Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia Part 25

"Enough," exclaimed the king, rising hastily, and pacing the room. "I have listened to you to the end, because I wished to see how far your audacity would go, and to gain a clear insight into your whole character. I was already prejudiced against you. It is true, I knew you were a thoughtful, talented, and bold man, but, at the same time, I believed you to be somewhat eccentric; in short, I regarded you as a man who, because he always thinks only his own opinion to be correct, is unable to fill a position in which he would constantly come in conflict with others, and soon be irritated and discouraged by the clash of opinions prevailing there. I overcame these prejudices, because I have always striven to select the servants of the state, not according to the promptings of personal whims, but of sensible reasons. I was advised to appoint you minister of foreign affairs; and (please take notice of what I am about to tell you now) those who advised me to do so--those who advocated your appointment most strenuously, were precisely the ones whom you are now attacking, and are bent upon overthrowing. I yielded! I offered you the department of foreign affairs. You declined the position on the pretext of not being familiar enough with the details of the department. Your refusal was greatly embarra.s.sing to me, for I still believed that your services ought to be preserved to the state and to myself. I overlooked your ungracious refusal, and sent for you to speak freely and openly with you. I have conversed with you, and now know you better!"

The king, walking up and down, uttered these words with increasing excitement, and in a voice growing louder and louder, without looking once at Stein, who had risen from his seat, and, drawing himself up to his full height, listened to this angry outburst. The king stood still before him, and, fixing his piercing eyes on the calm, cold face of the baron, added, "I have found out, to my regret, that my original opinion of your character was not erroneous; that my prejudices against you were just, and that you ought to be considered an obstinate, refractory, and disobedient servant of the state, who, boastfully relying on his genius and talents, so far from aiming at the welfare of his country, is actuated solely by his whims, his pa.s.sions, and personal hatred. Such men are precisely those whose conduct is most injurious to the interests of the monarchy."

"Your majesty," exclaimed Stein, impetuously, "your majesty, I--"

"Silence," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the king, in an imperious voice, "silence while I am speaking! I really feel sorry that you have compelled me to speak to you so plainly and unreservedly; but as you are always boasting of being a truthful man, I hare told you my opinion in unvarnished language, and will add that, if you should be unwilling to change your disrespectful conduct, the state cannot count very confidently of profiting further by your services."

"Your majesty, I cannot change my conduct," exclaimed Stein, pale with hidden anger, which he could no longer repress. "As you believe me to be an 'obstinate, refractory, and disobedient servant of the state, who, boastfully relying on his genius and talents, so far from aiming at the welfare of his country, is actuated solely by his whims, his pa.s.sions, and personal hatred--'"

"Ah," interrupted the king, laughing scornfully, "you have an excellent memory, for I believe you are repeating my own words!"

"Sire, this will show you that my conduct is not always disrespectful, but that I set so high a value on your royal words that they are immediately engraved upon my memory," said Baron von Stein, smiling.

"But, inasmuch as I am also of your majesty's opinion that such officials as you have described me to be are most injurious to the interests of the monarchy, I must request your majesty to accept my declination, and I hope it will be granted immediately."

"You have p.r.o.nounced your own sentence, and I do not know how to add any thing to it!" replied the king.

Baron von Stein bowed. "I thank your majesty most humbly," he said. "Now I must beg that my dismissal from the service be communicated to me in the usual form. I have the honor to take leave of your majesty."

Without waiting for the king's reply, the baron bowed a second time, and left the room with measured steps. He crossed the anteroom rapidly, and then entered the apartment contiguous to the hall. A royal _valet de chambre_ hastened to meet him. "Your excellency," he said, "the queen begs you to be so kind as to go immediately to her. She instructed me to wait here till your return from the king, and ordered me to announce you directly to her majesty."

"Announce me, then," said Baron von Stein, following the footman with a mournful air.

The queen was in her cabinet, and rose from her divan when Baron von Stein entered. She offered her hand to the minister with a smile. "I begged you to come to me," she said, "because I intended to be the first to wish you--nay, ourselves--joy of your new position. The king has informed me that he would intrust the office of Count von Haugwitz to you, and I tell you truly that this is as a beam of light for me in the gloom of our present circ.u.mstances. I know that you are a true and faithful patriot; that you have the welfare of Prussia, of Germany, and of our dynasty at heart, and that you have the will and the ability to help us all--this is the reason why I wish ourselves joy of--"

"Pardon me, your majesty, for daring to interrupt you," said. Baron von Stein, in a low, melancholy voice; "but I cannot accept your congratulations. I was not appointed minister of foreign affairs, but the king has just granted my request to be dismissed from the service."

The queen started, and turned pale. "You did not accept the position which the king offered to you?" she asked. "Oh, then I was mistaken in you, too! There is, alas! no more fidelity or constancy on earth!" She pressed her hand against her aching forehead, and tottered back a few steps, to sink exhausted on the divan.

