In the meanwhile Napoleon had been holding the fate of Prussia cruelly in the balance, until in September, 1808, the country, with the exception of the three fortresses on the Oder, was at last evacuated by the French tormentors. Napoleon now wished to have the royal family again in Berlin, “as in a mousetrap,” surrounded by the armies of France and of the Rhenish Confederation. Instead of immediately returning thither, they gladly accepted an invitation from Czar Alexander to visit St. Petersburg, December 27. On the journey the King and Queen were shown at Riga the house of the order, founded in 1390, “guild of the blockheads,” whose members were obliged to take an oath never to marry. The King remarked to Louise: “Had I belonged to that guild you would have been spared many unhappy experiences.” “Had they been ten times worse, and had you been able to foretell all our misfortunes, I should not have allowed you to become a master of this guild,” she answered. The royal pair were greeted with all honors and pomp, both on the journey and in St. Petersburg. The French ambassador also _fêted_ them at a grand banquet. But Louise was depressed rather than elated by all this pomp and ceremony. A deep melancholy possessed her in the midst of these splendors. Added to this, she fell ill at an evening exhibition of fireworks, which ended with a shower of thirty-four thousand rockets. On January 31, the King and Queen returned to Koenigsberg. “I come as I went; nothing dazzles me now,” she remarked. “My kingdom is not of this world.” Two days after her thirty-third birthday (1809) she wrote: “This has been another day when I have felt the burden of the world with all its sins. I am sick and I believe that as long as things remain in their present condition, I shall not get well. [It was dreadful to her that war had broken out again between France and Austria, and in the end Russia and Prussia would be forced to take the field against Austria.] My birthday was a terrible day to me. In the evening there was a brilliant celebration given by the city in my honor, preceded by a rich, gay banquet at the castle. How sad it all made me! My heart was torn. I danced! I smiled and said pleasant things to the hosts, was friendly to every one, but could scarcely endure my misery. To whom will Prussia belong a year hence? Whither shall we all be scattered? God, Almighty Father, take pity on us!”