THE ANGEL OF PRUSSIA
Next morning Frau Weyland called Bettina early.
"Good-morning, dear child," she said, kissing her round little cheek.
"Grandfather must go far into the forest. Would you like to go with him?
You may have a little basket like a wood gatherer and bring mother back
some faggots."
Bettina was glad, indeed, to get up. She had had a dreadful time. All
night long it had seemed to her that the awful Emperor was always trying
to catch her, and then she would wake with a start. Sometimes he had a
long, red beard, sometimes he was draped in grey mist and wore a golden
crown; and always he was riding the white horse.
Her mother looked at her kindly.
"If you are tired, dear," she began, but Bettina was eager to go.
"Nein, nein, dear mother," she cried, "I love to go with grandfather."
So she hurried on her clothes and drank her milk and ate her bread and
said "Auf wiedersehen" to her mother. Then she started off with her
grandfather. Frau Weyland stood in the door and watched them, waving her
hand and smiling.
She was very pretty. When she was sixteen, and only just betrothed to
Kaspar Weyland, people said she was like the "Lorelei," the maiden who
sits on a rock in the Rhine and sings songs to enchant the boatmen, all
the time combing her golden hair and gazing in a jewelled mirror.
And she was so good to old Hans, and never cross with Bettina, and
always the meals were hot and ready, and the house clean and quiet.
About the doorway grew a vine and October had brought the frost and
turned it crimson. It fell all about her like a frame as she stood
there, so gentle and smiling. It was foggy still, but there was a light
in the sky before which the mist must soon vanish. When they reached the
gate Hans turned for a last "Auf wiedersehen" to his Annchen.
"Till we meet again" it means, and little did old
Hans think as he waved his hand to his daughter that never in all the
world was he ever to hear his golden-haired Anna again. How could he?
What could happen? She was never so well in all her life, and he and
Bettina would return to dinner. So gaily he and the little girl entered
the forest and presently, through the fog, they saw a great red ball of
a sun which grew brighter and brighter.
As for Frau Weyland, she returned to her work. There was much to do with
two children to wash and dress, a house to clean, chickens to feed,
cream cheese to make, and dinner to prepare for the family.
The daylight showed Hans to be tall and strong with broad shoulders and
the walk of a soldier. His grey hair was drawn back and tied in a queue,
and on one ruddy cheek was a scar from a sabre cut. Hans was very proud
of this, because he had won it in one of the battles of the Great
Frederick. His eyes were like his daughter's and like Bettina's, very
blue, and very big, and gleaming with gentleness. But in Hans' eyes
there was something different. At once were they merry and full of
dreams as if he could joke and yet be, also, very melancholy.
As for Bettina, she was a little fairy of a girl who tripped along and
seemed barely to touch the ground. Her hair was golden and hung in two
tight little braids to her waist. Her dress was of red and made very
high under her arms and clinging about her little ankles. Her head was
quite bare, and a deep little wicker basket was strapped on her back in
which to bring home some pine cones or scrub oak leaves for the goat.
"I'm a wood gatherer, grandfather," she pretended, and tripped along
behind him.
She loved her grandfather. He told such nice stories and never was cross
like her grandfather Weyland, who always said children should be seen,
not heard, and in an entirely different tone from the pleasant one he
used with grown people.
"I love the forest, grandfather." Bettina's eyes sparkled.
"Ja, ja, little one," said Hans, "it is German to love all Nature, and,
truly, our forest is beautiful."
Bettina nodded and gazed about at the tall giant-like pines and her
little nose drew in the deep fragrance of the firs. She was glad that
she did not live in Jena, but deep in this lovely Thuringian wood, where
the trunks of the trees looked like armies of soldiers. There were
lovely things in the forest.
