"Oh, your excellency will understand it soon enough," replied General von Zastrow, smiling, "if you will only be so kind as to listen to me a little."
"I assure you, my friend, I am most anxious to hear your explanations; I am burning with the desire to know how we are to bring it about to leave this accursed, cold Memel and return to Berlin within so short a time."
"Well, what is the cause of our sojourn here?" asked General von Zastrow. "What has driven us hither? What has deprived the king, our august master, of his states, of his happiness—nay, almost of his crown? What is the cause that our beautiful and amiable queen has to undergo all sorts of privations and inconveniences, and is compelled to reside, instead of in her palace at Berlin, in a miserable, leaky house in Memel, where she is closer to the Bashkirs than to civilized people? The war is the cause of all this!"
"Yes, if my advice had been followed, these calamities would never have befallen us," replied General von Köckeritz, sighing; "we would have remained on terms of friendship and peace with the great man whom Heaven has sent to subjugate the world, and resistance against whom is almost equivalent to blasphemy. He frequently and magnanimously offered us his friendship, but at that time more attention was paid to the vain boastings of the lieutenants of the guard; and the rhodomontades of Prince Louis Ferdinand unfortunately found an echo in the heart of the queen. The advice of older and more prudent officers was disregarded, and the king, in spite of himself, was dragged into this war, which we have had to expiate by the defeats of Jena and Auerstadt, and by the loss of so many fortresses and provinces. And who knows what may be in store for us yet? Who knows what mischief may yet threaten the crown and life of Frederick William!"
"Well," said General von Zastrow, with a sarcastic smile, "it looks as though the fortune of war were now turning in favor of the Russians. Think of the great victories which the Russian General Benningsen has already won. Did not twenty-four trumpeting postilions proclaim to us at Königsberg, on new-year's-day, the Russian victory of Pultusk?"
"Yes, but those twenty-four postilions and that emphatic announcement were the most brilliant parts of the victory," said General von Köckeritz, shrugging his shoulders. "Benningsen was not defeated by Napoleon at Pultusk, but honorably maintained his position on the battle-field—that is what the whole amounted to."
"Yes, but we are celebrating again a great and brilliant triumph. On the 7th and 8th of February the Russian General Benningsen and our General Lestocq claim to have obtained another advantage over Napoleon and his marshals. I suppose you are aware that Benningsen himself has arrived here in order to communicate the news of the victory of Eylau to the royal couple?"
"Yes, I know," said Köckeritz. "But I know also what this new success really amounts to. The Russians are very liberal in issuing victorious bulletins, and if they have not been massacred in a battle to a man, the last ten survivors shout invariably, 'Victory! We have won the battle!' That of Eylau is even more problematic than that of Pultusk. Pray tell me, who held the battle-field of Eylau?"
"Napoleon with his French, of course."
"And who retreated from Eylau toward Königsberg?"