Baron von Stein approached, and his face seemed to be radiant with energy and determination. "No, queen," he said, loudly and firmly--"no; you were not mistaken in me, and if your majesty hitherto believed me to be a faithful and reliable man, I am sure you only did me justice.

Fealty does not change, however, and he who has once been found reliable will be so forever. No; let me repeat once more, your majesty was not mistaken in me, although I rejected the position offered to me. I fearlessly and truthfully stated to his majesty the conditions on which alone I could accept it. The king was unwilling to submit to these conditions; he was angry at them and reproached me in such a manner as to leave me no choice but to present him my humble declination, which he granted immediately. I did not refuse his offer because the situation of the country frightened me, but because, above all, I had to remain faithful to myself, and obey the promptings of my conviction. My love, my fealty, my soul, belong to Prussia and the royal dynasty. I retire into obscurity, and shall wait for the voice of Prussia and of my king.

When he calls me--when he can profit by services such as I am able conscientiously to perform--when he permits me to be faithful to myself and to my principles, that all my energy and faculties may be devoted to the welfare of my country, I shall gladly be ready to obey his call and enter upon those services. I would come to him, though from the most remote regions, and even should death menace me at every step. A true man does not shrink from danger or death, but from hypocrisy and falsehood, whether it concerns himself or others; he will not stoop to the tricks of diplomacy and dally with that which ought to be either forcibly removed from his path or carefully avoided, but with which he never ought to enter into compromise or alliance."

"Now I understand you," said the queen, gently and mournfully. "You did not wish to enter into an alliance with the secret friends of the French in our suite. The king was unwilling to sacrifice Haugwitz, Beyme, and Lombard to you, and hence you withdraw from the service. You did right, and it makes my heart ache to be compelled to admit it. So long as those three men are here, there will be a policy of continued vacillation and hesitancy, and what you would do one day those three men would annul the next. Oh! the king is so generous, so faithful and modest! He believes in the disinterestedness of Minister von Haugwitz, in his honesty and sagacity; for this reason, he will not altogether give him up, and he listens still to his advice, although Haugwitz is no longer at the head of the foreign department. Because the king himself is taciturn, and thinks and feels more in his head and heart than is uttered by his lips, Beyme's eloquence and quick perception fill him with respect; and because he is so very modest, and always believes others to be more sagacious than himself, he esteems Lombard's abilities highly, and wishes to preserve his services to the state. You know what I think of Lombard, and that at Stettin I was carried away by my anger at his conduct, more than was compatible with prudence. I caused the man to be arrested, whom I knew to be ready at that moment to betray me and the whole of Prussia, and whom I suspected of being in the pay of the French emperor. But you know also that my act was repudiated, and that immediate steps were taken to annul it. A special courier was sent to Stettin to procure the release of Lombard, and to convey him under a safe-escort to Kustrin; the messenger even took an autograph letter from the king to him, in which his majesty regretted the occurrence as arising from mere mistake. I do not tell you this in order to complain of it, but to show you how deep-rooted is the influence of those men, and how time is required to destroy it. But the time will come--believe me, it will--when Prussia will extend her hand toward you, and need your strong arm and firm will. Promise me that you will wait, and not give up to despair--that you will not enter the service of another monarch, so that, when Prussia calls you, you may be at liberty to respond."

"I promise it to your majesty," said Stein, solemnly. "I will wait; blessed be the hour when Prussia needs me, and when I shall be able to serve her again!"

"Yes, blessed be that hour!" exclaimed the queen, and, raising her eyes piously to heaven, she whispered, "G.o.d grant that it may come soon, for then a change in our circ.u.mstances will have taken place, and we shall have pa.s.sed from present incert.i.tude to firm determination. Oh, how much distress--how many disappointments and mortifications--until that change shall come! May we have strength to bear, and courage to overcome them!"

CHAPTER XIX.

THE QUEEN AT THE PEASANT'S COTTAGE.

It was a stormy night. The wind was howling through the pines, and driving the snow in dense clouds from the highway leading through, the forest. There was no sound, save that of the winter's gale, and the trees groaning beneath its power. A solitary light, twinkling as a star through the dark woods, was shedding its beams on this desolate scene.

It proceeded from a small house near the main road, where the forest-keeper had peacefully lived with his wife for more than twenty years. On the hearth in the cottage a merry fire was burning, and Katharine, the forest-keeper's wife, was industriously occupied with it, while the young servant-girl, seated on a low cane chair near the hearth, her hands clasped on her lap, had fallen asleep.

"Martha," exclaimed the old woman, in an angry voice, "--are you asleep again?"

The girl opened her eyes lazily and yawned. "Why should I not sleep?"

she asked. "It is time to do so, and every Christian has long since gone to bed. Let me also go to my bedchamber and sleep!"

