“Do not abuse him,” said the queen, warmly. “He was not cruel, not unfeeling. For if he had been so, he would have sundered the tie which bound him to the unloved woman who had been forced upon him when he became king. But he was mild and gentle; he tolerated me, and I was permitted to love him and call myself his, although he was never mine. Instead of banishing me, as he might have done, he endured me, and accorded me the royal honors due his wife. True, I have not often seen him, and have very rarely spoken to him; but yet I heard and knew of him, and he never permitted my birthday to pass without writing me a letter of congratulation. Once, however—once he went so far in his goodness as to hold the New-Year’s reception here in Schönhausen, because an accident which happened to my foot prevented my coming to Berlin. Oh, I shall never forget that day, for it was the only time the king visited me here; and since then it seems to me that the sun has never set, but still gilds the apartments through which Frederick had wandered. On that day,” continued the queen, with a sad smile, absorbed in her recollections of the past, “on that day, something occurred which astonished the court, and was talked of in all Berlin. The king, who, on similar occasions in the city, had only looked at and saluted me from a distance, walked up to my side, extended his hand, and inquired after my health in the most kind and feeling manner. I was so confused and bewildered by this unexpected happiness, that I almost fainted. My heart beat wildly, and I found no strength to utter a single word in reply, that is, if my tears were not an answer.[24] But since that day the king has never spoken to me. The words, however, which he then uttered have always resounded in my ear like sweet music, and will lull me to sleep in the hour of death.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the maid of honor, in astonishment and indignation, “how can it be possible to love in such a manner?”
The queen, who had entirely forgotten that she was not speaking to herself, and that another listened to her plaintive wail, raised her head quickly, her blue eyes sparkling as if she had been but seventeen instead of seventy years old.
“How could it be possible not to love in such a manner, when one loved Frederick the Great?” said she, proudly. “I had made this love my life, my religion, my hope of immortality. I gave to this love my whole soul, my every thought and feeling; and it gave me, in return, joyful resignation and the strength to endure. Without this, my great, my beautiful love, I would have perished in the solitude and desolation of my being; but from it my life derived its support, its enthusiasm, and its perpetual youth. Years have whitened my hair and wrinkled my countenance, but in the poor, miserable body, in the breast of this old woman, throbs the heart of a young girl; and it bears me on with its youthful love, through and beyond all time and trouble, to those heights where I will once more behold him, and where he will, perhaps, requite the love he here despised. Love never grows old; when the heart is filled with it, years vanish like fleeting dreams, and it encircles mortality with the halo of undying youth! Therefore it must not surprise you, Julie, that the old woman you see before you can speak of her love. It was the love of my youth, and still makes me young. And now go, my child, and leave me alone with my recollections, and the great dead! I have much to say to him that God only may hear! Go, my child, and if, at some future day, you should love and suffer, think of this hour!”
She greeted the young lady with a gentle wave of the hand, and as the maid of honor left the room she saw the queen fall on her knees.
Slowly, and with her head bowed down, Julie von Voss walked through the adjoining rooms to her own apartments. “I will never love like this, and consequently never suffer like this,” said she to herself. “I cannot comprehend how one can lose and forget one’s self so completely in another, particularly when this other person does not love as ardently—as ardently as I am loved by—”
She stopped and blushed, and a slight tremor ran through her being. “I should like to know whether he loves me as passionately as this woman has loved her husband, whether—But,” exclaimed she, interrupting her train of thought, “I had entirely forgotten that his valet is waiting to deliver a message.”
Immediately on entering her parlor, she rang the bell, and ordered her chambermaid to show the valet, Rietz, who was waiting in the queen’s antechamber, up to her apartments at once. She then walked slowly to and fro; she sighed profoundly, and her lips whispered in low tones, “I do not love him! No, I do not love him; and yet I will no longer be able to resist him, for they are all against me; even my own relatives are ready to sacrifice me. That they may become great, I am to be trodden in the dust; and that they may live in honor, I am to live in shame! But I will not!” she cried, in a loud voice; and she stood proudly erect, and held up her beautiful head. “No, I will not live in shame; every respectable woman shall not have the right to point the finger of scorn at me, and place me in the same category with the brazen-faced wife of the abominable Rietz! They shall not have the right to call Julie von Voss the king’s mistress! No, they shall not, and—”
“The king’s privy chamberlain,” announced the maid, and behind her Rietz walked into the parlor.