In its thick, pine-needle carpet grew lovely toadstools, red and yellow
and brown, and sometimes all queerly shaped and striped and just like
umbrellas and parasols. And the moss was thick and grew like a velvet
carpet and raised up the dearest little red cups, and the ferns waved
like feathers, and, in spring, there were the lilies of the valley which
rang tiny white bells for the fairies to come and dance round the gay
little toadstools. And, later, there were the Canterbury bells, so
lovely and purple. And, in and out the trees, ran great, bushy-tailed
red squirrels who peeped at her with eyes bright and sparkling, and
sometimes she saw little companies of deer and tiny fawns with their
mothers, and their eyes were like "Little Brother" in the fairy tale,
for it was in these very forests that some of the witches once lived,
and the fairies in "Grimm," and many of the people of the German
stories.
Bettina knew that the fairies slept on the moss and danced under the
toadstools, only it was strange that she never had seen them, nor had
her mother, nor her father, nor her grandfather, nor Willy.
But they were there. All the stories said so.
"Do you think, grandfather," she asked, "that 'Little Brother' really
was turned into a fawn?"
"Who can tell, Kindlein?" answered old Hans, but his mind was on other
things than Bettina and her fairy tales.
"Hard times! hard times!" he muttered. "Always war somewhere, and what
then for poor people? Work! Work! Work!"
Bettina was too small to understand, but, certainly, affairs were
gloomy.
The King of Prussia had declared war upon the Emperor of the French; the
Duke of Weimar, ruler of the forest they were walking through and friend
of the great poet, Goethe, had joined the king as his ally. And now
soldiers were round about and everywhere.
Soldiers were nothing new to Bettina. She had seen them all her life.
But the Emperor of the French! That was another thing, and an awful one.
She shuddered as her grandfather muttered his name.
He was a dreadful man. Her mother always said so. At the mention of his
name every child in Germany behaved itself. And to think that she,
Bettina Weyland, had seen this monster on the white horse everybody
talked so about.
Remembering the night before, Bettina trembled. Then, too, it seemed to
her that she kept hearing a queer sound of roaring--not loud, but far
away towards Jena, a rumble which frightened her.
But old Hans seemed to hear nothing. His mind, as old minds will, had
travelled into the past and he had forgotten the Thuringian Wood, the
bright-eyed red squirrels, the deer, and even little Bettina chatting so
innocently as she trotted along behind him.
In his day the world had changed greatly, old things were passing away
and no one knew what was coming.
In America, the Colonies under Washington had won their independence and
founded a Republic. In France, there had been a dreadful Revolution, and
Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette had been guillotined. A
Corsican soldier first had become France's first consul, and now he was
the Emperor Bettina so dreaded. The Holy Roman Empire, whose Emperor had
lived in Vienna and ruled Germany, was no more, and France's Emperor,
Napoleon, had brought war all over the world. Europe had been fighting
during Hans' whole lifetime, and all the small countries had belonged
so to first one big one and then another, that it was hard sometimes to
exactly know who was one's ruler.
"And now," said Hans aloud, "the French have come into Thuringia, and
our troubles begin."
How dreadful these troubles were to be the old man had not even an idea.
Little did he think as he walked along with Bettina that before
twenty-four hours should have passed, a nation should fall, his own home
be no more, and Thuringia blood-stained and overrun with soldiers.
What he did know was that the King of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick
were at Auerstaedt, Prince Hohenlohe at Jena, and Napoleon, with the
French, in the same neighbourhood.
"But there will be no battle; nonsense," the Prussians had all told him
in Jena. "And if there should be, who, tell us, would be victors but the
soldiers of Frederick the Great? Was not his army invincible?"
"What matter?" they had answered when someone had ventured to refer to
Napoleon and his victories. "He must yield to us Prussians. Why not? The
moment that he heard that we were at Jena did he not leave Weimar in
haste and retreat to Gera?"
In security they had gone to rest, and while they slept, Napoleon had
been planning a surprise for them.
While old Hans was thinking, he suddenly found out what the Emperor had
meant by his good-morning.
"Grandfather, oh, grandfather!" in sudden fright called out little
Bettina, "Oh, grandfather, what is it?"
