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Tuis series of Scanpinavian Ctassics is published
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to stimulate their sympathetic codperation to good ends

SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS
VOLUME XV

THE CHARLES MEN

BY
VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM

PART I

THIS VOLUME IS ENDOWED BY

MR. CHARLES S. PETERSON

OF CHICAGO

THE CHARLES MEN

BY
VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM
2.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH
BY CHARLES WHARTON STORK
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FREDRIK BOOK

PART I

NEW YORK
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1920

(Copyright, 1920, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation

D. B. Updike » The Merrymount Press » Boston - U.S.A.

TO THE MEMORY OF
THOSE HEROES
WHO WITH HONESTY OF PURPOSE
HAVE BATTLED GALLANTLY
IN LOST CAUSES
AND GONE DOWN SMILING
BEFORE MANY SPEARS
THIS VOLUME
IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED
BY THE TRANSLATOR

CONTENTS
Part I

Introduction

The Green Corridor

A Sermon

The Successor to the Throne
Midsummer Sport

Gunnel the Stewardess
French Mons

The Queen of the Marauders
Mazeppa and His Ambassador
Fifty Years Later

The Fortified House

A Clean White Shirt
Poltava

Behold My Children!

At the Council Table

In the Church Square
Captured

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VERNER VON FEIDENSTAM
Author of “The Charles Men”

I

OR more than five years the world has been

full of strife and the clash of weapons, and still

the last shot has not been fired or the last sword
thrust into its sheath. Humanity finds itself in a
situation recalling that in which Lucius Cary, Vis-
count Falkland, found himself during the English
Revolution and Civil War; when Clarendon relates
that he, “sitting among his friends, often, after a
deep silence and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill
and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace ;
and would passionately profess that the very agony
of the war, and the view of the calamities and deso-
lation the kingdom did and must endure, took his
sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.”
It is at this time that there is brought before the
American public one of the most distinguished
works of modern Swedish literature; a work de-
voted to the king who lived his whole life in the
field and died in a trench, and who even in the days
of Voltaire stood as the genius of war, the symbol
of its desolating and misfortune-bringing might;
a work that deals only with campaigns and _bat-
tles, with slaughter and pillage, the wailing of the

= INTRODUCTION

wounded, and the long, hopeless agony of the cap-
tives—with all that humanity would fain forget,
and cannot forget. The moment might seem to be
ill chosen; more than one, perhaps, may feel him-
self minded as Aeneas when, having barely escaped
from the burning of Troy, the swords of the
Greeks, and the terrors of shipwreck, Queen Dido
asks him to relate the story of his life, and he an-
swers with a shudder: J/ufandum, Regina, jubes reno-
vare dolorem.

But as surely as it is the province of fiction to
give us what we do not have in fact, and to make
us forget what hurts and oppresses us, so surely
does it also have the mission of helping us to un-
derstand what we have gone through, of looking
with clearer and purer eyes on the struggles and
experiences of life. Fiction frees from external real-
ity, not only by taking us away to the lands of fan-
tasy and the world of beautiful visions, but by ani-
mating the dead matter of events, by giving signifi-
cance and substance to things, by showing us the
confusing spectacle sud specie aeterntitatis. From this
point of view, The Charles Men is a timely work.
The fall of the Swedish empire, the desperate con-
test of an inflexible ruler for what he believed to be
true and right, the boundless suffering of an ill-
fated people, the ravages of hunger which they en-

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM xi

dured, their growing despair and infinite fortitude,
their inevitable ruin and eternal glory — such is the
picture that appears before us in simple, majestic
lines; a tragedy clear and compelling as one of the
Greeks’, composed by thevery history of the world,
and fitted to purify our hearts through terror and
pity, as Aristotle taught. He who ponders the na-
ture of war and the philosophy of history may win
instruction from the epic which Swedish history and
Swedish imagination together have formed about
Charles XII and his men. It was no superficial ro-
mance of war, no rancorous and hypocritical chau-
vinism, that inspired Verner von Heidenstam. He
saw before his eyes the misery and degradation of
war;no pacifistic Barbusse has painted it in grimmer
colors than he. He saw the problematic side of his
hero; the rigid, petrified insensibility that misfor-
tunes and spiritual torments wrought in the breast
of the king. And yet he felt deeply the moral beauty,
the human magnanimity, which these men of battle
displayed, and which they gave to posterity as a
noble, strengthening essence, extracted from with-
ered herbs and crushed reeds, a medicina mentis for
every one who must needs fight, endure, be van-
quished and overpowered.

The highest praise one can give to The Charles
Men is that this work, which was composed in deep-

xii INTRODUCTION

est peace, has not lost its color and quality during
the World War. Verner von Heidenstam has come
forward among the pacifists side by side with Ro-
main Rolland; but he does not belong to the super-
ficial, blind zealots for peace of whom Paul Elmer
More speaks in his profound and humane essay,
The Philosophy of War. He belongs with those who
have always seen mankind in all its contradictory
profusion and have laid to heart what the great
American critic writes: “ Nor is war in itself wholly
bestial. There has grown up amongst us of recent
years a literature devoted to the propaganda of
peace, both in the form of fiction and of exhorta-
tion, which throws into vivid relief all the horrors
incidental to the battlefield, and slurs over and de-
nies the honor and exaltation that are also a part
of the soldier’s life. That literature, I say boldly, is
as false and mischievous as its Nietzschean antago-
nist. There is an element of heroism in war which,
through all the waste and evil, has not been without
its salutary effect. Is it because he has passed his life
in a career entirely cruel and vile that the typical
soldier, in his later years of retirement, is a man so
true and honorable, often so gentle? Shall we, in
our imagination of peace, forget all that we have
felt in the reading of history, and slander our in-
stincts?””’

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM Xili

True, honorable, gentle—that is the stamp of the
Charles men: the prisoners in Siberia, as they are
gathered around the Bible in their bitter poverty;
and those that have returned to their native land,
as they set the plough in the earth to build a new
Sweden on the ruins of the old.

It is not, however, the affair of the Swedish critic
to subjoin the reflections to which The Charles Men
invites, but to tell of the author who wrought the
work, and to make clear what we admire in it.

II

Verner von Heidenstam is by birth an aristocrat;
he was born on the sixth of July, 1859, at the manor
house of Olshammar in Narke. As a boy he was
thought to have lung trouble, and for that reason
did not follow the usual course of education; in-
stead he was sent to the milder climate of southern
Europe. His youth received, therefore, a different
impress from that of most Swedish authors of the
same age. The horizon of the Mediterranean sur-
rounded it. He lived in Italy and visited Greece,
Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor; while for nearly
eight years he was away from Sweden. The attrac-
tion toward the Orient was very strong in his na-
ture; one has the impression that it was found in
all of his family, because at the end of the seven-

xiv INTRODUCTION

teenth century one of his ancestors was the Swed-
ish Minister at Constantinople, and was actively in-
terested in Turkish civilization; another travelled
to Persia, and died in 1878 as chargé d’affaires in
Athens, and branches of the stock are still flourish-
ing in Cyprus and Smyrna. Heidenstam wanted
to become a painter, and was in fact a pupil at the
studio of Gérome in Paris. But it gradually became
clear to him that he was above all a poet; in 1887
he returned to Sweden, and in 1888 made his debut
with the collection, Pilgrimage and Wander-Years.

In this we have the verse of a painter; strongly
colorful, plastic, racy, vivid. In the bold, sometimes
careless, form there is nothing academic; all is seen
and felt and experienced, the observation is sharp
and the imagination lively. The young poet-artist
reproduces the Italian carnival, the French life of
the streets, impressions of Attic landscapes; he tells
stories from the Thousand and One Nights, and con-
jures up before us the bazaars of Damascus. He
loves the ancient world: its clear beauty, its fresh
joy of life; he showers ridicule and scorn upon the
ugly, sad, nervous, bustling present. In the care-
free indolence of the East he sees the last reflection
of the old happy innocence, and for that reason he
loves it. He is a reckless epicurean, who lets the
Egyptian priests of Hator proclaim:

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM XV

Wine, the kiss of a girl, and the daring jest that will startle
Senile women and men—to the gods above these are blameless.

And yet amid all the gay hedonism in Pilgrimage
and Wander-Years is a cycle of short poems,
Thoughts in Loneliness, filled with brooding, melan-
choly, and sombre longing.

In the year 1888 Heidenstam brought out a
volume of travel descriptions, From Col di Tenda to
Blocksberg; and in the novel Exdymion, published
in 1889, he displayed a picture of the East which
is stifled to death in the embrace of the West. Ina
couple of brochures, Renascence (1889) and Pepita’s
Wedding (1890), the latter a rollicking jeu esprit
executed in collaboration with the poet and literary
historian, Oscar Levertin, he attacked the prevalent
naturalism, the gray-weather mood in life and fic-
tion. With the right of a strong, youthful tempera-
ment he craved an art that would move freely and
boldly, unfettered by social doctrines and pseudo-
scientific theories of the day; he wished to give
back their dues to the imagination, to the love of
beauty, and insisted upon the sovereignty of the
artist. hese writings took on a decisive meaning
in the development of Swedish literature: during
the decade of 1880 Sweden had been dominated by
the “literature of indignation,” literature with a

xvi INTRODUCTION

purpose, by the naturalism of the positivists, and
by methodized prose. Heidenstam turned the cur-
rent: the decade of 1890 became lyrical and ima-
ginative, the decade of free and sovereign poetry.
Gustaf Froding, Selma Lagerlof, Per Halstrom,
and Erik Axel Karlfeldt carried out the program
that Heidenstam and Levertin had laid down.

But the joy of life and enthusiasm for beauty,
which the young Heidenstam had proclaimed, soon
gave place in himself to deeper moods. Even the
great fantastic epic, Hans Alienus, which he com-
pleted in 1892, is a monument on the grave of his
care-free and indolent youth. He discovered that
beauty cannot satisfy the hunger of the soul; his
hero, a pilgrim in the storied lands of the East, is
a brooding Faust, who even in the pleasure-gar-
dens of Sardanapalus cannot cease from his painful
search after the meaning of life. He is driven back
by his yearning to the snowy country of his fathers,
far up in the Swedish forest of Tiveden.

In the collection, Poems, which Heidenstam
brought out in 1895, the horizon of the Mediter-
ranean has disappeared. The soughing fir-trees tell
him stories different from those he listened to
among dancers and camel-drivers. The love he now
sings is that which a man’s own effort has brought
to birth, and which “flings arms of flame around

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM xvii

heaven and earth.” The meagre land rises before
his glance with new beauty: it is the stretch of earth
which his fathers cleared with toil and self-denial.
No one has praised home more fervently and inti-
mately than the pilgrim and traveller, the restless

wanderer:
A home!’ T is like a fortress
By walls securely shielded,—
Our world, our own, the one thing

We in this world have builded.

Heidenstam’s nationalism, which had its theoretical
expression in many of the essays which he collected
in 1899 under the title Thoughts and Sketches, is
above all born of a deep filial affection for the past.
Annals, monuments, ruins, and portraits become
living realities to the man of powerful imagination;
wherever he goes, the present moment unfolds and
lets us look into the ancient records; the dead sur-
round us like gigantic spirits, overshadowing our
thoughts. But despite this entering into the past,
which is so characteristic of Heidenstam, his tra-
ditional bent has never become an inflexible con-
servatism. There is a strong democratic current
throughout all of his markedly aristocratic nature.
Among Poems is included Singers in the Steeple,
where he celebrates the idea of brotherhood, and
makes the classes privileged as to power and gold

XVili INTRODUCTION

pour their treasures into a cup, on which is in-
scribed:

Not joy to the rich, to the poor man care;
Our toil and our pleasure alike we share.

The collection of poems that gives the strongest
expression to his passion for his country, 4 People
(1902), contains the lyric Fe//ow-Citizens, where he
takes up the cause of universal suffrage and thor-
oughgoing democracy.

The Charles Men, which appeared in 1897-98, is
Heidenstam’s chief work in prose; to Swedish read-
ers it is evident that only verse allows his artistic
greatness to come to its full right. The Charles Men
forms the introduction to a series of historical de-
scriptions: St. Birgitta’s Pilgrimage (1901), which
sets before us the greatest religious personality of
Sweden in the Middle Ages; Folke Filbyter (1905)
and Ihe Legacy of Bjalbo (1907), which render the
ancient and mediaeval times in pictures composed
around the Folkung family; The Swedes and their
Chieftains (1908-10), which makes all the Swedish
annals pass by in review. The last-named work is
written in the form of a reader for Swedish schools.
In the collections of tales, St. George and the Dragon
(1900), and the volume of sagas and stories which
he collected in 1904 under the title Forest Murmurs,

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM xix

are to be found some of his most original and per-
sonal creations. His last book is New Poems (1915),
where the simple and compact form of the lyrics
expresses the noble, quiet humanism of the ripened
and matured man.

After his homecoming in 1887, Heidenstam set-
tled for a time on his ancestral estate of Olsham-
mar, but in 1890 shifted to Djursholm near Stock-
holm, and in 1897 participated in the founding of
the great national-liberal newspaper, the Svenska
Dagblad, whose program was defence and reform.
In 1g00 he settled at Naddo (near Vadstena), on the
shore of Lake Wettern, which he loved so deeply
- and on whose strand was situated the home of his
childhood. In 1917 he departed thence, after his
third marriage, like both of those preceding, had
been dissolved by divorce, and in 1919 he betook
himself afresh to foreign travel. In 1910 he was
made an honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the
University of Stockholm; in 1912 he became a
member of the Swedish Academy, and in 1916 re-
ceived the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ill
The Charles Men is a poem in prose. Heidenstam’s
technic has all the freedom, abandon, even caprice
that belongs to verse. There is no steady and clear

x INTRODUCTION

stream of narrative in his work; he leaps over what
is inessential, and his imagination concentrates it-
self on the scene, the figure, the detail that strikes
him as significant. This technic is in accord with the
historical atmosphere. Uniform realism, methodical
description, and painstaking motivation may be in
place in a modern novel; if, on the other hand, it
is a question of conjuring up visions from the past,
the poet must not bring his figures out into the full
daylight—that can only lead to destroying the il-
lusion,as when masks go about inthe sunshine. We
must have a broad river of darkness, which con-
tains all the mystery of the past, and against this
black background the figures and scenes may glim-
mer forth— symbolic flashes of that life whose
depth and scope one cannot define, but only sur-
mise.

That Heidenstam dreamed at one time of be-
coming a painter, to this every page of The Charles
Men bears witness. What a mighty composition is
the picture of Stockholm’s castle in flames which
closes the first narrative, The Green Corridor! Hei-
denstam has rendered the picturesque element of
Charles XII’s history with the most finished art:
not only the gloomy scenes in black, gray, and
white from the wintry land in the North, but also
the variegated and highly colored representations

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM Xxl

of the wanderings in the war. The Queen of the Ma-
rauders among the Cossacks by the Beresina; the
march of Mazeppa, surrounded by drunken Zapo-
rogeans; the flaxen-haired Stupid Swede in the
serail of the sultana, among gilded parrot-cages and
black cypresses—one could not draw a more mas-
terly contrast between the simple poverty of the
Charles folk and the exoticism of the Orient.

The artist reveals himself everywhere, but so,
too, does the aristocrat. The patriarchal idy] of the
country manor is immortalized in the airy Midsum-
mer Sport. The gay, care-free spirit of adventure that
played through the centuries among the Swedish
nobility is incarnate in the indomitable Grothusen
who is always in debt; and when Rika Fuchs rides
in front of his regiment to make an estimate of his
property, every Swede must recognize the national
sense of humor. The joking spirit has undergone
an intimate union with a proud and taciturn sense
of duty. It is only in the solitude of the prison cell
that Gustaf Celsing gives words to the deep grief
that burns among these officers, humiliated, in-
sulted, trampled to earth in the service of their be-
loved master:

In alien places
His men of proud races
As beggars must crouch.

XXxil INTRODUCTION

Even when dispersed in slavery, they preserve their
sense of order and responsibility; they keep up their
muster-rolls and accounts, they are nota horde but
a people, a state (The General of Papers).

Of the glittering conqueror, “ King Charles, the
youthful hero,” illuminated by the sunshine of tri-
umph and success, whom Tegner celebrated a hun-_
dred years after, Heidenstam has not much to tell.
Only for a brief second may we catch a glimpse of
his boyish ardor as he steps ashore at Zeeland. It
is in the time of adversity and defeat that he begins
to interest Heidenstam. When the king feels him-
self to be alone, abandoned by God and man, the
transfiguration of poetry falls over his form. He is
a wholly tragic figure. The author himself has pro-
pounded his view of Charles XII in an essay: “A
tragic problem comprises a duel between conflict-
ing claims of right which appear so strong that it
lies beyond human justice to reject either one of
them entirely. Not only is it impossible to cut the
blood-red thread that the logic of misfortune spins
through the tragedy, but even in respect to the final
moral judgment we cannot get further than a dim
scrutiny. This awakens sympathy, if not a full and
devoted admiration for the tragic hero; but it
arouses, too, inquisitive reflection, the search for a
possible solution, however impossible it may be to

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM XX1ii

find. The tragic problem is therefore insoluble to
mankind,and from that fact, first and last, comes the
general confusion in contemplating Charles XII,
the continual dissension between our admiration on
one side and our moral demands on the other. If
a solution were ever possible, it would mean that
the king was not really tragic; but we need have
no fear. What is tragicin the deepest classical sense,
if not the strife between the claims of personal and
of universal justice that fill his life as we behold it?
He finds himself treacherously attacked and en-
snared. He cannot escape from the single thought
that he must get back what force is tearing out of
his hands. The prudent and the exhausted cry out
for him to make peace, but he cannot overlook the
thought that at the first opportunity the enemy will
again fall upon him, if he does not first strike them
to earth fora long period. It is not he that has made
the Swedish empire, but if it collapses, it is he that
must bear the shame; and the more his honor weak-
ens, the more ambition becomes his all-engulfing
passion. In this manner he assumes in his person
all of his people’s demands for justice, and tragedy
spreads its wings over millions.”’

The hero of this tragedy 1s, accordingly, not only
the king, but the Swedish people as well. In Poltava
Lewenhaupt says: “ The wreath he twined for him-

XXiV INTRODUCTION

self slid down upon his subjects instead.” And in
A Hero’s Funeral Brother George answers the slan-
derers and revilers: “Are not your eyes opened yet
so as to see that it was our own secret will and de-
sire which he preserved against our own indecision,
like a banner against a rebellious guard?”

The Charles Men, therefore, is not only a monu-
ment over the fall of the Swedish empire, but also
a hymn on the beauty in its destruction, the hope-
less magnanimity of obedience to duty, the poetry
of sacrifice. It expresses Heidenstam’s deeply tragic
philosophy of life. The highest that a man can at-
tain is to fall with honor, and such is the fate of the
best. Happiness is common and superficial ; suffer-
ing is holy and great.

None of the stories in The Charles Men is more
deeply characteristic of Heidenstam than The Stu-
pid Swede. The parks and pavilions of the Turkish
serail, with their roses and jewels, symbolize the
oriental doctrine of pleasure and beauty that he cel-
ebrated in his youth. But at the moment when the
awkward and joyless Swedish thrall stands among
the glittering, soulless dancing-girls, who know
nothing more of earth than that it is lovely, and
dream of nothing else than of a kiosk with red
damask hangings and perfumed fountains, her form
suddenly takes on an exaltation that none of the

VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM XXV

others possesses; and when she seizes the basket
with the snake in order to fulfil her duty, it is she
who is the most beautiful. Beauty of self-sacrifice,
of misfortune, of the soul, causes her to shine more
brightly than even the odalisque Evening Star-
light.

Anatole France has related a legend of the jug-
gler of the Madonna who worshipped the Holy
Virgin, and won her favor by the naive piety with
which he performed his tricks in her honor. The
Stupid Swede is a legend of that soul-temper which
transforms ugliness to grace and misfortune to har-
mony. That soul-temper ts glorified in the conclud-
ing words of The Charles Men, where a benediction
is called down upon the people who in their fall
from greatness caused their poverty to be glorified

before the world.
FREDRIK BOOK

Lund, Sweden, December, 1919

The translator wishes to express his gratitude
to Mr. O. A. Linder of Chicago for his col-
lation of the English text with the original,
and to Mr. Edwin Bjorkman of New York
for assistance in certain difficult passages.

THE CHARLES MEN
BY
VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM

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THE CHARLES MEN

The Green Corridor
I: the castle attic, where the fire-chief sold

brandy and ale, a tall, narrow-shouldered cus-

tomer had been thrust. down the stairs and
his empty pewter pot thrown after him, so that it
rolled between his shoes. His worsted stockings
were mended and dirty. He had tied his neck-cloth
over his mouth and unshaven cheeks, and he con-
tinued to stand with his hands in his coat-tail
pockets.

“Show out crazy Ekerot!”’ said the fire-chief.
“He has spit tobacco plug into the ale, stuck Peter
Painter with a bodkin, and 1s full of mischief all
through. Then shut up the folding table! There is
a command to bar the castle gates, for now it will
soon be over with His Royal Majesty’s life.”
One of the wardens was Charles XI’s faithful old

servant, Hakon. He had a tranquil face, but walked
so bowlegged in his stiff clothes that he looked as
if he had just dismounted from a horse. He picked
up the pot and stuck it good-naturedly under
Ekerot’s arm.

“T shall follow you, constable,” he said, — “ or
lieutenant, or whatever I should call you.”

“ Lars Ekerot is a captain in His Gracious Ma-
jesty’s battle fleet,” answered Ikerot, “and travelled

4 THE CHARLES MEN

and learned in tongues he is, too. Here in the castle
attic one sees no distinction between folk and folk.
I shall leave a report and complain of it, that I
shall. Have I not told you that soon fire shall rain
from heaven, and every rafter in this house break
out into bright flame? Mercenary councillors, un-
righteous judgments,-execration, and lamentation,
—that has become our daily bread, and the wrath
of Heaven rests heavy on the land.”

“ Lieutenant —or captain— you need not spread
talk of worse misfortunes than those which God has
already given us to bear. Round about in the sub-
urbs has the fire made way, and for ten years we
have had failure of harvest and famine. Four bush-
els of rye already cost twelve rix-dollars in silver.
Soon fodder will run short even in the royal stable,
and the boats with imported grain lie frozen solid
out by the coast.”

Ekerot went down the steps beside him and
looked around without fixing his small, restless
eyes on any definite object. Sometimes he stood
still, nodding and talking to himself in an under-
tone.

Through the loopholes came glimpses of the
castle grounds far below and the covered terrace
with obelisks and sentries who went back and forth
in the trumpeters’ gallery. Beyond the snow-cov-
ered towersand roofs, small groupsof people moved
on the frozen Malar between King’s Island and

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 5
Séder. The light of the March evening shone

slanting through one of the halls in the western
wing of the castle, so that it appeared as if light had
been kindled in the chandelier.

“Yes, yes,” mumbled Ekerot, “that shall all
burn, all—all that which was our shame, all that
which was our greatness. I have seen shining fel-
lows in the heavens, and when I sit with my pipe
at night, I see in the tobacco smoke wonderful:
planets, which show me that the old order of the
world is upset. In Hungary and Germany rain
down swarms of Arabia’s grasshoppers. The fire-
spurting mountains cast up glowing stones. Two
years ago we had grass finger-high in the park in
February and heard the birds of spring, but in Sep-
tember I picked strawberries at Essing. It is in such
times that the Lord God opens the eyes of his elect
so that they see what is hid.”

“Tn God’s name, do not talk so!”’ stammered
Hakon. “Do you see your visions waking or
asleep?”

“Between the two.”

“TI promise that I shall report every word to His
Royal Majesty himself, if you, lieutenant, will re-
count for me quite veraciously all that you have
seen and known. Do you see down below there the
two windows where the shutters are closed? It isn’t
half an hour since I was in there. There His Royal
Majesty sits in a chair made into a bed with covers

6 THE CHARLES MEN ©

and pillows, and he has become so small and dried
up that he is only nose and lips. And he cannot
raise his head. His poor Majesty, who has to en-
dure such agony, though he is but some forty and
odd years! Formerly, whenhecame limping through
the door, I was most glad if I could slip out, but
though I am only the least among servants, he can
now put his arms around my neck and press me to
him with streaming tears. I do not believe that he
feels much more warmly for his son than he did for
his wife. When he sends for him, he is brief of
speech and mostly sits and looks at him. He speaks
now only of his kingdom—and again of his king-
dom. Up to a week ago I saw on his knee house-
inspections and tariffs and such trifles, but now he
has written down his secret instructions to his son
and laid the letter in a sealed iron casket. As soon
as any one steps into the room, it is as if both with
his feverishly gleaming eyes and his words he stam-
mered a constant: ‘ Help me, help me to uphold
the kingdom, to make my son worthy and prudent.
The kingdom, the kingdom!’”

Hakon passed his hand across his forehead, and
they went on down the steps from loophole to loop-
hole.

“Inthe room belowus to the left is Her Majesty,
the queen dowager. She has locked herself up dur-
ing these last days, and not even Tessin slips in with
his portfolios. No one knows just what she 1s about,

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 7

but I can well believe that she does her best to ban-
ish her sad thoughts with a game of cards. There’s
a tinkling and jingling of watch-charms on the edge
of the card table, and a crunching and a rustling
and a frizzling of lace and ruffs—and a cane with
a gold knob slips to the floor—”’

“‘And the pretty Lady Hedwig Stenbock, who
stands behind the chair, picks Tee oh oe

“That she certainly does n’t, for she is long since
married and old and ugly, and at her own home.
You live only in that which was and that which 1 is
to be.”’

“That may be.”’ Ekerot screwed up his eyes and
pointed to the north wing of the castle, which had
just been reared by Tessin, after the old one had
been levelled to the earth. Some scaffolds were stil]
standing with fir branches on the highest pinnacles.

“Well, who lives under that long box-lid? Fie!
There lives no one at all—and neither will any one
come to live there, that I know. Why could n’t it
be left to stand as it was? Devil take the Gottorp
woman that put all this building nonsense into the
head of His Royal Majesty! You see, warder, just
as every man has his soul, so every old house has
in it all sorts of spooks and other creatures of dark-
ness, which are disturbed and uncomfortable when
people come with pick-axe and trowel. Do you re-
member the Green Corridor which used to run
under the section of the roof above the old castle

8 THE CHARLES MEN

church? It was there that for the first time I got my
eyes opened. Oh, I’’ll tell you all about it. I will tell
you the whole story, warder, if you will follow me
home and then keep your promise to relate every
word to His Royal Majesty himself.”

Having now come down to the entrance door,
they went on the drawbridge across the castle moat.
A courier with a leathern bag on his back was just
about to dismount from his horse, and his answer to
the many questions was heard through the tramp-
ling of feet and the orders.

“For six miles north of Stockholm seen only
three human beings— They sat by the side of the
road and fed on an animal that had died a natural
death. In Norrland a pound of meal mixed with
bark cost five rix-dollars in silver. Soldiers starving
to death— Regiments hardly half their comple-
ment—”’

Ekerot nodded assentingly, as if all this had been
_known to him long since, and he continued to walk
beside Hakon with his pewter pot under his arm
and his hands stuck in his coat tails.

When they had come up to his attic room at
Trangsund he gave Hakon a mistrustful side-
look, and when he stuck the key into the lock he
ascertained carefully that the door had not been
opened in his absence. The room was large and
bare. In the window stood a cage with a squirrel,
and on one wall was a medley of unlike pieces of

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 9

money nailed up in rows. There were bright Elbing
rix-dollars, small and large copper coins, a five-
ducat piece of Reval, and even a couple of Palm-
struch’s old bank-notes, which had been worthless
for thirty years. Ekerot advanced, inspected, and
counted the money.

“A fool,” he said, “sinks his possessions so deep
that he cannot himself keep watch over them, but
I want to have them under my eyes, so that I can
easily count them into a sack, when the great fire
comes.

Out of one corner, Ekerot carefully took five
logs, which he put in the fireplace and lighted with
a piece of tarred stick. Thereupon he and Hakon
filled their pipes, and as there were no chairs, they
sat on the floor in front of the blaze.

“ Well, let us hear now,” said Hakon.

Ekerot narrated:

Never have I seen anything so frightful as the
Green Corridor. That was at the time when I was
constable with the battle fleet. Now they have given
me my little pension of two hundred and fifty dol-
lars. Oh, to be sure. I was as good as driven from
the service because people were afraid lest otherwise
I should end as admiral-in-chief. And ‘hat Hans
Wachtmeister wants to be himself. ‘‘ The fellow is
crazy!” he screamed on the deck, when I politely
asked him to raise his hat before he ordered me into

io THE CHARLES MEN

the rigging. And so it was all up with me. Crazy
Ekerot I was called wherever I came and went. So
it keeps on. A poor journeyman carries a comrade
to the grave; then he carries his master to the grave;
and at last, for a groat, he carries one after another,
gets himself a glazed hat and a long black cloak,
and when he is in a hurry rolls of braid fall out of
his pocket—and children take to their heels and
weep and scream: “The corpse bearer, the corpse
bearer!’’ But though one may become such a bug-
bear, at the beginning we are, to be sure, all baked
of the same dough. Report that now, word for word,
to His Royal Majesty in person. Ah well, at that
time I was quite skilful in drawing and sketching.
A few days before that quarrel with Wachtmeister,
I therefore received a gracious command to take
with me another constable, who was called Nils,
and appear in the store-room above the old papist
church in the castle tower that stood by the river.
There we were to draw a broken lantern of a gal-
leon, according to which the queen dowager wished
to have a new one made for her sloops on the
Malar.

When we had sat there in that manner for a day,
gambling and worrying over the smashed lantern of
the galleon, which the devil himself could n’t have
drawn,a merry fitcame upon me,and I cried: “ Nils,
have you ever seen a dog with five legs?”

When Nils shrugged his shoulders, I went on:

THE GREEN CORRIDOR Il

“<1 saw one just now in Iron Square. He walked on
four legs, and the fifth he had in his mouth.”

Nils got angry, and to provoke him I cried still
louder: ‘Clever you are not. Let’s see if you are
brave. I’ll wager youthis pewter pint measure filled
with good Spanish wine and with a ducat at the bot-
tom that I shall go alone at guard-bell through the
Green Corridor.”

Nils replied: “I know that when you set your
mind on anything it’s no use trying to keep you
from it, and I don’t want that you should think
me stingy of gifts. Therefore, my dear Ekerot, I
take your wager as you desire, but I will not bear
the responsibility to your old mother if any ill be-
falls you. Therefore I prefer to go home to my place.
In daytime this splendid building is fine enough to
see; but at night strange things are supposed to
happen here, and I'd rather sleep inthe wretchedest
hole in the suburb.”

I called him poltroon, and let him ramble off
home. As soon as I was alone, I noticed that it had
already begun to grow dark, and, in order to harden
myself, I went up the two or three winding stair-
ways to the Green Corridorand looked through the
kevhole.

The green paint had fallen downin many places, so
that the older bright red color shone out. Along the
walls stood all sorts of household furniture that had
been worn out and carried up there. I saw cabinets

12 THE CHARLES MEN

and chairs, and representations of dogs and horses,
and in the far corner a bed with drawn curtains,
On the sides were hidden recesses, where there was
a dropping and dripping from the leaky roofing.

It was Walpurgis Night and therefore somewhat
light, and this restored me to a certain feeling of se-
curity, so that I could sit down and wait, but I knew
that wondrous beings had their resort up there
under the roof. The warders called them night-gob-
lins, because only at twilight did they lift up the
dark boards and stick out their heads. They were
not larger than a three-years’ child, were brown al]
over, naked, and had the bodies of women. Often
they would sit mounted on a cabinet and wave their
arms, and he who happened to touch a night-goblin
died within the year. They were wont to spring
about in the attics, and sometimes they shrieked
in the privies and clattered under the seats, so that
the court ladies dared not go there, but rather lay
in bed with colic all night.

As soon as I heard the guard-bell, I opened the
door wide.

I took a step forward, but my terror was so great
that I remained standing with hands on the door-
jamb and only stared. Through a bare space in one
of the chalked panes I looked all the way up to the
tower at Brunkeberg, and that strengthened me so
that I sprang right into the Green Corridor, in order

that the ringing should not be still before I had got

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 13

back. As long as it sounded, the creatures of dark-
ness would have no power.

In about the middle of the corridor I suddenly
saw something dark shoot forward along the cur-
tain-bed and slink down in one of the armchairs to
hide or wait. My left knee gave way of itself, and
I heard the echo of my scream through the attics.
It was from that time that my eyes were opened so
that men called me crazy.

Against the light of the window, I saw that a man
was sitting in the chair. He remained as motion-
less as J. All at once he seized me by the arm and
whispered through his teeth: “Pig/to di un cane!
Spy? What are you? Thequeen dowager’s warder?”’

“God bless me!” I stammered, for now I under-
stood that it was a fellow human being, and by the
trembling and fumbling hands I comprehended that
he was no less frightened than I myself. I even no-
ticed that he was in his stocking feet, and had his
shoes stuck in his bosom.

I summoned my wits and described my foolish
enterprise, and finally I was believed.

“Such a damned, dilapidated old nest,” growled
the man, to excuse his own astonishment. “ There
are such drippings from the roof that my feet are
wet through. As sure as I live, there shall be a new
house here. My good man, if you can find the way,
help me through this labyrinth of attics to the ball-
room. Who I am is no matter.”

14 THE CHARLES MEN

“Very good,” I answered, though I recognized
the gracious Chamberlain Tessin.

He was silent, and took me by the coat tail, and
so I turned and went before him. I imagine that at
_ bottom we were both equally pleased at having hap-
pened upon each other. When we came down to the
ballroom, he ordered me to stand outside the door,
but I heard the night-goblins jumping in the dark
behind us, and I kept my hand on the lock, so that
I was instantly able to open the door again and steal
in after him unnoticed. Through the window I saw
the river, and within, around the walls, stood a mul-
titude of leaning side-scenes, painted with trimmed
trees and white temples.

Tessin stood in the middle of the hall and clapped
his hands thrice,

A lady rose behind the side-scenes, and opened
a little dark lantern. Who should it be but Hedwig
Stenbock, the queen dowager’s highborn lady-in-
waiting ! Look, look, look,” I thought, biting my
lips, “ has that foreign dandy there climbed so high
already?”

“ Hedwig, my dearest of all in the world!” said
he. “Let us go directly to your room. No argu-
ments, ma chére!”’

Hedwig Stenbock was then nearly thirty-five,
and she went so stiffly and rigidly to meet him that
I should not have believed she had either heart or
soul, had she not all at once become wholly trans-

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 15

formed and showed the blood in her cheeks, when
he. embraced her.

Then I forgot myself, and burst out half aloud,
SAha,yes!”’

Tessin turned around, but he was so hot that he
only knitted his eyebrows and spilled out all his
words in explaining my presence.

““We might have needed some assistant in any
case,” said he, “and Ekerot may be as good as any
one else. If he knows how to keep silent, he shall
not be without reward.”

He then ordered me to take the dark lantern
and go through the empty conference chambers —
thanks for the favor!—and on, by a course which
he described, to the corridor where the queen dow-
ager’s ladies dwelt—sweet sleep, my pretties! As
soon as I had carefully ascertained that no flies in
court dress were buzzing around there, I was to re-
turn and so report.

I had, however, something else to announce,
when I did come back. I had heard the night-gob-
lins clatter inside the door of the Art Room, and
had seen them running with small sparks of fire in
their hands down the stairs to the Archive Hall,
where the affairs of the kingdom lay in the wall
cabinets, Finally, in the aforesaid corridor I had
come upon one of the queen dowager’s warders,
who sat asleep over his dark lantern with his back
against the wall.

16 THE CHARLES MEN

“He has been sent there since I left,” said Hed-
wig Stenbock, and again she stood as stiff and
straight as at first. “ He does not suspect that the
bird is already flown. But how to get back?”

She pushed Tessin’s arms from her and became
thoughtful.

“Tong have I feared and suspected. To-night
scandal has come upon us. Her Majesty is jealous.”

Tessin clutched in the air with his hands as if
toward invisible swords and daggers, and his eyes
flashed and sparkled.

“Jealous! Of me? She is forty and grizzled, and
she is somewhat hoarse and rough of voice like a
man. Shall I neverescape hearing that babble? With
whom should I have laid my plans and sought gra-
cious protection, if not with Sweden’s Hedwig Eleo-
nora?” He bowed. “ Yet fear not, my dearest one,
for no shame shall attach to your days, but this very
night you shall follow me hence. A sleigh can al-
ways be had—and then—addio! In Italy I have
friends.” ;

“God in heaven knows,” she answered, “‘that I
will always follow you wherever you desire, and for
men I care not at all, but will rather be by you than
forsake you, yet we must first consider with a cer-
tain friend what is wisest. I am thinking of Erik
Lindskiold, who this evening sits and drinks with
His Majesty. Ekerot shall go down across the
courtyard to the king’s little staircase and wait there

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 17

till Lindskiold comes. Then—with many apolo-
gies—he shall entreat him to hurry up here—to
me.

Tessin made a dissuasive motion with his hand,
but I paid little heed to the cavalier, finding a
greater pleasure in obeying such a noble lady.

It had drawn far into the night when I came back
with Lindskidld. He interrogated me fully about
everything. His peruke swayed, and he swore
kindly, guffawed, and was as noisy as if the whole
castle were his.

When he came into the ballroom, he bent one
knee, while he threw his hat into the air and cried:
“Are ye altogether staggering mad, my worthy
folk, who of love would partake and never forsake,
Piouen all to hinder you watch and wake? Your
inclination gives more delectation than elevation.
Paff, poof! A poor master builder, who thrives by
adventure, though good luck bewilder, may not
without censure suppose himself worth, sir, a lady
of birth, sir. That day began mankind’s vexation
when Adam awoke at Eve’s creation and said, im-
pelled by a new proclivity: ‘Congratulations on
your nativity!’”

“ Fiddlededilly, reeling — silly !’”” muttered Tes-
sin to his lady. ‘‘ That’s what they call the Swedish
esprit. Lindskiold is drunk.”

“Only a trifle. He is in the most favorable
mood.”

18 THE CHARLES MEN

Lindskiold did not hear them, but went on so
that the wide hall rang: “I have long suspected
this, and the titled class is likely to take it ill. But
travel to Italy! Ah, bah! Here the chamberlain has
a land that needs his genius. Let him look me in the
whites of the eyes, and say whether he can travel
from the designs for the royal castle that he has
spread out on my table, whether anything in the
world is as dear to him as his art.”

