and fringed with gigantic oaks.

"Oh, my dear Mecklenburg, my dear native country, how beautiful thou
art!" exclaimed the queen, and an echo replied from the opposite shore,
"Beautiful thou art!"

"The echo is right," said the king. "And, as I am gazing at you, you
seem to me again the young princess whom I saw seventeen years ago for
the first time. Your return to your native country has made you once
more a girl."

"But the girl of seventeen years ago was not so happy as is the matron
and mother of to-day," said the queen. "At that time I did not have you,
my husband, nor my beloved children! I am younger in my heart to-day
than then, for love imparts and preserves youthfulness."

"God preserve you this youth, my Louisa, to the delight of myself and
our children! But come, it is cool here by the lake, and you look pale
again." They returned to the palace, and the queen spent in the midst of
her family a day of unalloyed pleasure. The last day!

When the next morning's sun shone into the queen's bedroom, Louisa
attempted to raise herself; her head fell back heavily, and she pressed
her hands convulsively against her bosom, exclaiming: "Oh, my heart!"
Poor queen! The death-worm was conquering!

"It is nothing!" she whispered to her husband, when the struggle was
over. "Nothing but a cold!" she repeated, when the doctors, who had been
called from Neustrelitz, came to her bedside.

It was a cold, but the queen was unable to leave her bed to accompany
the king to Berlin, when, a few days afterward, pressing state affairs
called him back to the capital. She was obliged to remain a few days at
Hohenzieritz, in order to rest and recover her strength. But the few
days became weeks. She was still ill, and suffered as she had never
suffered. Often, in the night, when her friend Caroline von Berg was
sitting at her bedside, she beckoned to her and whispered in her ear:
"The conquering death-worm! Did I not tell you, Caroline, that it was
attacking my heart? Oh, I would the king, my beloved husband, were with
me!"

Couriers went to Charlottenburg to the king, and they came every day to
Hohenzieritz and inquired in his name for Louisa's health. He himself
was unable to come; he was also ill with fever, confining him to his
bed.

"And I am not with him!" lamented the queen. "I cannot nurse him, and
smile away his cares! I am myself an object of anxiety to him! Oh, shall
I not soon be well again? Tell me, dear Doctor Hei