Hans' neck had stretched itself forward, his ears were listening, his
whole body on a strain, for a roar, deep and full and awful, seemed
suddenly to roll through the quiet of the silent, green forest.
"Grandfather!"
The old man turned his face as excited as a boy's.
"Himmel, child, Himmel!" he cried. "The Emperor is saying good-morning.
It is cannon you hear. The battle has begun at Jena!"
"Come, come," he continued, "I will not go any farther. Let the trees
take care of themselves for this morning. Come, come! What has an old
soldier of Frederick the Great to do with fir trees when the cannon are
sounding for battle?" And he started quickly in an opposite direction.
Bettina had to run so to keep up with him that her breath came in little
pants and her heart beat violently. But the roar was so awful she was
glad to be running to get away from it.
If that was the voice of Napoleon saying good-morning, no wonder people
were afraid of him.
"Grandfather," she panted, "dear grandfather, will the Emperor get my
father?"
Hans' glowing face became suddenly sober. He had forgotten his
son-in-law, as he forgot everything. He paused in the narrow forest path
and raised his old blue eyes to Heaven.
"Let us pray to the good God, my Bettina. He alone can save him in the
battle."
For a moment he stood silent, his face gazing upward to the sky which
showed now between the fir trees. When he had ended his prayer he went
on more slowly and as they walked he told Bettina why the French and the
Prussians were fighting. For eight years, he said, the King of Prussia
had kept out of all the fighting in Europe, although both Russia and
Austria had entreated him to help them. But he declared that his country
was too poor, he loved peace, and his people needed quiet.
"And wasn't that right, grandfather?" asked Bettina, who had been told
that fighting was wicked.
"Perhaps, dear child, perhaps," the old soldier answered, "but it's a
good thing to help our neighbours when they need us. But the King of
Prussia is good and saving, too, not at all like the old King who spent
so much, and whose ministers brought Prussia to all this trouble."
Then he explained how Napoleon would not let the King of Prussia alone,
how he had irritated him with taunts, how he had provoked him with
outrages, breaking a solemn promise about the Kingdom of Hanover,
quartering ten thousand soldiers on German soil, forming all the South
German States into a Confederation of the Rhine to depend upon him, and
not upon the Emperor of Austria, or the King of Prussia, and last, and
worst of all, defying the laws of nations, he had marched French
soldiers across neutral Prussia.
"The King of Prussia is a good man, my Bettina, a very good man," old
Hans nodded. "He has saved much money for Prussia, but no man can stand
everything, and so now we have war."
Bettina tried to listen, but all she could think of was the dreadful
Emperor on his white horse. She could see him again in his green
overcoat with its white facings, and feel the gleam of his eyes from
beneath his queer hat, and now he was firing cannon on her father. She
could not keep back her tears at the thought, and they rolled down her
cheeks and splashed to her red dress.
"Will he get us, grandfather, will he get us?" she cried.
"Nein, nein, little one," Hans answered. "That white horse will kick up
its heels and start back to Paris, perhaps this evening."
"God be praised!" said little Bettina in the way all the Germans say
it. Then, suddenly, she pointed before her.
In an opening in the forest where grew beeches, not evergreens, stood a
group of wood gatherers by a rippling stream which babbled through the
rocks, ferns dipping down their fronds from its banks to its water. They
were all women in short coloured skirts and loose jackets, deep wicker
baskets full of faggots strapped on their shoulders, their heads bare
and bowed a little because of the sticks, and their faces all frightened
and wild looking.
"Herr Lange! Herr Lange!" they called when they saw Hans and little
Bettina, "what is it? What is all that roaring?"
"Cannon," said Hans shortly. "The battle, women, has begun at Jena."
Then came a noise of talk and tears and outcrying such as never is heard
out of Germany. Louisa had a husband with the Duke; Emma, a son; Grete,
a lover; Magdalena, a father.