Tessin became blood-red, and looked downinthe
light of the lantern.

“‘] have determined to marry Chamberlain Tes-
sin,” said Hedwig Stenbock, “and that is how this
has happened.”

Lindskidld laid his hand on his heart: “ Of
course, of course! says the royal widow. A wreath
will I twine, the best to be had, of flower and vine
from my Lindevad. I was born at no manor, with
chapel and banner, and my sire was a smith, but
they made him forthwith— aha, burgomaster of
Skenninge. Think if the chamberlain had sprung
from Skenninge. How would he have built then?
A new royal castle in the Skenninge style? A sight
for the city, or the devil may get me! What pride
would be his to be just who he is!”

Lindskidld seized Tessin by the arm in a lofty,
threatening way, with a gesture as if he suddenly
threw off a spattered masquerade cloak.

“Tet him calm his ardor for a moon or so. To

THE GREEN ‘CORRIDOR 19

begin with, the chamberlain now kisses the hand of
his chosen one, goes three steps backwards, makes
a reverence, and then follows with me. Silent, when
I talk in the halls of the king! Ekerot goes back to
the dowager’s warder, blows out his lantern, wakes
him with a sound and expressive box on the ear, and
throws his shoes after him when he runs, so that he
believes it is the night-goblins. Afterwards the gra-
cious young lady returns unseen and tranquil to her
room. It is fully determined that she, in due time,
shall go along on a trip to Pomerania. Then the
chamberlain overtakes her, and marries her in all
secrecy. His Majesty I shall see to here at home.
The Gottorp misfortune—I mean the royal dowa-
ger—crafty woman — her the devil himself cannot
control, but the high-noble set, them I’ve heard
assessed before the Royal Commission, and I shall
know them well enough to remind them what they
are worth. New times are at hand here. Ah, my chil-
dren, my children, if you knew how the breast fills,
when one stands at the helm of state and steers ac-
cording to distant beacons, whose name one dares
not once utter to His Royal Majesty himself. But
for the present, rely on my word. Here where we
now stand, the chamberlain shall build his immor-
tality.”

Confusedly Tessin drew his hand to his lips, and
when I had performed my errand with the war-
der, he handed me, with a supercilious grimace.

20 THE CHARLES MEN

the two Palmstruch notes that hang there on the
wall.

“There you have your promised reward, if you
are silent,” he said.

But then began my visions and misfortunes, and
when I sat sick in my room at home, my ailments
became a by-word in the square — gout, lung
trouble, snuff disease, accidental bullets in the leg —
and buzzing in the head. And when I pulled out
the Palmstruch notes which the dishonorable vil-
lain stuck into my coat pocket, I found that they
had lost all value many Lord’s years before. Report
that now to His Royal Majesty’s person!

Ekerot would have related still more, but there
was a violent banging on the door, and a messenger
called Hakon to the king, who was worse.

Some days later, on the second day after Easter,
people said that the king lay at the point of death,
but Ekerot only nodded in his usual way as if it had
all been known to him before. A crowd of men and
maid-servants, who had been dismissed in the coun-
try because of the famine, stood homeless and de-
spairing on the streets in the snow,and Ekerot went
from group to group with his hands in his coat
tails, and listened and nodded. By night he com-
posed letters of prophecy, which he then presented
to the court pastor superior, Wallin. “The unfor-
tunate,” he wrote, “care accustomed to see in the

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 21

darkness, so that in the end they can discern that
which is dim and hidden to those blinded by the
light of prosperity.”

One windy April day, when he had just stuck his
last letter of prophecy under Wallin’s entry doorand
come home to his room, he sat down at the window
and prattled with the squirrel. Now and then he
chewed at some dried pears, which he picked out
of a drawer. Just as he was sitting so, he heard the
tocsin and alarm, and when he stretched himself
out through the window, he saw the castle roof en-
veloped in yellow smoke. Turning around to the
room, he began to take down the coins from the
wall, counting them accurately into his pocket. He
trembled, and his teeth chattered, as, with the
squirrel cage under one arm and the pewter pot
under the other, he toddled down the stairs to the
street.

He was jostled against the house wall, and stood
staring up at the castle, where roaring streaks of fire
already spurted forth under the dark rafters. Soon
all three of the wings flamed like huge bonfires, and
the thunderous noise of the conflagration drowned
the tocsin and the trumpet flourishes.

“ Look, look!” he said. ‘ The night-goblins must
out into the light of day. Look how they jump in
rows along the roof-ridges with fire in their hands!
Now they climb up on the tower roof and hop over
the new Tessin addition, which disturbed their com-

22 THE CHARLES MEN

fort. They want to burn themselves in it. This is
only the beginning. It will all burn—all.”

Soldiers and warders thronged on the castle
bridge amid barrels of water and itinerant chairs,
cabinets, and paintings. Under the two lions that
held the coat-of-arms above the door of the gate
stepped forth Hedwig Eleonora, the mother of the
Charleses. Two courtiers supported and almost car-
ried her, for she shrunk together, and constantly
wanted to stand still and look back. The wind raised
the mantilla over her silver-gray hair, and the next
moment drew it as a veil over her eyes red with
weeping, her proud aquiline nose, and thickly
painted cheeks.

“The pyre is burning under your son’s body,”
shouted Ekerot, pointing. “And the throne on
which your grandson has ascended is burning, and
before you close your eyes his whole realm shall be
burned in ashes. Don’t you remember that he was
born with blood on his hands?”

He made his way anxiously along the wall and
around the corner to Trangsund. Sparks rose to
heaven like stars, and beyond the churchyard wall
one saw the great castle tower called the Three
Crowns, which rose four full stories above the high-
est roof. With every story that the fire conquered,
the smoke burst out through the loopholes as from
cannon. That ’s the night-goblins, thought he, who
fire victory salutes, while the citadel of the Vasa

THE GREEN CORRIDOR 23

kings is burning. Again and again, the smoke en-
veloped the ancient arms of the realm on the spire
of the tower—and again, dizzyingly high, gleamed
forth the golden crowns, like three storm birds
resting on their wings. The ringers of St. Nicho-
las Church climbed up the steps to swing even the
great bell and the preliminary bell, but when they
heard the rumble, as the tower floors and vaulting
plunged down together, pulling the spire and arms
with them in the fall, they turned and fled. Smitten
with terror, children and women began to sob and
run, and it was told that people at the South Gate
saw an insane man steal out with a squirrel cage and
a pewter pot, singing in an undertone an old song
of penance.

A Sermon

N Great Church the audience arose from their

pews and looked toward the armory, before
which Charles XII dismounted from his carriage.

He was a handsome, but slender and undevel-
oped boy. His hat, edged with plumes, sat comi-
cally in its smallness upon the great curly peruke,
and when the king stuck it under his arm, his ges-
tures were nervous and embarrassed. He walked
trippingly, a trifle bent in the knees, as was the
fashion, and his eyes were lowered. His costume of
mourning was precious with ermine on the facings
and blonde lace around the gloves, and on his high-
heeled shoes of cordovan leather he had buckles
and ribbon rosettes.

Bewildered by the inquisitive glances, he took his
place in the royal pew, under the gilded crown up-
borne by gent. He sat stiffly, facing the altar, but
was unable to collect his thoughts around the sacred
ceremonies. When, at last, the minister stepped into
the pulpit and with an epigram and a vigorous blow
on the back of the book aroused a subdued mur-
mur, the king reddened and felt himself caught in
the very act. Directly, however, his thoughts be-
came the same rebels as they were just before, and
went their own ways. To cover his shyness, he be-
gan to pluck off the black points on the ermine.

“ Took at un,” said a woman in one of the bot-

A SERMON 25

tom pews. “He still needs to wear out his father’s
rod. Has the devil bit un i’ th’ fingers?”

“‘'That ’s for her to say, the dirty wench, who has
traipsed into a higher pew than belongs to her!”
answered a grand lady, and pushed her headlong
out into the aisle.

The old man with a cane, who stood down by the
door and had the office of going around and cuffing
on the neck those of the congregation who went to
sleep, tapped on the floor and menaced with his
hand, but the scuffle was heard as far up as the
pews of the nobility, so that the fine gentlemen
turned their heads, and the preacher straightway in-
terpolated the following words:

“Concord, I said, Christian concord! Whither
does she repair with her mild sweet-gruel? To the
populace, perchance? Hold her fast! In God’s
house or around His Royal Majesty’s own person,
perchance? Well for him who finds her ! Therefore
I say unto you, ye princes of the earth, seek dili-
gently for concord and love, and lift not into strife
the sword which God has placed in your hand, but
lift it only for the defence of your subjects.”

At this allusion the young king again blushed
red and laughed shamefacedly. Even Hedwig Ele-
onora, the queen dowager, in the royal pew just
opposite to him, nodded simperingly, but the young
princesses beside her laughed most of all. Ulrica
FJeanora sat tolerably stiff, but Hedwig Sophia

26 THE CHARLES MEN

leaned forward with her slim long neck. In happy
consciousness that she wore gloves, so that her mal-
formed thumbs were not visible, she held the prayer-
book in front of her mouth.

The king now became bolder and looked around.
In what a strange temple of the Lord he found
himself on this day! The whole church was over-
crowded with the furniture and objects of art which
had been saved from the fire at the castle. Only
the middle aisle was free. In the corner up by the
altar stood, rolled up, Ehrenstrahl’s representa-
tions of the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment,
and behind the tomb of the Skyttes he recognized
the plume-tufts and the green curtains from the
bed on which his father, sitting crosswise and sup-
ported on pillows, had given up the ghost. The
recollection of this, however, moved him not, since
he had scarcely felt for his father anything but fear.
He had seen in him rather the deputy appointed
by God than the dear blood-relation, and in his
thoughts as in his speech he preferred to call him
plainly and simply, the o/d king. Like two quest-
ing bees, his eyes wandered over the numerous fa-
miliar objects, and tarried long at last on a coat-of-
arms on the nearest pillar.

There, since several years, rested beneath the
floor his teacher, Nordenhjelm, the good-hearted
old Norcopensis whom he had loved with childish

enthusiasm. He recalled hours of study early in

A SERMON 27

winter mornings, when he sat and learned the four
branches of ciphering, and poked at the wick with
the candle-snuffers, or when Nordenhjelm told sto-
ries of the heroes of Greece and Rome. Since the
old king’s death he had walked in a dream. He
understood that he must not show gayety, that lam-
entation was the only thing he had license to claim,
but at the same time he saw that there were many
who were quite ready in private to court his favor
by.amusing him though attracting as little attention
as possible, now with one prank, now with another.
Even His Excellency Piper could at the same time
dry his tears and beg the king not to forsake his
youthful sports but play a game of shuttlecock.
The gloomy, serious faces about him afflicted him
sometimes, so that the tears sprang into his own
eyes, but from the most secret depth of his boyish
soul rose the dizzying, triumphal intoxication of vic-
tory. The morose and stiff-necked old men whom
he had formerly feared and shunned, he had sud-
denly found humble and submissive. Sometimes at
table, while they were sitting with their most anx-
ious expression, he had audaciously filliped fruit
seeds into their faces so as to see them laugh all at
once, and then go away again and rangethemselves
in a lugubrious ring around the queen dowager.
The burning of the castle, with its adventures and
dangers, had been for him a day of curiosity and
excitement. It had even been almost the jolliest

28 THE CHARLES MEN

day he had yet had in his life, though he himself
did not dare to think so. The affright of the others
and his grandmother’s faintings had only made
that wild spectacle the more strange and extraor-
dinary. Now all the old life was done. The old king
was dead, and his stronghold in ashes. All the new,
all, all that Sweden longed for, should now mount
on high with him like a flame of fire— and there
he sat, lonesome and fourteen years old.

It seemed to him next that Nordenhjelm stood
at the pulpit behind the speaker and dictated the
words. Only for an instant had the minister shaken
the clown’s staff with bells so as to make himself
intimate with his listeners. Then he addressed him-
self to the king in sight of all the congregation,
earnestly, strictly, yes, even commandingly. He re-
quired him, in the name of God, not to let himself
be led to vanity and pride by sycophants and
hangers-on, but to dedicate his actions unselfishly
to the unselfish people of Sweden, so that when, in
the fullness of years, he closed his weary eyes, he
might be followed by the blessings of thousands,
and might enter into God’s glory.

The voice of truth sang and thundered beneath
the arches of the church, and a lump rose in the
young king’s throat. He tried afresh to link his
thoughts to other, indifferent things, but every
word struck his upright childish heart, and he sat
with bowed head.

A SERMON 29

It was a relaxation for him when the carriage took
him again to Karlberg. There he bolted himself
into his apartments, and not even the resolute
summons of the dowager could induce him to go
down to table.

Inthe room outside his sleeping-chamber lay the
books which were used in his rarer and rarer les-
son-hours. Already he liked to philosophize overthe
riddles of creation, and he was always fascinated
by the sciences, but he began to despise books like
a merry troubadour intoxicated with life. The up-
permost work dealt with geography, and, after
turning the page back and forth, he threw it to
one side. Then, vehemently and at random, he
drew out instead the bottom book. With it he re-
mained sitting.

It was broken at the corners and severely worn,
and the contents was only a few manuscript pages
with the evening prayers that he had learned to
recite as a child. Many sentences and words had
already been frozen out of his memory, but as he
now saw the familiar lines before him, he needed
only to read them through two or three times to
know them by heart.

In the evening he ate only a cup of beer-soup,
and the warders then began to undress him. He
bore his violent emotions with such propriety that
they only thought he was tired, and when they
lifted the peruke from his short-clipped and dark-

30 THE CHARLES MEN

brown, somewhat wavy hair, and he climbed up in
his shirt into the great bed, he looked like a little
irl.

: The dog Pompey crept up by his feet, and be-
low the foot of the bed a lighted candle was set in
a basin of silver filled with water. The king was
afraid of the dark, and it had therefore become the
custom that the door to the outer room should
be left open, and that a page or playmate should
spend the night there. This evening, however, the
king ordered with decision that the door hereafter
should be closed. Only when they heard that did
the warders begin to wonder and become uneasy,
noticing that he was disturbed in spirit.

“Ah bah!” grumbled old Hakon, the faithful
servant from his father’s days, who obstinately con-
tinued to treat the king as a child. “To what shall
that serve?”

“It shall beas I have said,” answered the king.
“« And from to-morrow on the night-light 1s not ne-
cessary either.”

The warders bowed as they went backwards
from the sleeping apartment, but when Hakon had
closed the door, he sat down on the threshold out-
side. One of the warders, who was named Hult-
man, also remained there standing. They heard how
the king turned and threw himself on the mattress,
and when Hakon finally stretched himself up to
the keyhole, he saw indistinctly in the glimmer

A SERMON 31

of the night-light that his young lord was sitting
upright in bed.

Gusts of the night wind roared and rattled out
on the castle terrace and in the lindens of Karl-
berg Park, but within doors it was already hushed
and still. Yet Hakon thought,to his wonderment,
that he could distinguish a muffled, almost whis-
pering human voice, and even detached words. He
became attentive and listened.

He heard then that the king recited with half-
raised voice the prayers he had taught himself to
pray in his earliest childhood.

“Teach me to control myself and not to be mis-
led by flattering talk to presumption and self-will,
and thereby to sin against the regard which I owe
to God and men.”

Old Hakon brought his knees together and
clasped his hands for prayer, and, through the still-
ness and the soft rustle of the blast, he heard con-
tinually the words of the king.

“Though the son of a king and hereditary heir
to a mighty kingdom, I yet would always humbly
consider that these things are a special grace and
blessing of God, on which account I must strive
after Christian virtues and knowledge, so that |
may become skilful and worthy in so great a call-
ing. Almighty Lord, Thou who dost raise up kings
and put them down, teach me ever to obey Thy
commands, so that I may never to my own ruin

a2 THE CHARLES MEN

and the oppression of others misuse the power that
Thou lendest me. For Thy holy name’s sake.
Amen.”

The Successor to the Throne
OW dull it was! How long were the days at

the little court, where the black-clad coun-
cillors of state yawned in armchairs and stared in
front of them, as if they pondered how it was that
they were similarly shod on both feet, and had not
a jack-boot on one and a silken slipper on the other.
And so they yawned again—and out on the stair-
way the warders yawned, and down in the kitchen
the cooks tasted the viands with their fingers in
the grease, and said to one another: “Is that sour
enough, so that the great gentlemen will at once
make wry faces?”

The coachmen harnessed horses with black
plumes and ribbons in front of black carriages.
Black broadcloth was being cut out or sewed on
all the tables. In the church on Grayfriars’ Island,
where the old king had been interred, the black
canopies and tapestries still hung, and the king’s
funeral knell was heard far out into the country.
When, finally, the coronation train moved forth
over the snowy streets, all went in mourning, and
only the young king wore his purple. The echo of
the last festal salutes had hardly rolled over Tysk-
bagareberg, before the same intolerable dulness
again settled over the throne in the dark Yuletide
days.

Then, one sullen gray noon, the dowager’s mas-

34 THE CHARLES MEN

ter cook stamped on the floor. In his hands he held
a pot with boiled tomatoes.

“ Ach, du Lieber! There’ssomething todo here to-
day. His Grace, the Duke of Holstein, who is to be
expected here shortly, has sent us a costly gift. Her
Majesty and Mistress Greta Wrangel have already
tasted the fruit, and Tessin, who is a travelled man,
is coming down into the kitchen himself to advise
us in the preparation. Don’t stand there gaping,
boys. Dishclothsto the saucepans! Ruband polish!”

The remote little court in the outermost corner
of the world had that day gotten something to think
of. At table the talk was of nothing else than the
tomatoes, and each and all had something to say
about their smell and flavor. Meanwhile there was
drinking, and the old councillors who had been in-
vited, growing mellow, forgot their intrigues and
said drolly agreeable things to one another.

After the meal the king took Councillor Lars
Wallenstedt by the coat-button, and led him along
to the window recess, like a panting grumble-bear
with a ring through its -nose,

“Tell me,” inquired the king earnestly, “how
should a prince sacrifice himself for his people?
That sermon of last spring never leaves my mind.”

Wallenstedt had the habit when he talked of
puffing out his lips as if he were saying “‘ Pooh!”’

Accustomed to the king’s precocious and pene-
trating questions, he answered: ‘A prince should

THE SUCCESSOR. TO: THE THRONE. 35

sacrifice all small misgivings, gather all power to
himself, become his people’s archetype and will.
That was truly a pious discourse we heard that
time in church, but does not the Most Reverend
Bishop Spegel say that subjects should be as thralls
to their lord? The councillors and nobles now
quarrel but for their share of the power since the
time of Your Majesty’s revered father. And Ox-
enstjerna and Gyllenstjerna and—ah, well—they
have their ears to the ground. But it was for that
reason I always ventured to support Your Ma-
jesty’s will that even at your youthful years you
should shift the heavy weight of government from
the shoulders of Her Majesty the queen dowager.”’

When Cronhjelm, the king’s tutor, who stood
in the recess, heard the words about the weight of
government, he wrote with his finger on the moist-
ure of the window-pane: “The old woman feels
that burden as deliciously light as her head-dress.”’

“Yes, yes, my dear Wallenstedt,”’ the king mean-
while answered. “I, too, have always felt within me
that my will urged me in that direction. On Atland’s
throne a man must sit. It 1s a wondrous trouble-
some thing to will. How is that? To-day I feel that
I will ride to Kungsor and hunt bears. But why?
I might equally well will something else. Will is to
me a fetter, a chain drawn tight around my breast,
from which I cannot twist myself free. It is the mas-
ter, and I am the servant.’

36 THE CHARLES MEN

Wax candles were already lighted when he
stepped into his outer apartment. On the table
stood the sealed iron box in which the old king
had deposited his final secret and fatherly instruc-
tions. Many days had elapsed since the retiring
guardians of the realm had let it leave their hands,
but he had not yet been able to bring himself to
open the lid. One night, to be sure, he had violently
torn off the seal, but he had then shrunk back.
This evening he felt that the will was come.

But when he set the key in the rattling iron, his
old fear of the dark fell upon him. He saw before
him the old king’s coffin of tin, on which had just
fallen the spadefuls of earth, and it came over him
that now he was to stand eye to eye with the dead.
He called in Hakon, and bade him lay wood on the
fire. Meanwhile he turned the key, threw back the
lid, and with chilly trembling unfolded the closely
written paper.

“Take the power into your own hand,” stood
there, “and beware of the great lords who are about
you, of whom many have French stomachs. Those
who chatter most eagerly hanker only after their
own interests, and the best at times keep their own
counsel.”

When he had read to the end the anxious and
mistrustful warnings of the departed, he did not no-
tice that Hakon had left the apartment.

Now he was lord over all the land of Sweden.

CHE SUCCESSOR | lO. THE THRONE «37

The high dignitaries haa thronged outside his door
to declare him of age. Did they even know them-
selves whether their words were dictated by the
hope of favor or by pure intentions? Did they not
love him more than they did their own sons or
brothers? But nevertheless he could not talk famil-
iarly with these old men, who weighed and adjusted
their speech. And could he talk with those of his
own age, a crowd of shyly courteous playmates,
who knew naught of the affairs of the day? Alone
he went about as never before, and alone he had
to carry the old king’s sceptre. Nothing could be
greater than Sweden, and of all Sweden’s kings he
willed to be the foremost and best. Had he not re-
ceived a token of it from the hands of Almighty
God, in that he was exalted to be a ruler so young,
with the many years of a long life before him? The
old, which had brought down the wrath of God,
was now passed away. Song rose on high, there was
jubilation of drums and trumpets.

He arose, and his hand fell with a light blow on
the edge of the table.

Piper was right. Piper had said that Sweden was
a great realm with a little court in a smal] town at
the world’s end. There was to be no more of that.
He had himself set the crown upon his head, and
had ridden to church with it. Had he not already
received it from God at the hour of his birth, on
the June morning when the glittering star of the

38 THE CHARLES MEN

Lion’s Heart ascended above the rim of the east?
The floor-cloth on the streets, in which his horses’
hoofs had beaten holes, he had given to the peas-
antry for clothing, but the nobles had had to go on
foot, and the very councillors of state had borne
his canopy and waited on him like warders. Why
should he dissimulate, why should he confer honor
on men whom he did not honor in his soul? Had
he ever given a royal charter? The Estates, but not
he, had had to take oath. His kingly vow he had
sworn in silence before God, as he stood at the altar.
Now, now was he lord over all the land of Sweden!

He went to the hanging mirror, eyed compla-
cently the small pock-marks in his girlish skin, and
compressed with his fingers the stern furrow in his
brow.

Then he pointed into space, sat himself astride
on a chair, and galloped around the room.

“ Forward, boys, inane for your king! Jump,
Brilliant, jump, jump!

He imagined he was riding over a meadow
against the enemy and that hundreds of bullets
struck him on the breast, but fell flattened in the
grass. Round about on the heights stood specta-
tors, and at a distance the very king of France came
on a white horse and waved his hat.

In the hall below, the old dignitaries still stood
in conversation. When they heard the racket, they
were still a moment and listened, but Cronhjelm

THE. SUCCESSOR FO: THE FPHRONE- 39

wrote in the moisture and grumbled half aloud:
“That is only His Majesty who is occupied with
the management of the realm. He is devising marks
of favor for us in return for declaring him of age.”

Wallenstedt blew out his lips and gave him a
furious glance.

When the king had galloped all around his room,
a sudden recollection struck him, and he went to
the door.

“ Klinckowstrom!”’ he cried, “‘ Klinckowstrom,
can you tell me why I have just now taken such a
fancy for riding to Kungsor and hunting bears?”

Klinckowstrom, a merry page with red cheeks
and a light tongue, answered: “‘ Because it’s pitch
dark and infernal weather, and because no bear is
started, so that hunting 1s impossible. Shall I give
orders for horses and torch-riders?”

‘“‘ Have you any better suggestion?”

‘‘All other suggestions are better, but—”

“No, you are right. We must ride to Kungsor
just because it seems impossible, and because we
Wille tees

When, a little later, the king rode down Queen
Street, he passed close to a suburban place which
extended below St. Clare’s churchyard to a yel-
low-painted house. There an old widow known
as Mother Malin kept an inn. The grounds were
fenced in with boards, on which the builders at
work on the castle, when in summer they emptied

oe THE CHARLES MEN

their glasses at Mother Malin’s, had painted arches
of triumph and obelisks and dancing Italians. In
one corner lay a pleasure-house having a fireplace
and chimney. One window was on Queen Street,
the other faced inward on plum trees and flower-
beds, now covered with snow. For several weeks
Mother Malin had daily carried food to the plea-
sure-house, but no one of her old customers knew
anything with certainty as to the guest she lodged
within. At a sale of a noble family, whom narrowed
circumstances had bowed to the earth, she had pur-
chased for her guest a piano, and in the evenings
behind the closed shutters were heard strange mel-
odies, accompanied by a weak and delicate voice.

Just as the king’s torch-bearers approached,
Mother Malin was standing at a crevice of the
planks, looking out upon the dark street.

“It’s he himself,” she burst out, and thumped
on the door of the pleasure-house. “It’s the king
that’s coming. Put out the light and peep through
the heart in the shutter!”

At that moment the king dashed by in wild career.

‘““So handsome he is o’ the cheeks, the gracious
young lord!” she said, and went down again to her
inn. “And pure and holy is his life, too. But why
should he tempt God and set the crown on his head
with his own hands? That’s why he slipped on the
way, and the box of sacred ointment thudded on
the floor of the church.”

THE SUCCESSOR “TO” THE“ ERBRONES “4a

The night went by, and so did month after
month. In the garden the chestnut trees became
green again, as well as the plum trees behind the
barberry and currant bushes. The Maypole was
raised, and the court drove by to Karlberg.

Beside the king sat the Duke of Holstein, who
had come to marry his sister, Princess Hedwig So-
phia,and makean end of the intolerable dulness. As
they drove past the pleasure-house, he happened
by accident to throw a glance through the wide
open window.

In the evening came a man with his cape-collar
up, who knocked stealthily at the inn, but Mother
Malin regarded him mistrustfully. “ Be off to the
devil with your cape-collar!”’ said she.

He laughed loudly and talked broken Swedish.

‘““T lie here on one of the German galleons, and
would but have a mug of berry juice in your gar-
den. Schnell!”

He thrust a couple of coins into her hand and
pushed her aside. She was near to giving him a
blow, but, as 1t was, she counted her money and
thought things over. She put the mug of syrup on
the earthen bench in the garden, but she herself
sat behind the half-closed shutters to keep the new
customer under her eyes.

He sipped a little at the juice, wrote with his heel
on the sand, and looked about him. When he had
sat awhile and thought himself unobserved, he

42 THE CHARLES MEN

arose and turned down his collar. He was a young,
handsome gentleman, of a daring and merry ap-
pearance, and he walked slowly along the path.

“Tmpudent villain!” muttered Mother Malin.
“1 vow he’s going to knock at the door of the
pleasure-house.”’

When the door remained shut, he shrank several
paces aside to the open window, and stuck his hat
under his arm in knightly fashion. Then he sat on
the window-sill and spoke softly and eagerly.

With that Mother Malin’s patience gave way,
and she went out. She walked on the sand path,
twisting a thread of yarn between her fingers and
holding her head slyly bent forward. Meanwhile
she meditated on the abuse which she should utter.
But when she had gone a little way, the young gen-
tleman flew from out the barberry hedge, and roared
with the most disrespectful wrath, ‘Ha, you crone,
march! Iam the Duke of Holstein. But not a word
of this!”

Mother Malin was so astonished that she could
only turn completely around and smite herself on
the knee. Again, when shewent back into the house,
she smote her knee,and could not comprehend that
it was she, precisely, in her little abode, who had
come to experience anything so great and extraor-
dinary.

It then happened often in the bright, summer
evenings, when the chestnuts stood without show-

THE SUCCESSOR TO -TAE hORONE . a3

ing a breath of wind, that the duke came to the
place. The door of the pleasure-house was never
opened, no matter how insinuatingly he rapped,
but he sat on the window-sill; and Mother Malin,
who had meanwhile got a shining ducat in her
kirtle-pocket, served there both syrup and wine,
and once even a raisin-cake, on which she had writ-
ten with white of egg: “No prince on earth has
nobler worth.”

On this particular evening the duke tarried
longer than at other times, and within the plea-
sure-house the piano sounded.

As he finally rose to go, he said: ‘‘ Power, power!
Why to be sure, all cry out for it. Why should you
alone be silent? Consider that your father has played
away his last sovereign. Adieu, adieu! If you fail
with the lion, you bid fair next to hold the door
open for the wolf.”

The duke stood before the window. It was hushed
and still, for down at the inn all had by now gone
to bed.

“You do not answer,” he continued. “ Is it shy-
ness? Then answer with a sign. One stroke on the
piano means Yes, but if you trill with your little
finger-tips it means No, irrevocably No.”

He went lingeringly down the path. The night
heavens were bright, the ground without shadow,
and he felt about in a gooseberry bush without
being able to find any fruit. Then a chord sounded

44 THE CHARLES MEN

softly from the piano. He pressed his hat down on
his head, drew his cloak about him, and hastened
from the garden with cheerful steps.

After that night, Mother Malin went about in
vain waiting to open the gate at dusk for the great
lord. In ill humor, she began at last to draw from her
pocket and count over the ducats, and she cursed
herself because she had not at the right time known
how to entice to her yet more.

Meanwhile, one evening, a barber’s widow had
been buried 1n the churchyard of St. Clare, and after
the twelve torch-bearers had gone, two journeymen
remained to keep watch. They sat on planks by the
grave and spoke ill of the house of mourning.

“They ought to smart for it. The old hag lay
covered in a cambric bonnet with crape ribbons, like
a noble, and both spice-cakes and preserves stood
on the table, but here to us they have n't even sent
a stoop of small beer.”

- “T see across the wall that light is shining through
the heartin Mother Malin’s shutters. Should n’t we
go there and knock?”

They went out on the street to the yellow wooden
house and thumped on the tin.

Mother Malin set one of the shutters ajar.

“You come just in the nick of time, lads,” said
she, when she recognized them. ‘‘ No one has treats
to offer in these days, but you can earn a pretty
penny.”

THE SUCCESSOR. “LO” THE. HRONE, 45

She pushed open the shutter still further and
lowered her voice.

“Here you have each of you a whole Charles-
piece. Yes, look at it, you noisy lads; it'll stand
taking hold of. Within here stands a royal page,
who is soon coming down to you. At dawn, as
usual, some night-cuckoos from the court are to
ride by here. Pretend then to trip up and thrash
the young gentleman, and afterwards take to your
heels. That’s all.”

“That seems right enough,” said the journey-
men, and thumbed the coins. “The hardest thing
will be not to lay on in the excitement so that it
cuts;

They went back to the churchyard gate and
waited, and they heard Mother Malin whispering
with the page up in the room.

The time grew long. A star flamed over the dead-
house in the summer heat, the fire-watch called on
Brunkeberg, and the dawn drew near.

There was a creaking and squeaking on Mother
Malin’s steps, and the page, walking with knees
somewhat turned in and arranging the buttons of
his coat, came down to the journeymen.

In the alley off Queen Street was heard roister-
ing and trampling of horses. First rode Klinckow-
strom, who was so drunk that he had to hold him-
self on by his horse’s mane. Behind him could be
seen the king, the Duke of Holstein, and some ten

46 THE CHARLES MEN
other riders. All had blades in their hands, and all

but the king were in only their shirts. He was mad
with drink, and with his sword knocked in win-
dow-panes, lifted off signboards, and cut at wooden
doors. There was no one now in the whole world
whom he need obey. He could now do anything
whatever that occurred to him, and no one would
have a single word of reproach. Let them but dare!
At supper he had struck the dishes from the pages’
hands and thrown fragments of cake on his com-
rades’ clothes, so that they had white marks as from
snowballs. The intolerable old was now done with.
The old men might yawn and clear their throats
by their snuff-jars as they pleased. They had no
longer anything to attend to but to be fools. He
dedicated his old kingdom of bears to joy and the
spirit of youth. The whole of Europe should be
amazed. Now he was lord over all the land of
Sweden!

Meanwhile the unknown page had laid himself
on the ground in the churchyard gate, and the jour-
neymen pinched and beat to their heart’s content,
and clutched at his throat.

‘“Who’s there?”’ shouted the king, and set upon
the journeymen, who straightway fled between
grave-mounds and crosses. He was close at their
heels, and stabbed one of them several times in the
left arm, so that the blood dripped. At last, in de-
fence, they lifted one of the planks by the half-

LAE SUCCESSOR. FO -THE-PHRONE: 47
filled grave of the barber’s widow. Then the king
laughed and rode back to the wicket gate.

“One of ours?” he inquired of the unknown,
who had picked himself up again. “‘ What, are you
so tipsy that you don’t even know our password:
Snuff on all perukes? No matter. Sit up behind our
friend Klinckan, and hold him fast on his Wallach.
Forward!”

Singing and hallooing, the shirt-clad band dashed
on along street and hillside, waving and making
long noses at the sleep-dazed folk who came to the
gates. When the panes tinkled about Chief Mar-
shal Stenbock, that most worthy old man went
himself to the window in his dressing-gown and,
bowing, began to lament that, at last, it was neces-
sary for him to flee the realm. But the king tore
his wig from him, and cut it in two halves with his
sword.

“This is life!’” shouted the Duke of Holstein.
“Hats in the air! If we could only take along all
the royal lady wooers who sit and peep in their
bed-chambers. Wigs in the air! Rise in your stir-
rups and piddle over your horses’ heads! Soho,
boys! Devil take you. Vivat Carolus, king of Swe-
den and of scandals!”

Shirts were fluttering out; hats, wigs, and gloves
lay on the street; hoofs struck sparks, and the
horses rushed forward as tn a fire.

When the wild riders had come back to the

48 THE CHARLES MEN

castle, they sprang from their saddles, and let the
horses run as best they could. Upon the stairs they
broke the lampshades and fired pistol shots at a
marble Venus.

“Vorwarts!” shouted the king, as he stormed
with all his following into the chapel, and slashed
amain at the pews. “They shall get splintersin their
breeches here 0’ Sunday.”

The duke pounded on the floor demanding si-
lence, and Klinckowstrém, who had set to throw-
ing dice in the circle of the altar, held his hand over
his mouth so as to keep still.

“Dearly beloved listeners!” began the duke.
“Nothing could make this earnest occasion more
solemn than if my exalted and charming brother-
in-law in this morning hour would give us, his
faithful servants, a hint as to the choice of his heart.
Let us speak of ladies that woo! Let us think of
the baggage from Bavaria who scampered all the
way hither with her sweet mother, though there
was hardly any lodging for her after the castle was
burned. Oohoo! says the owl. Only eight little
tulip-red summers older than Your Majesty. Or of
the Princess of Wurtemburg, who already showed
her amorousness by paying suit to Your Majesty’s
father of most blessed memory, and who is sickly
in the chest. Don’t cough during the ceremony! Or
of the Princess of Mechlenburg-Grabow, who with
her mother is also supposed to be climbing into her

THE SUCCESSOR TO THE THRONE 49

travelling-coach. Or of the Prussian princess, who
is only two never-so-little sugar-grain years older;
or the Danish princess, the tooty-tooty little pink-
and-gold bird, who is only five small rose-leaf years
older. All of them are bent upon wooing, and
sprucing themselves up, and beautifying their pic-
tures, because their love afflicts them full sore.”

The king became abashed and replied, “‘ Have
I not always said that surely no man need think
of being married before he is forty?”’

As the duke noted his embarrassment, he winked
at the page from the inn and pounded anew on the
floor.

“Very good. His Majesty of Sweden will not
parcel out his glory and the love of his subjects in
anything else than manly courage and joy. Snuff
on all wigs! Were I the monarch of the Swedes, I
should therefore frighten the old fellows out of their
wits by summoning the prettiest ladies and minxes
to my festivities. Potztausend! They should sit be-
fore us on the saddle and stay with us till the cock
crowed the third time. But, as if I would talk any
longer! Set your knees to the pew-ends! Hey! Beat
and break, snap and crack! Stamp on the floor !—
Herr Gott, bring water! The king is sick. Water or
wine —just wine —wine!”’

The king had grown pale, and put his hand to
his forehead. It was nothing to him that the others
were flaming red and reeled about. At bottom, per-

50 THE CHARLES MEN

haps, he loved none of them deeply. What did it
matter if they called one another drunken? But
never should any such thing be said of him, the
chosen of God.

“That’s enough now, boys!” he said, trying to
thrust his sword into the scabbard, whereupon he
noticed that he had lost it. Instead, therefore, he
very calmly stuck the weapon through the skirt of
his coat, and walked with resolute step toward the
door.

The duke seized the unknown page by the arm,
whispered, and made signs with his hands. The
page hurried immediately after the king, opened
the door for him, and followed him upstairs.

“‘Never shall I taste wine again!” thought the
king. “I could not bear if people said that I stut-
tered in my speech and held pages to my breast.
Why should I after that be respected more than
they? And wine does not taste so much better than
small beer. That depends on habit. A really wise
man drinks water.”

They went togetheralong the stairs and corridors,
and came,at length, to his sleepingapartment. Here
Wallenstedt and a couple of other high nobles were
already waiting. Wallenstedt puffed up his lips.

“Six o’clock in the morning,” he began, “‘is the
usual time for us to consider the affairs of govern-
ment.’

““Tf it concerns a criminal matter, yes,’ answered

THE SUCCESSOR: TO THE. THRONE. ~s51

the king; ‘otherwise I will receive no counsel, but
will regulate and decide as seems to me right.”

He did not pick up the poker, as did his father.
He was as wakefully solicitous about his dignity
as a nobly-born young lady about court propriety.
Smiling and bowing, he went straight up to the
gentlemen, so that they had to leave the room
backwards.

“That is our return for setting a boy on the
throne,” they dinned maliciously into the ears of
Wallenstedt.

The page, however, had already locked the door
behind them with a subdued bang. That pleased the
king. He stood leaning against the end of the high
bed beside the casket in which his father had gath-
ered together jewels and valuables of all sorts, and
which had now been fetched up from the treasure-
vault known as the Elephant.

“Wihat is: your name?” he asked “the page.
“Why don’t you answer?”

