"I thought so!" she said, and her eyelids narrowed.
As for Hans, when he had dried himself somewhat and partaken of bread, cheese, and beer, he was off to the shoemaker's house, where they had taken the Queen. In its kitchen, with its great stove and its pots of blooming geraniums, he found some court servants, who, now they were resting, were glad enough of a gossip.
Especially was the driver of the carriage fond of talk.
"Ja," he said, "our good Queen has been ill to death of a nervous fever."
Then he told of how she had been with the King; her children, with the Countess Voss; and first little Princess Alexandrina, and then Prince Carl had been ill, and the Queen could not reach them.
At Königsberg little Carl had been near to death, and the Queen from nursing him took the fever.
"Ach Himmel," said the driver, gazing from face to face in the hot, steaming kitchen, "it was terrible, for we thought we should lose her! Herr Doctor Hufeland arrived from Dantzic. His Excellency found her near death. Ach, friends, but it was a dreadful night, and all hearts were anxious, for at sea was a ship, and on board Baron Stein, bearing to Königsberg the state treasure. He had saved the gold and jewels in Berlin from that thief Napoleon."
Then he told how in the night, while the wind howled and blew, there had come a crash which had startled old Königsberg.
It was a wing of the old castle which had fallen in the storm.
"And it brought bad luck," continued the driver, "for a courier arrived soon after with despatches. 'Fly!' they said, 'fly! the French approach Königsberg!'"