Fraulein Lamperi, on the contrary, who dined with us, wept.

She was convinced that the unfortunate king had been forced into something which would bring ruin both to him and his subjects.

"His poor Majesty!" she sobbed in the midst of our joy.
Our mother loved the king too, but she was a daughter of the free Netherlands; two of her brothers and sisters lived in England; and the friends she most valued, whom she knew to be warmly and faithfully attached to the house of Hohenzollern, thought it high time that the Prussian people attained the majority to which that day had brought them.

Moreover, her active mind knew no rest till it had won a clear insight into questions concerning the times and herself.

So she had reached the conviction that no peace between king and people could be expected unless a constitution was granted.