spairing looks. As soon as she could check her weeping,
she told her boys all she knew about Prince Louis's death. "Do not
only grieve for him. Be ready for Prussia's sake to meet death as he
met it," and then, in burning, never-forgotten words, she bade them
one day free their country and break the power of France.

There seemed only a choice between utter destruction and utter
submission, and yet when Napoleon demanded the cession of almost the
whole kingdom, Friedrich Wilhelm and his wife agreed that "only
determined resistance can save us." She was slowly rallying at
Koenigsberg from a fever caught in the crowded city, when the cry was
raised of the coming French. Propped by pillows, swathed in shawls,
she drove through blinding sleet to Memel, the one fortress still
left to the king. At her first halting-place the wind whistled in
through a broken window, and the melting snow dripped from the roof
on to her bed. Her companions trembled for her, but she, calm and
trustful, hailed as a good omen the sunshine which welcomed them
within the walls of Memel.

A week later Benningsen and his Russians, who had been wading
knee-deep through Polish forests and fording swollen streams, always
with 90,000 Frenchmen in hot pursuit, turned to bay amid the frozen
lakes and drifted snows of Eylau. Next day those snows for miles
around were red with blood. It was hard to tell with whom the costly
victory lay, but Napoleon despatched Bertrand to the Russian
outposts to propose an armistice, and Benningsen sent him on to
Memel, reminding the Prussian king that it could not be their
interest to grant what it was Napoleon's interest to ask. The terms
were, indeed, far easier than those offered after June; but
Friedrich Wilhelm, true to the ally who had held the field almost
single-handed through that terrible winter, would make no separate
agreement, nor did Louise receive more favorably a message to
herself, conveying Napoleon's wish to pay his court to her in her
own capital.

Though the piercing Baltic winds tried her strength greatly, she
employed herself whenever able in reading and visiting the over-full
hospitals. To a dear friend she said, "I can never be perfectly
miserable while faith in God is open to me." "Only by patient
perseverance," so she wrote to her father, "can we succeed. Sooner
or later I know we shall do so."

It was not to be yet. On June 14, 1807, Napoleon annihilated the
Russians at Friedland, and four d