Emperor William used to relate an incident connected with this journey which makes a touching picture of those dark days. “While my mother was fleeing with us from the French in that time of tribulation,” he said, “we had the misfortune to break one of the wheels of our coach, in the middle of an open field. There was no place for us to go, and we sat on the bank of a ditch while the damage was being repaired as well as possible. My brother and I were tired and hungry, and much put out by the delay. I remember that I especially, being rather a puny lad, troubled my dear mother greatly with my complaints. To divert our minds, she arose and, pointing to the quantities of pretty blue flowers with which the field was covered, told us to pick some and bring them to her. Then she wove them into wreaths as we eagerly watched her dexterous fingers. As she worked, overcome with thoughts of her country’s sorrowful plight and her own danger and anxiety for the future of her sons, the tears began to drop slowly from her beautiful eyes upon the cornflower wreaths. Smitten to the heart by her distress and completely forgetting my own childish troubles, I flung my arms about her neck and tried to comfort her, till she smiled and placed the wreath upon my head. Though I was only ten years old at the time, this scene remains undimmed in my memory, and after all these years I can still see those blossoms all sparkling with my mother’s tears, and that is why I love the cornflower better than any other flower.” [Illustration: _The cornflower wreaths_] At Königsberg the Queen was attacked with a fever, but this did not prevent her from continuing her flight to Memel with her children in January, 1807. It seemed doubtful at one time if she would live to get there, but she insisted upon pressing on, through cold and storm, ill as she was. Once, almost at the point of death, she was forced to spend the night in a poor peasant’s hut, without proper food or covering, the freezing wind blowing through the broken windowpanes and scattering snowflakes on her wretched cot. But God did not forsake the heroic Queen, and she succeeded at last in reaching Memel, there to await the no longer doubtful issue of the war, which cost Frederick William Third half of his kingdom. This sudden change from peace and prosperity to deepest humiliation was the anvil on which Providence forged the sword that was one day to make Germany a united and powerful nation, and some words of the Queen’s, written at this time to her father, are significant and memorable. “It may be well for our children to have learned the serious side of life while they are young. Had they grown up surrounded by ease and luxury, they would have accepted such things as a matter of course; that must always be so. But alas! their father’s anxious face and their mother’s tears have taught them otherwise.”