"Ach Gott! Ach Gott! Ach Gott!" sobbed a woman with sad dark eyes and
great shaggy white eyebrows. "The Poles killed my man," she wailed, "the
French, my sons; and now----"
"Her grandsons are with the Duke," explained a pink-cheeked woman the
rest called Minna.
"Come, come, women," Hans glanced kindly from one weeping face to the
other, "who says that your husbands and sons will be killed? They may
come home victorious; why not? The Prussians are three to the French
one. They are the soldiers of Frederick the Great, and is not your own
brave Duke helping them? Come, come, dry your tears. The thing, now, is
to get out of this forest. Who knows when the French will begin running
and the roads be full of soldiers?"
He started forward with Bettina, and the wood-gatherers in single file
left the golden beechwood and, a line of bright colour, moved after him
through the deep, green forest, swallowing their tears and struggling
against their sobbing. On they went, the cannon roaring and thundering,
and, presently, they came out on a highway winding like a white ribbon
through the forest's greenness.
They were but out of the path when a quick, noisy sound of hoofs on the
road made them start and stop suddenly.
"Soldiers!" cried Hans, and the whole party scattered to the edge of the
forest.
They were Prussians, and cavalry, and they acted as escort to a light,
closed travelling carriage.
A dash, a rise of wet dust,--it had rained the day before,--hitting
them in their faces, and the cavalcade passed, the roar of the cannon
following like a pursuer.
"We'll keep to the woods," and Hans changed their direction.
Plunging again into the greenwood, they walked with the firs and pines
for company until the path brought them out on the highway opposite an
inn before which were the same Prussian soldiers, standing about
dismounted from their horses.
The carriage was empty.
Plainly some accident had happened, for a smith was busy at work on its
wheel. Herr Leo, the Head Forester, was asking questions, and Hans,
leading Bettina, pressed forward for the news, the wood gatherers
listening timidly on the edge of the crowd.
The battle had begun before daybreak. The French guns had said an early
good-morning to the Prussians. The King was at Auerstaedt.
"And where is the Emperor?" The forester leaned on his gun, one hand on
his hip.
"At Jena, naturally," said a great, red-faced Prussian, who was standing
with his arm round the neck of his horse.
"The devil take him!" Herr Leo's nostrils swelled with anger.
"Ja wohl," cried the whole party, which is the German way of agreeing.
"I saw the Emperor last night, Herr Forester."
Every eye turned on Hans.
Then he told his story, and the brows of the soldiers grew gloomy.
"He, the Devil, was awake," said one who leaned idly against the
doorpost, "and we were all sleeping." He shrugged his shoulders and
began biting his nails as if in irritation.
"The Prussian generals are old," said the forester. He was a
pompous-looking man, and announced everything with an air of being a
herald.
"He called them 'old wigs.'" Hans' face flushed. "The generals of
Frederick the Great's army 'old wigs'!"
At that the soldiers uttered words which made the women shudder.
The forester asked news of the fight at Saalfield. He had heard that
there had been a skirmish, he said.
"Ach Gott," cried the soldiers, "have you not heard?"
Then the listening ears were shocked with the news of the defeat and
death of Prince Louis Ferdinand, he who was the darling of the army, the
Alcibiades of Prussia, one of the bravest princes who ever took up arms
against an enemy.
One thousand Saxons under this Prince had been surrounded in a narrow
valley by thirty thousand of the enemy. The Saxons had fought bravely,
but in vain. The horse of Prince Louis Ferdinand, leaping a ditch,
became entangled in a high hedge and was spied by a French hussar.
"Surrender, or you are a dead man!" he cried, and, for answer, Prince
Louis Ferdinand cut at him with a sabre.
The Frenchman retorted with a sword thrust and made an end of the most
gallant Prince in Germany.
Bettina, listening, and not always entirely understanding, grew cold
with horror. She could see the flashing of the swords, and, oh, her
father, her dear father was at Jena, and while the talk went on the
cannon roared louder and louder.
"The enemy captured thirty guns," said a red-faced soldier gloomily.
