"Ja wohl, Lotte," he said, and then he railed so at Napoleon that she was sure his grief had crazed him.
She kept her thoughts to herself until that night, when she and her husband lay under their featherbeds. Then she expressed the opinion she had been suppressing all day.
"It's all very well laying everything on Napoleon," she said. "He is a monster, an upstart, a villain, but Hans should have gone home to poor Anna. She should have obeyed and gone to Weyland's, you say? That is just like you, Otto, taking up for Hans Lange because he is a man, but Anna, poor woman, was not much given to obeying her father; you know that, husband, as well as I do, nicht? She was Hans, all over, doing what she pleased and obeying no one." Then the good woman, who truly had loved her cousin, wet her pillow with tears.
The farmer grieved, also. Why not? He, too, had liked Anna, and there were those little children, but he was a man and his thoughts were on the battle. He had learned at Jena that Napoleon was that evening to enter Weimar. Who knew what would happen?
The Duke was the ally of the King of Prussia, and Napoleon was not likely to forget it.
"Our poor country," and he sighed, remembering his meadows and how the soldiers had tramped over them.
He was sinking to sleep when Ulrich returned from Jena, where he had gone after supper.
"Father! Mother!" he called. "Wake up! Wake up! There is news of a battle at Auerstädt!"
The farmer pulled back the bed curtains and sprang from his bed.
"A battle at Auerstädt! Impossible!"