est child. When she lost him her own strength broke down,
and the doctors ordered her away to drink the Pyrmont waters. In the
late summer she was able to rejoin her husband, and he had startling
news to tell, for war with France was close at hand.

Since Haugwitz's fatal agreement Napoleon had heaped injuries on
Prussia. Now, at least, king and people were of one mind. The young
Prussian officers sharpened their swords on the French ambassador's
window-sills, patriotic songs were hailed with thunders of applause
in street and theatre, and when the queen, clad in the uniform of
her own Hussars, rode at their head through the city, she was
greeted with passionate loyalty.

Unhappily, Friedrich Wilhelm, hitherto too tardy, was now too
precipitate. He had been passive while France crushed Austria, and
Austria, suspicious and disabled, neither could nor would assist
him. Russia, with better reason for distrust, responded generously
to his appeal, but he did not wait for her promised aid. For all his
haste, Napoleon, with 180,000 men, was nearing the Thuringian Forest
before the Prussian troops left Berlin. They were very confident,
those Prussian troops, and the shouting multitudes who watched the
well-trained artillery and cavalry defiling by, hardly dreamed of
disaster; yet it came almost at once. The Saxon corps, led by the
king's cousin, Prince Louis, pushing on too fast, was surprised and
surrounded, and the gallant young commander, the queen's dear
friend, the idol of the army, fell while rallying his men.

Louise, who had hurriedly joined the king from Weimar, could hardly
be persuaded to leave him, but on the evening of October 13th he
confided her to a cavalry escort, promising speedy tidings of the
coming battle. As she threaded the lonely passes of the Hartz
Mountains she heard the distant cannonading, and a broken sentence
now and again fell from her lips: "We know that all things work
together for good." Late in the misty October twilight she drove
into Brunswick. At Brandenburg a courier brought the news her
trembling heart awaited. All was lost! Twenty thousand Prussians lay
on the fields of Auerstadt and Jena, and the French were already in
Weimar. The king was alive, but two horses had been killed under
him. Grief-stricken, travel-worn as she was, Louise must not halt.
Before she reached Berlin her children had been sent to
Schwedt-on-Oder. She followed thither, almost terrifying them by her
changed, de