The page breathed hard, fumbling and plucking
at his clothes.

“Well, but answer me, boy! You know your own
name, I suppose. You stand almost with your back
to me so that I cannot see you.”

The page now stepped forward into the middle
of the room, lifted the peruke from his head, tossed
it on the night-table, and answered: “ My name is

Rhoda— Rhoda d’ F lleville.”’

G2 THE CHARLES’ MEN

The king saw that it was a very young girl with
dark-pencilled eyebrows. Her yellow hair was
crisply curled with a curling-iron, anda lightly shad-
owed line trembled around her mouth.

She sprang forward, threw her arms about his
neck, and impetuously kissed him on the left cheek.

For the first time the youth of sixteen lost his
self-command. Flames rose before his eyes, his
cheek became grayish-white, and his hands hung
impotent. He only saw that the page’s coat was
unbuttoned over the breast, so that lace was hang-
ing-from it. She continued to hold him fast in her
arms, and pressed a long kiss upon his mouth.

He neither responded to it nor made resistance.
He only raised his hands little by little and lifted
her arms back over his head like a ring. Then,
stammering,and bowing deeply and ceremoniously,
he moved aside.

“Pardon, mademoiselle!’’ He scraped with his
foot, clicked his heels,and, bowing again with each
step, moved still further away. “ Pardon, made-
moiselle, pardon!”

How thoroughly had she not studied beforehand
every word she meant to say! But now she remem-
bered nothing. She spoke at random and without
herself any longer knowing what she said.

“Mercy, sire! The good God may be excused if
He punishes such presumption as mine.”

She bent her knee to the carpet.

THE SUCCESSOR. “LO, THE: THRONE. 53

“| have seen you on horseback, sire; I have seen
you from my window. In imagination I have seen
you, before I made the long journey up here, have
seen my hero, my Alexander.”

At once he went forward to her, took her under
the elbows, and conducted her in precocious cava-
lier fashion to a chair.

SNoOtsO.not s0.-51ts.sit

She kept hold of his hand, and wrinkled her
brow a little, as she looked him brightly in the eyes
—and then she burst into a ringing laugh of relief.

“Ah, well, you are human after all, sire. Not a
trace of the preacher. Youare the first Swede I have
met who understands that the eyes of virtue look
inward and do not evilly squint at others. Your
favorites drink and throw dice and pay attentions
to women without your saying anything about
it. You barely notice it. Let us speak of virtue,
sire.

Perfume, the scent of her hair, of a woman, tor-
tured him so violently that he was near to vomiting.
The contact, the feel of her warm hand, nauseated
him like touching a rat or a corpse. He believed
himself offended and defiled both as the king, spe-
cially chosen of God, and as a man in that a stranger
had touched his clothes and face and hands. An-
other, and that a woman, had taken hold of him
as of a prey,a conquered captive. The person who
had touched him straightway became an enemy,

54 THE CHARLES MEN

with whom he wished to fight, whom he wished to
strike down in punishment of lese-majesty.

“When I was yet but a child,” she continued,
“my confessor fell in love with me. He wrung his
hands and strove with himself and babbled prayers,
and I played with the madman and made a fool of
him. Sire, how different you are from him! You
never strive with yourself. You are wholly and
completely indifferent, sire. That is all. Virtue with
you 1s so innate that’’—she laughed playfully —
“T do not know if I can even call it virtue.”

He tried to twist his hand free, and exerted his
strength more and more. How had not the duke,
the pages, and the warders dinned in his ears about
lady wooers and pretty mamselles in the last weeks!
Was this, too, a game behind his back? Should he,
then, have no peace?

“ Pardon, mademoiselle!”’

“T know, sire, that for whole hours you can sit
and turn over Tessin’s etchings, and that you look
especially at pictures with tall young ladies. That
is perhaps only the esteem for art which you have
inherited from your noble lady grandmother; but
will it always remain so? I am no dead representa-
tion, sire.”

Though bowing constantly, he now tore himself
free with such vehemence that at the same time he
jerked Rhoda d’Elleville up from the chair.

“No, you are a live page, mademoiselle, and the

THE sUCCESSOR TO- THE THRONE “55

page I order to go down into the chapel and send
the comrades to the east anteroom.”

She saw at once that the game was hopelessly
lost, and the shadowed expression around her
mouth became deeper and more weary.

“The page must obey,” answered she.

When the king was left alone, he became again
tranquil as before. Only at times there passed over
his thoughts a flash of indignation. The unexpected
adventure had chased the wine fumes from his
head, and he wished not to go to rest like a weak-
ling after the pranks of the night, but to continue
them hour after hour.

He threw off his coat. In his shirt-sleeves, with
sword in hand, he went out to his comrades in the
east anteroom.

This room was sprinkled with dried stains of
blood. The boards of the floor had been drenched
and embrowned with pools of blood, and by the
portraits on the wall, whose eyes were poked out,
hung lumps of hair and of long-congealed blood.

In the room outside a lowing was heard. A calf
was led in and brought forward to the middle of
the floor.

The king bit his under lip so that it grew white,
and with a single whistling blow struck off the calf’s
head. With blood oozing under his nails, he then
threw the head through the broken window down
on the passers-by.

56 THE CHARLES MEN

Outside the door, meanwhile, the duke whis-
pered hurriedly with Rhoda d’Elleville.

“So no one is likely to get my exalted brother-
in-law out of his stiff-neckedness. Old Hjarne of
the funny face talks of cooking a love potion, but
that ’s likely to be of little avail. Had he not inher-
ited his father’s coldness, he would with his bra-
vado have become a Swedish Borgia. If he can’t
soon get to be a demi-god, he’ll become a devil.
When such a bird doesn’t find flapping-room for
its wings, it breaks apart the walls of its own nest.
Hist! Some one’s coming. Don’t forget! This
evening at nine at Mother Malin’s. Have on hand
some figs and raisins!”

Behind them on the stairs came faithful old
Hakon, leading two goats. He stood still, threw
his hands aloft, and sighed anxiously:

“What have they made of my young lord?
Never has such a thing been seen in the home of
Sweden’s kings. Almighty God, have pity and give
us yet greater misfortune than before, because the
quiet that has now come upon us can be borne
neither by the Swedes nor by such a prince!”

Midsummer Sport

WO little girls stood in a pasture with a sieve,

and near by, on a mossy stone, lazy and half-
asleep, sat their brother, Axel Frederick, who to-
day completed his twentieth year. His intended,
the frightened little Ulrica, who had come to the
place ona visit, bent down juniper twigs over the
sieve and cut at them with her sickle. The little
girls spread their hands to hold the twigs and help
all they could, and melting snow dripped from the
birches and alders.

“Oh, oh, even grandfather has come out in this
heavenly weather,” said Ulrica, pointing down at
the great house.

The little girls then began to shout and hop.
They took the sieve between them and went off to
the great house, while they swung the sieve in time
and warbled:

The birds of springtime, they sing so well.
Come little goat-girls, come!
To-night well have music and dance in the dell.

On the other side of the fence, where the neigh-
bor’s land began, Elias, the farm-servant, brought
down the last load of wood from the forest. The
water dripped from his wooden shoes, and the two
red oxen, Silverhorn and Yeoman, had sprigs of
rowan in their yoke as a protection against witch-
cratt. Elias, too, began to join in:

58 THE CHARLES MEN
The birds of springtime they sing so light.

Come, my goat, oh, come!

The flowers will push through the turf to-night.

But with that he broke off and, bending over the
fence, said to Axel Frederick, ‘“ Powder smells ill
when people shoot, and soot falls from the chim-
neys, so surely the thaw will last.”

The entry of the great house was covered with
a snowy thatch of turf, where in summer a goat was
wont to browse among the house-leeks and lime-
wort. Below on the bench sat grandfather in his
gray frock coat with pewter buttons, and Ulrica led
forward the little girls so that they might greet
him. They were clad in basted-up smocks, which
were home-dyed with whortleberry juice, and every
time the little girls curtsied, they made lilac circles
on the wet steps of the stairs.

Grandfather patted Ulrica on the cheek with the
back of his hand.

“You will grow upintime no doubt, little one,
and become a help to Axel Frederick.”

“Tf I were only quite certain of it, grandfather.
It is so big here, and there is so much to manage
that I am not accustomed to.”

«Ah, yes. And pity it is for Axel Frederick that
he lost both father and mother so early,and had no
one but his aunts and his old grandfather. But still
we have looked after him in every way, and you,
little one, must of course learn to take our place.

MIDSUMMER SPORT 59

The hardest thing 1s his frail health, the fine boy.
— Ah, dear children, God be thanked for this day
of spring and for blessed years of peace!”’

Grandfather felt of the cut juniper and praised
it because it was moist, so that it would take up a
great deal of dust.

Behind himin the kitchen window stood the two
aunts, cooking a mash of castoreum and laurel ber-
ries for a sick heifer. Both of them had plain black
clothes and ice-gray hair combed back.

“Why isn’t Axel Frederick with you?” they
asked of Ulrica. ‘‘ Remember that for supper he is
to have his favorite dish, honey-pudding dipped in
syrup, and there is to be pork with shallot.”

“Yes, yes,” said grandtather; ‘‘and then let the
servants have a rest for to-night.”

Ulrica hastened into the maids’ room, where the
servants were picking tow, but she had not taken
many steps before her timid and undeveloped little
face again took on an anxious and listening expres-
sion.

“ But,Ulrica!” called grandfather. “ I don’t under-
stand this, Ulrica! Come here, Ulrica!”’

She hung the bunch of keys she had just taken
up behind the door-post in the entry, and went
out.

“Isn't that a rider coming off there?” asked
grandfather. “ Three months now I’ve been spared
from letters. I grow so full of dread when I get a

60 THE CHARLES MEN

letter. Look at him, look at him! He digs his paw
into his bag.”

The rider came to a standstill a moment by the
steps, and delivered a sealed and folded paper.

The aunts elbowed their way forward on both
sides of grandfather, and reached him his spec-
tacles, but his hands trembled so that he could
hardly break the seal. They all wanted to read
the writing at the same time, and Ulrica forgot her-
self so far that she leaned over grandfather’s arm,
pointed along the lines, and spelled aloud before
the others.

At last she struck her hands together and stared
in front of her, while tears mounted to her eyes.

“ Axel Frederick, Axel Frederick!” she cried,
and ran over the sanded court to the pasture. “ For
heaven’s sake!”

“What themischiefisthe matter with you now?”
answered Axel Frederick, throwing away the with-
ered fern which he was chewing. He had a full, pink
face and an agreeable, careless voice.

She did not come to a halt before she had taken
his hand.

“Axel Frederick, you don’t know! There’s an
order that the regiment shall hold itself in readi-
ness to gather under the flag. It’s on account ofthe
Danes’ invasion into Holstein.”

He followed her back to the great house, and
she squeezed and squeezed his wrist.

MIDSUMMER SPORT 61

“Dear children,” stammered grandfather, “that
I must needs live to see such a visitation! We have
war upon us.”

Axel Frederick stood and pondered.

Finally he looked up and answered, “I won’t
gO.

Grandfather tramped around on the steps, and
about him the aunts went back and forth.

“You are already enrolled, dear child. The only
thing would be if we could perhaps hire some one
else.”

“One can surely do that,” replied Axel Freder-
ick indifferently.

He went into the house, and Ulrica sprang up
the stairs with her apron before her eyes, and threw
herself on her bed.

In the evening, when the honey-pudding was
eaten, and they all sat around the table, grand-
father wanted, as usual, to work on a hundred-
mesh net, but he trembled too much.

“Tt has gone ill up there in Stockholm,” said he.
‘Ballets, masquerades, streets covered with car-
pets, comedians and conjurers of all sorts—that
has been the daily food with our new ‘ King Chris-
tina.’ I’ve heard all about it. Whenthe money ran
out, he began to give away the crown jewels. Now
our gracious lord must spell out another lesson.”

Axel Frederick moved back his candlestick, and

sat leaning indolently forward with his elbows on

62 THE CHARLES MEN

the table, while the aunts and Ulrica, her eyes red
with weeping, cleared the table. Grandfather nodded
and coughed and went on with his talk.

‘Tn all these years of peace there has been noth-
ing but greed and extortion, and the very worst
fellows have pushed themselves nearest to the
throne. Now these fatted oxen are behaving ill, |
fancy. Ha-ha! You should but have seen the old
times when grandfather was young, and was called
to the nobles’ banner. The king’s standard that was
kept in the royal wardrobe was unfurled, and the
horse with the kettledrum was equipped in its long
saddle-cloth with crowns in the corner, and then we
assembled in our tight, braided coats, while the
trumpets began to play.”

Grandfather took the yarn and tried to tie it, but
threw it aside again and rose.

“You should only have seen, Axel Frederick.
Even in the moonlight, as we stood drawn up on
the icy ground and sang psalms before the advance,
I recognized the Narkingers’ red uniforms with
white facings, which were like striped tulips; and
the vellow Kronobergers, and the gray boys from
Kalmar, and the gay blue Dalecarlian regiment, and
the West Gotlanders, who were yellow and black.
That was a feast to behold, but quiet as in the
Lord’s house. Well, there have come other men
and other coats. Everything now ts to be severe
and simple.”

MIDSUMMER SPORT 63

There was silence in the room awhile.

After that Axel Frederick said, as if to himself,
“If my togs and gear were in good order, there
might be merry times in a camp.”

Grandfather shook his head.

“You are frail in health, Axel Frederick, and
it will be hard to march down through the whole
kingdom to Denmark.”

“Yes, march I won’t, but I might, though, have
Elias with me and the brown long-wagon.”

“That you may of course have any time, but you
have no cloth tent with stakes and ridge-tree and
pegs and whatever else there ought to be now.”

“Elias could very well purchase that for me on
the way. As to uniform, I’m passably well off.”

“Tet ’s see now, let ’s see now.”” Grandfather be-
came eager and toddled off over the floor to open
the wardrobe. “‘ Ulrica, come here, Ulrica, and read
how it stands there in His Royal Majesty’s”’ (he
bowed) “edict which lies on the table! Here we have
the cloak with brass buttons, lined with smooth
Swedish baize. That is right. And the vest is here,
too. Read now about the coat!”

Ulrica trimmed the tallow candle, and sat down
at the table with hands over her brow, while she
read monotonously, spelling out the words, in a
loud voice: “Coat of blue unstretched cloth, red
collar, lined with madder-red baize, twelve brass
buttons in front, four above and three below the

64 THE CHARLES MEN

pocket-flap, and one button on each side, three
small on each sleeve.”

“‘Kight—twelve—that’s right. Now we come
to the breeches.”

“Breeches of good buckskin or deerskin with
three buttons covered with chamois.”

“They are fearfully chafed. There will soon be
eyes in the seat. However, Elias could very well see
to getting you a new pair on the way. But the hat
and gloves. Where are the hat and gloves?”

“They ’re lying in the chest in the entry,” said
Axel Frederick.

Ulrica read: ‘Gloves with large gauntlets of yel-
low shamozed ox-leather, stiffened and reinforced,
with the grip of buck- or goat-skin. Shoes of good
Swedish wax-leather with straps cut in one piece.
Bottom of an insole and a middle-sole. Shoe-
buckles of brass.”

“The shoes and wax-leather boots are here, and
are fairly good. You can have my spurs. You shall
be a fine-looking Swedish soldier, my dear boy.”

“ Neckcloth: one of black Swedish wool-crepon
two-and-a-half feet long and a full nine inches wide
with a leather cord half a yard long at each end,
and two of white.”

“That Elias must get for you at Orebro.”

‘Pistols: two pairs. Holsters of black leather
with tops of gathered broadcloth.”

“You must take mine. And my broadsword is in

MIDSUMMER SPORT 65

excellent condition with calf-skin sheath and sword-
band of elk-leather. That ’s how a Swedish warrior
ought to look. We must now think, too, of equip-
ping Elias and putting in haversacks and all.”

Axel Frederick stretched his arms.

“It’s surely the best thing for me to go up and
lie down and take a good rest beforehand.”

There was now noise and commotion in the great
house. There was nailing and battering every day,
there was flaming and sputtering in the fireplace,
and by night the candle was burning. The one room
that stayed dark was Axel Frederick’s.

On the last night no one but Axel Frederick
went to rest, and when the dawn had come on so far
that all lights could be put out, the aunts waked
him and gave him something warm to drink in bed
with drops of agua fortis, for they had heard that
he coughed in the night.

When he came down into the hall, the others
were gathered there already,even the maids and the
men-servants, and the table was spread for all in
common. They ate without saying a single word,
but when the meal was over, and they arose, the
Bible was brought to grandfather, and Ulrica read
with choked voice. When she had ceased, grand-
father clasped his hands and spoke with eyes
closed:

‘like as my forefathers have done, even so will
| now in the hour of departure lay my hands upon

66 THE CHARLES MEN

you, my daughter’s son, and bless you, for many
are my years, and who knows when the hour-glass
has run out? God, the Most High, I invoke from
my lowly dwelling, that He may lead you to honor,
and that the heavy trials which await us may only
exalt our little nation to be greater and more glo-
rious.

Axel Frederick stood at the corner of the table,
fingering and balancing the plate, until from out-
side was heard a clatter, as the brown long-wagon
was driven up.

All now went out, and Axel Frederick sat up be-
side Elias, wrapped in grandfather’s wolf-skin coat
and much heated, for in the spring weather the
water was dripping from roof and tree.

‘“‘ Here is the butter firkin,” said the aunts, “and
here the bread sack. Hearken now, Elias! In the
seat-box are the curd-cake and the flask with the
aqua fortis. If the strain and peril are too hard, dear
Axel Frederick, never forget that the way home is
short.”

But grandfather pressed in among them and
stuck his hands down in the back of the wagon.

“Is the chest tied on right? And let’s see now!
Here is the sprinkling-brush and the whisk-cloth
and the scraper—and here we have the fodder-bag
and the water-bottle. That ’s as it ought to be. The
lead-mould, bullet-cutter, and casting ladle are in
the chest.”

MIDSUMMER SPORT 67

Ulrica stood behind them without any one no-
ticing her.

She said very softly, “Axel Frederick, when it
is summer, I shall go out some evening and bind
joy-threads and sorrow-threads on the rye, to see
which has grown highest the next morning—”

“‘ Now it’sall ready,” broke in grandfather, who
had not heard her; ‘‘and God be with both you and
Elias!”

Round about on the side of the road stood the
farm-folk and the day-laborers.

But just as Elias raised his whip, Axel Freder-
ick laid his hand over the reins.

“This journey may turn out ill,” said he.

Still it would look badly,” answered Elias, “to
unharness and unsaddle now.”

Axel Frederick stuck his hand back into the
sleeve of his coat, and between the lines of silent
people the wagon rolled away.

The weeks passed, and the trees blossomed. It
was a slow march with the Narke regiment through
the wilds of Sweden, and Axel Frederick sat in his
coat and slept beside Elias, warm on the brow and
with his gloves of goat’s-hair very moist. A little
way from Landskrona, the brown long-wagon had
fallen behind the regimental baggage,and the horse
stood in the blaze of the sun, and browsed beside

68 THE CHARLES MEN

the ditch. Both masterand man fell asleep, shoulder
to shoulder.

The horse whisked at a gad-fly, the water purled
in the ditch, and a couple of vagrants threw their
bad language at the sleepers; but they continued to
sit in the same untroubled repose.

Then there came behind them at a gallop a shab-
bily dressed rider with a large flaxen peruke, who
pulled up his horse beside the wagon.

Elias nudged Axel Frederick, and picked up the
reins, but Axel Frederick, unwilling to open his
eyes, only said: “Yes, drive on, Elias! I need to get
a good rest before my hardships.”

Elias gave him another nudge in the side.

“Rouse yourself, rouse yourself!” he whispered.

Drowsily Axel Frederick opened one eye — but
in that instant he grew blood-red over all his
face, he rose, and saluted from the middle of the
wagon.

He recognized at once from pictures that it was
the eighteen-year-old king himself. Yet what a
transformation! Was this majestic and command-
ing youth, who had grown up so quickly, the same
that afew months before beheaded calves and broke
windows? He was not above middle height, and his
face was small; but the brow was high and noble,
and from the large deep-blue eyes beamed an en-
chanting radiance.

“The gentleman should throw off his coat, so

MIDSUMMER SPORT 69

that I caninspect his uniform,” he said deliberately.
“The earth is green long since.”’

Axel Frederick panted and struggled to get off
his grandfather’s accursed pelisse,and the king sur-
veyed coat and buttons, fingered them, pulled at
them, and counted.

“That is fair,” said he with a precociously ear-
nest expression ; “and now we shall all become en-
tirely new men.”

Axel Frederick stood dazed and erect, looking
fixedly at the wagon wheel.

Then the king added slowly, “In a few days we
may perhaps have the fortune to stand before the
enemy. I have been told that in battle nothing is
as hardas thirst. If the gentleman should some time
meet me in the tumult of the strife, let him step
forward and lend me his drinking-flask.”

The king once more gave his horse the spurs,
and Axel Frederick sat down. He had never loved
or hated, never been worried or carried away with
enthusiasm, and he pondered the king’s words.

The pelisse came to lie between him and Elias.
When at dusk the wagon clattered into Lands-
krona, the regiment had already pitched their tents.
Axel Frederick looked about for the covered drink-
ing-table of which he had dreamed. Instead he found
only taciturn comrades, who pressed one another’s
hands, and looked away in crowds across the Straits
of Oresund, where the waves were rushing under

70 THE CHARLES MEN

the cloudy summer heavens, and where flags and
pennons fluttered over the forest of masts of the
Swedish fleet.

Next morning Elias put the horse and wagon
into a barn, because the Crown had taken over all
vessels, and only on the day after the fleet had
sailed could he follow on a fishing-boat to Zeeland.
He remained standing on the shore, almost out in
the water, when the monstrous anchors, dripping
with mud, were hoisted up by the creaking cables.
On mast after mast rose the swelling sails, and the
sunlight glittered on the lanterns and glass win-
dows of the poops. The billows danced and shot
by, mirroring in flaming coils the lofty, swaying
forms of the galleons, which with their laurel gar-
lands and tridents pointed out across the sea to the
unexplored land of wonder, toward adventure and
achievement. The masses of cloud, after resting
long on the waves, had sunk into thesea, and the
atmosphere was blue as in a saga.

Then the king forgot himself; the boy in his soul
conquered so that he began to clap his hands. He
stood in the poop just in front of the lantern, and
around him the gray-haired warriors of his father’s
time smiled, and also began to clap. Even His Ex-
cellency Piper sprang up the ladder as nimbly as
a ship’s-boy. There were no longer any old and de-
crepit men or greedy bickerers; it was an army of
youths.

MIDSUMMER SPORT Fo

As if at a mysterious sign, music and drums be-
gan to sound at the same moment, swords flew
from their sheaths, and, rising above Admiral Anc-
karstierna’s words through the speaking-trumpet,
a hymn was sung from the nineteen warships and
the hundred smaller vessels.

Elias recognized Axel Frederick, who sat on
grandfather’s pelisse, hemmed in by the cargo of
gabions, sacks for earth, and trench entanglements.
But when Elias saw that he, too, slowly rose and
drew his blade like the others, and saw how the
fleet gradually vanished on the water, he passed his
hand over his eyes, shaking his head.

He returned toward the barn, muttering, “How
will he look after himself with his fragile health till
Ecan catch “ups:

A few daysafterward Elias came alone with his long-
wagon on the Smaland roads. Peasant women, who
recognized him from the time he had driven past
with the sleeping officer, set their entry doors ajar,
and asked if 1t was true that the Swedes had landed
at Zeeland, and that the king had thanked God on
his knees for the victory, but had stammered from
embarrassment.

He nodded assentingly without replying.

Day after day he drove northward, step by step,
walking with the reins the whole way beside the
wagon, which was covered with a piece of an old sail.

72 THE CHARLES MEN

When at last, one evening, he came to the hedge
in front of the great house, all immediately recog-
nized by the noise that it was the brown long-
wagon, and the horse neighed. Amazed, they went
to the window, grandfather himself came out on
the steps, and Ulrica stood in the middle of the
courtyard.

Elias walked as slowly as ever with the reins in
his hands, and at the steps the horse stood still of
itself.

Then Elias carefully drew the sail from the
wagon, and there stood a long, narrow, nailed-up
coffin, with a yellowed wreath of beech-leaves on
the lid.

“*T brought him homewith me,” said Elias.“ He
received a shot in the breast as he sprang forward

and handed His Royal Majesty his drinking-flask.”

Gunnel the Stewardess

N a vault of the fortressat Riga, Gunnel the stew-

ardess; an old woman of eighty, sat and spun.
Her long arms were veinous and sinewy, her breast
was lean and flat like an old man’s. Some thin
white wisps of hair hung down over her eyes, and
she had a cloth knotted about her head like a round
cap.

The spinning-wheel whirred, anda trumpeter lad
lay on the stone floor in front of the fire.

“Grandma,” said he, “can’t you sing something
while you are spinning? I’ve never heard you do
otherwise than nag and scold.”

For a brief moment she turned towards him her
tired and wickedly chilling eyes.

“« Sing? Perhaps of your mother, who was set on
a wagon and carried to the Muscovites? Perhaps
of your father, whom they hanged at the chimney
of the house on the bridge? Curse will I the night
when I was born, and myself will I curse and every
human being I have met. Name me a single one
who is not even worse than his repute.”

“If you sing a song, you'll be cheerful, grand-
ma, and I should be so glad to have you cheerful,
this evening.”

‘““He whom you see playing or laughing is only
a master of deception. Misery and shame is all,

74 THE CHARLES MEN

and it is for the sake of our sins and our baseness
that now the Saxons have come and besieged our
city. Why don’t you go in the evening and do your
duty on the wall as at otherwhiles, instead of lying
here in your laziness ?”’

“Grandma, can’t you say a single pleasant word
to meas I go?”’

“Thrash you I should, if I were not so infirm
and bent with my years that I no more can lift my
countenance to heaven. Do you not want me to
tell your fortune? Do they not call me the Sibyl?
Shall I tell you that thecrooked line over your eye-
brows signifies an early death? I see years ahead
into the future, but as far as I see I find only evil
and low purposes. You are worse than I, and I am
worse than my mother, and all that which is born
is worse than that which dies.”

He arose from the floor and stirred the logs.

“T will tell you, grandma, wherefore I sat my-
self by you this evening, and wherefore I asked
of you a kindly word. The old governor-general
has ordered to-day that before the following night
all women, young and aged, sound and sick, shall
go their way, so as not to consume the bread of
the men. Those who refuse shall be punished with
death. How can you, who in ten years have never
gone further than across the castle courtyard to the
storehouse, now be able to range about in wood and

”?

waste in the midst of the winter cold? m

GUNNEL THE STEWARDESS 75
She laughed and trod the spinning-wheel faster

and faster.

“Ffaha! I have been waiting for this after I
tended so faithfully the noble lord’s storeroom and
all that was his. And you, Jan? Aren’t you worried
at having no one any longer to bake for you at the
oven and make your bed on the folding-bench?
What other feeling is there in children? Praised be
Gop, be Gop, Who at the end casts us all under
the scourge of His wrath!”

Jan clasped his hands about his curly brown hair.

“Grandma, grandma!”

“Go, I tell you, and let me sit in peace and spin
my tow, till I open the door myself and go out of
it to be quit of this earthly life!”

He took a few steps forward toward the spin-
ning-wheel, but thereupon turned about and went
out of the vault.

The spinning-wheel whirred and whirred, until
the fire burned out. Next morning, when Jan the
trumpeter came back, the vault stood empty.

The siege was long and severe. After divine ser-
vice had been held, all the women went out of the
city in the snowy days of February, and the feeble
or sick were set upon litters and wagons. All Riga
became a cloister for men, who had nothing to give
to the flocks of begging women that now and then
stole out in front of the wall. The men had scarcely
bread for their own necessities, and the starved

76 THE CHARLES MEN

horses tore each other to pieces in the stalls, or de-
voured the mangers, and gnawed great holes in the
wooden walls. Smoke hung over the burned sub-
urbs, and at night the soldiers were often wakened
by warning tocsins, and took down their broad-
swords from the ceiling.

In the evenings, however, when Jan the trum-
peter came home to the vault which he and his
grandmother had had as a living-room, he almost
always found the folding-bench made up as a bed,
and a bowl with mouldy meat beside it on a chair.
He was ashamed of saying anything about it to
the others, but he was really terrified. He believed
that his grandmother had perished in the snow-
drifts,and that now, remorseful over her former
hardness, she went about again without rest. In his
fright he shook as with ague, and many a night he
preferred to sleep hungry in the snow on the wall.
After he had strengthened himself with prayer,
however, he became easier, and finally he felt him-
self more surprised and anxious when he now and
then found the folding-bench untouched and the
chair empty. Then he would seat himself at the
spinning-wheel and, treading it very softly, would
listen to the familiar whirring which he had heard
day after day since his birth.

Nowit happened one morning that the governor-
general, the celebrated Erik Dahlberg, a man of
seventy-five, heard violent shooting. He rose with

GUNNEL THE STEWARDESS 77

impatient anger from his sketches and fortification
models of wax. As areminder of his bright youth-
ful excursions in the service of beauty, splendid
etchings of Roman ruins hung on the wall, but his
formerly mild countenance had become wrinkled
with melancholy, and an expression of harshness
stiffened around the narrow, compressed, almost
white lips. He adjusted his great spliced wig, and
tremblingly ran his nails over his thin moustache.
When he went down the stairs, he struck heavily
on the stones with his cane, and said:

“Ah, we Swedes, we blood-kindred to the Vasa
kings, who in their old age could only find fault and
quarrel and at the last sat in their own rooms afraid
of the dark,—we have in our soul a black seed,
from which with the years is raised a branching tree
filled with the bitterest gall-apples.”

He became bitterer and harsher in spirit the far-
ther he went, and when he finally stood at the wall,
he spoke to no one.

Several battalions had been drawn up with flags
and music, but afterwards the shooting had quieted,
and through the gate returned scattered bands of
weary and bleeding men who had just repulsed the
enemy’s attack. Last of them all, came a thin and
feeble old man, who had himself a red sabre wound
on the breast, but who painfully carried in his arms
in front of him a wounded boy.

Erik Dahlberg raised his hand over his brows to

78 THE CHARLES MEN

look. Was not the fallen boy Jan the trumpeter, the
lad from the castle? He recognized him by his curly
brown hair.

At the arch of the gate the exhausted bearer sank
down against the stone pillar, and remained there
sitting with his wound and with the dead boy on his
knee. Some soldiers, bending down to examine the
wound, slit up the bloody shirt above the breast.

“What!” they shouted, and stepped back. “It’s
a woman!”

Wondering, they bent down still lower to look
at her face. She had sunk her head sidewise against
the wall, and the fur cap slid down, so that the white
locks of her hair fell forward.

“It’s Gunnel the stewardess, the Sibyl!”

She breathed heavily and opened her dulling eyes.

“] didn’t want to leave the boy alone in this
world of evil, but after I had put on men’s clothes
and served night and day among the others on the
wall, I thought that I was eating a man’s bread with-
out wrong.”

Soldiers and officers looked dubiously at Erik
Dahlberg, whose commands she had transgressed.
He continued to stand there, reserved and harshly
gloomy, while the stick in his hand trembled and
tapped on the stone paving.

Slowly he turned to the battalion and the thin
lips moved.

“Lower your colors!’’ he said.

French Mons
HIDE-COVERED field wagon had stuck in

one of the swamps of Poland, and the horse
had already been unhitched. On the wagon stood
a young man who had just come to the army to
work his way up. His comrades called him French
Mons, because as tutor he had followed some dis-
tinguished lords to France, and had there filled his
chest with all sorts of odd things. Captain Olof
Oxehufvud and several subalterns and soldiers
waited alongside in the mud, and the snowstorm
struck them in the face.

“The wagon and chest must be left behind,” said
Oxehufvud.

French Mons opened the chest, and pulled out
as much as he could carry.

‘““What a pied dressing-gown with all that nee-
dlework and tassels!”’ exclaimed Oxehufvud and
the subalterns. “What miserable little slippers!
And false calves! And a bonnet!”

“That ’s a cadeau from ma—”’

“Kick it into the slush!”

“<__ From mama.”

“Look at the little peruke!

“«And the medium peruke!”

“And the great spliced peruke!”’

Oxehufvud could now control himself no longer,
but took him by the leg.

»”?

80 THE CHARLES MEN

“Kick the damned stuff into the slush, I say!”

The delicate blonde countenance of French
Mons flamed up, and he struck his hand on his
sword.

‘“‘Master Captain, such an import —”’

“Such an important person as you can freely
hold up the march, you think?”

“No. Such a victorious army, I would say, surely
need not go 1n shabby clothes, with dressing-gowns
from the time of King Orre.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Little schoolmaster ! Con-
summate ass !”’

‘* The captain treats me like a menial, yet I have
had education, have travelled in France, yes, have
stood eye to eye with Vauban himself.”

“ Well, what did Vauban say?”

“What did he say?”

SLMSh SOc,

““«Get out!’ he said, for it was at his own gate,
and I was in his way.”

“Lord! Lord! Get down from the wagon and
be quick about it! Come here, two of you fellows,
and take this beggar in lady’s chair style!”

French Mons rolled up the slippers and wigs in
the dotted dressing-gown and took it on his back,
while he held a lorgnette before his eyes.

When he had been carried to the bank, Oxe-
hufvud stood in front of him, tall and slim, with
brilliant red cheeks and small dark moustaches.

FRENCH MONS 8

“Hark now, monsieur, what do you want in the
field? Do you want to work up?”

“Though not of noble rank, I aspire to it. Who
knows if perhaps even I may not sit some time with
a certificate of nobility in my pocket?”

“You may ennoble yourself in fools’ hell! In
this army no one says a word about nobility, but
every one must work his way up the best he
may.”

Oxehufvud had now abused him so long as
leader that his comradely heart began to thaw, and
he added grumblingly in a somewhat milder tone,
“‘ Behave yourself gallantly, and you may get your
officer’s commission to start with! We have already
broken so many Swedish dandies of your sort and
made men of them. There by that little wood you
see a large house with a white stairway. Since we are
in all no more than five-and-twenty men, I can’t
afford to leave you a single soldier. Reconnoitre
and spy diligently on the enemy, so that no one
falls on us from the rear!”’

Oxehufvud marched off with his little band, and
French Mons went up to the house with his bun-
dle on his back.

No human being was visible, and he stationed
himself irresolutely in the lee of the wall. He was
cold and wet through, but above all he was troubled
by the dirt and mud on his boots. Would he not
be able to keep equally good watch from one of

82 THE CHARLES MEN

the windows? A well-made bed with a silken cov-
erlet and a foot-muff was exactly what he longed
for.

Transversely under the house went a dark car-
riage-door, and thither with great caution he slunk
along the wall. When he had dried his moist lor-
gnette, heleaned forwardand looked in withstealthy
alertness.

There was a stamping and clattering, and he dis-
tinguished two gleaming eyes. With throbbing heart
he took a step back and drew his sword. A black
horse rushed out and ran back and forth in the
courtyard, while it threw the snow high in the air
with its hind feet.

“T won’tcatch that black fellow,” thought French
Mons. “If a soldier sits on such a wild horse, the
dead owner will rise from the swamp, jump up
behind, and pull him from the saddle. They tell
of such things in the evening by the camp-fire.”’

He threatened the horse with his sword, and
went in, pushing the door open on the other side
so that the light would be better. He saw now that
the door to the house was walled up.

Snorting and stamping, the horse came back, but
French Mons chased him out again. Then he went
out and called up to the window. A gray-haired
serving-woman stuck out her head.

“Does a friend of King Stanislaus or of the
Saxon drunkard dwell here?” he asked.

FRENCH MONS 83

“Here dwells an old recluse, who is no one’s
enemy and no one’s friend.”

“Good. Then he cannot deny shelter to a frozen
Swedish soldier.”

Theserving-woman vanished and finally returned
after a time with a ladder, on which he climbed in.

The room was large, and the ugly but clean
wooden chairs stood in a stiff row along the bare
walls. When he chanced to push back one of the
chairs with his scabbard, the serving-woman has-
tened at once to move it back to its proper place.
Two girls dressed in blue, with pale faces and curled
hair, came and went without saying a word. As soon
as one got a few steps behind, she ran anxiously
forward to the other’s side. They rubbed against
each other and groped with their long fingers, and
though it was still bright daylight, they carried two
lighted lamps.

When the serving-woman had rubbed the mud
from his boots and sufficiently dried the wet places
that the soles had made on the floor, she quietly
and carefully opened the door to the next room.

“Don’t walk too roughly!” she whispered.

There stood a man of middle age in a dressing-
gown and with the most impudent and pointed nose,
but no one had ever worn a more elegantly curled
peruke, and on his white fingers gleamed rings with
jewels.

French Mons set down his bundle, and eyed him

84 THE CHARLES MEN

with his lorgnette. Much pleased with his vener-
able exterior, he thereupon made a wide gesture
with his arms, and bowed to the floor.

““My intentions are courteous,” he said, ‘and
humbly I beg the favor of knowing with what no-
bleman I have the good fortune to speak.”

«Sit down, my good sir. I am nothing but a for-
gotten old recluse, but since you are a man of qual-
ity, I shall at once explain various things that may
seem remarkable.”

The two gentlemen sat down stiff and straight
with hands on their knees.

“Formerly I was a merry companion, and my
coat of brocade was the talk of all Warsaw, but on
my thirtieth birthday, when I sat drinking with my
comrades, I lifted my glass and spoke somewhat
in this fashion: My friends, with every year your
eyes become harder and yourhearts more shrunken.
One believesin King Stanislaus of the whitecheeks,
and the other in King August with the big belly.
Afterwards you forge your plots accordingly, and
seek for appointments and rewards. I will not go to
the grave with the horrible recollection that each
of my brothers was at the last a Cain. I set friend-
ship much higher than love, because it is a bond
exclusively between souls, and therefore to-day I
say unto you farewell, aavile we are all still young.
Of me you shall never hear anything further, but
such as I now see you, you shall still go about me

FRENCH MONS 85

in my room before my eyes and keep me company,
when I sit alone and old. When the serving-woman
outside the door hears that I prattle half aloud, she
will say: ‘Now the old man is talking with the
friends of his youth.’”

“And after you had so bade them farewell?”

“Then I went home and had the door walled up.
My servants have to get themselves out and in as
best they may.”

