history.
For that reason one is apt to find famous places in Europe which have
only an historical significance somewhat disappointing. One fails to
find in a battle fought for the sake of conquest by an overweening
ambition such soul-stirring pathos as in the leading of a forlorn hope
from the spirit of patriotism, or of a woman's pleadings where a man's
arguments have failed. For that reason Austerlitz touches one not so
nearly as the struggle around Memel. As we drew near Memel things
began to look lonely and foreign and queer, and its picturesque
features were enhanced by recollection of Napoleon and Queen Louise.

Memel is near Tilsit, and the river Niemen, or Memel, empties into the
Baltic just below here. The conference on the raft appeals to me as
one of the most thrilling and yet pitiably human events in all
history.

Its sickening anticlimax to poor Queen Louise was so exactly in
keeping with the smaller disappointments which assail her more humble
sister women in every walk of life that it takes on the air of a heart
tragedy. I tried to imagine the feelings of the Queen when _she_
journeyed to Memel to hold her famous interview with Napoleon. How her
pride must have suffered at the thought of lowering herself to plead
for her husband and her country at Napoleon's hands! How she hated him
before she saw him! How she more than hated him after she left him!
How she must have scorned the beauty upon which Napoleon commented so
idly when a nation's honor was at stake! A typical act of the emperor
of the French nation! Napoleon proved by that one episode that he was
more French than Corsican.

In the Queen's illness at Memel she was so poorly housed that long
lines of snow sifted in through the roof and fell across her bed. But
that was as nothing to her mental disquiet while the fate of her
beloved Prussia hung in the balance.

There is a bridge across the Memel at the exact spot where the famous
raft conference is said to have taken place. As we crossed this bridge
it seemed so far removed from those stormy days of strife that it was
difficult to imagine the magnificent spectacle of the immense armies
of Napoleon and Alexander drawn up on either bank, while these two
powerful monarchs were rowed out to the raft to decide the fate of
Frederick William and his lovely queen.

And although to them Prussia was the issue of the hour, how like the
history of individual lives was this conference! For Prussia's fate