s gone, too! I have wept much since
yesterday. Now I will be calm, and force my grief back into my heart.
But as Mary, Queen of England, said at the capture of Calais, 'If my
heart were opened, you would find on it the name of _Magdeburg_ in
bloody letters!'"[25]

[Footnote 25: Louisa's own words.--Vide "Queen Louisa," p. 316.]

"It is true," said Hardenberg, gloomily, "it is a great disaster. A
fortress so well supplied with every thing, and a garrison of more than
ten thousand men!"

"If your majesty will permit me, I ask, how did this intelligence
impress the king?" said Baron von Stein.

"He bore it with resignation, and that calm courage which never leaves
him in these days of affliction," said Louisa, quickly. "But his
so-called friends and advisers, Messrs. von Haugwitz, Koeckeritz, Voss,
and Kalkreuth, received the heart-rending news with secret satisfaction.
I read it in their faces, notwithstanding the sadness they assumed. They
regard the fall of Magdeburg as an ally of their intentions and schemes.
They desire peace with France--peace at any price--and hope that the
king will now approve their views. Hence, Minister von Stein, Madame von
Berg had to give a letter to the courier yesterday, in which I urged you
to comply with the king's orders, and to come here immediately. Hence,
Count von Hardenberg, I am glad that you have come too. Oh, I know very
well what it must have cost your noble heart to come without being
expressly requested; but you did so for the sake of the crushed and
prostrate fatherland--I know it very well--and not for Prussia, not for
us, but for Germany, on whose neck the tyrant has placed his foot, and
which he will strangle unless the good and the brave unite their whole
strength and hurl him off."

"I came here," said Hardenberg, "because I remembered that hour when
your majesty permitted me to give an oath of unwavering fealty and
devotion--that hour when you condescended to accept my hand for our
league against France, and when you vowed to exert yourself to the best
of your ability to maintain the policy Prussia had entered into, and not
to suffer her king ever to accept the perfidious friendship of France!"

"I have never forgotten that hour," said the queen, gravely. "He who
joined us in taking that pledge at the solemn moment you refer to,
Prince Louis Ferdinand, has sealed his vow with his death: he is
sleeping on the field of honor. But I feel convinced that he is looking