"I regret, your Majesty," he said, "that I must not do what you asked me."
"And I regret," said the Queen, "that, having had the honour of knowing the hero of the age, whom I can never forget, the impression left on my mind must always be painful. Had you been generous, sire, I would be bound to you by an everlasting gratitude."
"Indeed, your Majesty," returned Napoleon, "I lament that so it must be; it is my evil destiny."
"And I have been cruelly deceived," were the Queen's last words, and off drove her carriage.
The two Royal Foes parted, never again to meet.
That day Louisa thought herself the vanquished, and before the world Napoleon wore the laurels of victory. Seventy years later the President of France wrote that it was his belief that, at Tilsit, Napoleon was conquered; that had he then been generous and bound the King and Queen of Prussia to him by a tie of gratitude his last days need not, perhaps, have been spent on the island of St. Helena, for in his troubles they would have been his ally.
When the Queen reached her room she turned to her ladies in tears.
"When I am dead," she said, "it will be as with Queen Mary of England; not Calais, but Magdeburg will be graven on my poor heart in letters of blood."
Peace was signed on the seventh, and on June 24 Napoleon, in triumph, entered Frankfort-on-Main, and three days later he arrived at his palace at Saint Cloud and immediately was off again, marching armies into Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria.
"Peace is made," wrote Queen Louisa to her father, "but at a dreadful price. Our boundary will only go as far as the Elbe. Yet is the King greater than his adversary. After Eylau he could have made a more advantageous peace, but then he must have followed wicked principles, and now he has acted through necessity and not forsworn himself. That must bring a blessing on Prussia. After Eylau he would not desert a faithful ally. Once more, I repeat, it is my firm belief that this conduct of the King will bring good fortune to Prussia."