I am afraid your
beauty, your understanding, your grace, are to be abused to fascinate
your enemy, and to wrest from him by persuasion what is the sacred right
and property of your king and of your children, and what I believe
cannot be wrested from the conqueror through intercession, but by the
king and his ally, the Emperor Alexander, by means of negotiations, or,
if they should fail, by force and conquest."
"Hush, hush, Caroline," exclaimed the queen anxiously. "Do not repeat to
me my own thoughts; do not give expression to my doubts and fears! I
think and feel like you. But I must go nevertheless; I must do what my
king and husband asks me to do. He wrote me that it is my sacred duty
to control my feelings, and come to him--that every thing is lost if I
do not succeed in influencing Napoleon by my remonstrances. It shall not
be said that I neglected my duty, and refused to yield, when the welfare
of my children and of my husband was at stake. It is a trial imposed
upon me now, and I am accustomed to make sacrifices. God may reward my
children for the sufferings I am now undergoing, the tears of their
mother may remove adversity from them when I am no more. Oh, my children
and my husband, if you are only happy, I shall never regret having
suffered and wept! And who knows," she added, "whether God may not have
mercy upon me, and whether, by the humiliation I am about to make, I may
not really promote the welfare of my king, my children, and my beloved
people? Oh, Caroline, I feel a joyful foreboding that it will be so! It
will touch the proud conqueror to see a lady, a wife, a mother, who was
once a queen, and is now but a sad, afflicted woman, appear before him
and humbly ask him to have mercy on her children and her country.
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