The coachman, profiting by this movement, drove onward. The people,
whose desire had been satisfied in having seen their queen, no longer
resisted, and permitted the carriage to roll away.
Louisa closed her coach window, and, sinking back upon the cushions,
exclaimed in a heart-rending tone, "Alas! it is perhaps the last time
that they thus salute me! Soon, perhaps, I shall be no longer Queen of
Prussia!" She buried her face in her hands, and sobbed aloud.
"Do not weep," whispered Madame von Berg, the queen's intimate friend,
who was sitting by her side, "do not weep. It may be a dispensation of
Providence that the crown shall fall from your head for a moment, but He
will replace it more firmly, and one day you will again be happy."
"Oh, it is not for the sake of my own majesty, and for my little worldly
splendor, that I am lamenting at this moment," said the queen, removing
her hands from her face. "I should gladly plunge into obscurity and
death if my husband and my children were exempted from humiliation, and
if these good people, who love me, and are attached to their king,
should not be compelled to recognize a foreigner as their master, and
bow to him!"
"Even though the people should be subjugated at present," said Madame
von Berg, solemnly, "they will rise one day and avenge their disgrace!"
"Would you were a true prophetess!" exclaimed Louisa.
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