One day, many years before the days of Memel, an old Frenchman had appeared at the "Stork's Nest" in Berlin.
Though his hair was white, his shoulders bowed with trouble, and his clothes worn and poor, the Professor recognised him as a once very elegant-looking servant of a French nobleman whom he had known well in Paris. He led by the hand a little girl of eight or nine.
"My master and mistress lost their heads in the Revolution," the man explained, "but I escaped to Berlin with Mademoiselle Pauline."
Then he told of his dangers and all they had endured.
"Monsieur," he said, "I am old, poor, and alone. What shall I do with a fine young lady?"
Madame von Stork's quick eye had been studying the child. The sadness of the pale little face, the neatness of the black dress, the daintiness of the Marie Antoinette kerchief warmed her heart to the homeless little girl.
She looked at her husband, a question in her kind grey eyes.
He nodded, and so Pauline came to the shelter of the "Nest," which so kindly welcomed Bettina also.
And now Pauline was like Madame von Stork's own child, and, since she was noble and hated the French Republic, and loved her poor King, she, too, had no good for Napoleon and, like the Prussians, hoped to see him conquered.
"And what I should do without Pauline, Heaven only knows," Madame von Stork was often saying, "my own Marianne being so useless."