What naturally followed caused the loyalists the keenest pain, for the injury done to the strong monarchical feeling of the Prussian people in the person and the conduct of Frederick William IV was not to be estimated.  Only the simple heroic greatness and the paternal dignity of an Emperor William could have repaired it.

In the year preceding the revolution there had been a bad harvest, and frightful stories were told of famine in the weaving districts of Silesia.  Even before Virchow, in his free-spoken work on the famine-typhus, had faithfully described the full misery of those wretched sufferers, it had become apparent to the rulers in Berlin that something must be done to relieve the public distress.

The king now began to realize distinctly the universal discontent, and in order to meet it and still further demands he summoned the General Assembly.

I remember distinctly how fine our mother thought the speech with which he opened that precursor of the Prussian Chambers, and the address showed him in fact to be an excellent orator.

To him, believing as he did with the most complete conviction in royalty by the grace of God and in his calling by higher powers, any relinquishing of his prerogative would seem like a betrayal of his divine mission.  The expression he uttered in the Assembly in the course of his speech—­“I and my people will serve the Lord”—­came from the very depths of his heart; and nothing could be more sincerely meant than the remark, “From one weakness I know myself to be absolutely free:  I do not strive for vain public favour.  My only effort is to do my duty to the best of my knowledge and according to my conscience, and to deserve the gratitude of my people, though it should be denied me.”

The last words have a foreboding sound, and prove what is indeed evident from many other expressions—­that he had begun to experience in his own person the truth of the remark he had made when full of hope, and hailed with joyful anticipations at his coronation—­“The path of a king is full of sorrow, unless his people stand by him with loyal heart and mind.”

His people did not do that, and it was well for them; for the path indicated by the royal hand would have led them to darkness and to the indignity of ever-increasing bondage, mental and temporal.

The prince himself is entitled to the deepest sympathy.  He wished to do right, and was endowed with great and noble gifts which would have done honour to a private individual, but could not suffice for the ruler of a powerful state in difficult times.

Hardly had the king opened the General Assembly in April, 1848, and, for the relief of distress among the poorer classes in the capital, repealed the town dues on corn, when the first actual evidences of discontent broke out.  The town tax was so strictly enforced at that time at all the gates of Berlin that even hacks entering the city were stopped and searched for provisions of meat or bread—­a search which was usually conducted in a cursory and courteous manner.