“But your people do not want peace!” exclaimed the queen. “They are enthusiastic and clamorous for war, and long for nothing so much as to see an end put to this deplorable incertitude. You have now caused your army to be placed on the war footing, and all faces have already brightened up, and all hearts feel encouraged; announce to your people that you will declare war against the usurper, and all Prussia will rise jubilantly and hasten to the battlefield, as if it were a festival of victory.”
“You refer to the army, but not to the people,” said the king. “It is true, the army is ready for the fray, and it is satisfied also that it will conquer. But who can tell whether it may not be mistaken? It is long since we have waged war, while the armies of Napoleon are experienced and skilled, and ready to take the field at any moment.”
“The army of Frederick the Great, the army of my king has nothing to fear from the hordes of the barbarian!” exclaimed the queen, with flaming eyes.
The king shrugged his shoulders. “I stand in need of allies,” he said; “alone I am not able to sustain such a struggle. If the courts of Northern Germany should comply with my invitation, if they should ally themselves with me, finally, if Austria should accept my proposition and unite with me, in that case I should hope for success. All this will be decided to-day, for I am now looking for the return of two important envoys—for the return of Hardenberg, who has delivered my propositions in Vienna, and for the return of Lombard, whom I have sent to the smaller German courts to offer them an offensive and defensive alliance in opposition to Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. I confess to you, Louisa, I await their replies tremblingly; I cannot think of any thing else; this feeling has haunted me all day, and now you know why I even forgot to greet you this morning. I intended not to betray the uneasiness filling my heart, but who is able to withstand such an enchantress as you? Now you know every thing!”
“And do you know already the new misdeed which the tyrant has committed?” asked the queen. “Do you know that he is ruling and commanding on German soil as if Germany were nothing but a French province, and all princes nothing but his vassals? In a time of peace he has caused a German citizen to be dragged from his house; in a German state he has ordered a court-martial to meet, and this court-martial has dared to pass sentence of death upon a German citizen merely because he, a German bookseller, had circulated a pamphlet deploring Germany’s degradation!”
“I have already known it for three days,” said the king, gloomily. “I concealed it from you in order not to grieve you.”
“But public opinion now-a-days conceals nothing,” exclaimed Louisa, ardently, “and public opinion throughout Germany cries for vengeance against the tyrant who is murdering German honor and German laws in this manner! In every city subscriptions have been opened for Palm’s family, for his young wife and his little girls. The poor as well as the rich hasten to offer, according to their means, gifts of love to the widow and orphans of the martyr; and believe me, the money which Germany is now collecting for Palm’s family will be dragon’s seeds from which armed warriors will spring one day, and Germany’s vengeance will blossom from this blood so unjustly shed. Permit me, my friend, to contribute my share to these seeds of love and vengeance. They brought to me this morning a list on which the most distinguished families had subscribed considerable sums for Palm’s family, and I was asked whether my ladies of honor and the members of my household would be allowed to subscribe for the same purpose. I should like to allow it and do even more—I should like to contribute my mite, too, to the subscriptions. Will you permit me to do so?”
“They will take that again for a demonstration,” said the king, uneasily; “they will say we were stirring up strife and discontent among the Germans. I believe it would be prudent not to make a public demonstration prematurely, but to wait and keep quiet till the right time has come.”
“And when will the right time come, if it has not come now?” exclaimed the queen, mournfully. “Remember, my beloved husband, all the mortifications and humiliations which you have received of late at the hands of this despot, and which, in your noble and generous resignation, did not resent in order to preserve peace to your people. Remember that he alone prevailed on you to occupy Hanover, that he warranted its possession to you, and then when your troops had occupied it, applied secretly, and without saying a word to you, to England, offering to make peace with her by proposing to restore Hanover to her.”
“It was a grievous insult,” exclaimed the king, with unusual vivacity; “I replied to it by placing my army on the war footing.”