“With a host of such delicate sensibilities a guest
will surely get on well.”

“Get on well? What are you thinking of ? My
twin daughters who walk about the room here with
their lampsareinsane. Their mother wasan abducted
nun. No, a guest would not get on in the least.”

“You mean, perhaps, that my coming disturbs.”

“‘ Ah well, I won’t exactly say that. But there are
ghosts here.”

His nostrils rose at the corners, and he got up
and rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

“TI consider it my duty as host to tell the truth as
well first as last. There is a dead lackey who goes
about again, and whose name is Jonathan. He
stands in window-recesses and behind doors in
brown livery with black braid. His servant zeal so
sticks to the poor fellow even after death that he
watches over and serves guests when they least ex-
pect it. Fortunately guests are rare here. Tell me,
are you a count?”’

86 “THE CHARLES MEN
TUNG,

“Are you a baron?”

“No, I’m not a baron yet.”

‘“‘Are you not at least a plain nobleman?”

“Ts it my lord’s intention to insult?”

French Mons flushed with embarrassment. “ T he
certificate has been my dearest dream,” he thought,
“and would to God I carried it already in my coat
pocket. Then no one any longer should cry, ‘ Little
schoolmaster!’ Then it should be: ‘I sawthe marks
of nobility on that man long before he got his cer-
tificate.’”’

‘“‘How can such a simple question wound you?”
exclaimed the recluse, with yet more enjoyment.

“Of course I am noble. My family is extremely
Olas

“That would be another thing. That’s very
good. Though Jonathan had a Christian burial and
all that, he is such an out-and-out aristocratic lackey
that he starts all sorts of malicious tricks as soon as
he has before him a parvenu or a plebeian.”

French Mons stroked his small moustache with
the nail of his little finger and swung his lorgnette
uncomfortably.

“Is my lord a connoisseur of Syracusan wine?”
he asked.

SIN G2

“T too think much more of a glass of Fronti-
gnac. My favorite dish is ragout with mushrooms,

FRENCH MONS 87

though I shall never speak ill of a haché of lamb
with thyme. Much in this part of the world depends
on the sauce. Oh, I do not long to be back see:
with oatmeal and pitchy darkness.”

“ Pitch darkness? Are you thinking of the sum-
mer nights?”

“ Phey:are bright.

“And winter evenings are bright, too, for then
you have snow. If you are afraid of pitch darkness,
never travel southward again! Have you in your
land any great artists and scholars?”

“We have not and never shall have.”

“You do not over-value your countrymen.”

“‘T have seen a little of the great world, my lord.
I have travelled in France a good two months, my
lord. I have even been a whole evening with roz
Soleil.”

“You? Have you been with Louis XIV?”

“That I have—at the theatre—though I only
got a wretched standing-place in the parterre. Since
Augustus there has not lived so majestic a sover-
eign. Only look at his style of bowing!”

“The king of Sweden is a man, too.”

“That he 1s, for he makes us noticed in foreign
countries, but how poor for all that!”

‘““Mightily poor in Warsaw lately. When Stanis-
laus stepped into the church for coronation with
his spouse, who is always frightened and tremulous,
he not only got as a present from the Swedes the

88 THE CHARLES MEN

newly wrought crown, sceptre, apple, sword, er-
mine, belt, and shoes, but also a banner, tapestries
on the church walls, the plates on the table, corona-
tion money to be scattered about, and soldiers who
kept guard and fired the jubilation salute — and
at the last he thanked His Excellency Piper and
kissed his hand.— Are you poor yourself?”

“Poors Le4 :

French Mons thought of the two wretched
Charles-pieces that were sewed under the lining of
his coat, and were all he possessed, but he rapped
his lorgnette on the table and hastened to say: “ My
expenses are enormous—and play amuses me— |
never go without ten louis d’or in my purse.”

“Will you lend me five louis d’or?”’

French Mons looked up at the ceiling.

“Just to-day, unluckily, I forgot my purse in a
coat on my tent-post. But I shall deem myself
happy to have the trifle sent you at the first oppor-
tunity. My lord, do not regard us awkward Swedes
as any grands seigneurs. However high I mount, still
Mons always peeps out between the seams.”

“You were mightily awkward lately at our Polish
election, when Arvid Horn sat with his note-book
and registered all who voted against the Swedish
orders, and when our land-marshal broke his staff
in despair.— But now consider my house as your
own. The tobacco pipe lies by the flask of scented
water, the scented water on the powder-box, the

FRENCH MONS 89

powder-box on the tobacco keg, the tobacco keg
on the commode. That you must hunt out as time
goes on.’

With these words he took up a leather-bound
book and sat down to read.

““T beg you to trouble yourself no further,” an-
swered French Mons, looking at him sidelong
through his lorgnette with wakening mistrust.
Within his soul he thought: “Just wait till I’m
sitting with my certificate in my big state carriage!
Then it will be: ‘That gentleman is our newly
made knight, Magnus Gabriel.’”’

The two girls every now and then pattered past
through the room, and threw the light of their
lamps upon him, and every time he rose and
bowed. As the ah meanwhile continued to read
and gradually appeared to forget his presence en-
tirely, he finally took his bundle and went back into
the outer room.

“Tt’s getting dark,” he said to the serving-wo-
man, “‘andI am too tired to keep company longer.”

“We have arranged the gentleman’s bed here to
the left in the great hall. That is the only room that
has a, fire,”

The hall was whitewashed and long, with inhos-
pitable rows of chairs and a couple of rough fold-
ing-tables. Just by the door stood a bed with cur-
tains of Holland linen. The old woman lighted the
four candles in the sconces and left him alone.

go THE CHARLES MEN

Chilled, he looked about him and laid his sword
on the table. Then he unpacked his bundle. Three
of the candles he blew out, and on them hung the
little peruke and the medium peruke and the
spliced peruke, but with the fourth he threw the
light under the bed and in the window recesses and
then set it back in the socket.

“Impudent pack!” he muttered. “I’d rather
have stood outside in the snow, but since I’m now
inside here, it’s a matter of keeping awake, peeping
about, and going often to the window to listen and
spy.

: He tried to lock the door from inside, but it was
without both bolt and key. After he had worked in
vain for a long time to get off his wet boots, whose
musty smell annoyed him, he put on his dressing-
gown and lay down in his boots on the bed.

At times he heard a muffled stamping and snort-
ing from the wild horses in the carriage entrance
under the floor of the hall, but after a while it grew
more quiet, and he began to think that the candle
did not light sufficiently, because all the corners
and recesses were dark. He raised his lorgnette,
sharpened his gaze, and turned his eyes on all sides,
but otherwise Jay quite motionless.

Then he saw by the door-jamb close behind the
curtain at the head of his bed a tall, thin lackey ina
brown coat with black braid.

A cramp-like dread caught him by the throat, he

FRENCH MONS gl

grew dizzy, but he thought: “It is only the good
God who wishes to try me because I am dreaming
of distinctions and certificates.”

Softly and almost imperceptibly he caught hold
of both sides of the bed so as to control his shud-
dering body, and then he stuck his right leg out
between the curtains.

“‘ Jonathan,” said he, “ pull off my boot!”

The lackey grinned so that his dark mouth
twisted itself up to his ears, but he did not move
from his place.

French Mons chattered his teeth, but he did not
draw back his leg.

‘Jonathan, is this the way you serve folk of the
nobility?”

The lackey grinned still worse, and made a dis-
dainful gesture of refusal with his hand.

French Mons now understood that the lackey
had seen through his deception and treated him as
a parvenu and a plebeian, and his terror grew so
great that he panted and moaned softly, but his leg
he held continually outstretched.

“Pull off my boot, Jonathan!”

His voice was now barely a whisper.

The lackey rubbed his hands on his hips and
grinned, but remained standing by the door-jamb.

At that moment the horse down below in the car-
riage entrance neighed long and piercingly, and far
off in the snowstorm many horses answered.

g2 THE CHARLES MEN

French Mons threw himself from the bed.

“I’m neglecting my duty,” he cried. “That’s
the enemy!”

He sprang forward to the table to grasp his
sword, but the lackey walked beside him with long
steps and stared him in the eyes.

Then he again grew paralyzed and stood still.
Meanwhile the lackey took the sword with one
hand, stretched out the other over the candlestick,
and with two fingers lifted the great spliced wig on
high and then drew it as an extinguisher over the
burning candle.

“Good God in heaven!” stammered French
Mons. “I have seldom gone into Thy house and
have rather pampered myself and played with all
sorts of vanity, but help me for this one time so
that I do not neglect my duty and become a dis-
grace! Then Thou may’st punish me eternally.”

Neighings were heard ever nearer and nearer,
and the wild horse rushed stamping and snorting
from its retreat.

Then French Mons bent down with his clenched
hands over his head, and threw himself in the dark
upon the lackey.

“You spook of Beelzebub!” he shouted.

He pulled the sword to him and struck on all
sides in the dark, and chairs fell to the floor. He
could nowhere lay hold on Jonathan, but at last
he struck his hands against the wall, and the door

FRENCH MONS 93

opened. The two sisters with their lamps and their
pale, wide-eyed countenances entered in only their
chemises, without the wit to feel any embarrass-
ment about it. They only rubbedagainst each other
and stared at the stranger who had waked them
with his racket. On this occasion he did not give
himself time to bow, but shoved up the window
and hopped to the ground. In his dressing-gown,
with sword in hand, he ran along the house and
heard behind him a harsh voice from the window,
but he did not know whether it was that of the re-
cluse or of Jonathan, or whether they were both one
and the same.

‘“<T said that you were afool,” cried the voice, “‘a
great fool, a fool without peer, and I wanted to be
even with you. But if the horsemen get to see you,
and there is a hand-to-hand fight, my house, my
home, my nook will be an ash-heap before the
cock crows.”

Without looking back, French Mons sprang in
among the trees, thinking all the while: ““Now’s
the chance for an officer’s commission! And then
the certificate, the certificate!”

The moonlight shone through the snowstorm,
and he saw Polacks with waving plumes flit by like
shadows. When they came too near, he threw him-
self down beside a heap of twigs or set himself be-
hind a tree trunk.

At last he discovered an old snow-covered bar-

94 THE CHARLES MEN

ricade. Behind the logs a soldier rose and asked in
a whisper: ‘“‘ Who goes there?”

“God with us! Good comrade!” answered
- French Mons, and climbed into the triangle. “The
enemy is upon us!”

“T have long thought I heard hoofs,” said Oxe-
hufvud softly. ‘ Perhaps it would be wisest to run
down and occupy the house.”

‘Captain, do not command me to show the way!
I was received there as a guest; I am a chevalier
and would rather be shot.”

“* And how were you treated there?”

Mike an. excellencys

“We shall see. Itseemsto be too latenow. Take
aim! Fire!”’

A swarm of Polacks galloped forward and struck
with their spears across the logs, but the first volley
threw them from the saddle.

“OQohaho! oohaho!” rang through the wood.
Riding shadows and long lines of men on foot
gathered as far as the eye could see. In the half
light they resembled the dark bushes that swayed
in the wind.

“‘T fancy we’re going to havea pretty party with
the enemy,” said Oxehufvud. “We are five-and-
twenty men, and around us stand fully three bat-
talions.”

“Now we are only twenty-four,” answered

FRENCH MONS 95

French Mons as he took the musket from a fallen
soldier.

“Now we are only nineteen,” said Oxehufvud
after a time.

Shot rained over the triangle and killed man
after man. As soon as the riders shrank back, the
Swedes stopped shooting, but when the silence
once more enticed the Polacks and inspired them
with the belief that there was no longer any man
living behind the barricade, they were met at once
by shot and swords and stones and boughs of
trees. So the raging strife continued hour after
hour.

Oxehufvud stole along the stockadeand counted
half aloud: “‘ Fight, ten, thirteen—we’re not many
now. A sorry number.”

He, too, had taken a musket, and on his knees
was picking up the ammunition from the cartridge-
box of one of the fallen.

““Comrade,”’ said he, and without rising he drew
French Mons tohim in his dressing-gown. “I gave
it to you rough, comrade, at noon on the swamp.”

““ Now we are only seven,” answered French
Mons, loading and firing. “‘ But soon we shall have
held out three hours.”’ :

“‘Comrade, you are not the first who has shown
me that the Swedes should not always laugh at
their dandies. You see, comrade, it happens some-

96 THE CHARLES MEN

times in this world that he who begins with a great
peruke may end with a great deed.”

“ Now we are only two.”

“ Hardly two, for I have got mine already,” an-
swered Oxehufvud, and sank back against the logs.

“‘ Hardly two.”
| French Mons now stood alone among the dead.
He tore up his dressing-gown and twisted some
rags about his left arm, which was bleeding vio-
lently. His waistcoat, too, he cast away, and the
lorgnette he stuffed into the leg of his boot. Then
he lay down among the others as far in among the
branches and twigs as he could creep.

The next time the Polacks galloped forward, all
was still.

They vaulted over the logs with a wild cry and
began to plunder, but when they saw him, bloody
and half undressed, they let him lie, and at day-
break they went away.

“Now,” thought French Mons, “now I havemy
officer’s commission. The certificate comes later.”

He crept out between the logs, and up by the
house in the snow he happened upon the peruke,
which had been thrown after him from the win-
dow.

“The wretch!” hewhispered. “ That’s my thanks
for saving his nest.”

All day he went through the woods with his

peruke under his arm, and only late in the even-

FRENCH MONS 97

ing was he challenged by the outposts of the Swed-
ish camp.

Tents and cabins of brush were set up in the
woods without any sheltering entrenchments. On
wagons or before their huts the women sat on a
separate lane and cradled their children on their
knees or whispered gently and quietly with their
soldiers. Round the fires the clay pipes puffed in
scarred hands. There Cornet Brokenhjelm and the
dauntless Lieutenant Pistol related their adven-
tures. Lieutenant Orbom let his neighbor feel with
his fingers the shot from Klissov which still re-
mained behind his right ear after having gone in
under his left eye and through his head. Per Ad-
lerfelt, the dancing-master, lamented that the en-
emy always, as at Duna, shot so low that at last
they would mar his handsome legs. There the lively
Dumky jested, still wearing on his arm the garter
which as a page he had got from a Silesian duch-
ess. Svante Horn, who was being bandaged by his
faithful servant, Lidbom, muttered that he could
never charge without immediately getting a Cos-
sack spear or sword in his body. Before him stood
the genial gray-haired surgeon, Teuffenweisser, who
continually put on and took off his spectacles, and
always required a dram before he attended rich
patients. All conversed of the fortune of war, which
allowed one man to grow gray under hardships and
honors, but let another fall by the first shot in the

98 THE CHARLES MEN

spring of his days. No drinking-songs rang out,
but the king had kettledrumsand oboes play mer-
rily all night. It was a camp where that soft noise
was like the murmur of a clear forest brook under
leafage dewy with June.

Against the wish of the king, his bodyguards
had wound his tent with hay and on that had laid
sod, so that it was like a charcoal-kiln. It stood,
not in the middle of the camp, but on the outer-
most edge and almost in darkness. Within, by the
tent-pole, they had built a fireplace of stones and
had brought there time and again a red-hot cannon-
ball. There was a wash-basin of pure silver, and on
the table, beside the Life of Alexander the Great
and the gold-bound Bible, stooda little silver-plated
image of the dog Pompey, which had died. But the
light blue silken brocade on the chair and field-bed
was already worn and spotted. In the middle of the
tent crouched the dogs, Turk and Snuffer, but the
king lay among the fir-twigs on the ground. The
small beer was done, and the lackey Hultman had
had nothing but a glass of melted snow and two
slack-baked biscuits to offer him for supper. After
that he had spread his cape over him and put on his
embroidered nightcap. There now, at the midday
height of his victories, slept the king of the Swedes,
and his narrow head was turned toward the lan-
guishing gleam of the last glowing cannon-ball. It
was long now since he had read the evening prayer

FRENCH MONS 99

which he had formerly stammered out in his room
while the wind raged in the lindens of Karlberg
Park. His god had gradually darkened into the
thunderous god of the Old Testament, to the aveng-
ing Lord of Sabaoth, whose commands he heard in
his soul without needing to pray for them; and it
was Thor and the Asar who drove around this camp
in the rumbling of the nocturnal storm, and who
with their trumpets hailed their youngest-born on
earth.

Then the dogs began to whimper and growl, and
the half-grown Max of Wurtemberg, the Little
Prince,.came, overjoyed and beaming, to the open-
ing of the tent.

“Your Majesty,” he cried, with his ringing boy-
ish voice, ‘‘awake, awake! Five-and-twenty Sma-
landers have been out and played with the enemy.”

Behind him stood French Mons, proppedagainst
the gallant Captain Schmiedeberg, who himself still
went ona crutch after an engagement over the bag-
gage, where he with twelve men had fought against
three hundred Polacks.

French Mons had never carried his head more
proudly and contentedly, though he reeled with
weariness; but when he heard that he was standing
before the king’s tent, he stopped short in anxiety.
He stooped and tremblingly wiped the bloodstains
from his hands. His hat, the medium peruke, and
the little peruke he threw upon the ground, and

100 THE CHARLES MEN

without considering the regulations, put on the
great spliced peruke. When he got himself in order,
he extended his arms along his sides and told his
story stammeringly with chattering teeth.

The king, who continued to sit on the fir-twigs,
then slowly repeated it, investigating every word
so as not to miss a single detail of the adventure.
He rejoiced as a child would at a wonderful saga.
Finally he gave him his hand.

“ Oxehufvud spoke rightly,” he said. “ The gen-
tlemen have had a pretty party with the enemy. It
has been quiet enough here in camp, and I should
myself have gladly been along. Since the Polish re-
cluse begged in jest the loan of five louis d’or, I
will leave him ten, and the gentleman shall go back
and throw them in to him through the window.”

French Mons went backward through the tent
door, and Schmiedeberg caught him around the
waist and conducted him into a ring of inquisitive,
expectant comrades. There were ensigns and lieu-
tenants and captains, who were his equals in age,
but who had already risen higher in rank than he.

“French Mons,” they murmured, “now no one
any longer dares laugh at your lorgnettes and your
wigs. But how did it go with your commission and
certificate? The certificate!”

“Quiet, quiet!”’ said Schmiedeberg. “ There are
other rewards for the poor fellow. If His Royal
Majesty might prevail, he would give no rewards,

FRENCH MONS 101
but would wish that each and all should fight and

fall for honor alone.”

No one dared contradict Schmiedeberg, and
dropping the arm of his new-found charge, he
limped on his crutch a few steps nearer the fire.

“Did n’t you see?” he whispered — “did n’t you
see that His Royal Majesty took him by the hand
almost as an equal?”

“There I got my certificate for time and eter-
nity,” said French Mons.

In his dripping spliced wig and ragged shirt he
stood all the while upright with arms at his sides,
and he still stammered in his speech and chattered
his teeth.

“And your charter as baron,” answered Schmie-
deberg softly, “you get when you fall.”

The Queen of the Marauders

HE tocsin in the church tower at Narva had

ceased. Ina breach of the battered rampart lay
the fallen Swedish heroes, over whose despoiled
and naked bodies the Russians stormed into the
city with wild cries. Some Cossacks, who had sewed
a live cat into the belly of an innkeeper, were stil]
laughing in a circle around their victim, but the
gigantic Peter Alexievitch, the czar, soon burst his
way through the midst of the throng on street and
courtyard and cut down his own men to check their
misdeeds. His right arm. up to the shoulder was
drenched with the blood of his own subjects.
Weary of murder, troop after troop finally assem-
bled in the square and the churchyard. Under the
pretext that the churches had been desecrated by
the misbelievers who lay buried there, bands of sol-
diers began to violate and plunder the graves.
Stones were pried up from the floor of the church
with crowbars, and outside the graves were opened
with shovels. Pillagers broke the copper and tin
caskets into pieces, and threw dice for the silver
handles and plates. The streets, where at the first
mélée the inhabitants had thrown down firebrands
and tiles, and where the blood of the slain was still
running in the gutters, were for many days piled
up with rusty or half-blackened coffins. The hair
on some of the bodies had grown so that it hung

THE OUEEN OF “THE MARAUDERS 103

out between the boards. Some of the dead lay em-
balmed and well preserved, though brown and
withered, but from most of the coffins yellow skele-
tons grinned forth from collapsed and mouldered
shrouds. People who stole anxiously among them
read the coffin-plates in the twilight, and now and
then recognized the name of a near relative, a
mother or a sister. Sometimes they saw the ravagers
pull out the decayed remains and throw them into
the river. Sometimes, again, protected by night,
they themselves succeeded in carrying them offand
burying them outside the city. So in the dusk one
might encounter an old man or woman who came
stealing along toilsomely with children or serving-
maids, carrying a coffin.

One night a swarm of pillagers bivouacked ina
corner of the churchyard. Hi! what fun it was to
pile up a bonfire of bed-slats and bolsters and chairs
and coffin-ends and what the devil else could be
dragged forth! Flames and sparks blazed up as high
as the attic window of the parsonage. Round about
stood coffins propped one against another. The
bottom of one of the uppermost had been broken,
so that the treasurer, of blessed memory, who was
inside it, stood there upright with his spliced wig on
his head and looked as if he thought: “I pray you,
into what company have I been conducted?”

“Haha! little father,” the robbers called to him,
as they roasted August apples and onions at the

104 THE CHARLES MEN

flames; “you surely want something to wet your
whistle, you there!”

The glow of the fire lighted up the living-room
of the parsonage, and the sparks flew in through the
broken panes. In the rooms stood only a broken
table and a chair, upon which sat the parson with
his head propped on his hands.

“Who knows? Perhaps it might succeed,” he
mumbled, and raised himself as if he had found the
key to a long-considered problem.

His silver-white beard spread itself all over his
breast, and his hair hung down to his shoulders. In
his youth, as chaplain, he had gone in for a little of
everything, and he had never pushed back a cup
that was offered him. Afterwards, as a widower in
the parsonage, he had worshipped God with joy
and mirth and a brimming bowl, and it was bruited
about that he did not reach first for his Bible if a
well-formed wench happened to bein his company.
He therefore even now took misfortune more
bravely and resignedly than others, and his heart
was as undaunted as his soldierly body was un-
bowed by years.

He went out into the entry and cautiously pulled
out the five or six rusty nails that held down a
couple of boards above a little narrow recess under
the stairs. Then he lifted the boards aside.

“Come out; my child!” ‘he said.

When no one obeyed him, his voice grew some-

THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS 105

what more severe, and he repeated his words:
“Come out, Lina! Both the other maids have been
bound and carried away. It was verily at the last
minute that I got you in here. But it is almost a day
since then, and you cannot live without meat and
drink. Eh?”

When he was not obeyed, he threw back his
head 1n annoyance, and he now spoke in accents of
harsh command: “ Why don’t you obey? Do you
think there is food here? There’s not so much as
a pinch of salt left in the house. You must be got
away, you understand. If it goes ill with you, if a
plunderer gets you on the way, I can only say this:
clasp your arms about his neck and follow with him
on his horse’s back wherever it carries you. Many
a time in the rough-and-tumble of war have I seen
such a love, and then I have slung the soldier’s
cloak over my priest’s frock and waved my hat fora
lucky end to the song. Don’t you hear, lass? When
your late father, who was a tippler—if I must tell
the truth—was my stable-boy and pulled me out
of a hole in the ice once, I promised for the future
to provide for him and his child. Besides, he was
Swedish born, as I was. Well, have n’t I always
been a fatherly master to you, or what has Her
Grace to object? Have her wits deserted her, eh?”

Something now began to move in the pitch-black
recess. An elbow struck against the wall, there was
a rustling and scraping, and with that Lina Anders-

106 THE CHARLES MEN

daughter stepped out, barefooted, in nothing but
her chemise and a torn red jacket without sleeves
but with a whole back to it, over which hung the
braid of her brown hair.

The light of the fire fell in through the window.
Squatted together, she held her chemise between
her knees, but her fresh, downward-bent face with
broad, open features was as merry as if she had just
stepped out of her settle-bed on a bright winter
morning in the light of the dawn.

The blood ran impetuously enough through the
veins of the white-haired chaplain, but in that mo-
ment he was but master and father.

-“T did not know that in my simple house folk had
learned sucha ceremonious feeling of delicacy,” said
he, and gave herafriendly pat on the bareshoulders.

She looked up.

““No,” she said, “it’s only because I’m so
wretchedly cold.”

“Ah, well, that’s natural. That’s the way I like
people totalk in my house. But I have no garments
to give you. My own hang on me in tatters. The
house may burn at any time. I myself can maybe
sneak out on my way unaccosted, and I have a
Riga rix-dollar in my pocket. Who asks about a
ragged old man? It’s another affair with you, Lina.
t know these wild fellows. I know but one way to
get you off, but I myself shrink from telling it.
Naturally, you are afraid.”

THE OUEEN; OF THE MARAUDERS 107

“Afraid I’m not. It will go with me as it may.
To be sure, I am no better than the others. Only
I’m perishing of cold.”

“Come here to the door, then, but don’t be
frightened. Do you see out there in the doorway
the rascals have set a little wooden casket. It can-
not be very heavy, but I think you will have room
in it. If you dare lay yourself in the casket, per-
haps I can smuggle you out of the town.”

“That I surely dare.”

Her teeth chattered, and she trembled, but she
straightened herself up a little, let the chemise hang
free, and went out on the stones in the doorway.

The pastor lifted off the moist lid, which was
loose, and found nothing in the plundered casket
but shavings and a brown blanket.

“That was just what I needed,” she shivered.
She pulled up the blanket, wrapped it over her,
stepped up, and laid herself on her back in the shav-
ings.

The pastor bent over her, laid both his hands on
her shoulders, and looked into her fearless eyes.
She might be eighteen or nineteen years old. Her
hair was stroked smoothly back to the braid.

As he stood so, it came over him that he had not
always looked on her in the past with as pure and
fatherly feelings as he himself had wished and as he
had pretended to do. But now he did so. His long

white hair fell down as far as her cheeks.

108 THE CHARLES. MEN
“May it go well with you, child! I am old. It

matters little whether my life goes on for a while
still or is destroyed in the day that now is. I have
been in many a piece of mischief and many an ill
deed in my time, and for the forgiveness of my
sins I will also for once have part in something
good.”

He nodded and nodded toward her and raised
himself.

There outside the clamor sounded louder than
ever. He laid on the lid and fastened in as well as
he could the long screws that had been left in their
places. Then he knelt, knotted a rope crosswise
around the casket, and with strong arms lifted the
heavy burden on his back. Bending forward and
staggering, he strode out into the open air.

“Look there!” shouted one of the pillagers at
the fire, but his nearest comrade silenced him with
the word: “Let the poor old man alone! That’s
only a miserable beggar’s casket.”

Sweat trickled out over the old man’s face,and his
back and arms ached and smarted under the heavy
weight. Step by step he moved forward through the
dark streets. Every now and then he had to set the
casket down on the ground to take breath, but then
he stood with his hand on the lid in constant fear
of being challenged and hustled away or of being
stabbed by some roving band of soldier revellers.
Several times he had to step to one side because of

THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS tog

the heavy wagons, loaded with men and women,
who were to be taken hundreds of miles into Russia
to people the waste regions. The great conquering
czar was a sower who did not count the seeds he-
strewed.

When finally the old war-pastor reached the town
gate, and the watch came to meet him, he roused
his strength to the utmost with all the collected
will-power of his anxiety. With a single arm he
held the casket in place on his back, while with
his free hand he drew the Riga rix-dollar from his
pocket and handed it to the sentry as a bribe.

The soldier motioned to him to go on.

He wanted again to move his foot forward, but
now he was unable. Through the town gate he saw
the river glimmer on the open plain, but then it
grew dark before his eyes. Still afraid for his bur-
den in his helplessness, he softly and cautiously
lowered the casket beside him on the stone flag-
ging. Thereupon he fell forward and died.

The other men of the watch sprang forward and
began to curse and complain. No casket could re-
main standing there in the door of the gateway.

The officers, who were sitting and gambling in
a room of the casemate, now came likewise to the
spot. One of them, a little dry, weather-beaten fig-
ure with rectangular spectacles, who was more like
a clerk than a soldier, took a lantern, came forward,
and held the lid slightly ajar with his scabbard.

110 THE CHARLES MEN

First he drew back his head precipitately, nearly
dropping the lantern. The next time he bent down
and looked in, he dwelt on the action longer and
more searchingly, and afterwards passed his hands
over his whole face to hide his thoughts. Then
he unhooked his spectacles and stood pondering.
When he bent the third time, he sent the light back
and forward through the crevice,— and there in-
side lay Lina Andersdaughter quite calmly, screw-
ing up her eyes at him in the lantern’s light without
herself knowing what was going on.

‘“T’m hungry,” she said.

He laid aside the lantern and went a couple of
paces up and down through the door with hands
crossed behind his back. There came then into his
frigid expression a sly and merrily vibrating life,
and unnoticed he took some August apples and
thrust them into the casket. Thereupon he began
to give commands.

“Come here, boys! Let eight men take the casket
to General Ogilvy, salute him, and say that this is
a small gift from his humble servant, Ivan Alexie-
vitch. Eight of you others who have just come from
working on the walls go after it, and roll up your
leather aprons like trumpets in which you are to
blow the regimental march. But in front of all, two
men are to go with rushlights. Forward, march!”

The savage soldiers looked open-mouthed at
one another and obeyed. Laughing, they lifted the

THE OUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS “aia

casket on their muskets. Two long stalks, tarred
and twisted about with straw, were brought for-
ward from a corner of the gateway and lighted at
the lantern; and as the procession set itself in mo-
tion into the field toward the camp, the musicians
tooted the march in their aprons:

O you, who have chosen a gun to bear,

You care not for lodging or bed, lad,

You feed like a prince on the finest fare,

Of girls and of lice you’ve enough and to spare,
But when will you ever be paid, lad?

When they came to the camp, the soldiers rushed
together around them in the torchlight. General
Ogilvy, who was sitting at table, came out of his
tent.

“ Beloved little father,” said one of the bearers,
* Lieutenant Ivan Alexievitch humbly sends you
this gift.”

Ogilvy grew pale and bit his lips under his bushy
gray moustache. His face, wrinkled and strained to
harshness, was at bottom good-natured and friendly.

“Ts he out of his right mind?” he thundered
with pretended wrath, though in reality he was as
frightened as a boy. ‘Put down the casket and
break off the lid!”

The soldiers pried it open with their blades, and
the dark lid rattled to one side.

Ogilvy stared. With that he burst out laughing.

1i2 THE CHARLES MEN

He guffawed so that he had to sit down on an
earthen bench. And the soldiers laughed, too. They
laughed down through the whole lane of tents, so
that they reeled and tottered and had to support
themselves one against another like drunkards.
Lina Andersdaughter lay there in the casket with a
half-eaten apple in her hand and made great eyes.
She had now become warm again,and was as bloom-
ing of cheek as a doll.

“ By all the saints,” Ogilvy burst out.“ Not even
in the catacombs of St. Anthony has man seen such
a miracle. This is a corpse that ought to be sent to
the czar himself.”

“By no means,” answered one of his officers.
“T sent him two little fair-haired baggages day
before yesterday, but he cares only for thin bru-
nettes.”’

“So it is,” answered Ogilvy, and turned himself,
bending, toward Narva. “Salute Ivan Alexievitch
and say that, when the casket is returned, there
shall lie in the bottom of it a captain’s commission.
— Hey, sweetheart!”

He went forward and stroked Lina Anders-
daughter under the chin.

But at that she sat up, took hold of his hair, and
gave him a resounding box on the ear, and after that
another.

He did not let it affect him in the least, but con-
tinued to laugh.

THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS 113

“That ’s the way I like them,” he said; “that’s
the way I like them. I will make you Queen of the
Marauders, my chick, and as token thereof I give
you here a bracelet with a turquoise in the clasp. A
band of our worst rabble stole it just now from the
casket of Countess Horn in Narva.”

He shook the chain from his wrist, and she
caught it eagerly to her.

When, later in the evening, the cloth was laid in
the tent, Lina Andersdaughtersat at the table beside
Ogilvy. She had now got French clothes of flowered
brocade, and wore a headdress with blonde lace.
But what hands! She managed to eat with gloves,
but under them swelled the big, broad fingers, and
the red shone between the buttons.

‘“Hoho! hoho!” shouted the generals. “Those
hands make a man merrier than he would get with
a whole flask of Hungary. Help! Tighten our
belts! Hold us under the arms! It will be the
death of us!”

Meanwhile she filled her plate, munched sweet-
meats, and sat with her spoon in the air. If anything
tasted bad, she made a face. Eat she could. Drink,
on the contrary, she would not, but only took a
swallow in her mouth, and then spurted the wine
over the generals. But all their curses and worst
expressions she picked up, while she sat ever alike
blooming and gay.

“Help! help!” shrieked the generals, choked

114 THE CHARLES MEN

with laughter. “ Blow out the light so we can’t see
her! Hold our foreheads! Help! Will you have a
little puff of a tobacco pipe, mademoiselle?”’

“Go to the deuce! Can’t I sit in peace?” an-
swered Lina Andersdaughter.

There was one thing, though, that Ogilvy skil-
fully concealed, so that the laughers should not
turn to him and nudge him in the ribs and pull his
coat tails and say: ‘‘Oho, little father, you ’ve got
into water too deep for your bald head. Bless you,
little father, bless you and your little mishap !”’

He pretended always to treat her with slightly
indifferent familiarity, but he never sat so near her
that his dog could not jump up between them. He
never took hold of her so that any one saw it, and
never when no one saw it either, for then he knew
that her hand would catch him on the face, so that
the glove would split, and the red shine out in all
its strength. It was a fact that, notwithstanding, she
now and then gave him a slap in the middle of the
face, and no one did she snub worse than him. But
at all this he only laughed with the others, so that
never before had there been in the camp such a
clamor and bedlam.

Sometimes he thought of knouting her, but he
was ashamed before the others, because everything
could be heard through the tent, and he feared that
they then would the more easily guess how things
stood, and how little he got along with the girl.

THB QUEEN. OF THE MARAUDERS: 115

“Wait,” he thought, “we shall be sitting alone
sometime behind locked doors. Just wait! Till then
things may go on as they do.”

“Help, help!” shouted the generals. ““That’s
how she carries her train. We must take hold of it.
Lord, Lord, no; but just look!”

“Take it up, you,” said she. “Take it up, you.
That ’s what you are for.”

And so the generals were cuffed and bore her
train, both when she came to the table and when
she went.

Then it happened one evening, when she sat
among the drinking old men, that an adjutant
stepped in, hesitating and embarrassed. He turned
to Ogilvy.

Date. be. tran.

“Naturally, my lad.”

“‘ And whatever I say will be forgiven?”

“By my honor. Only speak out!”’

“The czar is on his way out to the camp.”

“Very good, he is my gracious lord.”

The adjutant pointed at Lina Andersdaughter.

“The czar has a fancy for tall brunettes,” said
Ogilvy.

“Your Excellency, in these last days he has
changed his taste.”

“God! Call the troops to arms—and forward
with the three-horse wagon!”

Now the alarm was struck. Drums rolled, trum-

116 THE CHARLES MEN

pets blared, weapons clattered, and shouts and tram-.
pling filled the night. The drinking party was broken
up, and Lina Andersdaughter was set in a baggage
wagon.

Beside the peasant who was driving a soldier
sprang up with a lighted lantern, and she heard the
peasant softly inquire of him the purpose of the
flight. ;

“The czar,’ answered the soldier in a mono-
tone, and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder
at the girl.

At that the peasant shrunk together as at a frost-
cold breeze, and whipped the small, shaggy horses
more and more wildly. He hallooed and beat and
urged them into a thundering gallop. The lantern
light fell caressingly on the fir bushes and the burnt
homesteads; the wagon banged and tottered among
the stones, and creaked in its joints.

Lina Andersdaughter lay on her back in the hay,
and looked at the stars. Whither was she carried?
What fate awaited her? She wondered and won-
dered. On her wrist hung the bracelet asa talisman,
a pledge for the accomplishing of Ogilvy’s wonder-
ful prediction. Queen of the Marauders! It sounded
so grand, though at first she had but gradually dis-
covered what the word really betokened. She
stroked and plucked at the small silver rings. Then
she sat up and scanned the stony road in the lan-
tern’s light. Cautiously she moved further and fur-

THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS 117

ther out. Unnoticed, she climbed slowly over the
wagon-sill and lowered her feet to the ground.
Would she be crushed and left lying? For a few
steps she dragged along. Then she lost her hold,
stumbled, and fell lacerated among the bushes.

On thundered the baggage wagon with its three
galloping horses, and the lantern light vanished.
Then she got up and wiped off the blood from her
cheeks, while she wandered forth into the trackless
woods.

When she met barbarous-looking fugitives, and
they saw her pretty face, they at once picked berries
and mushrooms for her and followed along. She
got a whole court of ragamuffins, and she treated
them so ill that they scarcely dared to touch her
dress, but sometimes they stabbed one another.
Finally she took service with a skipper’s wife, who
was to sail with her husband to Danzig. Scarcely
had it begun to grow dark when the ragamuffins
came out one after another and took service for
nothing. The skipper sat on his cabin in the moon-
light, blew his shepherd’s pipe, and congratulated
himself on having got such a willing crew. And
never had the old woman seen a stronger serving-
maid. But hardly had they put to sea when Lina
Andersdaughter sat herself beside the skipper with
her arms crossed, and all the ragamuffins lay on
their backs and sang in tune with the pipe.

“To you think [Il scour your bunks?” said she.

118 THE CHARLES MEN

“Beat her, beat her,” cried the old woman, but
the skipper only moved nearer, and blew and blew
on his pipe. Night and day the vessel rocked on
the bright waves with slack sail, and the skipper
played for Lina Andersdaughter, who danced with
her ragamuffins; but down in the cabin sat the old
woman, crying and lamenting.

When they came to Danzig, the skipper stuck
the pipe under his arm and slunk off the vessel at
night with Lina Andersdaughter and her ragamuf-
fins. They guessed now that she thought of going
to the Swedish troops in Poland and compelling
the king himself to give her his hand.

When she with her followers stepped, humming,
in among the Swedish women of the camp, there
was uproar and alarm, because for two days they
had sat by their wagons without food. The last
provisions had been delivered to the sutlers and
divided among the soldiers. Then she stepped for-
ward to the first corporal she happened on and set
her hands on her hips.