"There were bad omens before the war," announced the forester pompously.
His wife, he told them, had been in Berlin and had seen the statue of
Bellona, goddess of war, fall from the roof of the Arsenal on the very
day when the King reviewed his army.
"And when they had picked her up," continued the forester, "her right
arm was entirely shattered!"
He had another thing to tell.
Old Field Marshal von Muellendorf, being lifted on the left side of his
charger, had straightway fallen down on the right.
At this the red-faced soldier looked impatient.
It was certainly stupid in that big-nosed forester to be telling such
things to the soldiers.
"The Queen has been in camp with us," he announced to change the
subject.
Then Bettina pricked up her ears.
Oh, if only they would tell more of the Queen of Prussia! Who in Europe
did not know of her beauty, her goodness, her love for her people? To
Bettina she was like a fairy princess, for her grandfather had told her,
over and over again, of how he had seen her ride into Berlin in a
splendid gold coach to marry the Crown Prince.
But the soldiers had their thoughts just then on war and they were soon
talking again of the Emperor.
"The Devil," announced the forester, "is the only being who can conquer
the Emperor."
"Or the English," said Hans quietly; "remember Nelson and his victory of
Trafalgar."
At this there was an outcry, the whole group protesting and talking.
"Hold your tongue, old fool!" cried a fat, rude Prussian.
"Ja, ja!" all the others approved him.
"Are not the soldiers of Frederick the Great as brave as the sailors of
Nelson? Did not the Great Frederick himself say that the world was not
so well poised on the shoulders of Atlas as the Prussian monarchy on the
bayonets of the Prussian army?"
"Ja wohl," cried the company.
Then, suddenly, little Bettina's childish voice made the whole party
pause and listen. She spoke as fearlessly as if alone with Hans.
"Grandfather," she said, "grandfather, do the soldiers know of Frederick
Barbarossa? Tell them, dear grandfather," her little face glowed with
excitement, "tell them the ravens will wake him and he will come with
the sword and kill the wicked Emperor," and she gazed from one face to
the other, her eyes bright and eager.
A great laugh answered her, but one soldier, a kind-looking young man
with blue eyes, patted her head and said:
"Brava, little one, brava! If the ravens won't caw enough, we'll wake
the old Redbeard with our cannon. Never fear, we'll wake him."
He smiled at Bettina as if he knew how little girls feel, for perhaps he
had a little sister at home who also loved stories.
Then, before the talk could begin again, out came an officer, and the
soldiers at his command mounted their horses. While the talk had gone
on, the smith had mended the wheel and now stood in his leather apron as
if waiting for something to happen.
The Herr Ober-Forester stepped to one side and, with a wave of his
important hand, motioned the wood gatherers to move farther from the
carriage.
The door of the inn was then thrown open by the Herr Landlord, bowing
almost to the ground as he did it. Four grand ladies and a gentleman
then approached the carriage. Nobody troubled much to look at two of the
ladies, though they were young and very noble in appearance.
The third was so dignified that everybody stood up a little straighter.
Yet her face was as kind-looking as it was handsome. She was not young.
Years had turned her hair quite snow-white, and yet her eyes were as
bright and sparkling as a girl's, and she greeted them pleasantly.
But it was at the fourth lady everyone gazed and gazed almost as if
enchanted. Never in all her life was little Bettina to see anyone half
so lovely. She was exactly like the Princesses in the Fairy Tales, tall
and slender, and the most graceful person in the whole world. Her hair
was quite golden and waved in the loveliest way from a parting in the
middle. Her complexion was pink and white and made you think of
snowdrops. Her features were quite perfect and her smile altogether
enchanting.
And her eyes!
"Never," the people of Berlin had said years before, "never have we seen
such eyes, never."
They were blue, and deep in colour, and they seemed to speak right to
the heart and say things no one can write of. They were wonderful eyes,
the most wonderful then in Europe, and that is all there is about it.
