"Two Englishmen went to Peacock Island," said
Carl, puffing out his words in his eager importance. "They had no right to go and they went. An officer ran them away. But they met a lady and a gentleman. It was our King and Queen. They made them stay and they showed them everything, and the Englishmen did not know that it was our King and Queen. My story is best, ja, Mariechen; isn't it, Bettina?"
Marianne nodded.
"But now, let us read," she said.
"Peacock Island has also a palm house, and there are many peacocks and doves and pigeons, of which our Queen is so fond.
"Our Queen is so good to all children.
"'The children's world is my world,' she says, and she is always being kind to some child, and when she and the King drive out she will salute the people with smiles long after he is tired and stops it.
"Often I think of what our poets have said of her. She is one of four sisters. One is our Princess Louisa; another, Theresa, is the Princess of Thurn and Taxis; and the third, Charlotte, is the Duchess of Sachsen-Hildburghausen. Our great poet, Jean Paul Richter, called them 'the four noble and beautiful sisters on the throne.' And famous Wieland said of our Louisa, 'Were I the King of Fate, she should be Queen of Europe.' And Goethe," Marianne rolled her voice and the twins giggled, "who was with the Duke of Weimar in camp and saw our Queen and her sister, Frederika, when, as princesses, they came to visit their betrothed with their grandmother, from his tent, wrote in his journal that they were visions of loveliness which should never fade from his memory. And she has set the Berlin young girls a fine example in dress. Ludwig is delighted. She wears very simple muslins, and, indeed, why should she waste her time over silks and brocades when white so suits her?"
Marianne here stopped in her reading.