“Are n’t you ashamed,” said she, “to let my
women starve, when in spite of all you can’t get
along without them?”’

“Your women? Who are you?”

She pointed to her bracelet. “am Lina Anders-
daughter, the Queen of the Marauders, and now
take five men and follow us!”

He looked toward his captain, the reckless Jacob

THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS 119
Elfsberg; he looked at her pretty face and at his

men. How the line surrounded her with their mus-
kets, and the women armed themselves with whip-
handles and pokers! At night, when the light of the
camp-fire tinged the heavens, the king, inquisitive,
got into his saddle. As the wild throng came back
with well-laden wagons and oxen and sheep, the
troops cheered louder than ever: “Hurrah for King
Charles! Hurrah for Queen Caroline!”

The women thronged about the king’s horse, so
that the lackeys had to hold them back, and Lina
Andersdaughter went to him to shake hands with
him. But he thereupon rose in his stirrups, and
shouted over the women’s heads to the corporal and
the five soldiers: ‘‘ That ’s well maraudered, boys!”

From that moment she would never hear the
king named, and whenevershe meta man, she flung
her sharpest abuse right in his face, whether he was
plain private or general. When Malcomb Bjork-
man, the young guardsman— who, however, was
already famous for his exploits and wounds — held
out his hand to her, she scornfully laid in it her
ragged, empty purse; and she was never angrier
than when she heard General Meyerfelt whistling
as he rode before his dragoons, or recognized Colo-
nel Grothusen’s yellow-brown cheeks and raven-
black wig. But if a wounded wretch lay beside the
road, she offered him the last drop from her tin
flask and lifted him into her wagon. Frost and

120 THE CHARLES MEN

scratches soon calloused her cheeks. High on the
baggage wagon she sat with the butt of a whip and
commanded all the wild camp-followers, loose
women, lawful wives, and thievish fellows that
streamed to them from east and west. When at
night the flare of a fire arose toward heaven, the
soldiers knew that Queen Caroline was out on a
plundering raid.

Days and years went by. Then, after the jolly
winter quarters in Saxony, when the troops were
marching toward the Ukraine, the king commanded
that all women should leave the army.

“Teach him to mind his own affairs!”? mut-
tered Lina Andersdaughter, and she very tranquilly
drove on.

Butwhenthe army came tothe Beresina, there was
murmuring and lamenting among the women. They
gathered around Lina Andersdaughter’s cart and
wrung their hands and lifted their babies on high.

“‘See what you have to answer for! The troops
have already crossed the river and broken all the
bridges behind them. They have left us as prey to
the Cossacks.”

She sat with her whip on her knee and with high
boots, but on her wrist still gleamed the silver
chain with its turquoise. All the more violently did
the terrified women sob and moan around her, and
from the closed baggage wagons, which were like
boxes, crept out painted and powdered Saxon hus-

THE -OUEREN-VOF THE MARAUDERS 121

sies. Some of them, none the less, had satin gowns
and gold necklaces. From all sides came women she
had never seen before.

“Dirty wenches!” muttered she. ““Now at last
I have a chance to see the smuggled goods that
the captains and lieutenants brought along in their
wagons. What have you to do among my poor
baggage crones? But now we all come to know what
a man amounts to when his haversack is getting
light.”

Then they caught hold of her clothes, and called
upon her as if she alone could seal their fate.

‘Ts there no one,” she asked, “‘who knows the
psalm, ‘When I am borne through the Vale of
Death’? Sing it, sing it!”

Some of the women struck up the psalm with
choked and nearly whispering voices, but the others
rushed down to the river, hunted out boats and
wreckage from the bridges, and rowed themselves
across. Fach and every one who had a husband
or a beloved in the army had hoped that even at
the last she would be taken along and hidden; but
all the worst women of the rabble, who belonged
neither to this man nor to that, stood with their
rags or their tasteless, ridiculous gowns in a ring
around Lina Andersdaughter. Meanwhile swarms
of Cossacks, who had crossed the river to snap up
any straggling marauders, were sneaking up through
the bushes on their hands and knees.

P22 - THE CHARLES MEN
Then her heart failed her, and she stepped down

from the wagon,

“Poor children!” she said, and patted the hus-
sies on the cheek. “Poor children, I will not desert
you. But now—devil take me!—do you pray to
God that He will make your blood-red sins white,
for I have nothing else to offer you than to shame
the men and die a hero’s death.”

She opened the wagon chest and hunted out
from among her plunder some pikes and Polish
sabres, which she put into the hands of the softly
singing women. Thereupon she herself grasped a
musket without powder or shot, and set herself
among the others around the cart to wait. So they
stood in the sunset light on the highest part of the
shore.

Then the women on the river saw the Cossacks
rush forward to the cart and cut down one after
another of them with the idea that they were men
in disguise. They wanted to turn their boats, and
soldiers sprang down from their ranks to the water
and opened fire.

“Hurrah for King Charles,” they cried with a
thousand intermingled voices; ‘‘and hurrah—No,
it’s too late. Look, look! There is Queen Caroline
dying a virgin in the midst of the harlots with a
musket in her hand!”

Mazeppa and His Ambassador

N a splendidly decorated sleeping apartment
stood a high bed with plumes at the corners.
Behind the half-drawn bed-curtain lay an old man
of sixty-three with the coverlet pulled up under his
beard, his long white hair spread over the pillow.
His whole forehead was hidden under a plaster. It
was Mazeppa.

Beside the bed, among cups of medicine on the
carpet, lay several books of Latin and French
poetry,and at the doora little wizened priest carried
on a whispered conversation with two green-clad
messengers from Czar Peter.

“He scarcely comprehends your words,” whis-
pered the priest, giving a painfully searching look
toward the sick man. “ He even lies speechless for
long periods. Who could have imagined that the
old man with his joy of life would suddenly lie on
his death-bed?”’

“Ivan Stefanovitch,” one of the strangers said
with raised voice, approaching the bed, “our mag-
nanimous czar, your lord, sends you greeting. Do
you remember? Those three Cossacks of yours who
stole off to him and related that you secretly
planned a rebellion against his over-lordship, he
has had them fettered and returned to you as gifts
of friendship. Ivan Stefanovitch, he relies on your
lovalty.”

124 THE CHARLES MEN
Mazeppa’s eyes opened feebly and his lips

moved, but he was only able to utter an unintelli-
gible whisper.

“We understand you,” cried the messengers,
speaking all at once. ‘We understand you. You
greet him and thank him for his favor, and we
are to say to him that you are bowed under your
years and that you have already turned all your
thoughts to that which is not of this world.”

“I fear,” murmured the priest to them aside,
“that here it will soon be over.”

The messengers nodded sadly, and backed out
of the sleeping apartment.

As soon as they were out, the priest bolted the
door.

““They have gone,” he said.

Mazeppa sat up and tore the plaster from his
brow, throwing it far across the carpet. His dark
wide-open eyes gleamed and twinkled. A flush rose
and paled on his cheeks, and under the handsomely
curving nose shone teeth as white and fresh as
a youth’s. He tossed away the coverlet and, fully
clad from tip to toe in long-coat and boots with
spurs, he sprang from the bed, and jestingly
pinched the priest in the ribs.

“You little rascal priest, you! You vagabond!
This time we didn’t manage badly. In Moscow
they will believe that old Mazeppa is lying help-

less and harmless. God be gracious to his pious

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR | 125

soul! Haha-hey! You little rascal priest, you! You
arch-hypocrite!”

The priest laughed dryly. He was a deposed
bishop from Bulgaria, and his round head with its
short nose and deep-sunken eyes was like a skull.

Mazeppa grew still livelier.

““Mazeppa dying! Ay, ask his mistresses! Only
ask them! No, my great Muscovite czar, you, now
I am going to live and be quits with you.”

“The czar suspects you, my lord, but he wishes
to disarm you with magnanimity. He can be like
that.”

“And I should have been conquered by it, if
one night at table, when we were drunk, he had
not struck me on the ear. I value my ear as he does
his, and an insult I can never forgive. It sticks in
the soul and frets and gnaws. If I am not a king
by birth, I am one in soul. And what does he want
with his German coats on my splendid Cossacks?
Now to business! Relate your adventures, you
Hanis

“My lord, dressed as a mendicant monk, I went
forth on my way to the Swedish headquarters.
Sometimes I set a tavern lass on my knee and a
can on the table corner, but when I peeped down
and saw the toes sticking out of my ragged shoes,
I thought to myself: his is Mazeppa’s ambassa-
dons

“Very good, but how did you find the dandy?”

126 THE CHARLES MEN

“The dandy?”

“To be sure. His Swedish Majesty, King Caro-
lus. Don’t you believe he dandifies as much with
his grimy rags as any French prince of scented
water with his silk stockings? And he possesses that
wonderful Northern recklessness which continually
snaps a riding-whip and cries: ‘Rubbish! that’s
nothing! It’s no matter!’—He has never been able
to grieve for a misfortune longer than overnight.
That has been the secret of his power. Woe to him
and his fate when he sits up night after night with-
out sleep! I am curious to see him. I long for it.
But tell on!”

“First I found him in wig and armor on the
tavern lass’s neckcloth or pinafore, and on the
glass from which I drank, and on the icing I ate,
and on table-cloths and chest-lids and tobacco-boxes
and market-booths. No one spoke of anything else
than of him, and the children arranged themselves
and played at Swedish divine service. The old peas-
ants called him the sword-pope of the Protestants
chosen by God Himself, and took off their hats in
speaking of him.”

“Ah yes, but how did you find him himself,
when you came to headquarters?”

“‘T warn you. I predict misfortunes. Il sawan omen.
I found him puffed up and haughty of spirit.”

“As a great personality of whom the world be-
gins to disapprove.” .

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR | 127

“‘ Marlborough, after an audience in Saxony, left
his camp with a shrug of the shoulders, and sover-
eigns begin to laugh at him behind his back. His
own generals have grown weary.”

“He has become a hero of the rabble, you think.
Well, even then, that’s the sort of man I need to
gather the wild hordes. If you do not assure me
that you have seen him eat and drink, I cannot
believe that he is a living human being. Then I
should have to say: The young prince of the
Swedes fell in the tumult of victory at Narva, but
his shade rides ever on before his troops. Snow falls
and falls,and drumsrattle andrumble,and the thin-
ning battalions do not know and do not under-
stand whither he leads them. When the enemy rec-
ognize him in the powder-smoke, they lower their
muskets in superstitious awe and dare not shoot,
and he does not notice that sometimes he cuts down
men who are making ready to fall on their knees.
Hired assassins throw down their weapons at sight
of him and give themselves up—and he lets them
go unpunished. Don’t talk to him about states and
treaties! He does not fight for possessions as men
do; he wields the sword of God to revenge and re-
ward. What did he require just now as the reward
of victory at the conclusion of peace? Money?
Land? Of Austria he required a councillor who had
slandered him at table and a swarm of Russian sol-
diers who had fled in over the border—and free-

128 THE CHARLES MEN

dom of conscience for the Protestants. Of Prussia
he demanded the imprisonment of a colonel who
had given counsel to the czar, and banishment for
a writer who had cavilled at his stipulations against
the Pietists. Of Saxony he demanded Patkull and
all Swedish renegades, but freedom for the Princes
Sobieski and all Saxons who had gone over to the
Swedes. King August himself he compelled to pack
up the old Polish regalia in a velvet trunk and send
them to King Stanislaus. And now, since he has de-
posed King August in Poland, he wants to depose
the czar or challenge him to a duel, but their crowns
and governments he would not even take as a gift.
Since antiquity no stranger man has held a sword
or a sceptre.”

Mazeppa, while he was speaking, grasped one
of the bedposts so hard that the plumes of the
silken canopy shook.

But the other lifted three fingers and replied:
“IT have warned you. Everything that he touches
he dedicates to misery and death. Yet he is the pa-
tron saint of adventurers. He has raised adventure
to stability and greatness. You too, my lord, are an
adventurer, and I myself am the worst adventurer
of you all. Therefore I will be compliant.”

He lowered his hand and drew near with dis-
respectful familiarity. ““You, Ivan Stefanovitch!
Have you never wondered that I directed my steps
to your particular door?”

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR _ 129

“You were driven from your episcopal see be-
cause of your unfaith and your pranks.”

“Tt really amounted to a little pilfering of small
import. There were on the ikon-stand a couple of
emeralds—”’

“Which you replaced with bits of glass and in
all secrecy sold,so that you might live more bounti-
fully and ina manner more worthy a servant of the
church.”

“Let us say no more about it!—So I heard of
Mazeppa, the former page at Johann Casimir’s
court, who in his powdered wig was attentive to the
wayward sex so long that a jealous husband at last
bound him naked on a horse’s back and drove him
forth into the wilderness. And there he built up a
kingdom of adventurers. Saint Andrew guarded
you, Mazeppa. I needed a little master who would
be ashamed to strike off a good head, who would let
me read my Greek and my Machiavelli in peace,
and to whom I might say: ‘Agreed, old fellow! It’s
all a shadow play, even this that you are lord and
I servant.’ Therefore I came to you. My adven-
turer’s blood cannot bear to sit still, and I weary of
your wine mixed with water, for you are a great
miser, Mazeppa; but as you are now pondering a
financial transaction in musket-balls, I follow you.
And as the Swedish king no longer listens to his
generals or to the beseeching letters from his grand-
mother and his people, and comes hither by the

130 THE CHARLES MEN

most perilous and impossible roads, he wishes to
accept your offer of an alliance. With you and your.
Cossacks he will march against your lord. Here are
the papers.”

The priest shook off his cope and stood in Cos-
sack dress with pistols in his girdle, and from his
bosom he drew forth some folded papers.

Mazeppa grew pale, seized them, and held them
pressed long to his mouth, while he sank his fore-
head and bowed as before the invisible image of a
saint.

“Drums, drums!” he stammered in agitation.

But when the priest had got to the door, he
checked him.

“No, don’t let the drums strike up before to-
morrow.

Thereupon he went to a plain wooden table ina
little side-room, and sat dowh over his account
books. He had his bailiffs summoned, and calcu-
lated and calculated, and prescribed greater econ-
omy in the milk department. Half a merry knight
of the roads and half a learned but thrifty propri-
etor of lands, he finally superintended the packing
of his many trunks and boxes. Sometimes he bent
down and helped. Last of all, next morning he put
on an old-fashioned and much-adorned Cossack
costume. Impetuous and active, he sprang up from
his chair as soon as he had sat down, but he re-
mained standing before the mirror for some little

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR 131

time, now and then running his delicate, small white
hand through his beard.

As soon as the music was heard, he mounted to
the saddle and kept his charger constantly at a

gallop.

When, after a time, he had come to the Swedes
and was riding one morning through a flurry of
snow in the king’s retinue, the priest, as if by acci-
dent, pulled up his horse alongside him. Round
about the troops marched past, sprinkled with
grime, their weapons and cannon covered to pre-
vent rusting. Baggage wagons clattered along with
their weight of provision sacks and sick men, and
sometimes with a covered coffin. Last were driven
massed herds of cattle. Drunken Zaporogeans,
prancing Cossacks, and eagerly drumming Polish
Wallachians rode in green and red cloaks and with
high brass helmets on which bells were tinkling.
Some were brandishing tufted spears and bows or
long flint-locks inlaid with silver and ivory. Others
played on a sort of wailing wooden pipe. It was a
colorful, legendary sort of march, that went over
untrodden and unknown forest paths, over frozen
marshes, and under snowy fir trees toward the mys-
terious East.

“Mazeppa,” the priest began in a low voice,
“you promised to come to the Swedes with thirty

132 THE CHARLES MEN

thousand Cossacks, but hardly four thousand fol-
lowed you.”

Mazeppa kept his roan at a gallop, and nodded
in silence, and the priest never wearied of his gibes.

“Day before yesterday half of these went off.
Yesterday more still. Soon you will have barely a
couple of hundred fellows, barely the servants who
watch over your trunks and the two barrels with
your money. Your uprising was betrayed, your cities
are burned, your few faithful men nailed on boards
and thrown into rivers. Soon you will be nothing
but a gorgeous knight in the train of the Swedish
king.”

As Mazeppawas still, the priest continued: “To-
day I too will abandon you, because the small beer
of the Swedes tastes sour to me, and my toes stick
out too far from my shoes. Your ambassador needs
a richer lord. Farewell, Ivan Stefanovitch!”’

Mazeppa replied, ““As long as I have still my
headand my philosophy, I remain Mazeppa. While
my Cossacks turned and broke away, I had the het-
man staff and mace carried before me, and I rode
on to the king as if I had come in front of Xerxes’
millions. And he, with his impoverished realm, his
discontented generals, and his sinking sun, came
toward me like the most fortunate among princes.
What does it trouble him and me how many ride
behind us? He has had enough of kingly honor,

and wishes also to be a chosen man of God. He

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR 133

thinks of history as a man in love does of his
sweetheart: he would not win her favor by his birth
but by his person. If we two, he and I, should one
day be the last survivors and sit in an earthen hut
on the steppe, we should still continue to talk
philosophy and treat each other as at a coronation
dinner.”

“You speak of his sinking sun. You have seen
the omen, even you! He can no longer talk with-
out boasting like a baggage driver.”

“Tt is easy to be modest as long as everybody
praises.”

Mazeppa threw back his white-haired head with
lofty contempt, and galloped forward to the king,
who raised his hat and bowed and bowed again in
his saddle.

Round about several of the generals joked as
loudly as possible so that the king might hear
them.

“ WhenI come to Moscow,” said Anders Lager-
krona, “I shall mend the seat of my trousers with
the czar’s night-cap.”’

“‘Pshaw!”’ answered Axel Sparre. “There is an
old prophecy that a Sparre will some day be gov-
ernor at the Kremlin.”

“This way!” cried the ensigns. “Shoot down
any one who dares to hinder sucha great and exalt-
ed prince from marching forward wherever he
chooses.”

134 THE CHARLES MEN

The king smiled and hummed: “Russia must
run, Russia must run.” But when the speakers
were no longer within his hearing, they were trans-
formed and became absent and melancholy.

“Your Majesty!” cried Mazeppa in crisp Latin
and with kindling eyes, ‘“‘ Your Majesty’s conquer-
ing arms go on so far that one fine morning we
shall have hardly eight miles more to Asia.”

“As to that the authorities used to disagree,”
answered the king, moved, but hunting for the
Latin words, his gaze fettered by Mazeppa’s white
and pleasingly mobile hands. “If the border is not
far off, we must go there, so that we can say we were
also in Asia.”

The voices died away, and the priest reined in
his horse.

“Asia!” he muttered, “‘Asia doesn’t lie in the
middle of Europe. But ride on, ride on with you,
my adventurous lords! I have changed my name
and dress so many times that none of you Swedes
will ever notice what I was. But do not forget that
it was the ragged monk, the vagabond, Mazeppa’s
ambassador, who by his cunning negotiations laid
his blue-frozen finger on your and your demi-god’s
fate and directed you into the wildernesses. You
are right, King Carolus, and you, Mazeppa. Every-
thing depends at the last on individual men.”

It snowed and snowed, and he sat motionless
on his lean horse, while the battalions marched by,

MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR 135

silent and impatient. When the last soldiers turned
and looked back at the solitary, unknown rider,
and saw his little compressed death-skull head,
they were seized with fear and hastened their steps.

Fifty Years Later
HEN the porridge had been eaten and the

branch candles of tallow which shoneon both
sides of the pewter dish stood more than half burnt
out, the chairs were drawn close to the fire. The
manor-house was one of the smallest and poorest
in the district, but in the evening no poverty was
visible there. The straw lay soft as a carpet over the
floor planks, fresh juniper had been set beside the
dark and streaming windows, the gleam from the
open fireplace tinted with yellow the whitewashed
wooden walls. Recently, too, a goblet of sherry had
been offered about. All knew, furthermore, that the
most festive time of the evening was now come.
Even the two servant-girls, who wore to-day their
best holiday jackets, cleared the table as slowly as
possible and hid themselves, waiting, by the door,
for now old Captain H6ok, a Charles man, brought
out his tobacco-box and drew in the chair of honor
to the middle place before the fire. It was, however,
only after he had unlaced his brogans and laid his
crossed feet with their thick white stockings on the
fender to warm them thoroughly that he seemed
to feel himself fully at ease. To be sure, he alone
had carried on the conversation almost all the even-
ing, and now at last spoke of Ehrencrona, who had
received the Order of the Sword from King Fred-

erick and never could wear it otherwise than in a.

FIFTY YEARS LATER 137

snuff-box. But in the same moment he became stern
and reflective, and slipped into a new history. It
was, indeed, alleged that he generally lied roundly,
but nobody cared about that, for the principal thing
was that he should keep on with his tales.

He was already an elderly man with a frost-bitten
lump of a nose. Both his hair, which was brushed
forward, and his moustaches, which were twisted
youthfully, had always been so light that nobody
noticed whether the years had made one or another
strand still whiter. And he sat on the chair in his
scanty, buttoned-up coat as upright as formerly.
Without any transition he began in his usual way.

Yes, the autumn when I went astray in the woods
I was certainly badly off. I mean the autumn down
in Severia. Lewenhaupt had just made us destroy
our last wagons, and was leading us along the Soza
River to find a ford, so that when on the other side
we might be able to grope our way forward to the
king’s army; but many foot-soldiers had stopped to
plunder the wagons. I was an ensign at that time.
Together with several others, I was sent back by
Major-General Stackelberg to master the fellows,
but the Russians were already among them, and |
scarcely knew in the darkness how I could manage
to save myself across the river. When, dripping with
water and mud, I stood in the heather on the farther
bank, I stumbled on a dragoon private. He was

138 THE CHARLES MEN

from my own regiment, and we called him Long
Jan, because he was one of the tallest and slimmest
lads that ever lifted a Swedish blade. His chest was
narrow, but his hands were large. His arms and legs
seemed to have hardly a single muscle, and there
was not a particle of down on his lean and simple
face—a face any one would know again by the
slanting eyes and the thick under lip.— God knows
why he had ever been taken along. — But in that
moment I was as glad to get sight of that lanky
spectre as if I had met a sweetheart, and at random,
but still as fast as we were able, we turned our steps
into the forest.

At the start we leaped along so as to get warm
and dry our clothes, and not until dawn did we lie
down to sleep.

For many days after, we struggled on through
the woods and swamps, and our clothes were still
as wet as before. Once we took them off and hung
them ona branch, but in the misty autumn air this
helped but little, and we were only so much the
colder when we succeeded, with great difficulty, in
pulling them on again. As to our boots, there was
no talk of getting them off. They dried temporarily
during our progress, but soon became as completely
soaked in a marsh, and one shower of rain followed
another.

I had with me a bit of meat and a piece of black
bread, which I divided with my silent and, as it

FIFTY YEARS. LATER 139

seemed, submissive brother in misfortune, and after
that we chewed leaves and twigs and anything we
could find. Hunger, though, was not nearly such a
gnawing plague as the continual chilly dampness,
which made our teeth chatter even in our sleep. As
our strength failed, our joints stiffened, so that we
could not move them without pain.

One evening we heard an unexpected barking,
and for a moment I realized that I flushed with
joy, but immediately after came hesitation, with
thoughts of danger. I turned to the opposite direc-
tion, and Long Jan followed me, silently as always,
but when we had walked awhile, I noticed that we
only came much nearer to the barking. Then I took
the soldier by the arm and turned again toward the
other side, but, similarly drawn by an irresistible
inner attraction, we kept walking so that we came
nearer and nearer to the dog. When I finally let go
of Long Jan’s arm, he still went on.

“Halt!” I called after him, excruciated with the
damp and yet little minded to go straight into a
hostile place where most likely axes would be the
first things to greet us.

“Halt, halt!’’ repeated Long Jan obediently, but
in spite of that continued to go on.

Then I raced up to him and caught him by the
belt. As long as I held him, he stood quite straight
and motionless, but as soon as I let go my hold, he
went on.

~

140 THE CHARLES MEN

“ Halt! Stand!” I thundered, raging as if I had
found myself under fire, and dumbfounded at such
an abrupt and insubordinate obstinacy in a soldier
who had learned ouriron-hard discipline. “ Will you
not obey your own ensign, fellow?”

“Halt! Stand!” he repeated, but continued onas
before, as though no longer master of his own feet.

“Come on, then, in Jesus’ name!” I burst out;
“we can’t get it worse than it has been already. But
now you have made yourself an ensign, though you
are barely one of the rank and file, and me a com-
mon soldier. Be so good as to lay that up in your
memory!”

Long Jan answered nothing, neither perhaps did
he hear me. I resigned myself to following him, and
after a few minutes we came out on a level clearing
with many barns and houses. Right beside us stood
a great wooden building with many stories. The sun-
set glittered on the raindrops which hung on the
cementing moss between the rough logs of the wall,
and the window-panes glimmered as if lighted by
countless chandeliers; but the door was locked, and
no smoke came from the chimneys. The house was
as a corpse with closed mouth and without breath,
but with eyes hideously lighted by a cold gleam
from without. Tied to a stake behind a straw-stack
that had crookedly collapsed, a lean dog crept back
and forth along the ground and wagged his tail

when he saw us.

FIFTY YEARS LATER 141

Long Jan went straight forward to the door and
banged on it, but no one opened. Then he drew his
blade and smashed in the nearest window with the
hilt. At that moment we heard from within a fright-
ened woman’s voice shouting again and again to
some one who was called Varvara. The broken glass
fell tinkling, the leaden frame was bent on all sides
into long hanging strips. Then running steps were
heard in the house. The next moment the door was
opened by a well-grown and stately serving-maid
with a broad, light braid of hair down her back and
a multitude of jingling silver pieces on her black
hood and red and green bodice. In her hand she
held an unlighted lantern, which in her terror she
had presumably seized from habit.

“We'll do no harm,’ I said, trying as well as I
could to explain myself in the bothersome speech.
“Heaven forbid such a horror, most gracious
young lady! But we are nearly starved and above
all we require—”

“‘Dry clothes,” broke in Long Jan, shivering.

That was the first time in the long wandering
that I had heard this peculiar chap utter anything
of his own accord, and then he had had the impu-
dence into the bargain to take the word out of my
mouth. When the girl turned around and left the
door half open, he did indeed stand aside to give
me place, but I remarked irritably: “The Herr
Ensign will surely go first.”

142 THE CHARLES MEN

“God deliver me from any such thing,” he an-
swered, and smacked his boot-heels together. But,
partly cheered by the peaceful reception, partly
still angry, I added in such a sharp tone of voice
that he could not doubt my seriousness: “ Or else
devil take the ensign!”

Then he dragged his long legs in through the
door ahead of me and, as the house had no entry,
we found ourselves at once in a large hall, where
a heating-stove of variegated porcelain rose like
a tower to the middle of the ceiling. Along the
walls, which consisted entirely of rough-hewn
logs caulked with moss, stood several black-var-
nished chairs, andona shelf gleamed pots of pewter.

The serving-maid ran away and called Varvara,
who finally appeared, dazed and frightened, in the
farthest corner of the darkened hall. There the two
girls tarried, whispering anxiously.

After a while, however, they grew easier; and
they could not keep from giving each other a look
and feeling more accommodating when I unexpect-
edly called them “gracious young ladies,” and ac-
cordingly feigned not to understand that ey were
poor serfs. That was a drop of warm oil on the hard
wax, and they now told us that the noble masters
had gone away two weeks ago at the report of the
Swedes’ approach. They separately assured us that
in the whole house, yes, in the whole place, there
was nothing left of any value whatever, but that

FIFTY YEARS LATER 143

they would gladly do their best to serve the stran-
gers.

Varvara had pretty teeth, but she was too small
and fat and black-fleeced, and after a while she let
out such a piercing laugh that I was annoyed. The
yellow-haired girl, who was called Katarina, on the
other hand, I could not keep from pinching on the
ear in fun, when she brought in wood to the stove.
Meanwhile Long Jan had, without further cere-
mony, pulled off his tattered blue coat, and as he
had neither shirt nor vest, he soon stood naked to
the waist in all his miserable leanness, so that no
one could keep serious any longer—no one but
himself. Never had I seen a cheerful twitch pass
over that stolid face. After we had each of us got a
sheepskin coat and stilled the worst hunger with
a little mashed turnip and kvass, we laid us down
by the stove with broadswords between our knees,
and I ventured to order the Herr Ensign to watch
with me alternately, in case any one could possibly
have any evil in mind. I also forbade the two serv-
ing-maids to leave the hall, and reading my prayers
aloud in Swedish, entrusted us to the Almighty.

But!— The Almighty lets us human beings now
and then give each other surprises. When no one
addressed me, I went on sleeping for hours, till I
was waked by a piercing warmth, which at other
times I should have called a pain, but which now
at least reminded me that I was no longer a wan-

144 THE CHARLES MEN

dering skeleton, but a living man again. And still,
who will not understand my terror when I| saw the
heated hall dark and empty, and heard shrieks and
clamor from the room adjoining.

I at once took my broadsword and sprang to the
door. There I saw a blazing cook-stove, and before
it stood Long Jan in a checkered dressing-gown of
bright silk and high-heeled shoes. Obviously the
rascal had also skill in foraging, for a fowl sat al-
ready on the spit, and in a bubbling pot he threw,
higgledy-piggledy, everything he could gather from
the half-sobbing girls. In the midst of this he took
out of a broken cupboard one splendid glass after
another, smashed it to pieces on the edge of the fire-
place, and threw the fragments on the floor. I went
forward and took the lanky loon around the body,
but was not in a condition to remove him from the
spot. Hisincredible obstinacy gaveagiant’sstrength
to his slim body, and I was still exhausted by all the
sufferings we had gone through. When he turned
his face toward me, his eyes were glassily fixed, but
I noticed a whiff of wine. Quite taken aback, I now
let him go. He was drunk.

The yellow-haired Katarina, who really seemed
much more amused than frightened, meanwhile
came up to me and told me in her soft voice — ho!
old Captain Hook was young in those days and a
pretty fellow—... Where were we now? Oh, ves,
she said that he had gone from room to room,

FIFTY YEARS LATER 145.

hunted through everything, and broken the vases
and clocks. Finally, in the cellar he had searched
through all the vaults except one—except one—
one—one, to which the key was lost, she added
hurriedly.

“But you, poor fellow, may also need some-
thing,” she said to me, and pushed me into another
room, which might have been called palatial.
Around the walls hung woven greenish tapestries,
on which Diana hunted a deer. The most splendid
garments lay spread out over the slippery and shin-
ing floor; the armchairs were gilded, and beside a
dish in the middle of the table stood mugs which
were not filled with sickening kvass, not even with
ale, but with a clear, yellow wine.

I, too, now lost my reason at the vision of all
this magnificence, and my mistrust was somewhat
eased because the two girls themselves seemed
heartily delighted at having the chance to waste
and destroy. They, too, felt themselves on hostile
ground in the house where they had formerly had
to go about as obedient and humble thralls. It was
for them a moment of victory to be able to destroy
the delicacies which they had never tasted, to throw
themselves into proud reclining-chairs before which
they had been forced to bow to the floor, and to
trample on the costly garments which they had
been scarcely deemed worthy to touch. They se-
lected for mea coat of stiff cloth-of-silver, which

146 - TH CHARLES. MEN

had tails spread out with whalebone so that they
were like a swelling skirt; and I got stockings and
red shoes on the feet from which that evening I
had ripped the boots with difficulty. Just the same,
I did not dare to throw off the broadsword from
my body, because I could not altogether put aside
all doubts as to an ambush.

With the wholly childlike frankness of a little
heart-subduer Katarina clapped her hands, which
in fact were neither white nor soft, and confessed
that she felt really jolly, since with me, who was
of the same class, they could be as they chose;
whereas before the ensign, who was a fine gentle-
man, they always had to be careful.

I sat down to the table in one of the armchairs,
which was nearly buried under my glittering coat
tails, and on either side I invited one of the girls,
and clinked glasses with them and drank.

“The Herr Ensign is of very high extraction,”
said I. “He will end as, it may be—yes, a coun-
cillor of state.’—That was up to then my most
unseasonable remark, because people who wield
the pen—“ But the gracious young ladies know
that the highborn sometimes, by an unlucky hap,
may be born both foolish and simple-witted, and
it is therefore that I regard myself obliged some-
times to screw up his wits a little into the right
groove, so to speak.”

] have always had a fault as a soldier. I have

FIFTY YEARS. LATER 147

been able both to hack and to hew at the right
time, but in the very act I have been too good-
natured and accommodating. Therefore, too, I let
Long Jan rummage in the kitchen however he
chose, while I myself ate and drank to my heart’s
content. But with every gulp I felt how the wine
kept on taking away my wits. That I did not be-
come more forward than I was toward my merry
hostesses depended less on the virtue with which
the Almighty has sometimes wisely endowed beauty
than on the hardships I had gone through, which
quickly enough changed the wine into a sleeping
potion. Reflection told me that I should push the
mug aside, but, in addition to the distress of the
last days, the wine was irresistible. I fell asleep sit-
ting with hands crossed over the pommel of my
sword.

“* Now I hear tiptoeing steps,” said I to myself
in my dreams. “ They are coming yet nearer behind
my chair. Now I must draw steel. But what’s that!
I can move neither hand nor foot, though I am so
much awake that I can see Diana and her grey-
hounds on the tapestry. All the air 1s dancing vapor,
which rustles around the faces of the prattling girls
and the flames of the waxlights. I am helplessly
drunk. Of that there is no doubt, but now I am
asleep again, and there’s a tiptoeing behind my
chair. A hidden serf stands there with his axe.
Even now he’s lifting it. The next instant I shall

148 THE CHARLES MEN

feel it as a lightning-flash through my head—and
then all’s over. Why won’t the chair stand still?
I can’t hold myself on, if you jump. Whoa, there,
Whiteface! I’d have you know there’s nothing in
the world that can scare me. But to hold myself on,
sitting backward on the loins of one of the king’s
galloping chargers—that I can’t... . Bang! Look
there! Now I’m lying there in the middle of the
stone pavement. ... Fie! What are you laughing
for? And then the vault in the cellar.... Why
did you say just now that there was one... one

. one two, one two, one two, lads in blue, two
three, in grief and glee, three four, their land adore,
four five, and boldly strive, five six, for Carolus
Rex.”

Finally I raised myself on my aching elbow and
sang the whole of Psalm Number Six from the first
to the last verse, and that with such a powerful voice
that it seemed to meas if everything evil must have
shrunk away in terror.

Many times have I treated myself to a booze,
but never one that gave me worse agony. When |
awoke in the morning, I sprang at once from the
floor, where I was lying at full length on my back
by the chair. I was still so sure of an ambush that
I was wholly surprised when I found both the girls
sleeping on a sheepskin under the table, on which
a light was burning in the socket. Out in the kitchen
I heard strange voices and came there upon an old

FIFTY YEARS LATER 149

one-eyed witch who was called Natalia, and ashaggy
serf who was called Makar, and who to the smallest
detail resembled the man of whom I had dreamed.
They confessed that they had kept themselves hid-
den in the attic, but had now crept out when they
noted that we intended no harm. They related that
in the neighboring village there had also been sev-
eral families during the night, but that at the report
of our coming these had straightway loaded their
belongings on a wagon and driven off at a gallop.

For the first time now I could honestly feel my-
self free from all apprehension, and with joy I went
back to the hall, bent over the girls, and kissed
Katarina both vigorously and long.

She woke up and laughed and turned over on
her side to sleep further, but I kissed her yet again,
and then she defended herself and jumped up, brisk
and cheerful.

“You are a fine girl, Katarina, and I don’t need
to mistrust you any longer,” said I. “ Fetch me a
little fresh water now and some salt.”

While she came and went to set out my break-
fast I often took her about her none too slender
waist, and kissed her. At last she kissed me back,
too, and leaned against the cloth-of-silver on my
breast, and cried and laughed alternately. We went
back and forth through the many rooms, but at a
certain door she always checked herself, because
back of it the ensign had been pleased to go to rest

150 THE CHARLES MEN

in one of the noble master’s own down beds. Finally
we sat down in a yellow reclining-chair, and I took
her on my knee and wound her thick plait about
my wrist. It was no falsehood either when I whis-
pered into her ear that my hardened soldier’s heart
had seldom beaten more warmly.

I think with regret of the happy days that fol-
lowed, and rather than recall them hour by hour,
I leave it to you, especially to the young ones, to
make use of your imaginations. Still, I always set
Makar every evening as a guard before the house
and never left off my broadsword. Sometimes Kata-
rina in play would pull it from me, hold it out with
both hands on the hilt, and go tramping through
the rooms, while the autumn rain beat on the win-
dow-panes. The loosely suspended tapestries were
set in motion by the draught she made, so that the
pictures seemed to breathe and bow. There was an
echo every time when, with her black hat pulled
down likean old-fashioned morion, she shouted her
“ Forward!” Then I built barricades of tables and
gilded leather chairs, until in the midst of the assault
I leaped forth and overpowered both the amazon
and her weapon. I had no longer any thought of my
comrades, who meanwhile were perhaps hungering
and bleeding, and my only wish was always to stay
where I now found myself.

Katarina always smelt of lavender. We had
barred off a corner room for our share of the house,

FIFTY YEARS LATER 151

and thither she carried her big chest, which was
entirely plastered over with blue-checkered paper.
This contained her clothes and other belongings,
and it never was opened without filling the room
with lavender scent. It was her favorite diversion to
lie on her knees in front of the chest, pull out all
her garments with a multitude of small boxes and
receptacles, and then pack them in again with the
greatest care. When I found that too tedious, or the
room sometimes grew too cold, I persuaded her to
go out with me to the great hall, where we sat down
by the stove. Then I tried to fasten her attention
by telling the life history of my long broadsword,
which I did not shorten by a word. I knew for sure
that it had thedeath of eleven men on its conscience,
and on my arm I could show scars both of bullet-
grazes and cuts. But she did not ask much about
them. If I told the saga of Prince Gideon of Maxi-
brander, she grew impatient. “That is something
that never happened,” she said, and began eagerly
to sew together green and red scallops of cloth on
two fur boots, which were clearly intended to be-
come a masterpiece of their kind.

