His mother certainly had been much pleased at such an honour to Carl, and, as for the little rascal, he could talk of nothing else, but most certainly he was scolded.
"But nothing did him the least good until his sister Marianne had told him that Pauline would write a little letter in French to Bonaparte, and if he ran away again the Emperor would come and get him."
Bettina shuddered. She could quite believe that Carl never had run away again.
"He is a great boy now," said the Herr Lieutenant. "This happened two years ago."
"I have seen the Queen, too," confided Bettina, and she told him all about the day at the inn, and about Napoleon, and her mother, whom she missed so. Night after night she wept herself to sleep under her feather bed, poor little Bettina.
"Oh, dear Herr Lieutenant," she said, "why did not the ravens wake the Kaiser Barbarossa?"
"Perhaps they will some day," he answered, smiling.
"Do you think, gracious Herr Lieutenant," she asked on the day when Hans had departed so secretly, "that the wicked Emperor will get the dear, lovely Queen?"
The soldier shook his head.
"No, no, little Bettina, the good God must save her, for she is so good and kind to everybody."