第79章

"Well, Herr Baron, you are already returned," said the king, as he scarcely nodded to the profoundly respectful bows of the ambassador.

"I infer, therefore, that your instructions are not from the empress, but from the co-regent, the Emperor Joseph, who has betaken himself to the Austrian camp.""Sire," answered Thugut, laconically, "I have driven day and night, and have received my instructions directly from the empress."The king slowly shook his head, and an imperceptible smile played around his lips.

"Does the young emperor approve of these instructions?""Sire, his majesty, the emperor, is only the co-regent," answered Thugut, hastily. "It is not therefore necessary, that my sovereign should make her decisions dependent upon her son's concordance.""The empress will negotiate for peace," said the king to himself, "but the emperor desires to win laurels in the war, and will try to cut off the negotiations of his mother by a coup de main. One must be on his guard!"Just then the door opened and Herzberg returned.

"You perceive I expected you, Baron von Thugut," said the king, "and I ordered here my minister of state, Herr von Herzberg. This is the Baron von Thugut, my dear minister, the ambassador of the empress-queen, who carries in his pocket peace or war, as it may be.""Sire, I must protest against being so important a personage, as peace and war alone depend upon your majesty. It alone depends upon the lofty King of Prussia whether he will give peace and tranquillity to Germany, or suffer the guilt of permitting the bloody scourge of civil war again to tear in pieces the unhappy German nation.""That sounds very sentimental," cried the king, smiling. "The Baron von Thugut will appeal to my heart, when we have only to do with the head. Austria wishes to be the head of Germany, and as such would devour one German state after another, as a very palatable morsel.

But if you will be the head, Monsieur le Baron, you cannot represent the stomach also, for, as I have been told, it only exists in those soft animals of the sea whose head is in their stomach, and which think and digest at the same time. Austria does not belong to this class, but has rather a very hard and impenetrable shell. We cannot let her devour as stomach what as the head she has chosen as booty.

That the electorate of Bavaria is not to be devoured, is the necessary and fundamental preliminary upon which the temple of peace may be erected. If you, or rather the empress-queen, agree to it, the negotiations can be concluded by you two gentlemen. But if you think to erect a temple of peace upon any other basis, your propositions will be in vain. I have not taken the field to make conquests, but to protect the rights of a German prince, and not suffer others to appropriate a German state. I know, as you have said, that war is a bloody scourge for the nation; but, sir, we will not look at it in a sentimental light, and talk of civil war, when Austria herself compels us to take the field. Or, perhaps, you imagine to prove to my good Pomeranians, Markers, and my other German states, that the Croatians, Pandurians, Hungarians, Wallachians, Italians, and Polanders, are our German brothers, which imperial Austria opposes to us. I think this brotherhood may be traced to our common ancestor, Adam, and in this sense all wars are indeed civil wars. In any case war is a scourge for man, and I am convinced that the empress-queen would just as willingly spare her Croatians, Pandurians, Wallachians, and Galicians, as I all my German subjects collectively.""Also your majesty's Polish subjects, as may be expected," added Baron yon Thugut.