“No, your majesty,” said the prince, heaving a sigh, “this time, unfortunately, I have to confess to you no merry freaks and agreeable sins, and I am afraid I am about to become a steady man, and to turn my back on all extravagant pranks. Hence, the minister has not accompanied me this time in order to defend me and to implore the gracious intercession of my royal cousin, but we have come for the purpose of repeating to your majesty Prussia’s cry of anguish and distress, and of beseeching you to assist us in saving her from the ruin on the verge of which she is tottering at the present time!”
The queen looked alternately at the prince and at the minister with grave, wondering eyes. “It is a political conference, then, you wish to hold with me?” she asked; and when the two gentlemen made no reply, she continued more rapidly and in a slightly agitated voice—“in that case, gentlemen, I must request you to leave me, for I am no politician, and I do not aspire to the role of a political intriguer. I am the wife of the reigning king, but not a reigning queen; my sole endeavor is to render the king a happy husband at home, and to cause him to forget at my side politics and the vexations of his official position.”
“I am afraid, your majesty,” said Minister von Hardenberg, solemnly—“I am afraid the time for such an idol on the throne is past; and instead of causing the king to forget the vexations of his position, it will now be the great task of your majesty to bear them with him.”
“And we have come to beg my noble and magnanimous cousin to do so,” exclaimed the prince, enthusiastically. “We have come to implore your assistance and cooperation in the name of Prussia, in the name of all German patriots, and in the name of your children!”
“In the name of my children?” ejaculated the queen, turning pale. “Speak! speak! what has happened? what calamity threatens my children? I decline listening to you as a queen, but I will do so as a mother, who anxiously desires to secure the happiness of her children. What evils, what calamities do you refer to?”
“The independence, nay, perhaps the whole existence of Prussia, is menaced,” said Minister von Hardenberg, solemnly. “We have to choose whether Prussia is to be an isolated state, shunned by everybody, and despised by everybody—a state which France will be able to devour with impunity and amid the jeers of the whole world, as she has devoured Italy, Holland, and the left bank of the Rhine—or whether Prussia will preserve her power, her independence, and her honor, by not staving off a division any longer, but meeting her friends as well as her enemies with open visor, and by assuming at length an active and resolute attitude instead of the vacillating and hesitating course she has so long pursued!”
“We ought to oppose the Emperor of France in a manly manner,” exclaimed the prince, energetically. “If we do not interfere with his proceedings, he will soon be our master as he is of all those who call themselves his allies, and who are really nothing but his slaves. My heart kindles with rage when I now see all Germany trembling with fear before this son of a Corsican lawyer, this tyrant who assassinated the noble and innocent Duke d’Enghien, and who, not contenting himself with chaining France, would like to catch the whole world in his imperial mantle so as to fatten its golden bees on it. And he will succeed in doing so, unless we resist him, for his word is now already the law of half the world, and this emperor carries out whatever he wants to do. Truly, if he should feel some day a hankering for a dish of princes’ ears, I should no longer deem my own ears safe, nor those of your young princes either!” [Footnote: Prince Louis Ferdinand said this to the queen.—Vide “Rahel and her Friends,” vol. i.]
The queen did not smile at this jest which the prince had uttered in an angry voice, but she turned once more with a grave and anxious air to the minister.
“Tell me, has any thing occurred?” she asked. “Has there been a change in the political situation?”
“Yes, your majesty,” replied the minister, “there has been a change in the political situation; the Emperor Napoleon has dared to violate our neutrality, and if Prussia should not now demand satisfaction she either loses her honor, or she places herself before the whole world as the ally of France, and defies thereby the open hostility of Austria, Russia, and England.”