"Nein, nein, child," they all heard him reply, and then Bettina insist:
"But, yes, dear grandfather. Please, please ask him, I know it, dear grandfather, I know it."
"What is it, Hans?" and the Herr Professor came close to Bettina, smiling in his kind, fatherly way.
"She will have it, sir," answered the old soldier, "that your name must be 'Von Stork,' and that you are the father of the young Prussian soldier whom we nursed in the Forest House!"
"I know it, dear grandfather, I know it," burst out Bettina in high excitement. "The Herr Lieutenant told me of Carl and Ilse and Elsa and Mademoiselle Pauline and his big sister, Marianne, and of how our Queen kissed Carl—and——"
Bettina could say no more.
Screaming and crying out, they all crowded round exclaiming that it was their Franz, their own dear Franz and no other.
And then they would know everything and all he did and said and just where he was wounded and how they took him prisoner, and Madame von Stork fell to weeping, and all the others cried, "Ja, ja," and "Nein, nein," so loud and so much that poor, tired little Bettina was almost deafened.
And then Hans must go all over the whole story for them again, and it set Bettina to weeping, and the old man to vowing vengeance against Napoleon.
Madame von Stork first rejoiced because her boy was alive, and then wept because he was a prisoner, and she thanked Hans over and over, and told him that she would care for Bettina so long as they remained in Memel.