He had entered her palace; he had ransacked her private desks; he had read all her letters to her husband; he had published dreadful things against her in the French paper in Berlin; he had proclaimed her the cause of the war; declared her to be vain, foolish, and unworthy of the love of her people; and loudly had he declared that never would he rest until he had brought the King and Queen of Prussia so low that they must beg for their bread.
He had driven them from place to place, and now was advancing on Königsberg.
When Hans and Bettina had arrived in that old city the King had gone, the court was flying, and so, never heeding the snow, on they had gone, too, fleeing like the rest, before that dreadful Emperor.
And here was the poor Queen, who had been ill to death in Königsberg, journeying in the cold and snow to Memel, with not even a pillow to rest her head upon!
When the carriage started again Hans and Bettina walked behind it.
"It will shelter us," said the old man, for the wind blew little Bettina almost off her feet.
Ach, as the Germans say, but it was cold!
The blasts, sweeping from the Baltic to the Kurischehaff and from the Kurischehaff to the Baltic, still fought for mastery, and the curtain of the northern night began to fall about them early in the afternoon, and on they struggled in the gathering darkness.
At last, through the snowy gloom, they saw the lights of a village, and, nearly frozen, they sought lodgings.
Hans asked a woman whom he saw at a door to shelter them.