ays later Dantzic fell. Her tone
grew sadder. "We are not yet bereft of peace. My great sorrow is
being unable to hope."

As the czar could resist no longer and Napoleon desired peace, they
met at Tilsit, and there, on a covered raft moored midway in the
Niemen, arranged the outlines of a treaty. The next day Friedrich
Wilhelm, yielding to stern necessity, accepted terms "to the last
degree hard and overwhelming." The czar, believing that Louise might
move even Napoleon to clemency, her husband begged her to join him
at Tilsit. On reading this summons she burst into tears, declaring
this the hardest task ever given her to do. "With my broken wing how
can I succeed?" she pathetically asked.

Napoleon paid his respects soon after her arrival, and they met at
the stairhead. Louise, for Prussia's sake, forced herself to utter
courteous regrets that he should have to mount so steep a staircase.
He answered blandly that no difficulties were feared when striving
for a reward beyond. Then, touching her gauze robe, asked, "Is it
crepe?"

"Shall we speak of such trifles at such a time?" was her only reply.

He was silent; then demanded, "How could you make war on me?"

She told him that they had overrated their strength.

"And relying on the great Friedrich's fame you deceived yourselves."

Louise's clear eyes met his steadily. "Sire, resting on the great
Friedrich's fame, we might naturally deceive ourselves, if, indeed,
we wholly did so."

Then she told him that she had come to entreat him to be generous to
Prussia. He answered respectfully, but made no promise. Again, with
exceeding earnestness, she implored at least for Magdeburg, just
then Friedrich Wilhelm entered, and Napoleon abruptly took leave.

"Sire," said Talleyrand warningly to him, when they were alone,
"shall posterity say that you threw away your great conquest for the
sake of a lovely woman?"

Louise meanwhile dwelt again and again on Napoleon's words, "You ask
a great deal, but I will think about it." Yet her heart was heavy,
and when arrayed for the evening banquet in the splendid attire so
long unworn, she likened herself sadly to the old German victims
decked for sacrifice. Napoleon said of her afterward, "I knew I
should see a beautiful and dignified queen; I found the most
interesting woman and admirable queen I had ever known."

The treaty of Tilsit restored to Friedrich Wilhelm a fragment of his
kingdom, but even this was to be held by the