"Grandfather," she panted, "dear grandfather, will the Emperor get my father?"
Hans' glowing face became suddenly sober. He had forgotten his son-in-law, as he forgot everything. He paused in the narrow forest path and raised his old blue eyes to Heaven.
"Let us pray to the good God, my Bettina. He alone can save him in the battle."
For a moment he stood silent, his face gazing upward to the sky which showed now between the fir trees. When he had ended his prayer he went on more slowly and as they walked he told Bettina why the French and the Prussians were fighting. For eight years, he said, the King of Prussia had kept out of all the fighting in Europe, although both Russia and Austria had entreated him to help them. But he declared that his country was too poor, he loved peace, and his people needed quiet.
"And wasn't that right, grandfather?" asked Bettina, who had been told that fighting was wicked.
"Perhaps, dear child, perhaps," the old soldier answered, "but it's a good thing to help our neighbours when they need us. But the King of Prussia is good and saving, too, not at all like the old King who spent so much, and whose ministers brought Prussia to all this trouble."
Then he explained how Napoleon would not let the King of Prussia alone, how he had irritated him with taunts, how he had provoked him with outrages, breaking a solemn promise about the Kingdom of Hanover, quartering ten thousand soldiers on German soil, forming all the South German States into a Confederation of the Rhine to depend upon him, and not upon the Emperor of Austria, or the King of Prussia, and last, and worst of all, defying the laws of nations, he had marched French soldiers across neutral Prussia.
"The King of Prussia is a good man, my Bettina, a very good man," old Hans nodded. "He has saved much money for Prussia, but no man can stand everything, and so now we have war."
Bettina tried to listen, but all she could think of was the dreadful Emperor on his white horse. She could see him again in his green overcoat with its white facings, and feel the gleam of his eyes from beneath his queer hat, and now he was firing cannon on her father. She could not keep back her tears at the thought, and they rolled down her cheeks and splashed to her red dress.
"Will he get us, grandfather, will he get us?" she cried.