The Herr Ensign lived in a continual booze
and showed for the women the most open disdain.
Katarina found this, too, very fortunate, she con-
fessed, because it was so hard for a person in her
class to reprove so high a gentleman, if he became
attentive. One morning, in the midst of this, Herr

152 THE CHARLES MEN

Ensign called to mind the locked vault down in
the cellar, which we had both forgotten. He went
straightway there, and Katarina grew so beside her-
self with alarm that she could not conceal it. Press-
ing both my hands, she begged and prayed me to
hold him back, and so completely was I then the
prisoner of my heart that, although all my previous
doubts awoke to life again, I let myself be forced
to seek help for her.

We went downafter Herr Ensign into the lighted
cellar, where he was already absorbed in breaking
open a locked wooden door.

“Tet that alone!”’ I commanded him, and heas-
sented, but kept on, nevertheless, with his immov-
able stubbornness, breaking and prying.

Then I excused myself before my wailing fol-
lowers with the plea that a common soldier such as
I could not command an officer—and at that mo-
ment the door gave way.

Within the vault a lamp burned under a gilded
Russian Madonna, and beside a table with various
sorts of food stood a made-up bed. Between the bed
and the wall moved something round and dark,
which, when we went nearer, showed itself to be the
bent back of an old man. When the old man saw
himself unearthed, hecrept forward, embraced Herr
Ensign’s knees, and begged and conjured him to
give pardon. He admitted that he was the mas-

FIFTY YEARS LATER 153

ter of the house and that he had concealed himself
after he had sent away his family, but promised to
be our most humble servant if we had pity on his
life.

“Be easy!’’ answered I, and helped the totter-
ing old fellow up from the ground. “ But then you
shall be our drummer when we go to table.”

When we ate that evening in the great hall, Herr
Ensign as usual had the splendid chair, and beside
him sat I and Katarina. Ata table a little to the left
stood the white-bearded and trembling master of
the house with a brass mortar, and Makar with two
pot-lids. They made their cooking utensils thunder
in time to the melancholy folk-songs which ugly old
Natalia sang, as she sat between the two on the edge
of the table.

I don’t know why, but her wailing voice gradu-
ally robbed me of all my brisk gayety, and I began
to think of my thousands upon thousands of absent
comrades. I had between my vest and shirt a whole
packet of letters which anxious relatives had written
to their dear ones in the field, and which they had
begged me to deliver to them, if I ever should get
on to the king’s camp. I drew the letters from my
bosom. They were not secret, for I had received
many of them unsealed on my last evening at Riga.
I pushed the candlestick nearer, eyed’ by chance a
letter written in uncertain style, and read:

154 THE CHARLES MEN
Give this into the hands of John.

My dere son: —

Receive thy father’s blessing, though separated
from him by both land and watter, and right nere
the heathenish parts of the urth, where crocodiles,
scorpions and other harmful crawling things strike
{eres ac

I drew a wry face, mayhap, but I felt my sacred
responsibility, and my mind grew all the heavier.
I noticed that Katarina pressed my foot more en-
ergetically than usual, but I pressed back and
thought that it was only a love token. When at
last I had laid the letters together, I discovered that
she sat quite pale, and could not take any wine or
food. I bent a little to one side, so that she might
be able to whisper, but the old gentleman at the
table stared at her unexpectedly, while he the more
eagerly let his blows ring on the brass mortar, which
he held out like a bell.

I remained in doubt and did not know rightly
what trick I should invent. Then I trumped up the
excuse that I was freezing. I went into the sleeping-
room and, after pretending to search in the dark
awhile, called, “ Katarina, my girl, where have you
put the sheépskin coat?”’

When she came in, she rushed straight up to me
and threw herself on my neck with stifled sobbing.

FIFTY YEARS LATER 155

“You didn’t hear,” she whispered, “that Makar
just now in the midst of the noise told the master
that he had got together more than sixty of the
serfs, and that, as soon as he gives them a signal
by breaking the window in the great hall, they are
coming in to cut down both of you.”

I remained fairly cool and sought to console her,
but, choked with weeping, she told how she herself
at the beginning was with the rest in wanting to
entice us into a trap, but that she now no longer
believed she could live on a day without me.

I pressed her to me hard and kissed her burning
mouth and throbbing temples, and yet in that mo-
ment a strange repose fell upon my soul. My ac-
quaintance with her became all at once nearly as
something in the past. I have since, in my gray
years, regretted this bitterly and wondered at my-
self, who at that especial moment had so little to
give her. Reading the letter, the sudden danger
... 1 don’t know fully which was most to blame.
To be sure, it depended on both.

“If I could take you along,” I stammered.

She shook her head, as I could very clearly per-
ceive in the half-light from the open door, and drew
me instead to the window, where she begged me to
steal off. Then I lashed myself into a sort of pre-
tended anger, threw her from me over the polished
floor, and cried with raised voice, “ For whom do
you take me, lass?”’

156 THE CHARLES MEN

With that I drew my broadsword and went out
into the great hall, and when Herr Ensign got
sight of me so, he rose from the table directly and
also drew.

Then the master raised the mortar to throw it at
the misty window-pane, but we stood right in front
of him with our weapons, and his shaking knees
became all the more bowed. He grew shorter and
shorter, and the pestle rang between his fingers.
Natalia crossed herself in silence, and Makar, who
saw his master ready to sink, supported him from
behind under the elbows and let the pot-lids fall
clattering to the floor. Every now and then he tried
to snatch the pestle to throw it at the window-
pane, but then the old man shut his hand around
the shaft without daring to let it go.

So we stood a long while facing one another, and
we heard the kettle purr in the kitchen.

But soon we heard also the tap of steps, for the
serfs had spied through the window from without
and seen all. The kitchen door was filled with dirt-
gray sheepskin coats, on which a bright button
glinted here and there. Then a shot rang out and
blew the smoke over the shaggy hides.

Now I wholly forgot our ensign game and shoved
Long Janaside so as to go at them for lifeand death,
but just at this moment, even better than at any
other time, was I to learn whom I had for a com-
rade. He stood still, obstinate as ever, seized me

FIFTY, YEARS LATER 157

around both arms and swung me aside with the irre-
* sistible strength which his thin limbs gathered, I
don’t know from where.

“Ensign,” said he, “if you have made yourself
a private and me the ensign, then you ought also
to know our custom in war that an officer goes first
into the firing.”

Like a thunderbolt he burst in among the sheep-
skin coats, and with his great flat hands held the
blade that with one blow cut the lintel over his neck
and with another peeled off the poor wretches’ hides
and clothes. I heard yet another shot, and saw axes
and hay-forks. His right arm twitched and grew
bloody, and he could now only wield his weapon
with the other, but I was at his side, hewing and
thrusting.

We were forced into one corner of the kitchen,
and my inflated fool’s mantle of cloth-of-silver
was cut to pieces so that the black stubs of whale-
bone stuck out through the holes. Blackened with
smoke so that he was unrecognizable, Long Jan
tottered against my shoulder, and I took him by
his uninjured hand and squeezed it in brotherly
fashion with the words, “ Now I’ve learned what you
amount to, Jan, and if we get out of this, we shall
nevermore leave each other.”

He answered nothing. One eye was shut, the
other was staring wide, and he fell heavily in front
of me to the floor.

158 THE CHARLES MEN

That was the last time I saw Long Jan, at whom
I had so often laughed, and who had so often vexed
me, but to whom I was now glad to offer the respect-
ful grasp of a friend and an equal.

For a moment I sought involuntarily to defend
his body, but gradually I perceived it would be
useless in that last forlorn hope. A moment later
I was groping around once more amid underbrush
and mud, wet through with rain, and with a wound
over one dexter finger.

I had, however, the luck to stumble upon a detail
of twenty other wandering Swedes, and climbed up
in a fir-tree to get with my eye to the kernel of the
far-stretching glow that tinted the lowering sky
above the wood.

““What do you see?” asked my comrades.

“T see pitch-black darkness. But if I shut my
eyes, I see still more. Then I see before me a hos-
tile camp. Below me I see the soggy turf, which
sucks hard about our feet, greedy for the honor of
being the death-bed of a few poor wretches. Be-
hind me I see the miles on miles of wilderness,
where our brothers’ corpses grow yellow beneath
the fallen October leaves, where no hens cluck
before the burnt homesteads, and no horse can find
any food except the bark of twigs. But still farther
away lies the sea, and beyond that I see a long
road with tumble-down fences that climbs up to
an old red-painted homestead. Within there, the

FIFTY YEARS LATER 159

turnips have just been taken from the table, and
while the venerable old man opens his leather Bible,
where a black cock’s feather lies as marker to the
first chapter of the Book of Revelation, he falls
into musing and wonders if we perchance have by
now got ahead with reinforcements to the king’s
camp, and if his dear boy may now be reading by
the fire his half illegible letter.”

Certainly I did n’t say all this at that time, but
I know that I thought it. Katarina was already an
almost silenced memory.

““What do you see now?” asked my comrades,
“You have climbed higher up.”

Across the trees I saw beacons or camp-fires hang-
ing within the yellow mist like lumps of melted
iron, and asI strained my eyes, the row of gray tent-
roofs in the light of the pitch beacons reminded me
of a misty coast-line.

“That glow,” I whispered to my comrades, “is
a great apple with many kernels, and we need to
have our swords ready. But wait! that was not Rus-
sian. Did n’t you hear the two outposts who called
to each other? As sure as I live was not that our
own beloved mother-speech? If I didn’t seven
times hear ‘devil,’ may the devil take me!”’

How did I come down from the fir? That I
hardly remember. On all sides I shook outstretched
hands and moved between blue and yellow coats
from embrace to embrace. How many longed-for

160 THE CHARLES MEN

embraces did I not have to give, how many ad-
ventures to describe! I went about ever further into
the camp, sometimes carried, sometimes dragged,
sometimes met with ringing laughter, as they got
sight of my ragged fool’s-mantle, round which the
projecting whalebones shook with every motion.
Within me was a roar of joy.

“I have a letter to Captain Bagge,” I shouted.

“Shotilong-agos”

“‘T have also a letter to Cederstjerne, Lieuten-
ant.”

Shot?’

I stumbled over a dead horse, which with its
stiffened grin was almost scorched by a smoulder-
ing fire of logs. The rain had quenched the flames,
and in the illuminated smoke behind the embers I
saw a Seated circle of grim-looking officers. Among
them lay on the ground at full length a man with
a fur hood drawn down and a cape collar over his
face. I wanted to step over him and waved my
packet of letters, but a hand seized me by the shoul-
der and I was harshly stopped short by the words,
‘Are you out of your wits? Don’t you see it is His
Majesty?”

Then I struck my heels together as I raised the
hand with the packet to my head, and the tears that
burst forth ran down my cheeks.

Captain Hook arose and finished his story as he

FIFTY YEARS LATER 161

bade good-night, but when he went out into the
entry, the others heard that he remained standing
on the winding stair.

Then one of the servant-girls drew her holiday
jacket about her and loosened the last stump of one
branch candle from the round table. As she carried
it, she held one hand underneath, so that no grease
should fall on the straw. Thereupon she went out
carefully to light the captain, for they all knew that
he, a Charles man, was so afraid of the dark that he
never dared go alone across the attic.

The Fortified House
URPRISED by the winter cold, the Swedes in

crowded confusion had taken up their quarters
behind the walls of Hadjash. Soon there was not a
house to be found that was not filled with the frost-
bitten and the dying. Cries of distress were heard
out in the street, and here and there beside the steps
lay amputated fingers, feet, and legs. Vehicles stood
fastened to each other, so tightly packed from the
city gate to the market-place that the chilly-pale
soldiers, whostreamed in fromall sides, had to crawl
between the wheels and runners. Buckled in their
harness and turned away from the wind, the horses,
their loins white with frost, had already stood many
days without food. No one took care of them, and
several of the drivers sat frozen to death with hands
stuck into their sleeves. Some wagons were like ob-
long boxes or coffins, where from the chink of the
flat lid stared out mournful faces, which read in a
prayer-book or gazed longingly with feverish delir-
ium at the sheltering houses. A thousand unfortu-
nates, in muffled tones or silently, cried to God for
mercy. Under thesheltered side of the city wall dead
soldiers stood in lines, many with red Cossack coats
buttoned over their ragged Swedish uniforms and
with sheepskins around their naked feet. Wood-
doves and sparrows, which were so stiff with frost

that they could be caught with the hand, had fallen

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 163

on the hats and shoulders of the standing corpses,
and fluttered their wings when the chaplains went
by to give a Last Communion in brandy.

Up at the market-place among burnt areas stood
an unusually large house, from which could be heard
loud voices. A soldier delivered a fagot to an en-
sign who stood in the doorway, and when the soldier
went back into thestreet, he shrugged his shoulders
and said to whomsoever cared to hear him: “It’s
only the gentlemen quarreling in the chancellery.”

The ensign at the door had lately arrived with
Lewenhaupt’s forces. He carried the fagot into the
room,and threwit down bythe fireplace. The voices
within ceased immediately, but as soon as he had
closed the door, they began with renewed heat.

It was His Excellency Piper who stood in the
middle of the floor, his countenance wrinkled and
furrowed, with glowing cheeks and trembling nos-
trils.

“‘T say that the whole affair is madness,” he burst
out, “ madness, madness!”’

Hermelin, with his pointed nose, was constantly
twitching his eyes and his hands, while he sprang
back and forthin the room likea tame rat; but Field
Marshal Rehnskiold, who, with his handsome,
stately figure, was standing by the fireplace, only
whistled and hummed. If he had not whistled and
hummed, the quarrel would have been finished by
this time, because for once they were all fully

164 THE CHARLES MEN

agreed; but the fact that he whistled and hummed
instead of being silent or at least speaking, that
could beenduredno longer. Lewenhaupt at the win-
dow took snuff and snapped shut his snuff-box. His
pepper-brown eyes protruded from his head, and
it looked as if his comical peruke became ever big-
ger and bigger. If Rehnskidld had not continued
to whistle and hum, he would have controlled him-
self to-day as yesterday and on all other occasions,
but now wrath rose to his brow.

He shut his snuff-box for the last time, and
mumbled between his teeth, “1 do not ask that His
Majesty should understand statesmanship. But can
he lead troops? Does he show real insight at a
single encounter or attack? Trained and proved
old warriors, who never can be replaced, he offers
daily for an empty bravado. If our men are to
storm a wall, it is considered superfluous that they
bind themselves protecting fagots or shields, and
therefore they are wretchedly massacred. To speak
freely, my worthy sirs, I can forgive an Uppsala
student many a boyish freak, but I demand other-
wise of a general in the field. Truly it avails not to
carry on a campaign under the command of such
a master.”

“Furthermore,” continued Piper, “His Majesty
does not at present incommode you, general, with
any particularly hard command. At the beginning,
before one man had succeeded in distinguishing

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 165

himself more than another, it went better; but now
His Majesty goes around mediating and reconciling
with a foolish smile so that one could go crazy.”

He raised his arms in the air with a wrath which
had lost all sense and bounds, notwithstanding he
was altogether at one with Lewenhaupt. While he
was still speaking, he turned about and betook him-
self impetuously to the inner apartments. The door
‘slammed with such a clatter that Rehnskidld found
himself yet more called upon to whistle and hum.
If he only had chosen to say something! But no,
he did not. Gyllenkrook, who sat at the table and
examined departure-checks, was blazing in the face,
and a little withered-looking officer at his side
whispered venomously into his ear: “A pair of
diamond earrings given to Piper’s countess might
perhaps even yet help Lewenhaupt to new appoint-
ments.”

If Rehnskiold had now ceased to whistle and
hum, Lewenhaupt would still have been able to
control himself, to take up the roll of papers he
carried under his coat and sit down at a corner of
the table; but instead, the venerable and at other
times taciturn man grew worse and worse. He
turned about undecidedly and went toward the
entrance door, but there he suddenly stood still,
drew himself up, and smacked his heels together as
if he had been a mere private. Now Rehnskiold
became quiet. The door opened. An icy gust of

166 THE CHARLES MEN

wind rushed into the room, and the ensign an-
nounced with as loud and long-drawn a voice as
a sentry who calls his comrades to arms: “ Hi-s
Majesty!”

The king was no longer the dazzled and won-
dering half-grown youth of aforetime. Only the
boyish figure with the narrow shoulders was the
same. His coat was sooty and dirty. The wrinkle
around the short, protruding upper lip had become
deeper and rather morose. On the nose and one
cheek he had frost-bite, and his eyelids were red-
edged and swollen with protracted cold, but around
the formerly bald vertex of his head the combed-
back hair stood up like a pointed crown.

He held a fur cap in both hands, and tried to
conceal his embarrassment and diffidence behind
a stiff and cold ceremoniousness, while bowing and
smiling to each and all of those present.

They bowed again and again still more deeply,
and when he had advanced to the middle of the
floor, he stood still and bowed awkwardly toward
the sides, though with somewhat more haste, being
apparently wholly occupied with what he was about
to say. Thereupon he remained a long while stand-
ing quite silent.

Then he went forward to Rehnskiold and, with
a brief inclination, took him by one of his coat but-
tons.

“‘T would beg,” he said, “that Your Excellency

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 167

provide me with two or three men of the common
soldiers as escort for a little excursion. I havealready
two dragoons with me.”

“But, Your Majesty! the country is overrun with
Cossacks. To ride in here to the city from Your
Majesty’s quarters with so small an escort was al-
ready a feat of daring.”

“Oh, nonsense, nonsense! Your Excellency will
do as I have said. Some one of the generals pres-
ent, who is at leisure, may also mount and take one
of his men.”

Lewenhaupt bowed.

The king regarded him a trifle irresolutely with-
out answering, and remained standing after Rehn-
skidld hastened out. None of the others in the circle
considered it necessary to break the silence or to
move.

Only after a very long pause did the king bow
again to every one separately, and go out into the
open air.

“Well anquired Lewenhaupt and clapped the
ensign on the shoulder with a return of his nat-
ural kindliness. “The ensign shall go along! This
is the first time the ensign has stood eye to eye with
His Majesty.”

“] had never expected he would be like that.”

“ Heis always like that. He is too kingly to com-
mand.”

They followed after the king, who clambered over

168 THE CHARLES MEN

wagons and fallen animals. His motions were agile,
never abrupt, but measured and quite slow, so that
he never for a moment lost his dignity. When he had
finally made his way forward through the throng to
the city gate, he mounted to the saddle with his
attendants, who were now seven men,

The horses stumbled on the icy street, and some
fell, but Lewenhaupt’s remonstrances only induced
the king to use his spurs yet more heartlessly. The
lackey Hultman had read aloud to him all night or
had related sagas,and had at length coaxed him into
laughing at the prophecy that, had he not been ex-
alted by God to be a king, he would for his whole
life have become an unsociable floor-pacer, who de-
vised much more wonderful verses than those of the
late Messenius of Disa on Bollhus, but especially
the mightiest battle stories. He tried to think of
Rolf Gotriksson, who ever rode foremost of all his
men, but to-day it did not please him to bound his
thoughts within the play-room of a saga. The rest-
lessness, which during the last few days had struck
its claws into his mind, would not let go of its royal
prey. At the chancellery he had just seen the heated
faces. Ever since the pranks of his boyhood he had
been wrapt in his own imaginary world of the past.
He had sat deaf to the piercing cries of distress along
the way, while he became distrustful of each and all
who exhibited a more sensitive hearing. To-day, as
at other times, he hardly noted that they offered

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 169

him the best-rested horse and the freshest cake of
bread, that in the morning they laid a purse with
five hundred ducats in his pocket, that the horse-
men at the first mé/ée would form a ring about him
and offer themselves to that death which he had
challenged. On the other hand, he noticed that the
soldiers saluted him with gloomy silence, and mis-
fortunes had made him suspicious even of those
nearest to him. The most cautious opposition, the
most concealed disapproval, he made a note of with-
out betraying himself,and every word remained and
gnawed at his soul. Every hour it seemed to him
that he lost an officer on whom he had formerly
relied, and his heart became all the colder. His
thwarted ambition chafed and bled under the weight
of failure, and he breathed more lightly the farther
behind him he left his headquarters.

Suddenly Lewenhaupt came to a stand, debating
within himself how to exercise an influence upon
the king.

“My heroic Ajax!” said he, and patted his steam-
ing horse, “ you are indeed an old manger-biter, but
I have no right to founder you for no good cause,
and I myself am beginning to get on in years as you
are. But in Jesus’ name, lads, let him who can follow
the king!”’

When he saw the ensign’s anxious sidelong look
toward the king, he spoke with lowered voice:
“Be faithful, boy! His Majesty does not roar

170 THE CHARLES MEN

out as we others do. He is too kingly to chide or
bicker.”

The king feigned to notice nothing. More and
more wildly over ice and snow he kept up the silent
horse-race without goal or purpose. He had now
only four attendants. After another hour one of the
remaining horses fell with a broken fore-leg, and the
rider out of pity shot a bullet through its ear, after
which he himself, alone and on foot, went to meet
an uncertain fate in the cold.

At last the ensign was the only man who was able
to follow the king, and they had now come among
bushes and saplings, where they could proceed but
at a foot-pace. On the hill above them rose a gray
and sooty house with narrow grated windows, the
courtyard being surrounded by a wall.

At this moment there was a shot.

“‘ How was that?” inquired the king, and looked
around.

“The pellet piped nastily when it went by my
ear, but it only bit the corner of my hat,” answered
the ensign, without the least experience of how he
ought to conduct himself before the king. He had
a slight Smaland accent, and laughed contentedly
with his whole blond countenance.

Enchanted by the good fortune of being man by
man with him whom he regarded as above all other
living human beings, he continued: ‘‘Shall we then
go up there and take them by the beard?”

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 171

‘The answer pleased the king in the highest de-
gree, and with a leap he stood on the ground.

“We'll tie our steeds hereinthe bushes,” he said,
exhilarated and with bright color on his cheek.
“Afterwards let us go up and run them all through
as easily as whistling.”

They left the panting horses and, bending for-
ward, climbed up the hill among the bushes. Over
the wall looked down several Cossack heads with
hanging hair, yellow and grinning as those of be-
headed criminals.

“Took!” whispered the king, and smote his
hands together. ‘‘ They ’re trying to pull shut the
rotten gate, the fox-tails!”

His glance, but recently so expressionless, be-
came now flickering and anon open and shining.
He drew his broadsword and raised it with both
hands above his head. Like a young man’s god
he stormed in through the half-open door. The
ensign, who cut and thrust by his side, was often
close to being struck from behind by his weapon.
A musket-shot blackened the king’s right temple.
Four men were cut down in the gateway, and the
fifth of the band fled with a fire-shovel into the
courtyard, pursued by the king.

Then the king wiped off the blood from his
sword on the snow, while he laid two ducats in the
Cossack’s shovel and burst out with rising spirits,
“It is no pleasure to fight with these wretches

172 THE CHARLES MEN

who never strike back and only run. Come back
when you have bought yourself a decent sword.”

The Cossack, who understood nothing, stared
at the gold-pieces, sneaked along the wall to the
gate, and fled. Ever farther and farther away on
the plain he called his roving comrades with a dis-
mal and lamenting ‘“Oohaho! Oohaho!”

The king hummed to himself as if chaffing with
an unseen enemy: “ Little Cossack man, little Cos-
sack man, go gather up your rascals!”’

The walls around the courtyard were moulder-
ing and black. From the wilderness sounded an
endlessly prolonged minor tone as from an aeolian
harp, and the king inquisitively shouldered in the
door of the dwelling-house. This consisted of a
single large and half-dark room, and before the fire-
place lay a heap of blood-stained clothing, which
plunderers of corpses had taken from fallen Swedes.
The door was thrown shut again by the cross-
draught, and the king went to the stable-buildings
at the side. There was no door there, and a sound
was now heard the more plainly. Within in the dark-
ness lay a starved white horse bound toan iron ring
in the wall.

A lifted broadsword would not have checked the
king, but the uncertain dusk caused the man of
imagination to stand on the threshold, fearful of
the dark. Yet he gave no sign of this, but beckoned
the ensign. They stepped in down a steep stairway

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 173

to a cellar. Here there was a well, and at the arm
of the creaking windlass that brought up the
water, a deaf Cossack, wholly unaware of danger,
was driving around with whip and reins a human
figure in the uniform of a Swedish officer.

When they had loosed the rope and had bound
the Cossack in the place of the prisoner, they rec-
ognized the Holsteiner, Feuerhausen, who had
served as major in a regiment of dragoon recruits,
but had been cut off by the Cossacks and harnessed
as a draught animal for hoisting water.

He fell on his knees, and stammered in broken
Swedish: ““Your Majesty! I gan’t pelief my eyes
ese. iy gratitude —*\t.:

Theking cheerily interrupted his talk, and turned
to the ensign: “‘ Bring up the two horses to the
stable! Three men cannot ride comfortably on two
horses, and therefore we shall stay here till a few
Cossacks come by, from whom we can take a new
horse. Do you, sir, stand guard at the gate.”

After that the king went back to the dwelling-
house, and shut the door after him. The horses
which, desperate with hunger, had been greedily
gnawing the bark from the bushes, were meanwhile
led up to the stable,and the ensign mounted guard.

Slowly the hours went by. When it began to
draw towards dusk, the storm increased in bitter-
ness, and in the light of sunset the snow whirled
over the desolate snow-plain. Deathly yellow Cos-

174 THE CHARLES MEN

sack facesraised themselves spying above the bushes,
and borne in the wind sounded the roving sire
derers’ “Oohaho! Oohaho! Oohaho!”’

Then Feuerhausen stepped out of the stable,
where he had sat between the horses so as not to
get frost in his wounds from the ropes with which
he had been bound. He went forward to the barred
doors of the dwelling-house.

“Your Majesty!” he stammered, “the Cossacks
are gathering more and more, and darkness is com-
ing soon. I and theensign can both sit on one horse.
If we delay here, this night will be Your Mightiest
Majesty’ s last, which Gott in His secret dispensa-
tion forbit!”

The king answered from within, “ i: must be as
we said. Three men do not ride comfortably on two
horses.”

The Holsteiner shook his head and went down
to the ensign.

‘Such is His Majesty, you damt Swedes. From
the stable I heard him walk and walk back and for-
vart. Sickness and conscience-torture will come.
Like a pater familiae the Muscovite czar stands
among his subjects. A confectioner he sets up as his
friend, and a simple servant-girl he raises to his glo-
rious imperial throne. Detestable are his gestures
when he gets drunk, and he treats women 4 /a fran-
¢ois; but his first and last wort always runs, ‘For
Russia’s goot!’ King Carolus leafs his lants as

CHE BORTIFIED HOUSE 175

smoking ash-heaps, and does not possess a single
frient, not efen among his nearest. King Carolus 1s
more lonely than the meanest wagon-drifer. He has
not once a comrade’s knee to weep on. Among
nobles and fine ladies and perukes he comes like
a spectre out of a thousant-year mausoleum — and
spectres mostly go about witout company. Is he
a man of state? Oh, haf mercy! No sense for the
public. Is he a general ? Good-by ! No sense for the
big masses. Only to make bridges and set up gabi-
ons, clap his hants at captured flags and a couple
of kettledrums. No sense for state and army, only
for men.”

“That may be also a sense,” replied the en-
sign.

He walked vigorously back and forward, for his
fingers were already so stiff with cold that he
scarcely could hold his drawn blade.

The Holsteiner shifted the ragged coat-collar
around his cheeks and went on with muffled voice
and eager gestures : ‘ King Carolus laughs with de-
light when the bridge breaks, and men and beasts
are miserably drownt. No heart in his breast. To
the deuce wit him! King Carolus is such a little
Swedish half-genius as wanders out inthe worlt and
beats the drum and parades and makes a fiasco, and
the parterre whistles, Whee!”’

“And that is why the Swedes go to death for
him,” answered the ensign; “that is just why.”

176 THE CHARLES MEN

“Not angry, my dearest fellow! Your teeth shone
so in a laugh when we first met.”

“‘T like to hear the Herr Major talk, but I’m
freezing. Will not the major go up and listen at the
king’s door?”

The Holsteiner went up to the door and listened.
When he came back, he said, “‘ He only walks and
walks, and sighs heavily like a man in anguish of
soul. So it always is now, they say. His Majesty
nefer sleeps any more at night. The comedy-actor
knows he is not up to his part, and of all life’s
torments wounded ambition becomes the bitter-
est.”

“Then it should also be the last for us to jest at.
Dare I beg the major to rub my right hand with
snow; it is getting numb.”

The Holsteiner did as he desired, and turned
back to the king’s door. He struck his forehead with
both hands. His gray-sprinkled, bushy moustaches
stood straight out, and he mumbled, “Gott, Gott!
Soon it will be too dark to retreat.”

The ensign called, “Good sir, I should like to ask
if you would rub my face with snow. My cheeks are
freezing stiff. Of the pain in my foot I will not speak.
Ans can thbear it:

The Holsteiner filled his hands with snow. “Let
me stand guard,” he said, ‘‘only for an hour.”

“No, no. The king has commanded that I stay

here at the entrance.”

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 177

“Och, the king! I know him. I will make him
cheerful, talk philosophy, tell of gallant exploits.
He is always amused to hear of a lover who climbs
adventurously through a window. He often looks
at the beautiful side of womankint. That appeals
to his imagination, but not to his flesh, for he is
witout feeling. Ant he is bashful. If the fair one
ever wishes to tread him under her silken shoe, she
must herself attack, but pretent to flee, and all the
others must strive against the /aison. The most
mighty lady, his grandmother, spoiled everything
with her shriek of ‘ Marriage, marriage!’ King Caro-
lus is from top to toe like the Swedish queen Chris-
tina, though he is genuinely masculine. The two
should have married each other on the same throne.
That would haf been a fine little pair. Oh, pfui, pfui!
you Swedes. If a man gallops his horses and lets
people and kingdom be massacred, he 1s still pure-
hearted and supreme among all, if only his bloot 1s
too slow for amours. Oh, excuse me! I know pure-
hearted heroes who were faithfully in love with two,
three different maidens or wives in one and the same
week.”

“Yes, we are so, we are so. But for Christ’s pity
you must rub my hand again. And excuse my moan-
ing and groaning!”

Just inside the gate, which could not be shut,
lay the fallen Cossacks, white as marble with the
hoar frost. The yellow sky became gray, and ever

178 THE CHARLES MEN

nearer and more manifold in the twilight sounded
the wailing cries, “Oohaho! Oohaho! Oohaho!”

Now the king opened his door and came down
across the court.

The pains in his head, from which he had begun
to suffer, had been increased by his ride in the wind
and made his glance heavy. His countenance bore
traces of lonely soul-strife, but as he drew near, his
mouth resumed its usual embarrassed smile. His
temple was still blackened after the musket-shot.

“It’s freshening up,” he said,and producing from
his coat a loaf of bread, he broke it in three, so that
every one had as large a piece as he did. After that,
he lifted off his riding-cape, and fastened it himself
about the shoulders of the sentinel ensign.

Abashed over his own conduct, he then took
the Holsteiner forcibly by the arm and led him up
through the courtyard, while they chewed at their
hard bread.

Now, if ever, thought the Holsteiner, is the time
to win the king’s attention with a clever turn of
speech, and afterwards talk sense with him.

“The accommodation might be worse,” he began,
at the same time biting and chewing. ‘Ah, good old
days! That reminds me of a gallant adventure out-
side of Dresden.”’

The king kept on holding him by the arm, and
the Holsteiner lowered his voice. The story was
lively and salacious, and the king grew inquisitive.

THE FORTIFIED. HOUSE 179

The coarsest allusionsalways lured out his set smile.
He listened with a despairing and half-absent man’s
need of momentary diversion.

Only when the Holsteiner with cunning deftness
began to shift the conversation over to some words
about their immediate danger did the king again
become serious.

“« Bagatelle, bagatelle!” he replied. “It is nothing
at all worth mentioning, except that we must behave
ourselves well and sustain our reputation to the last
man. If the rascals come on, we will all three place
ourselves at the gate and pink them with our
swords.”

The Holsteiner stroked his forehead and felt
around. He began to talk about the stars that were
just shining out. He set forth a theory for measur-
ing their distance from the earth. The king now lis-
tened tohim with a quite different sort of attention.
He broke into the question keenly, resourcefully,
and with an unwearied desire to think out new,
surprising methods in his own way. One assertion
gave a hand to another, and soon the conversation
dwelt on the universe and the immortality of the
soul, to return afresh to the stars. More and more
of them flickered in the heavens, and the king de-
scribed what he knew about the sun-dial. He stood
up his broadsword with its scabbard in the snow and
directed the point toward the Polestar, so that next
morning they might be able to tell the time.

180 THE CHARLES MEN

“The heart of the universe,” he said, “must be
either the earth or the star that stands over the land
of the Swedes. No land must be of more account
than the Swedish land.”

Outside the wall the Cossacks were calling out,
but as soon as the Holsteiner led the talk to their
threatened attack, the king was laconic.

“‘ At daybreak we shall betake ourselves back to
Hadjash,” said he. ‘‘ Before then we can hardly se-
cure a third horse, so that each of us can ride com-
fortably in his own saddle.”

After he had spoken in that strain, he went back
into the dwelling-house.

The Holsteiner came down with a vehement
stride to the ensign, and pointing at the king’s door,
he cried out, “ Forgif me, ensign. We Germans don’t
mince words when a wount oozes after a rope, but
I lay down my arms and gif you, sir, the victory,
because I also could shed my bloot for the man.
Do I lofe him! No one efer understands him that
has not seen him. But, ensign, you cannot stay any
longer out in the weather.”

The ensign replied, ‘‘ No cape has warmed me
more sweetly than the one I now wear, and I lay all
my cares on Christ. But in God’s name, major, go
back to the door and listen! The king might do
himself some harm.”

“His Majesty would not fall on his ow» sword,
but longs for another’s.”

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 181

““Now I hear his steps even down here. They
are getting still more violent and restless. He is so
lonely. When I saw him in Hadjash bowing and
bowing among the generals, I could only think,
How lonely he is!”’

“If the little Holsteiner slips away from here
alife, he will always remember the steps we heard
to-night and always call this refuge Fort Garten.”

The ensign nodded his approval and answered,
“Go to the stable, major, and seek rest and shelter
awhile between the horses. And there through the
walls you can better hear the king and watch over
him.”

Thereupon the ensign began to sing with reso-
nant voice:

O Father, to Thy loving grace. ..

The Holsteiner went back across the court into
the stable and, his voice quavering with cold, in-
toned with the other:

In every time and every place

My poor weak soul would T commend.
O Lord, receive it and defend.

“Oohaho! Oohaho!”’ answered the Cossacks in the
storm, and it was already night.

The Holsteiner squeezed himself in between the
two horses, and listened till weariness and sleep
bowed his head. Only at dawn was he wakened by
a clamor. He sprang out into the open air, and be-

182 THE CHARLES MEN

held the king already standing in the court, looking
at the sword that had been set up as a sun-dial.

By the gate the Cossacks had collected, but when
they saw the motionless sentry, they shrank back in
superstitious fear and thought of the rumors con-
cerning the magic of the Swedish soldiers against
blow and shot.

When the Holsteiner had gotten forward to the
ensign, he grasped him hard by the arm.

“What now?” he asked. “ Brandy?”

At the same instant he let go his grip.

The ensign stood frozen to death with his back
against the wall of the gate, his hands on his sword-
hilt, and wrapped in the king’s cloak.

“Since we are now only two,” the king remarked,
drawing his weapon out of the snow, “we can at
once betake ourselves each to his horse, as it was
arranged.”

The Holsteiner stared him right in the eyes with
reawakened hate and remained standing, as if he
had heard nothing. Finally, however, he led out the
horses, but his hands trembled and clenched them-
selves, so that he could hardly draw the saddle-girths.

The Cossacks swung their sabres and pikes, but
the sentry stood at his post. |

Then the king sprang carelessly into the saddle,
and set his horse to a gallop. His forehead was clear,
his cheeks were rosy, and his broadsword glimmered
like a sunbeam.

THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 183

The Holsteiner looked after him. His bitter ex-
pression relaxed, and he murmured between his
teeth, while he too mounted to the saddle and with
hand lifted to his hat raced by the sentry: “It is

only the joy of a hero in seeing a hero’s noble
death.— Thanks, comrade!”’

A Clean White Shirt

RIVATE Bencr Getinc had got a Cossack’s

pike through his breast, and his comrades laid
him on a heap of twigs in a copse, where Pastor
Rabenius gave him the Holy Communion. This
was on the icy ground before the walls of Veperik,
and a whistling norther tore the dry leafage from
the bushes.

“The Lord be with thee!” whispered Rabenius
softly and paternally. “Are you prepared now to
. depart hence after a good day’s work?”

Bengt Geting lay with his hands knotted, bleed-
ing to death. The hard eyes stood wide open, and
the obstinate and scraggy face was so tanned by sun
and frost that the bluish pallor of death shone out
only over his lips.

“No,” he said.

“That is the first time I have heard a word from
your mouth, Bengt Geting.”

The dying man knotted his hands all the harder,
and chewed with his lips, which opened themselves
for the words against his will.

“For once,” he said slowly, “even the meanest
and raggedest of soldiers may speak out.”

He raised himself painfully on his elbow, and
ejaculated such a piercing cry of anguish that Ra-
benius did not know whether it came from torment
of soul or of body.

A CLEAN WHITE SHIRT 185

He set down the chalice on the ground, and
spread a handkerchief over it, so that the leaves
which were tumbling about should not fall into the
brandy.

“And this,” he stammered, pressing his hands
to his forehead, “this I, who ama servant of Christ,
shall be constrained to witness, morning after morn-
ing, evening after evening.”

Soldiers crowded forward from all sides between
the bushes to see and hear the fallen man, but their
captain came in a wrathful mood with sword drawn.

“Tie a cloth over the fellow’s mouth!” he
shouted. ‘“‘ He has always been the most obstinate
man in the battalion. I am no more inhuman than
another, but I must do my duty, and I have a mass
of new and untrained folk that have come with
Lewenhaupt. These have got scared by his wail-
ing, and refuse to go forward. Why don’t you obey?
I command here.”

Rabenius took a step forward. On his curled white
peruke he had a whole garland of yellow leaves,

“Captain,” he said, “‘ beside the dying the servant
of God alone commands, but in glad humility he de-
livers his authority to the dying man himself. For
three years I have seen Bengt Geting march in the
line, but never yet have I seen him speak with any
one. Now on the threshold of God’s judgment-seat
may no one further impose silence upon him.”’

