"Grandfather," she asked, "please, what is a foe?"
"Napoleon, child, Napoleon. He comes to do us harm, to work evil. He is the foe of the good King and Queen, but especially does he hate our Queen and seek to do her harm."
Bettina opened her blue eyes.
"Grandfather," she said, "how can he?"
The old man shrugged his shoulders and sat absently stroking her hair.
As for the little girl herself, she was thinking. How anyone could be a foe of that lovely Queen it was hard to understand. But then, it was so with all the fairy princesses. There was always an ogre, Bettina remembered, but it was true, too, that the foes were always conquered by a knight, or a prince, a dragon, or something.
She remembered the cave of Kyffhäuser.
"Grandfather," she said, pulling at one of the buttons of his coat, "why don't the ravens wake Barbarossa? I told one at our Forest House. I think, dear grandfather, it is time for him to wake up, don't you?" and she gazed quite anxiously into his face. As for Hans, he laughed for the first time in days.
"It would surprise the Emperor a little, my Bettina," he said, and then told her that their journey was ended. "The King, dear child, is at Königsberg, and there we will rest for a long time."
"God be praised," said little Bettina, in the way the Germans do. "I shall truly be glad, dear grandfather, to sit down and do a little quiet knitting."