What they were to represent to the king as urgently necessary was:  The withdrawal of the military force, the organization of an armed citizen guard, the granting of an unconditional freedom of the press, which had been promised for a lifetime, and the calling of the General Assembly.  I shall return to the address later.

CHAPTER IX.

The eighteenth of March.

The 17th passed so quietly that hopes of a peaceable outcome of the fateful conflict began to awake.  My own recollections confirm this.

People believed so positively that the difficulty would be adjusted, that in the forenoon of the 18th my mother sent my eldest sister Martha to her drawing-lesson, which was given at General Baeyer’s, in the Friedrichstrasse.

Ludo and I went to school, and when it was over the many joyful faces in the street confirmed what we had heard during the school hours.

The king had granted the Constitution and the “freedom of the press.”

Crowds were collected in front of the placards which announced this fact, but there was no need to force our way through; their contents were read aloud at every corner and fountain.

One passer-by repeated it to another, and friend shouted to friend across the street.  “Have you heard the news?” was the almost invariable question when people accosted one another, and at least one “Thank God!” was contained in every conversation.  Two or three older acquaintances whom we met charged us, in all haste, to tell our mother; but she had heard it already, and her joy was so great that she forgot to scold us for staying away so long.  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.  In Parliament she would have sat on the right, but that her adopted country should have a Parliament filled her with joyful pride.

Ludo and I were very gay.  It was Saturday, and towards evening we were going to a children’s ball given by Privy-Councillor Romberg—­the specialist for nervous diseases—­for his daughter Marie, for which new blue jackets had been made.

We were eagerly expecting them, and about three o’clock the tailor came.