“With whom should I have spoken?” asked the

186 THE CHARLES MEN

bleeding trooper bitterly. ““‘ My tongue is as if tied
and lame. Weeks would go by without my saying
a word. No one has ever asked me about anything.
It was only the ear that had to be on guard so that
I did not fail to obey. ‘Go,’ they have said, ‘go
through marsh and snow.’ To that there was noth-
ing to answer.”

Rabenius knelt and softly took ‘his hands in his.

‘But now you shall speak, Bengt Geting. Speak,
speak, now that all are gathered to hear you. You
are now the only one of us all who has the right to
speak. Is there a wife or perhaps an aged mother
at home to whom you want me to send amessage?”

‘‘My mother starved me and sent me to the
troops, and never since then has a woman had any-
thing else to say to me than the same, ‘Get away,
Bengt Geting, go, go! What do you want with us?’”’

“‘Flave you then anything to repent?”

“‘T repent that as a child I did not jump into the
mill-race, and that, when you stood before the regi-
ment on Sunday and admonished us to go patiently
on andon, | didn’t step forwardand strike you down
with my musket.— But do you want to know what
causes me dread? Have younever heard the wagon-
drivers and outposts tell how in the moonlight they
have seen their comrades that were shot limp in
crowds after the army and hop about on their
mangled legs and cry, ‘Greetings to mother !’—
They call them the Black Battalion. It’s into the

A CLEAN WHITE SHIRT 187

Black Battalion that I’m to go now. But the worst
is that I shall be buried in my ragged coat and my
bloody shirt. That’s the thing I can’t get out of my
mind. A plain trooper does n’t want to be taken
homelike the dead General Liewen, but I’m think-
ing of the fallen comrades at Dorfsniki, where the
king had acoffin of acouple of boards and a clean
white shirt given to each man. Why should they be
treated so much better than I? Now in this year of
misfortune a man is laid out as he falls. 1’m so deep-
ly sunkin misery that the only thing in the world
that I can be envious of is their clean white shirts.”
“My poor friend,” answered Rabenius quietly,
“in the Black Battalion —if you believe in it now
—you will have great company. Gyldenstolpe and
Sperling and Lieutenant-Colonel Morner already
lie shot on the field. And do you recall the thou-
sand others? Do you remember the friendly Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Wattrang, who came riding to our
regiment and gave an apple to every soldier, and
who now lies among the Royal Dragoons, and all
our comrades under the meadow at Holofzin? And
do you remember my predecessor, Nicholas Up-
pendich,a mighty proclaimer of the Word, who fell
at Kalisch in his priestly array? Grass has grown
and snow fallen over his mould, and no one can
point out with his foot the sod where he sleeps.”
Rabenius bowed yet deeper, and felt the man’s

forehead and hands.

188 THE CHARLES MEN

‘“‘Tn ten or at most fifteen minutes you will have
ceased to live. Perhaps these minutes might replace
the past three years, if you sanctify them rightly.
You are no longer one of us. Don’t you see that
your spiritual guide is lying on his knees by you
with head uncovered? Speak now and tell me your
last wish; no, your last command. Consider but one
thing. The regiment is disorganized on your ac-
count, and meanwhile the others go forward with
glory or stand already on the storming-ladders.
You have frightened the younger fellows with your
death-wound and your wailing, and you alone can
make it good again. Now they listen only to you,
and you alone have it in your power to make them
go against the enemy. Consider that your last words
will be last forgotten, and perhaps sometime will be
repeated for those at home, who sit and roast their
potatoes behind the oven.”

Bengt Geting lay motionless, and a shadow of
perplexity passed over his glance. Then he gently
raised his armsas if foran invocation and whispered,
‘“‘ Lord, help me to do even so!”

He gave a sign that now he was able only to
whisper, and Rabenius laid his face to his so as to
be ableto hear his words. Then Rabenius motioned
to the soldiers, but his voice trembled so that he
could hardly make himself heard.

“‘ Now Bengt Geting has spoken,” he said.“ This

is his last wish, that you should take him between

A CLEAN WHITE SHIRT 189

you on your muskets and carry him with you in his
old place in the line, where he has stubbornly
marched day after day and year after year.”

The drums now struck up, the music began, and
with his cheek on the shoulder of one of the sol-
diers Bengt Geting was carried forward step by step
over the field toward the foe. Around him followed
the whole regiment, and ever with bared head Ra-
benius went behind him, and did not notice that he
was already dead.

“T shall see to it,” he whispered, “that you get
a clean white shirt. You know that the king does
notregard himselfas morethan the humblest soldier,
and itis so that he himself wishes sometime to lie.”’

Poltava

N the firstof May Field Marshal Rehnskiold

gave an evening dinner, and Colonel Appel-
gren became heated about the forehead and inquis-
itive ; he rolled bread-crumbs with his fingers and
looked cross-eyed.

“Can Your Excellency say why Poltava has to
be besieged?”

“‘His Majesty wants to have amusement till the
Poles and Tartars come with reinforcements.”

“And nevertheless we know that neitherof them
is coming. Europe begins to forget our court @ /a
Diogenes with riding ministers of state, fighting
chancellor’s clerks, chamberlains falling in battle,
seats of honor on tree stumps... and with pal-
aces of tent-cloth, and pancakes and small beer on
the royal table.”

““ His Majesty wishes to practise fortifications
now, and is getting the habit of camping out for the
rest of his life. So we have time ahead of us. Pol-
tava is a little flea fortress, which will probably sur-
render when the first shot cracks.”

The field marshal became abruptly silent, and
dropped his fork.

“IT believe those fellows in the town have gone
crazy, and are going to defend themselves.”

He sprang out and threw himself into the saddle.
All arose and heard a continuous firing.

POLTAVA 1g!

The Russian sentries around the walls had the
custom of shouting long and noisily in the dark-
ness, “Good bread, good drink!’’ During this
screaming, Colonel Gyllenkrook, without any one
being able to hear his approach, had begun to open
trenches, and had set up a cover, but at that mo-
ment the king ran over the field, and shouted aloud
something to his adjutant-general. The fact that he
held his drawn broadsword prevented him from
looking ridiculous as he ran. Gyllenkrook asked
him not to cry out so loud so as not to alarm the
enemy, but even while he was speaking, the outposts
weresilent, and began instead tolight their port-fires
and shoot. Fire-balls that rose aloft threw theirlight
over the hills and meadow-land,and were reflected
inthe hurrying waters of the Vorskla. Gyllenkrook’s
laboring Zaporogeans then sprang back from their
spades and gabions, and the Swedish soldiers, who
thumped on their leather coats with the flat of the
sword, at last began themselves to flee or to lie
down on the ground.

In that way the shooting had begun.

“Look there!” said Gyllenkrook, who stood be-
hind a tree with the king and the Little Prince. “A
small cause may bring about such a big confusion,
and for the last time I dare propose that the whole
siege be given up. In my prayers unite the tired
troops and all the unhappy subjects at home. Why
were we not commanded hither in the winter, when

192 THE CHARLES MEN

the town might have been easily taken? Now the
garrison is strengthened every day, and the enemy’s
whole army is on theadvance. We have barely thirty
cannon left, and the powder, which has many times
been wet and dried again, only casts the shot a little
way from their muzzles.”’

“‘ Nonsense, nonsense! Why, we’ve shot away
many a log thicker than a scaling-post.”’

“But here we need to shoot away many hun-
dreds.”

“Tf we can shoot away one, we can shoot away
hundreds. We must perform just what is extraor-
dinary, so that we get reputation and honor from
it. Now we shall let the Zaporogeans see that they
can work here without the least danger.”

The king stuck his broadsword under his arm,
and went out into the rain of shot on the field.
Behind him followed the Little Prince, pale, erect,
festal as a youth in an ancient procession to a sacri-
fice at the temple.

Two thick logs were driven down like two gate-
posts close to the open trench, and there the king
took his stand behind a fallen fire-ball, whose day-
light brilliance exposed him to the enemy. The
Little Prince gave him a hesitating side-look, and
felt up and down his sword-hilt with his hand,
which trembled a little. After that he climbed up on
one of the logs and took a position with his arms at
his side. Then a junior officer, who was called Mor-

POLTAVA 193

ten Preacher, stepped up on the other log. He
had a face brown as leather, black hair, and brass
rings in his ears. Motionless as two painted wooden
statues in some Catholic country district, the two
guards stood in this way behind their king, and the
furious Russians directed their catapults and field-
pieces and muskets at the remarkable spectacle. No
one wished to humble himself and descend first, and
for that reason they had to stay. There was whis-
tling and swishing as of whips and rods, as of storm-
gusts and pipes, while cannon-balls, striking near,
threw gravel and clods on high. It lightened and
thundered, the ground trembled like a frightened
horse, and splinters and bits of stone whirled
by.

“The king is there! Now he'll be shot!” cried
the soldiers, rushing forward and driving the Zapo-
rogeans among them. Again they seized the spades,
and again the Zaporogeans tore up the turf and
opened the earth, so that they could lie down and
get shelter.

In the light of the burning pitch stood the mon-
arch of the generals and dignitaries, the comrade
of thesoldiers, at once knight errant, king, and phi-
losopher. All day long dark memories had slunk in
his footsteps. He recalled Axel Hard, whom he
himself had killed by accident, and Klinckowstrom,
the friend of his youth, shot dead. He felt the loss
of neither, but he could not forget their bloody

194 THE CHARLES MEN

clothes. All the heaven-storming gayety of boy-
hood, however, awoke to life and silenced the heavy
thoughts, when one heard the bullets. He had
drained the cup of warlike adventure to the bottom,
and the drink needed to be spiced more strongly
every day to have relish. He began to see the great
clamorous victories in a colder light as they became
rarer. To besure he could still sometimes talk about
ruling great states, but that was mostly so that these
should provide him daily with a hundred more gal-
lant guardsmen. He never forgot that any moment
might be his last, but the years of misfortune were
come. How sweet would not repose be after a glori-
ous death! To will, to know he had the power, but
yet to fail and becomea mockery, because the others
could no longer, follow — that was the breath of frost
from the autumn of life. He wished to prove, he
wished to show, that he was still the exceptional man
under God’s protection. If he were not that, then
he wished to fall like the plainest soldier.
Morten Preacher meanwhile grew so excited that
he could not hold himself motionless on the pillar,
but shifted the musket from his back. Who did not
know Morten Preacher, the sharpshooter, who
could make even the king clap his hands? Either
an infantryman or a cavalryman he could bring
down in full career. He muttered and laughed, laid
the weapon to his eye, and shot at a shadow that
climbed in the farthest cherry-tree. Struck by the

POLTAVA 195

ball, it tumbled down among the blossoming twigs
like a bird. Then a hunter’s enthusiasm came over
Morten Preacher, and he hopped down and sprang
to the spot.

There lay an old man, shot dead, and beside him
stood a little girl of nine years.

“That ’s father,” she said without crying, and
looked at Morten Preacher. “‘ We were out picking
nettles, and on the way home—”

“Well, on the way home—?”

“‘We heard shooting, and then father climbed
up to look around. That is father’s cherry-tree.”

Morten Preacher shook his head, took off his
hat and tore at his hair, and sat down.

“‘God forgive me —the old man has never done
me any harm. Dear child—you cannot understand
this. But I havea ducat in my pocket. Take it! You
see, my child, I’ma hunter, you understand, a regu-
lar old expert hunter. Formerly I had my cottage
and my sweetheart, who quarrelled and struck at
me because I never moved my spade —you know
what a spade is?—but only sat in the woods and
listened to the blackcock’s song. Hearken now!
Then one morning I took my musketoon and my
dog and went my way out into the world.”

The girl turned over the ducat in the light of the
fire, but he drew her to his knee, and stroked her
softly on the cheeks.

“When I had gone along so the first day, I shot

196 THE CHARLES MEN
the dog. When I had gone another day, I gave the

gun to a forester who showed me the way. After
that I had nothing.”

“Can one buy coppers for it?”

“Surely, surely. So when I joined the army like
that and got me a war musket, then, as you may
believe, I became a hunter again. But Heaven have
pity!—You shall come here every evening in the
dusk, and then you shall get half of my day’s ra-
tions and all I can pick up.” |

She stared at the musket in the grass, so he rose
and went, leaving it there.

‘The girl can’t know that it was I who fired the
shot, and she shall never get to know it.— You are
a Judas, who has robbed an innocent man of life. —
Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill!”

He held his forehead and tottered away over the
field. Then he came to d’Albedyhll’s Dragoons,
who lay around a log fire and read prayer-books,
and there he sat down to read, until finally he be-
gan to pray aloud and preach.

“‘ What news?”’ the soldiers asked next morning
of Brakel’s red-haired sutler, a little knowing West
Gotlander, who stood in his gray blouse among the
pots and hung-up clothes.

“News? Morten Preacher must have had a sun-
stroke in the middle of the night and become ripe
for the fool’s locker. He goes bare-headed down
to the river and shouts. When the preacher’s fever

POLTAVA 197

sets in on him, he always says he has been out and
shot somebody.”

In gloomy silence the soldiers received tin bowls
hardly half full.

“Bread or dead. Why don’t we go ahead and
storm before it’s too late?”

“The king is working with ditches, and Gyllen-
krook has to stand by the work night and day. Just
listen to Morten Preacher now down by the water!
Here has been praying and psalm-singing lately so
that it makes one warm at heart to hear the field
marshal go on the rampage.”

At dusk Morten Preacher slunk away to the
cherry-tree, where the little nine-year-old stood al-
ready waiting with her smooth flaxen, almost white
hair and her serious face.

He had with him his day’s rations, and he gave
her his last kopek for the promise that he might
kiss her on both cheeks.

“Ts your mother living?”

She shook her head.

““What’s your name?”

* Dunya.”

He wanted to kiss her again on the cheeks, but
she moved away.

“Give me a kopek first!”’

He went back to the camp—and begged kopek
pieces of all whom he met.

“) will watch over her when there 1s a storming.

198 THE CHARLES MEN

She is like a little, little princess. I will lay by from
my pay, so that one day she will have something
to get married on.— Why should she not get mar-
ried ?’—Surely, surely! I have, to be sure, my wife
at home, and I have a sweetheart in the baggage-
train, too. And it seems I’m a murderer. Surely a
little princess shall marry!”

He had made a copy of St. John’s Gospel and,
sitting down, he read aloud from it tod’ Albedyhll’s
Dragoons.

All the plants of spring flamed up over the hilly
meads down to the yellowish banks of the Vorskla,
but the soldiers looked only toward Poltava, which
shone out through clumps of forest with its white
cloister walls, its wooden towers, palisades, and ram-
parts, on which young and old men, women, and
children had thrown up a breastwork of sacks filled
with earth, of wagons, bundles of twigs, and barrels.

“What’s the news? Will they never lead us
against the foe?” the soldiers inquired of the sutler.

“The foe is so kind as to come to us instead,”
he answered, and dried his forehead with his blouse.
“In the night I heard how he rolled his field-pieces.
The heavy firing is not from the Swedes, for we
have no other cannon-balls left than those which
the Zaporogeans pick up out of the ground. It’s
the czar’s whole army that’s already standing on
the other side of the river.”

Then came Major-General Lagercrona, spurring

POLTAVA 199

his horse and shouting that the king was wounded
in the foot. Beside the royal litter the field marshal
pointed out the situation of the seventeen redoubts
which the enemy had already begun to throw up
at the village of Pietruska.

““What’s the news?” muttered the soldiers daily
around the sutler.

“If there’s nothing else that any one offers, then
I’m the richer,” answered he, and pointed with his
ladle around the verdant landscape. “ The king has
got mortification in his wound. The brandy is done.
The bread is done. I’ve a little porridge for you to-
day — but then that’s done. The enemy has barred
us in and disputes our retreat. Oh, the devil, the
devil! It’s only the Swedes that can stand such
bitter days.”

He stamped on the turf, put the ladle to his eye,
and aimed like an assassin at the king’s battered
cabin, but the heroic, frost-bitten heads around him
lowered their eyes.

“Thou shalt not kill!’? whispered Morten
Preacher with upraised arms.

So passed the month of May, and the heat of
June shone in through the tent-cloths. The soldiers
sat in a row and twined wreaths for midsummer-
poles, but did not talk. They thought of the pas-
tures at home, of the cottages, of the wide, wide
moors.

On Sunday, a little before evensong, Morten

200 THE CHARLES MEN

Preacher slipped to the grove, where little Dunya,
in return for some kopeks, handed him a basket
with the first half-ripened cherries. He ate them
along with her, patted her small hands, and played
with her, carrying her like a child, but he could not
get her to smile. For his last kopek he was allowed
to kiss her three times on the cheeks.

When he came back there was clamor and
unrest. Officers inspected the soldiers’ equipment
and thumped on their swords, which here and there
were so ground that they were like worn scythes.
Brakel’s sutler pulled together his empty pans. The
king had resolved to deliver battle.

On the grassy banks outside the king’s window
the generals and colonels were already sitting to re-
ceive their divisions and written instructions. There
sat the melancholy Lewenhaupt with his great clear
eyes and a littleLatin pocket lexicon stuck between
the buttons of his coat. There sat the gallant Creutz
with hands crossed over the pommel of his sword,
and Sparre and Lagercrona carried on a noisy con-
versation in loud tones. Colonel Gyllenkrona stood
by the table, bent over his fortification drawings,
with which he appeared to be so fascinated that he
did not notice the others in the least, but occupied
himself instead with carefully and slowly flicking
the grains of sand from his beloved sketches. Lean-
ing back a little by the door,1n the worst of tempers,
stood the field marshal himself with his pointed,

POLTAVA 201

somewhat turned-up nose and his puckered, pur-
ple-red girl’s mouth.

In the dusk began the march with furled banners
and without music, and the king’s litter was set
down for a while in a grove in advance of the life-
guards. From the field were heard sounds of the
enemy knocking and hammering on their palisades
as upon waiting scaffolds. The band of Charles
men, once so proud, had now so little shot and
powder that they could not bring along to the en-
counter more than four poor field-pieces, and now
when they heard hammer-blows so near, many
among the scarred warriors were seized with cor-
poral fear and vainly offered a ducat for a swallow
of brandy. It was the wane of the moon. The
horses stood saddled, and the men had their mus-
kets or carbines at their side. From one of the 1n-
fantry regiments was heard murmuring and whis-
pering,as the chaplain distributed the Communion,
and he had to grope with his left hand in the dark-
ness to put the chalice tothe mouths of the kneeling
soldiers. Around the litter, beside which the king
had stuck his broadsword into the earth, the gen-
erals had lain down for a moment in their cloaks,
and Piper sat on a drum with his back against a
tree. To break the force of gloomy thoughts and
avoid one another, they began a philosophic dis-

202 THE CHARLES MEN

course with the king. He sat in a circle of ponderers
and taught like a master in his school, and Lewen-
haupt, the honest old Latinist colonel, recited
Roman verses.

When he ceased, he took a burning torch from
the attendants and threw the light on the king,
whose head had slid to one side. Piper and all the
generals arose and forgot their spite, so beautiful
appeared to them the.aspect of the sleeper. His hat
lay on his knee, and the coverlet was folded about
the hurt and bandaged foot. The emaciated and
fever-wasted countenance with the frost-bites on
nose and cheek had become even smaller than be-
fore, and harderand moreset. Yellowish and humid,
it was already shadowed by a premature old age, but
there was a drawing and twitching of the lips. It
looked as though he was dreaming.

The king of the Charles men dreamed that he
saw an endless line of giggling and tittering folk,
who went hurriedly pastand held their hands before
their faces to hide how they laughed at him. Some-
times they were bright green or blue,and they shone
like lighted lanterns. Finally,onasweating bay,there
came a tall man who was completely clad in dusty
silk taffeta. “Begone! you bald and lame Swede,”
he cried, guffawing from the back of his horse. “In
this very place, three hundred years ago, the hordes
of Tamerlane cut down the united armies of the
West. What would you do to me and my ocean of

POLTAVA 203

men with your last thinned-out regiments and your
four field-pieces? My men are thieves and drunken
miscreants, and are of less use to me than nails in
a plank, but I make good use of such nails. I am
building at a great ship to sail the centuries, and |
myself am still the same to-day as when I stood at
my trade, a simple carpenter in Saardam. Millions
upon millions shall bless my work.”

The king would have answered, but he found
that his tongue was paralyzed.

Lewenhaupt knelt with bared head, and touched
him on the shoulder. “My most gracious lord, day
is dawning, and I call down God’s protection over
your noble person and actions.”

The glow of morningalready burned between the
tree trunks, and the king opened his eyes. Straight-
way he grasped his broadsword. As soon as he
noted the many men who stood around him and
the bearded cavalry chaplain Norberg and all the
attendants, his expression changed, and he nodded
with his usual chilly friendliness— but the dream
still stood out clear in his thoughts. It seemed to
him that the others, too, must have seen it.

“What is a kingdom?” he said. “An accident,
a far-stretching estate with fortresses at the outly-
ing farms. Battles and negotiations move the bound-
aries. And yet, czar, supposing you have power over
millions but not over yourself? The Lord God may
so ordain that men shall one day inquire less con-

204 THE CHARLES MEN

cerning states, but all the more concerning individ-
uals. If I conquer you, your whole ship takes fire
and becomes ashes, but if you cut down me and
my men, you only fulfil thereby the victory of my
achievements,”

Lewenhaupt gripped Creutz by the arm, and
whispered mournfully: “ Dear brother, dark fore-
bodings will not slip from my mind. Shall we all ever
again stand together under God’s free heaven? Hark
how the field marshal swears and curses behind the
Upplanders. Gyllenkrook won’t even go forward to
him and ask for orders. You are holding back, too.
And look how haughtily Piper is glowering after
us!”

“The Swedes always look haughtily at one an-
other. For that reason they will some day be un-
done, and their name erased among peoples. Our
children in the tenth or twentieth generation will
see the time. To-day is only the beginning.”

“The Lord pardon your words! Never did I see
more glorious champions of God than the Swedes,
and never a people so wholly free from the self-
assurance and rough hands of a despotic will. The
king is nowtooill to hold us together longer, though
he pretends to be as confident as a young cornet. He
was given at birth the recklessness which the gods
lend their favorites, but now—”

“Nowe”

‘““Now he has got the impenetrable and over-

POLTAVA 205

mastering delusion to which the favorite’s reckless-
ness hardens when the gods abandon him.”

Lewenhaupt pressed his hat on his head and
drew his sword, but turned yet again to Creutz and
whispered: ‘‘ Perhaps men such as I with my care
forthe rankand file,and Gyllenkrook with his com-
pass-case and all his redoubts adorned with pali-
sades, have never all this time understood him
rightly. You with your broadsword have blindly
obeyed. May it be granted us all to-day to fulfil
his mission with him, for I foresee that he who sur-
vives the eveningwill envy the brothers who by then
have entered into eternal blessedness.”

The riders now sprang into the saddle. Lewen-
haupt went to his foot-regiments, and in the light
of daybreak they saw before them the expectant
field. It was black. It was already burnt. It was a
heap of ashes, which without flower or grass-blade
vanished between clumps of trees into the barren
steppes. It was so level that a cannon-carriage could
easily be driven back and forth.

Out in front of the largest Russian redoubt came
a red-clad rider, who fired off his pistol. Then the
enemy let all their drums beat behind the outworks,
on which appeared innumerable troops of soldiers
and standards and catapults and field-pieces. Im-
mediately the Swedish music answered throughout
all the regiments.

The indomitable Axel Sparre and Karl Gustaf

206 THE CHARLES MEN

Roos rushed in front of the army with their bat-
talions, and stormed the field redoubts. Horses
snorted, harness creaked, swords and carbines clat-
tered, and ashes and dust fell over the clumps of
trees so that the green was quenched on the leaf-
age.

The king sent Creutz with the left wing after the
conquering Sparre, and behind the captured en-
trenchments the enemy’s cavalry rushed in flight
toward the swampy meadows by the Vorskla. On
the other side Lewenhaupt advanced with his in-
fantry, occupied two redoubts, and disposed himself
to attack the enemy’s camp from the south with
the bayonet. There the confusion was so great that
women began to harness horses to the baggage
wagons, but the czarina, a tall womanof some twenty
years with a high bosom, white forehead, and deeply
colored cheeks, still stood out by the wounded
among her bandage-strips and water-flasks with an
almost haughty tranquillity.

Meanwhile the generals collected around the
Swedish king’s litter, which was borne along not
far from the East Gotland infantry regiment and
set down by a bog. Here a halt was commanded,
and a crowd with deep bowing and taking off of
hats began already to congratulate His Majesty and
wish for further progress. While the lackey Hult-
man was filtering water and catching it in a silver

goblet, the king said: ‘‘ Major-General Roos has

POLTAVA 207

been surrounded, and the field marshal has there-
fore checked the other troops, but Lagercrona and
Sparre have been sent back to help Roos on, and he
is likely to come here soon.”

Thus the army remained standing there awhile,
but soon Sparre came up, sprinkled with drops of
blood, and related that he could not get through
on account of the enemy’s superior numbers. The
troops now marched back and forth for a long time
without the officers’ knowing where they should lead
them, and during the wasted time the Russians got
fresh courage. Then Lewenhaupt suddenly put
himself in motion, marched to the stretch of woods
where Creutz’ squadrons had taken position, and
there drewup the infantry in lineagainst the enemy.
No one knew from where the command for this had
been given out, and, beside himself with wrath, the
field marshal galloped forward to the king’s litter,
which went beside the Guards.

“Ts it Your Majesty who commanded Lewen-
haupt with the infantry to draw himself up against
the enemy?”

The disrespectful tones took the king aback, and
as if by the light of a dark lantern that has been
suddenly opened, he saw how wearily and coldly
even his closest favorites in the circle were staring
at him.

“No,” heanswered reluctantly, but became blush-
ing red, and all understood that he hed.

208 THE CHARLES MEN

Then in the furiously raging field marshal every
last glimmer of respect and trust was quenched. He
gave voice to the spite and despair which all had
nourished for days and months. The king, acclaimed
for his love of veracity, had all at once been humil-
iated to the level of a wounded soldier, had behaved
himself churlishly, and tried to exculpate himself
with rude prevarications. Rehnskiolddid not reflect.
The moment of retribution had come. He lost con-
trol of himself. Hewanted to take revenge and pun-
ish and humiliate. He could not pretend that he
believed in the lying. He could not even use the
customary form of address.

“Yes, yes,” he shouted from his horse, “that’s
what you always do. Would that you would leave
it to me!”’

With that he turned his back on him.

The king sat motionless on the litter. He had
been shamed before the whole troop, and his diffi-
dence and disinclination for bickering had befooled
him into an unpremeditated and pitiful trick. His
own men had heard him lie likean interrogated bag-
gage-driver. Hecould not take back his words with-
out still more exposing his shame. The degrada-
tion he had brought upon himself as man was for
him harder to endure than if he had lost his crown.
He wanted to spring up, throw himself on a horse,
and take along with him the deep ranks, Ais men,
who still believed that he was the chosen of God.

POLTAVA 209

But the pain in his foot and a great lassitude re-
strained him. His cheeks still glowed, but it was the
heat of fever, and for the first time the broadsword
trembled in the hand which he was now barely
able to raise.

“Take the litter before the front!”’ he shouted.
“Take the litter before the front!”’

“The cavalry have not got forward yet,” burst
out Gyllenkrook with vehemence. “Is it possible
that the battle shall begin so soon?”

“They are marching now,” answered the king
with vexation, ‘and the enemy is coming out of
his lines with the infantry.”

ThenGyllenkrook commended theking to God’s
protection, and seated himself on his horse beside
the Guards, who straightway advanced and gave the
first volley.

The battle-token was a straw fastened on the hat,
and through the noise of shots and trumpets and
oboes and drums and cavalry kettledrums sounded
the battle-cry of the troops: “God with us! God with
us!” In the throng and farther out on the field old
war-comrades and near relatives, who had aforetime
sat merrily together at home at wedding and chris-
tening, met and shouted to one another a last greet-
ing. Where there was more space, captains and lieu-
tenants and ensigns marched before the battalions,
pale as corpses, in time with the music, as if they
had filed up toa paradein the citadel square by the old

210 THE CHARLES MEN

Three Crowns; butthesoldiers clenched hands over
their empty cartridge-boxes. Through the midst of
the fire from the redoubts the Life Guards went
in a stubborn line with muskets on shoulder, but
when they came to close quarters with the enemy,
they shook their clicking weapons savagely and
grasped their bayonets. Dust and dirt soon be-
grimed them all,so that the green coats of the enemy
could no longer be distinguished from the blue, and
Swedes lifted musket butt against Swedes. In front
of Kruse’s dragoons Cornet Queckfelt tumbled
from his horse with a bullet in his body and the ban-
ner against his breast. Major Ridderborg, whoin the
morning had seen his gray-haired father fall among
the troopers by the king’s litter, was dragged un-
conscious from the hand-to-hand struggle. In front
of the Nylandregiment fell Colonel Torstenson, and
Lieutenant Gyllenbogel stood with shot-wounds in
both cheeks, so that one could see the daylight
through them. In a thicket behind the Scanian
Gentleman-Dragoons reeled Captain Horn, badly
wounded in the right leg, and his faithful servant,
Daniel Lidbom, held him around the body and dried
his forehead. Cavalryman Per Windropp sat dead
on his horse, in his hand the tatters of a company flag
that had been torn to pieces, and Lieutenant Pauli,
who believed him only wounded, offered him his
canteen. In front of the Kalmar regiment dropped
Colonel Rank, struck in the heart; Major Lejon-

POL TAVA 211

hjelm lay with his leg shot off; and by the corpse of
Lieutenant-Colonel Silversparre Ensign Djurklo
foughtwith brokensword tosavethebanner, until he
sank down dying. Around him lay half the non-com-
missioned officers and half the men asa hero’s watch.
The Jonkoping regiment, which was nearest the
redoubts, carried along their wounded colonel,
and after Lieutenant-Colonel Night-and-Day and
Major Oxe had fallen in their blood, Captain Mo6r-
ner took command. Beside him lay prostrate in the
ashes on the ground Ensign Tigerskiold with his
face hidden in his hands, propped on his elbows
and bleeding from five wounds. Scarcely a fourth of
the regiment could still bear arms.

At this moment the field marshal came riding,
and cried out to Morner with untimely warmth:
“Where the deuce have the regiment’s officers gone
off to?”

“They are lying wounded or dead.”

“Why the thousand devils aren’t you lying there
with them?”

“No, my old mother’s supplications have called
down God’s protection over me, and therefore I’m
alive and have the honor of commanding this regi-
ment, which has done and will do its duty as true
warriors. — Stand, boys, stand!”

Colonel Wrangel lay already dead and unrecog-
nizable, and his recruits sought in vain to prop him
up under the arms. Colonel Ulfsparre, who went

212 THE CHARLES MEN
before the West Gotlanders, fell with his hands

pressed to his heart, and his major, the dauntless
Sven Lagerberg, was struck down backwards by a
musket-ball. The whole hostile army went over
him. He heard the horses and the cannon-carriages.
He was trampled and kicked and rolled in ashes
and dirt among stiffening corpses and moaning
wounded, till a wounded dragoon finally took him
on his horse, and mercifully conducted him to the
baggage-train.

The beloved old banners, shot into strips, were
still fluttering in goodly numbers over the human
sea, but they wavered and tottered, they were torn
and snapped, and at last they sank and vanished one
by one. The Uppland regiment, which drew most
of its men from the heart of Sweden, from the an-
cient home of the Svea at Malardale, was annihi-
lated. Flags with the cross-surmounted apple in the
corner were twisted from the clenched hands of the
fallen,and amid Cossack pikesand butts and sabres
Colonel Stjernhook was stretched on the ground,
as he stammered: ‘‘ Now is the time when we may
cry: Father, itis finished!”’ Lieutenant-Colonel von
Post and Major Anrep fell almost side by side. Cap-
tains Gripenberg and Hjulhammar,and Lieutenant
Essen, and the three boyishly slender and beard-
less Ensigns Flygare, Brinck, and Duben already
lay in the throes of death. ‘Stand, boys, stand!”
shouted officers and soldiers, and fell over one an-

POLTAVA 23

other, so that of corpses and rags, of clothing and
sod and sand, was built a mound which served the
living for a breastwork. Whistling grapeshot and
musket-balls, grenades and exploding canister,
rained over the fighting and the dead, and the air
was so saturated with dirt and smoke that mencould
see only a horse’s length ahead.

Then the troops began to waver. Lewenhaupt
drew a pistol from the holster and pointed it at his
own men. He threatened and struck. “Stand, boys,
in Jesus’ holy name! I see the king’s litter.” “If the
king is here, we ’ll stand,” answered the soldiers.
«Stand, boys! halt, stand! God with us!” they
shouted to themselves, as if to control their limbs,
that trembled and dripped with sweat and blood.
But step by step they yielded, and the riders reined
in their horses, until, with slashed faces and hands,
they finally wheeled about in wild flight, man after
man, and trampled one another down. Under the
rising clouds of smoke they saw the king, who amid
fallen troopers, bearers, and attendants lay on the
ground without a hat, supported on his elbow, with
the injured foot propped on the crushed litter, over
which had been spread the clay-spotted cloak of the
slain trooper Oxehufvud. The stiffened face was
raven-black with grime, but the eyes kindled, and
he stammered: ‘‘Swedes! Swedes!”

In the yielding ranks many stood still when they
recognized the voice, because it seemed to them that

214 THE CHARLES MEN

even if they could save themselves now, they must
sometime on their death-bed hear across the pillow
that timid and lonely voice. He had not the strength
to raise himself, but they lifted him on their crossed
pikes like a doomed and helpless invalid. Againand
again, though, the bearers were shot down, and yet
in that instant, when the bleeding men succumbed,
they stretched up their arms to support him so
that he should not be hurt in the fall. Then Major
Wolffelt lifted him on his horse, and afterwards fell
himself under the weapons of the pursuing Cos-
sacks. The foot, which was laid over the horse’s
neck, bled violently, and the bandage dragged in
the dust. A cannon-ball from the entrenchments
struck off the horse’s leg, but Trooper Gierta lifted
the king upon his charger and, himself wounded,
mounted on the three-legged and bleeding horse.
The cavalrymen who had made a ring about the
king could hardly hold back the pursuers.

Meanwhile Gyllenkrook rushed over the field,
and exhorted the straggling soldiers to rally, but
they answered him: “ Weare all wounded and our
officers dead.” He then met the field marshal, and
now upon the day of retribution there was no
longer any deference.

Gyllenkrook shouted to him offensively, “‘ Does
Your Excellency hear that the volleys are still
sounding on our left wing! Here are a mass of

POLTAVA 215

squadrons that have sat down. Order them to go
somewhere!”

“Here everything is mad! Here to be sure some
obey me with their haunches, but few with their
hearts,” answered the field marshal, and rode fur-
ther and further to the left. At the same time Gyl-
lenkrook saw Piper with his men of the chancellery
ride off to the right. Had the two Excellencies
spoken together? He shouted after them that they
were betaking themselves straight toward the en-
emy, but they did notturn about. Then he struck his
hand on the pommel of his saddle, and understood
that now the wine of patience was drunk, that now
there remained only captivity or death.

There lay behind him no longer a field. There
grew from the earth a boundless wood, but the
trunks were men and the boughs weapons. It
broadened out. It filled the whole landscape, and
constantly, constantly spread forward over the
bleeding and dying. It was the czar’s army, that
marched on to take possession of its land and ded-
icate its empire to future times. Ever nearer and
nearer was heard an uncanny and dull-sounding
religious hymn. Slowly, step by step, as in a funeral
procession, between swinging thuribles and high
over the heads of thousands upon thousands, was
borne the giant standard. On the cloth appeared
the czar’s ancestral tree, surrounded by saints, and

216 THE CHARLES MEN

above, under the Trinity, was his own likeness.

The Swedish fugitives gathered around the king
by the baggage, where the Swedish Nobleman-
Guards and some other regiments kept watch.
Having bound up his foot and tolerably wiped off
the grime, he now sat in a blue wagon beside the
wounded Colonel Hard.

“Where is Adlerfeldt, the chamberlain?” he
asked.

Those who stood around him answered, “He
fell by a cannon-shot close to Your Majesty’s lit-
ter.”

At that moment the Dalecarlian regiment came
past, shattered and in great disorder.

“‘Dalecarlians,” inquired the king, “where is
Siegeroth, your Colonel, and Major Svinhufvud,
and where is the merry Drake, who is said to have
fought so valiantly at the redoubt that he shall get
a regiment?”

‘They-aresshot,-allvof them’

“Where, then, are the Little Prince, and Piper,
and the field marshal?”

Those around him shook their heads and looked
at one another. Should they once for all tell him
the whole truth? Should they on that day of judg-
ment expose all his loneliness? Should they tell
him, too, that Hedwig Sofia, his favorite sister, had
lain for half a year in her cofin —unburied? There
was none who dared to do that.

POLTAVA eo ery

“Captured,” they answered reluctantly.

“Captured? Captured among the Muscovites?
Better go among the Turks, then. Forward!”

He paled, but he spoke calmly and almost tri-
umphantly with the unalterable smile on his lips.

A grizzled soldier among the Dalecarlians whis-
pered to the comrades, “Truly I have never seen
him so youthful and happy since the day at Narva,
when he went with Stenbock. This is a day of vic-
tory to him.”

The wagon rolled away, and the king of the
Charles men, in front of his disordered, fleeing
army of haughty ragamuffins, swearing baggage
crones, cripples moaning loudly, and limping
horses, marched with flying banners and resound-
ing music as from his greatest victory.

By two o’clock the last volleys were fired, and
then stillness had spread itself over the battle-field,
where Mazeppa’s last Cossacks and countless Zapo-
rogeans were impaled alive on stakes. Homesteads
and mills stood burned, trees shot asunder, and the
fallen heroes lay with dust and ashes blown over
them, all with eyes wide open, as if they had stared
back from another world on the past years and
on the living. A few captured priests and soldiers
roamed about, seeking for their countrymen and
sometimes opening a shallow grave, over which the

218 | THE CHARLES MEN

words of burial in the speech of their far-off home-
land were softly whispered out into the dusk of the
June evening. After that the grave was again shut,
to be overgrown with sedge grassand rough thistles.
For centuries after, they have rustled to the winds
of the steppes on the gloomy bogland to which the
Russians gave the name of the Swedes’ Cemetery.

When one of the priests found Lieutenant-Colo-
nel Wetzel, who had fallen, together with his two
sons, he picked up the empty covers of the prayer-
book which lay beside him, adorned with the fam-
ily crest.