"No, you must stay here," said Katharine, quickly; "I do not want to be alone in such a night. The wind is roaring in the chimney so fearfully that we might almost fancy Old Nick or the French were coming down to carry us away, or, at any rate, our last piece of bread and meat!"

"Meat!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the servant-girl, laughing scornfully. "Old Nick, or even the French, would be unable to find any meat in your house. Would that I could only get the wages you owe me for the last six months, I should leave forthwith this miserable place, where one has so little to eat, and where it is so dreadfully tiresome!"

"You have not suffered hunger as yet, Martha," said the old woman, deprecatingly. "It is true, we have no meat left; the last ham we had has been consumed, and our last chickens had to be taken to town to be sold there--"

"And your husband has taken away your only cow," cried Martha, half angrily, half sadly; "he is going to sell the good animal that always gave us such excellent milk and b.u.t.ter. I tell you it is a shame that he should do so, and I shall never go back to the stable where my dear cow's lowing will no more greet me!"

"You will, nevertheless, have to go back, Martha, for the two goats are still there; you must give them fodder, so that they may give us milk.

They are all we have left! Do you think it did not grieve me to part with our fine cow which I had raised myself? I wept for her all last night, and would have given away my hand rather than sell her. But no one would have paid any thing for my old hand. We had to have money to pay your wages, so as not to be obliged to listen longer to your continued importunities. That was the reason why my good old man took the cow to town. It cut him to the quick to hear you dunning us all the time for a few dollars."

The servant-girl cast down her eyes and blushed. "I did not mean any harm, Mde. Katharine," she said, in confusion. "It was mere talk; I always hoped master would take a lesson from me and dun the count in the same manner for his own wages. But the great lords are living sumptuously, and do not care whether their servants are starving to death or not!"

"Our count, Martha, does not live sumptuously," said Katharine, heaving a sigh. "The French destroyed his palace, and--but hush! Did you not hear something outside? I thought I heard some one call."

The two women were silent and listened; but nothing was to be heard. The storm was howling, and rattling the windows. At times an iron hand seemed to pa.s.s across the panes--it was the snow which the wind lashed against the house as if intending to awaken the inmates from their slumbers.

"A terrible night!" murmured Katharine, shuddering. "I hope that my dear old man won't return in such a storm, but stop with one of his friends at the neighboring village. Heaven preserve any human being out in such a night as this on the highway, and from--"

A loud knock at the window-panes interrupted her, and a voice outside shouted imperiously, "Open the door!"

The two women uttered a shrill scream, and Martha clung anxiously and with both her hands to Katharine's arm.

"I beseech you, Mde. Katharine," she whispered with quivering lips, "don't open. It is a.s.suredly Old Nick or the French that want to come in!"

"Fiddlesticks! The devil does not wait for the door to open, but comes down the flue," said Katharine; "and as to the French, the _Parlez-vous_, why, they cannot speak German. Just listen how they are commanding and begging outside. 'Open the door!' Well, yes, yes! I am coming. No one shall say that old Katharine suffered people to freeze to death in the forest while she had fire on her hearth." Disengaging herself from Martha's grasp, she hastened to the door, and opening it quickly, said, "Whoever you may be, you are welcome!"

The storm rushed in with a terrible noise, driving the snow into the house, and blowing up the fire on the hearth into a still brighter blaze.

There appeared on the threshold a tall lady, wrapped in a dark velvet cloak, trimmed with fur; her head covered with a silken cape, to which a white lace veil was fastened. Behind her were another richly-dressed lady, and two men in blue coats, splendidly embroidered with silver.

"You permit us, then, my dear woman, to enter your house and stop here overnight?" asked the veiled lady, in a gentle, sonorous voice.

Old Katharine stood staring at her. She felt as frightened as if a sorceress had entered her house. "First let me see your face," she said, growing bold notwithstanding her inward terror; "I must see who you are."

An indignant murmur arose among the attendants of the lady, but she ordered them to be quiet with a wave of her hand. She then turned once more to Katharine. "Well, my good woman, look at me," she said, drawing back her veil.

A pale, wondrously beautiful face was visible, and eyes more l.u.s.trous than the old woman had ever seen before, looked at her gently and kindly.

"Do you know me now?" asked the lady, with a smile full of touching melancholy.

"No," said Katharine, "I do not know you, but you are as beautiful as the angels that sometimes appear to me in my dreams, or as the fairies of whom my mother used to tell me when I was a little child. Come in, you as well as the others. There is room at the hearth for all who are cold."

The strange lady smiled and advanced into the cottage; before doing so, however, she turned around. "M. von Schladen," she said, in French, "pray, give orders to all not to betray my incognito. I am here the Countess von Hohenzieritz; please inform the servants of it."