Though she looked worried and anxious, the moment she saw other faces
than those of the soldiers, she smiled first at one, then at the other.
About her lovely throat was a light tissue scarf, and a breeze, seizing
it, blew its end sharply into the very face of the dignified,
bright-eyed old lady.
"Pardon me, oh, pardon me, dear Voss," called out a voice so sweet that
Bettina and the wood gatherers thought they had never heard anything
like it. It thrilled them like gentle music. Then she swept away the
scarf and patted the old lady's shoulder.
Her foot was on the carriage step, when, for the first time, she saw
little Bettina. Her lovely face suddenly lighted with a smile like a
mother's.
"Voss, Voss," she said, "see that dear child. Do look at her."
Then she stepped from the carriage and turned to Bettina.
"God bless you, little one," she began, but a roar of cannon, loud and
thundering, came like a voice warning her to hasten. With a wave of her
hand she entered the carriage. From its window, when all were ready, she
thrust forth her lovely head.
"God bless you all, good people!" called her voice of sweetness. Her
face now looked sad and very anxious. "Pray for me, dear people, pray
for my King and your good Duke who is helping him, pray the dear God
that He will give us the victory."
Then she drew in her head; bang went the door; the officer gave an
order; the postilions sounded; and away dashed the carriage, the
splashing mud and the roar of cannon behind it.
The women crowded around Hans.
His face was radiant.
"Who was it?" he cried. Then he spoke with great triumph. "Who better
than Hans Lange can tell you? I saw her ride into Berlin in a golden
coach to marry her husband. Women," his voice quivered, "the lady with
the golden hair and the blue eyes is the 'Angel of Prussia.' Yesterday,
in Jena, I heard how the Emperor of the French hates her and has vowed,
if he can, to capture her. It is from him, doubtless, that she is
flying."
The old lady, he told the excited wood gatherers, was the Countess Marie
Sophie von Voss, Mistress of Ceremonies in the Prussian Court, and like
a mother to Her Majesty.
"Oh, grandfather, oh, grandfather!" Bettina, in spite of the Emperor, in
spite of her father and the cannon, for the moment was again quite
happy. She had seen the Queen of Prussia, the most beautiful lady in all
Europe, and she had said, "God bless you."
But her grandfather, listening to the cannon, turned to the wood
gatherers who were standing and discussing the Queen.
"Go home, women," he said in a tone of command, "go home at once and see
that your children are in safety. We may win." He threw out his hands.
"We may not." He shrugged his shoulders. "Either way, you are better off
the highroad."
Then he turned to the pink-cheeked young woman.
"Minna," he said, "take Bettina, here, home to Frau Weyland. Ja, ja, go,
child; mother will be anxious. Go, now, and you can tell her how the
Queen spoke to you. And, Minna, tell Frau Weyland to go at once to her
father-in-law's with the children. She can lock the house, tell her, and
leave the dogs unchained. Herr Weyland can go up, or send Fritz, for the
night. I am going, myself, now, to Jena. Tell her, Bettina, to go at
once. No one knows when the soldiers will be everywhere."
"Ja wohl," and Minna took the hand of Bettina.
Her grandfather turned towards the roar of the cannon.
"Auf wiedersehen," he said, and off he marched like a soldier.
As for Bettina, she trotted along with the wood gatherers, her fright
all gone.
Now that she had seen the lovely Queen and knew that the Emperor had
vowed to capture her, she could almost see the old Kaiser Barbarossa
rising from his sleep. His sword was flashing, his eyes were like fire,
and she knew that he would kill the monster, Napoleon, and save the
lovely Louisa.
"Do you think," asked Minna, suddenly, "that the Queen will escape?"
The women looked gloomy and shrugged their shoulders.
"The Emperor does what he wills," said black-eyed Emma.
"Ja wohl," agreed Magdalena. Then she shook her head wisely. "I say
this, women, poor as we are to-day, it is better to be wood gatherers of
Thuringia than the Queen of Prussia."
"Ja wohl," they all said, "much better."