“You are the last of your family,” he said; “and
how many a stock has been extinguished on this
field! Galle, Siegeroth, Mannersvard, Rosenskidld,
von Borgen. As I now tear apart the crest on this
cover and strew it to the winds, I also in the name
of my afflicted, my annihilated father-folk, shatter
the coats-of-arms above you all.”

A multitude of bodies were thrown together in
a heap outside of the field entrenchment where the
day’s conflict had been hottest, but the others re-
mained strewn about. The air was filled almost at
once with a stale vapor and with countless flapping
crows. But darkness descended silently with all the
more solemnity over the wide city of graves, though
the wounded still cried for water. Those most
pitiably mangled prayed that some one in mercy
would finish them with a sword-thrust, or they

POLTAVA 219

dragged themselves to a horse that had been shot,
pulled the pistols from the holsters, and took them-
selves from the light of day, after they had on
tremulous knees called down a blessing over all at
home and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Then a mor-
tally wounded dragoon began to speak words of
power and to thank God for his glorious death-
wounds. Over himself and his comrades he uttered
the burial words and thrice took earth with his
hands and cast it upon his breast. “Out of earth
are we come, to earth we shall return.”’ After that
he preached with ecstasy of the Resurrection, and
finally with a loud voice took up a funeral hymn,
and twenty or thirty voices answered far off in the
dark under the star-bright heavens.

Morten Preacher, who stole around on the plain
without feeling any terror of the fallen, contin-
ued the psalm when the dragoon was silent. Then
he caught sight of an old woman, who came with
a torch. After her followed a line of peasants with
long, rude carts, on which they loaded clothing
and all manner of plunder. A fallen cornet, who
was not yet dead, defended himself with his hand
and would not let go from him a necklace with a
little silver cross, but they thrust him down with a
hay-fork.

Then Morten Preacher sprang forward. “Thou
shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill!”” he whispered.
Among the plundering women he recognized his

220 THE CHARLES MEN

nine-year-old Dunya, his little princess. His whole
countenance changed, and he stretched out both
hands to her, half like a father, half like a bashful
lover. She stared at him, and burst into a silly
laugh.

“That’s the wicked Swede,” she cried, “who
bribed me so as to get cherries and kiss me on the
cheeks.”

She sprang upon him like a cat and tore the ear-
rings from him, so that the blood ran down the sides
of his neck. He fell backwards, and the women
seized him and struck him and tore his clothes from
him. They came upon his transcript of St. John’s
Gospel, and strewed the leaves around like feathers
from a plucked fowl. They pulled off his flap-boots
and ragged stockings, but when he saw his little
Dunya clutch at a hay-fork, he wrenched himself
loose with the strength of upflaming hate and fled
in his shirt over wounded and dead.

“Not even trust in a guileless heart is left us
more,” he muttered, and clambered up on a Jame
horse which had attached itself to him in the dark-
ness. “God has abandoned us. This is the judg-
ment. All is over, and the whole world is dark.”

He rode for two nights and two days, and
wounded stragglers pointed out the road. He found
the fleeing Swedes on a peninsula between the
Vorskla and the bright Dnieper, which spread it-

self out like a lake between banks overgrown with

POLTAVA 22)

reeds, underbrush, and bushes. The Russians were
close behind them on the landward side, but when
the outposts saw Morten Preacher in his bloody
shirt, riding bare-back on the lame horse, they
sprang to one side in terror and only shot after him
when he was already past.

The sun burned hot as fire. The wounded and
those with camp-fever were bedded under bushes
by the water. The generals stood in conversation,
and Lewenhaupt turned mournfully to Creutz.

“Tf the king is taken, the men of Sweden will
abandon their houses and leave their last wisp of
hay for his ransom. The responsibility is ours.
This war is a game of chess, where everything is
decided by taking the kings. On my knees I have
prayed him to have himself rowed across the river,
but he pushed me away, and said he had serious
matters to consider.”

“‘ My dear brother, you talk to him as toa gouty
statesman. You should never talk to him as toa
man, but as to a youth who is proud of being chal-
lenged to show his manhood.”

Creutz went forward to the king’s wagon and
swung the gloves in his hand with such violence that
it seemed as if he meant to strike Charles on the
forehead, but he was at once confounded by his
radiant glance.

“Your Majesty is in perplexity?”’

“J fight ill with the pen—that’s what I’m think-

222 THE CHARLES MEN

ing of. I wish to draw up my will and arrange for the
succession. Then we’ll set the guns cracking! If I’m
left on the field, I wish to be buried in my shirt like
a common soldier on the place where I fall.”

Creutz twisted and squeezed the gloves; he was
cowed and lowered his head, like the others.

“‘ Most gracious lord, I am not of those who pray
God to spare their life, because full well do I under-
stand the highest longing of a hero. If Your Maj-
esty shouldget your bullet. . . well,sobeit,in Jesus’
name! But to-day Your Majesty can no longer stay
in the saddle. God forgive my words, but Your Maj-
esty has got to the point of being carried around
helpless, and when the last of us has lost his life,
there will be left only Your Majesty —a prisoner!”

“*A man should not only stand one against five,
he should also be able to stand one against all.”

“True, true. But—devil take me!—we com-
mon fellows in uniform are not fit for that. One
against all? That means one against the whole
world. For that are needed men of quite a differ-
ent sort, for we are such pitiful wretches that we
have nothing to defend ourselves with but our
blades. Now that I have described the situation
plainly, I therefore beseech Your Majesty to stay
with us and not cross the river, because then Your
Majesty would set yourself one against all. Then
it would be: What an Alexander to run away and
leave his troops to the Russians! What a heartless,

POL TAVA 223

disgraceful dolt! Look, look! And he took the plate
and money-barrels from Saxony along instead of
leaving everythingtotheRussians.Oho, yes, hahaha!
— We poor honest subjects can never allow that
Your Majesty should set yourself'as one against the
whole world in that way, to expose your high per-
son to the mud-flinging that ignorance and stu-
pidity will not spare either to the field marshal or
Piper or Lewenhaupt or the rest of us. When did
stupidity ever learn tounderstand misfortune? Your
Majesty wants to die, and therefore it is no sacri-
fice and no achievement to die—that we old war-
dogs know; but pride, pride, Your Majesty, to offer
up that for your subjects is a sacrifice that the sub-
jects cannot consent to. That the men cannot be
taken over is clear. We have no barges, no anchors,
no spikes, not enough logs, no carpenters. There-
fore I require that Your Majesty remain and do not
defy the world.”

“Get the boats ready!” ordered the king.

Mazeppa, the gallant landed proprietor, had
collected his trunks and his two barrels of ducats,
and was already sitting on his wagon far out in the
water. Zaporogeans and swarms of soldiers tied
their clothes on their backs, took wagon-lids and
branches of trees under their arms, and sprang into
the waves. At midnight the king’s wagon also was
lifted on two boats tied together, and Gyllenkrook,
who stood at his feet, dumbly surrendered to Lew-

224 THE CHARLES MEN

enhaupt the battle-plan, pasted on a board. No one
spoke. The night was starry and quiet, and the
oar-strokes of the troopers died away on the shin-
ing river.

‘““We two shall never see him again,” muttered
Creutz to Lewenhaupt. ‘His eyes were so won-
derful just now! There is still oil in the lamp, but
I am gazing curiously at his future. How will he
be when he is conquered, ridiculed, old?”

Lewenhaupt answered, “‘’The wreath he twined
for himself slid off upon his subjects instead. It
will lie forever on the forgotten graves up there in
the marshes.—So we must thank him for all he
has made of us.”

Far off through the darkness of the night was
heard the lamenting voice of Morten Preacher:
««¢ And men have made of me a by-word before the
world,’ saith Job. ‘And I am become a mockery,
and mine eyes are wasted with grief, and my limbs
are all a shadow. Unto corruption I say: thou art
my father, and unto worms: ye are my mother and
sister. And where then is my hope? It goeth down
to the gate of death, when I and it shall rest in the
earth.’”’

Day came on,and Morten Preacher in his bloody
shirt rode from group to group, examining the men
in the Catechism and Biblical knowledge. The sol-
diers stood in silence by the empty tent of the king,
but when the shout was raised that they must sur-

POLTAVA 225

render, and when the Russian general Bauer, tanned
by the sun, ascended the hill to receive the trophies,
Morten Preacher stepped down and wrung his
hands.

Round about, with their brazen helmets and
pikes, sat the Cossacks on their tired and panting
horses, and before them on the ground were laid
kettledrums and bass-drumsand hornsand muskets
whose thunder had rolled over battalions, and the
well-known flags to which once mothers and wives
had waved farewell from door and stairway and
window. There was gleaming and sparkling on the
heather. Sullen old under-officers embraced each
other sobbing. Some cut off their bandages and let
the blood run, and two battle-brothers quenched
each other’s lives with their swords at the same
time that they threw them down before the con-
querors. Dumb and threatening, the cripples ad-
vanced. Therecame youths with frost-bitten cheeks,
and without nose and ears, so that they were like
dead men. Ensign Piper, not yet full-grown, who
had lost his heels, stumbled up on crutches. There
camethecourtier Gunterfelt, who lacked both hands,
and had got in France two others of wood, black and
shining, which fingered up and down on his coat.
There rattled wooden legs and canes and litters and
ambulance-wagons.

Morten Preacher stood with hands clasped.
Sparks leaped before his eyes. There was a roaring

226 THE CHARLES MEN

and moaning within, and the old preaching-spirit
came so violently over him that he himself heard
how his voice at one time was choked and hoarse,
but the next grew so strong that it seemed to him
as if he were borne away on the wings of it and
were changed to a flame of fire.

He reeled forward to the arms that had been
laid downand pointed to the empty tent ofthe king.

“He alone is the offender. You, mother or
widow, clad in mourning, turn his picture to the
wall! Forbid the little ones to mention his name!
You, little Dunya, who with your playmates will
soon be picking flowers on the graves, build his -
monument with skulls and horses’ heads! You, crip-
ple, knock with your crutch on the hollow earth and
summon him to a meeting there below, where thou-
sands whom he sacrificed await him!—And yet I
know that one day before the judgment seat of right-
eousness we shall all limp forward on our wooden
legs and crutches, and say: ‘Forgive him, Father,
as we have forgiven him, because our love was both
his victory and his destruction.’”

When no one replied, but all stood bent forward
and dumb as if they had answered the same, his de-
spair was yet more vehement. He covered his angu-
lar face with his hands.

“Tell me by the grace of God that he lives
cried he. ‘‘Say that he lives!”

With his black wooden fingers Gunterfelt raised

lie

POLTAVA 229

his hat from his head and answered, “ His Majesty
is saved.”

Then Morten Preacher bowed his knee, and
trembled, and recovered himself.

‘“ Praised be the Lord of Hosts!” he stammered.
“If the king is saved, then I will bear whatever
burden fate shall lay upon me.”

“Yes, yes, praised be the Lord of Hosts!” re-
peated the Swedes mumbling, and all slowly lifted
their hats from their heads.

Behold My Children!
Cee ANDERS GroBERG stood with

his canteen on Saracen’s Heath. Around him
reeled and marched the last band of fleeing Swedes
and Zaporogeans, and on wagons lay those who
had been wounded at Poltava. The whole night and
morning Anders Groberg had endured thirst so as
to spare the last drops of water to the utmost, and
the torture had now become overpowering. But in
the very moment he lifted the canteen to his lips,
he lowered it again.

“My God, my God!” he stammered, “why
should I alone drink, when all the others are thirst-
ing? If Thou hast led us forth into the wilderness
and the steppes, it is that Thou shouldst sometime
be able to say: ‘From your poverty-stricken coun-
try of snow I let you go forth into the world with
- musket on shoulder to be hailed as heroes and con-
querors, but when I read your hearts and saw that
they remained pure, that ye were my children, then
I tore your clothes in pieces and set crutches in your
hands and wooden legs under your bodies, so that
ye should no more hanker after domination over
men, but should be gathered among my saints. Such
greatness did I grant unto you.’”

Anders Groberg stood awhile longer with the
canteen before him. Then he went on, and handed
it to the king, who lay in burning fever among the

BEHOLD MY CHILDREN 229

sacks of hay on his wagon. The king’s lips adhered to
his teeth; they split and bled when he opened them.

“No, no,” he whispered, “give the water to the
wounded! I have just had a glass.”

Anders Groberg knew well that the king had had
no water. He himself was the only man who had
taken thought for the morrow and saved it up, and
neither spring nor bog had they found for many a
mile. But now, as he turned away from the wagon,
weakness and temptation once more came over him.
He hung the canteen back at his side and contin-
ued to march and march without handing it to the
wounded. He squeezed the stopper and strove in
his soul, but every time he raised the canteen to
his mouth, he let it fall again and had not the heart
to drink of the water.

“Perhaps; he thought, “T might refresh myself
with a clearer conscience, if as an offset I should
humiliate myself in something else.”

At noon, when the sun burned most hotly, he
saw a gray-haired subaltern who went almost naked
with unbandaged wounds on his shoulder. There-
upon he tore up his shirt, bound the other’s wounds,
and gave him his coat; but as soonas he shut his
hand on his canteen again, his unrest of conscience
woke anew. Then he gave his boots to a sick driver
lad, who limped along with bare and bleeding feet,
but when he still could not swallow the water with
an easy mind in the midst of all the other thirsty

230 THE CHARLES MEN

men, he became embittered and hard. He pointed
with derisive curses at the money-barrels which, full
of goldand silver, clattered as they were taken along
on two of the wagons, but which could not provide
the unfortunate soldiers with a spoonful of brackish
bog-water.

“Whip the horses!” he shouted, “whip the
horses, so that the money-barrels shall not be left
behind! Whip the men, too!”

The soldiers answered nothing, because now they
recognized him again as he used to be formerly,
when in the years of success he had gone in front
of the line, bitter and abusive. They did not notice
that he had hardly heard his own voice before he
bent his head and began again to cudgel his brains
and whisper to himself.

“Must I then of necessity offer up just the one
thing that has now any worth for me?” he thought.
“ Haha! May we also some day roll the money-
barrels on the grass and nevermore touch them
with our fingers! My God, my God! Once at Ve-
perik I heard the dying soldier Bengt Geting speak
with envy of the fallen who had received a clean
white shirt. My longing dares not rise so high. I de-
sire so little . . . ah, only this, not to be left lying
behind the others on the heath, only to be laid in
the ground, to have earth and grass over me—and
a couple of words on the muster-roll. Now it will
stand: Anders Groberg, his fate unknown.”

BEHOLD MY CHILDREN Dain

Towards dusk a halt was made to bury thosewho
had died during the day, and a couple of Zaporo-
geans had already stuck their spades in the ground.
In the reedy grass grew a few low bushes with cher-
ries which, meanwhile, officers and soldiers picked
and divided among them as a bounty bestowed from
God’s own hands. Anders Groberg slunk behind
the bushes to drink the water unseen by the others.
But just then the trumpets began to blow as a sign
that the pursuing Russians had again become visible
against the heaven on the farthest waves of the
parched desert of grass.

Anders Groberg opened the tin stopper, but the
longer he inhaled the moist smell, the harder beat
his heart, and in the nearest wagon the dying Borje
Kove,a soldierin charge of the silver, raised himself
and stared at him.

Anders Groberg tried to meet his look, but could
not, and yet again he pushed the draught of refresh-
ment from him.

“Blessed are those that hunger and thirst atter
righteousness,” he said.

Like an acolyte who gives the sacrament, he bore
the canteen 1n front of him and held it to the mouth
of the soldier, and the dying man drank the water
to the Jast drop.

Anders Groberg held on tight to the tail-board,
but when the wheel rolled on again, his hand slipped
off, and he tottered to his knees on the grass.

232 THE CHARLES MEN

“There is no place for me onthe wagons, ”’ hesaid,
and pulled a spade to him. “Though I’m hardly
thirty years old, I am as weary and infirm as a man
of ninety. But leave me one of the spades, so that,
if my strength stays by me, I may at least be able to
open the earth and lay me down in my last abode.
All my unrest has now fallen sweetly to sleep, and
a voice calls at my ear: ‘Behold my children!’”’

Once more the soldiers around the shaking
wagons began their wandering, and the trumpeters
turned in the saddle. Flocks of storks with out-
spread wings hovered in the dusk over the darken-
ing tracts, and out on the steppe Anders Groberg
still knelt with the spade in his hands.

Since then no one has learned anything of his
fate. ;

At the Council Table

N the ante-room of the Council Chamber al-

ready stood the secretary, Schmedeman, with the
address to the chiefs of the provinces, which was
now to be signed, and in which new levies were
required from impoverished Sweden.

The lords began to assemble, and old Frdlich,
who with crossed hands was groaning and snoring
in a corner beside the sick Falkenberg, suddenly
awoke.

“We must hand over to the king the whole
bank with the money and the patents,” he said
without lifting his reddened eyelids.

Then Arvid Horn started forward with such
vehemence that his chair fell back on the floor,
and shouted with his arms lifted toward the ceil-
ing: “ Keep yourself to your heavenly revelations
and seasons of prayer with sisterEva-Greta and do
not make thieves of us out of mere good intentions
toward His Royal Majesty!”

‘Satan, Satan!” retorted Falkenberg, and rapped
with his colorless fingers on the arm of the chair.
“Here is blackguarding and maligning from day
to day. No Swede any longer respects the honor
of another, but no one has the courage for an hon-
est word against him who alone is responsible for
it all. Yes, don’t you sit down again, you Horn,
for people are most of all incensed about your yacht

234. THE CHARLES MEN

in the Malar, and assert that with the powder
smoke from your salutes you want to win the same
gallant favor with Princess Ulrika Eleonora which
Creutz had with Princess Hedwig Sofia of most
blessed memory.— Yes, yes, yes, don’t talk any
more about the person of the king. Read his letter
instead! Do that! Is there a single line of it that
is worthy of the leader of an unfortunate people?”’
“Bah! Don’t talk about the letter either!’ an-
swered Horn, picking up his chairand sitting down.
‘A little prattle for women, evasions, and indiffer-
ent matters! Don’t ask that a person who never
exposes himself in a conversation shall set himself
down in a tent and pour out his soul on a sheet
of paper! But I may well admit that sometime an
after-reckoning will follow on all this misery.”
“Sometime, say you!” continued the invalid
Falkenberg, and raised himself on his trembling
arms. “Sometime! Have the Swedes then become
cringers and hypocrites? Neither Christian the Ty-
rant nor Erik XIV has done us so much harm as
this man, and therefore he belongs to the devil.
Since our men have fallen in the field, only old-
woman souls are left alive, and those are they that
now begin to propagate the Swedish people.”
The venerable Fabian Wrede stood up among
the speakers, and his voice was wondrously faint
and quiet.
“The session is beginning,” he said, and pointed

AT THE - COUNCIL TABLE 235

to the open doors. “I’m no cringer. I was never
of those who jostled around the young master to
make him of age, and I am in disfavor. My native
land, that is everything to me — father and mother,
home, memory, all, all! I know that now my native
land is bleeding to death. I know, too, that some-
time retribution will follow. But the present is not
the time to waste thought upon that. When God
sets on us the crown of thorns, that man is not
greatest who most conveniently puts it off, but he
who himself presses it on all the tighter and says:
‘Father, here stand I to serve Thee.’— And I say
to you that never, never amid the victory-banners
in former years has our little people come nearer
to imperishable greatness than to-day.”

Horn went into the assembly hall, but on the
way he turned to Falkenberg with lowered voice:
““My mother had many sons besides me. They
have got their bullets. Shall I be worse than they?
You talk about the king. If a single man can lure
a whole people to so many sacrifices, must not that
man be superior to other men?”’

Wrede took Falkenberg gently by the shoulders,
and added inan undertone: “And the people who
have borne so much—would you to-day forbid
that pecple to press fast the crown of martyrdom?”

The lords entered the hall, but, propped on his
stick, Kalkenberg continued to wander back and
forth in the ante-room. When he at length sat down

236 THE CHARLES MEN

at the Council table, the secretary had already read
out the long address, and the signatures were de-
sired.

No one asked leave to speak. Falkenberg sat
huddled together in his armchair. His eyes were
moist and dim. Forgetful of precedent, he fumbled
with his hands on all sides and whispered, ‘A pen,

1?
a pen.

In the Church Square

ROAD-SHOULDERED Jons Snare of

Mora was eating porridge with his peasant
neighbors, Mons and Mathias. He was so stingy
that he lay and slept all winter in a shutter-bed to
save lighting. His large, flat, beardless face, which
glowed in the light from the round window, was
uglier and more wrinkled than a troll’s, and he
talked slowly with a hollow and rumbling voice.

“‘T predict,” said he, striking his hand on the
table, “that days of bark-bread are coming. To-
morrow I kill my last cow. Every year brings new
levies and conscriptions, and now they want to take
from us the church bell, the money for the Com-
munion wine, and the grain in the church store-
house.”

“It’s truly spoken, that,” said Mons.

He scratched his gray cheeks and took another
pinch of salt on his porridge-spoon, because it was
the Sabbath. At other times Mons was so stingy
that he went around among the neighbors and
counted the pinches of salt on the porridge and the
sticks of wood under the pot.

Mathias, on the contrary, leaned forward over
the table, shrivelled and ugly, with black teeth and
two small shining gray vipers for eyes. He was,
however, the stingiest of the three. A more cov-
etous peasant never lived in the parish. He was

238 THE CHARLES MEN

so stingy that he went into the sacristy to the priest
and ordered him on week days to wear wooden
shoes like the common folk.

“My opinion simply is,” he droned, “that God
set us peasants to keep our thumbs on the na-
tion’s purse. Not a copper will I lay in the bailiff’s
fist:

“But steal my fish-net,” answered Jons Snare,
“that you could.”

“It’s truly spoken, that,” said Mons.

Mathias sneered, and broke a !oaf with the back
of an axe: “ What’s a man to do when he’s starv-
ings’

Jons Snare shook his long and straggling yellow
hair and got up, and his speech could be heard far
outside the cabin.

“Ay, sluggard, then do you take your father’s
old blunderbuss from the wall, pick off the bailiff
and the tax assessor, and hide them in the hayloft.
And before you are done for or come to the gallows,
you shall go with me to Stockholm to teach the
great gentlemen peasant wit. Peace we demand,
and peace it shall be!”

“Tt’s truly spoken, that. We’ll go with you,”
said Mons and got up, swaying in the knees.

Even Mathias got up and gave Jons Snare a
hand-shake.

“To begin with, let’s go on to the church and
talk to the common folk,” he said, with his whin-

IN’ THE CHURCH SOUARE 239

ing voice. “ We must hold by ourancient rights and
liberties!”

“T’ll talk, sure enough I will,” answered Jons
Snare; “and peace it shall be. We demand it.”

They went out of the cabin, and on the way
talked with wives and servant-maids and old men
and boys. When they came to the church square,
they had a good twenty or thirty following with
them.

The autumn sun shone cold and clear over
woody ridges and lakes and on the long white
church. On the square in front of the stable-build-
ing the people murmured between wagons and
carts, but thechildren of the confirmation class, who
had sat by the altar, had as yet got no further than
the threshold of the church porch. The shaggiest
old men, who came down from the woods and who
had already put on their fur coats, began to cry out
and make a racket when they recognized Jons
Snare, because they all regarded him as the most
stiff-necked and powerful peasant in the parish.
The other Dalecarlians, as well, with bright, open
features and white shirts that gleamed out between
leather breeches and vests, turned toward him, for
it seemed to them that nothing in the world had
more weight than his slow and obstinate words.

“You are great church-goers, you,” he shouted
to them. “I suppose it’s to learn the new church
prayer about the subject’s duty of patience.”

240 THE CHARLES MEN

No one gave himself leisure to answer. All
thronged about him.

“The king is taken!” they shouted. ‘The king
is taken! The king is taken!”

“Is the king taken?” Jons Snare stood with his
hands clenched and looked inquiringly from one
to another.

“It’s truly spoken, that,” said Mons.

“ Be still, you fellow! What do you know about
it?’ roared Jons Snare, and lifted his clenched hands
half up so that all edged away and left him space.

He sat down on a bench before the stables, but
the Dalecarlians would not leave him, and the circle
around him became closer. No one wanted to lose
a single word.

“Is the king taken?”’ he asked afresh.

“So it’s being told from one to another. A smith
from Falun has said that the king is taken among
the heathens.”

Mathias moved up nearer and bent himself and
stretched out his long fingers.

“What do you think about these tidings, Jons
Snare, I simply ask?”’

Jons Snare sat with hands on knees, and the sun
shone upon his wooden, motionless forehead and
hard lips. He looked down at the ground.

“ Whatdoyousay?”’ murmured the Dalecarlians.
“In Stockholm one of the councillors is giving his
own money to the Crown, another his plate, and

IN THE CHURCH SQUARE 241

thethird proposes that every well-to-do subject shall
give all he has and hereafter possess no more than
the poor man. There is only the Queen Dowager
who wants her allowance undiminished, the stingy
trollop, and people on the street are breaking the
windows of Piper’s countess.”

“And we,” said Mathias, “we ought to take the
blunderbuss from the wall, Jons Snare says.”

“Tt’s truly spoken, that,” confirmed Mons.

Jons Snare was still silent, and it now became so
still around him that nothing else was heard than
the ringing of the bell.

“Yes,” he answered after a time, and his voice
rumbled more deeply and bitterly than ever before,
“we ought to take the blunderbuss from the wall
and leave the house. By God! you good men of the
Dale,if the king is taken, then we demand that they
should lead us against the foe, so that we may get
him home.”

Mathias remained in thought, but his brow be-
came bright, and his gray eyes twinkled slyly.

“ Took you, that isa demand that belongs to our
ancient rights and liberties.”

“Tt’s truly spoken, that,” said Mons.

“Yes, yes, that’s a demand that belongs to our
ancient rights and liberties,” murmured the Dale-
carlians, and lifted their hands in affirmation. Then
there was such a clamor and uproar that the bells
could no more be heard.

Captured
| ee out in the wastes of Smaland and Finnved

wondrous portents appeared in the air, and
since work lost all worth and the morrow all hope,
people either went hungry or ate and drank with
riot and revel amid half-stifled curses. At every
farm sat a mother or a widow in mourning. During
the day’s occupation she talked of the fallen or the
captives, and at night she started from her sleep,
and thought she was still hearing the thunder of the
hideous wagons on which teamsters in black oil-
cloth cloaks carried away those who had died of the
plague.

In the church of Riddarholm the body of the
Princess Hedwig Sofia had lain unburied for seven
years from lack of money, and nowa new coffin had
been laid out for the old Queen Dowager Hedwig
Eleonora, the mother of the Charleses. Several
sleepy ladies-in-waiting were keeping the death-
watch, and wax-lights burned mistily around the
dead, who lay wrapped ina simple covering of linen.

The youngest lady-in-waiting arose, yawning,
went to the window,and drew back the black broad-
cloth to see if dawn had not appeared.

Limping steps were heard from the ante-room,
and a little man of a gnarled and rugged figure, who
inevery way tried tosubdue the thump of his wooden
leg, advanced to the coffin and with signs of deep

CAPTURED 243

reverence lifted aside the drapery. His fair, almost
white hair lay close along his head and extended
down his neck as far as his collar. From a flask he
poured embalming liquid into a funnel, which was
set in the royal corpse between the kirtle and the
bodice. But the liquid was absorbed very slowly,
and, waiting, he set down the flask on the funeral
carpet and went to the lady at the window.

“Ts it not seven o'clock yet, Blomberg!”’ she
whispered.

“Tt has just struck six. [t’san awful weather out-
side, and I feel in the stump of my leg that we ’re
going to have a snowstorm. But then it’s a long
while since one could foretell anything good in
Sweden. Trust me, not this time either will there
be enough money for a decent funeral. It was only
the beginning when the sainted -kerot prophesied
misery and conflagration. And perhaps the fire
didn’t go on over the island in front of the castle!
Over the plain of Uppsala it threw its light from
cathedral and citadel. In Vasteras and Linkoping
the tempest sweeps the ashes around the blackened
spaces devastated by fire—and now there’s burn-
ing in all quarters of the kingdom. Forgive my free-
dom, gracious mistress, but to tell the truth ts in
the long run less dangerous than to le. That’s my
old maxim that saved my life once down there by
the Dnieper River.”

“Saved your life? You were then a surgeon in

244 THE CHARLES MEN

your regiment. You must sit down by me here and
tell the story. The time is so long.”

Blomberg spoke resignedly and a trifle like a
priest, from time to time lifting his dexter and mid-
dle fingers with the other fingers closed.

Both cast a glance at the corpse, which slept in
its coffin with gracefully disposed locks, and wax
and rouge in the deepest of the wrinkles. There-
upon they sat themselves on a bench in the win-
dow-nook outside the hanging broadcloth, and
Blomberg began whispering his narrative.

I was lying unconscious in the marshy wilderness
at Poltava. I had stumbled along on my wooden
leg and got a blow from a horse’s hoof, and when
I came to, it was night. I felt a cold, strange hand
fumble under my coat and pull at the buttons. An
abomination before the Lord are the devices of the
wicked, I thought; but gentle words are pure.
Without becoming frightened, I seized the corpse-
plunderer very silently by the breast, and by his
stammered words of terror I perceived that he was
one of the Zaporogeans who had made an alliance
with the Swedes and followed the army. As sur-
geon I had tended many of these men, as well as
captured Poles:and Muscovites, and could make
myself tolerably understood in their various lan-

guages.

“Many devices are in the heart of man,” said I
y

CAPTURED 245

meekly; “but the counsel of the Lord, that shall
abide. No evil can befall the righteous, but the un-
godly shall be filled with misfortunes.”

“Forgive me, pious sir,” whispered the Zapo-
rogean. ‘The Swedish czar has left us poor Zapo-
_ rogeans to our fate, and the Muscovite czar, whom
we faithlessly deserted, is coming to maim and slay
us. I only wanted to get me a Swedish coat so that
in a moment of need I could give myself out as one
of you. Do not be angry, godly sir!”

To see if he had any knife, I searched out flint
and steel while he was speaking and made a fire
with dry thistles and twigs which lay at my feet. I
noted then that I had before mea little frightened
old man with a sly face and two empty hands. He
raised himself as vehemently as a hungry animal
that has found its prey, and bent in the light over
a Swedish ensign who lay dead in the grass. Think-
ing that a dead man might willingly grant a help-
less ally his coat, I did nothing to hinder the Zapo-
rogean; but as he drew the coat from the fallen
one, a letter slipped from the pocket. I saw by the
address that Falkenberg was the name of the bov
who had bled to death. He lay now as fairly and
peacefully stretched out as if he had slept in the
meadow by the house where he was born. The
letter was from his sister, and I had only time to
spell out the words which from that hour became
my favorite maxim: “To tell the truth is in the

246 THE CHARLES MEN

long run less dangerous than to lie.” At that mo-
ment the Zaporogean put out my light.

“With your wise consent, sir,” he whispered;
“do not draw the corpse-plunderers hither.”’

I paid little attention to his talk, but repeated
time after time: “To tell the truth is in the long
run less dangerous than to lie. That is a big saying,
my old fellow, and you shall see that I get along
further with it than you do with your disguise.”

“We may try it,” answered the Zaporogean,
“but we must promise this, that the one of us who
survives the other shall offer a prayer for the
other’s soul.” :

“That is agreed,” I said, and gave him my hand,
for it seemed as if through misfortune I had found
in this shaggy-bearded barbarian a friend and a
brother.

He helped me up, and at daybreak we fell into
the long line of stragglers and wounded that silently
tottered into Poltava to give themselves up as pris-
oners. They willingly tried to conceal the Zapo-
rogean among the rest. His big boots with their
flaps reached up to his hips, and his coat tails hung
down to his spurs. As soon as a Cossack looked
at him, he turned to one of us and cried with raised
voice the only Swedish words he had learned in the
campaign: “I Shwede. Devil-damn!”

My Zaporogean and I, with eight of my com-
rades, were assigned quarters in the upper story of

CAPTURED 247

a big stone house. As we two had come up there
first, we picked out for ourselves a little separate
cubby-hole with a window on an alley. There was
nothing else than a little straw to lie on, but I had
in my coat a tin flute, which I had taken from a
fallen Kalmuck at Starodub, and on which I had
taught myself to play a few pretty hymns. With
that I shortened the time,and soon we noticed that,
as often as I played,a young woman cameto the win-
dow on the other side of the alley. Possibly for that
reason I played more than I should have otherwise
cared to, and I know not rightly whether she was
fairer and more seemly than all other women, or
whether long sojourn among men had made my
eye less accustomed, but I had great joy in be-
holding her. However, I never looked at her when
she turned her face toward our window, because I
have always been bashful before women-folk, and
have never rightly understood how to conduct
myself in that which pertains to them. Nor have
I ever sought fellowship with men who go with
their heads full of wenches and do nothing but
hanker after gailant intrigues. ‘ Let every one keep
his vessel in holiness,” Paul saith, “and not in the
lust of desire as do the heathen, which know not
God; also let no one in this matter dishonor and
wrong his brother, because the Lord 1s a powerful
avenger in all such things.”

I recognized, however, that a man should at all

248 THE CHARLES MEN

times bear himself courteously and fittingly, and
as one sleeve of my coat was in tatters, I always
turned that side inward when I played.

She usually sat with arms crossed above the
window-sill, and her hands were round and white,
though large. She had a scarlet-colored bodice
with silver buttons and many chains. An old witch
who often stood beneath her window with a wheel-
barrow and sold bread covered with jam called her
Feodosova.

When it grew dusk, she lighted a lamp, and
since neither she nor we had any shutters, we could
follow her with our glancewhen she blewon the fire,
but I found it more proper that we should turn
away, and I therefore set myself with my Zaporo-
gean on the straw in the corner.

Besides the prayer-book, I had a few torn-out
leaves of Miuller’s Sermons, and IJ read and trans-
lated many passages for my Zaporogean. But when
I noticed that he did not listen, I gave it over for
more worldly objects, and asked him of our neigh-
bor on the other side of the alley. He said that she
was not unmarried, because maidens in that country
always wore a long plait tied with ribbons and a
little red tuft of silk. More likely she was a widow,
because her hair hung loose as a token of sorrow.

When it became wholly dark, and we lay down
on the straw, I discovered that the Zaporogean
had stolen my silver snuff-spoon, but after I had -

CAPTURED 249

taken it back and reproached him for his fault, we
slept beside each other as friends.

I was almostashamed, when it was morning again,
at feeling myself happier than for a long time, but
as soon as I had held prayers with the Zaporogean
and had washed and arranged myself sufficiently, I
went to the window and played one of my most
beautiful hymns.

Feodosova was already sitting in the sunlight.
To show her how different the Swedes were from
her fellow countrymen, I instructed my Zaporo-
gean to clean our room, and after a couple of
hours the whitewashed walls were shining white
and free from cobwebs. All this helped me to
drive away my thoughts, but as soon as I set
myself again to rest, my torments of conscience
awakened that I could be happy in such misery.
In the hall outside, my comrades sat on floor and
benches, sighing heavily and whispering about their
dear ones at home. In due turn, two of us every
day were allowed to go out into the open air to
the ramparts, but when I laid myself on my straw
in the evening, I was ashamed to pray God that
the lot next morning should fall upon me. I knew
very well within myself that, if I longed for an
hour’s freedom, it was only to invent an errand to
the house opposite. And yet I felt that, if the lot
really fell upon me without my prayer, I should
still never venture to go up there.

250 THE CHARLES MEN

When I came to the window in the morning,
Feodosova lay sleeping in her clothes on the floor
with a cushion under her neck. It was still early
and cool, and I did not have the heart to set the
tin flute to my mouth. But as I stood there and
waited, she may have apprehended in her sleep
that I was gazing at her, for she looked up and
laughed and stretched her arms out, and all that
so suddenly that I did not manage to draw back
unnoticed. My brow became hot, I laid aside my
flute, and behaved myself in every way so clumsily
and unskilfully that I never was so displeased with
myself. I pulled and straightened my belt, took
my flute again from the window, inspected it, and
pretended I was blowing dust out of it. When
finally the Russian subaltern who had charge over
us unfortunates informed my Zaporogean that he
was one of the two who were to go out into the
city that day, I drew the Zaporogean aside into
a corner and enjoined him with many words to
pick a bunch of yellow stellaria such as I had seen
around the burned houses by the ramparts. At a
suitable opportunity we should then give them to
Feodosova, I said. She appeared to be a good and
worthy woman, who perchance in return might
give us poor fellows some fruit or nuts, I said.
The miserable bite of bread that the czar allowed
us daily did not even quiet our worst hunger, I
said,

CAPTURED 251

He was afraid to show himself out in the sun-
light, but neither did he dare to arouse mistrust
by staying in, and therefore he obeyed and went.

Scarcely was he out of the door, though, when
I began to regret that I had not held him back,
because now in solitude my embarrassment grew
much greater. I sat down on the bed in the corner,
where I was invisible, and stayed there obstinately.

Still the time was not long, for thoughts were
many. After a while I heard the Zaporogean’s
voice. Without reflecting, I went to the window
and saw him standing by I*eodosova with a great,
splendid bouquet of stellaria, which reminded one
of irises. First she didn’t want to take them, but
answered that they were impure, since they had
been given by a heathen. He pretended that he
understood nothing and that he knew only a few
words of her speech, but with winkings and ges-
tures and nods he made it intelligible that I had
sent the flowers, and then at last she took them.

Beside myself with bashfulness, I went back into
the corner, and when the Zaporogean returned,
I seized him behind the shoulders, shook him, and
stood him against the wall.

But scarcely had I let go my grasp when he
with his thoughtless vivacity stood at the window
again, made signs with his hands, and threw kisses
on all five of his fingers. Then I came forward,
pushed him aside, and bowed. I*eodosova sat pick-

252 THE CHARLES MEN

ing the flowers apart, pulling off the leaves and
letting them fall one by one to the ground. Ve-
hemence helped me so that I took courage and
began to speak without stopping to consider how
it would be most polite to begin a conversation.

“The lady will not take amiss my comrade’s
pranks and unseemly gestures,” I stammered.

She plucked still more eagerly at the flowers
and answered after a time, ‘‘ My husband, when he
was alive, often used to say that from heel to head
such well-made soldiers as the Swedes were not
to be found. He had seen Swedish prisoners un-
dressed and whipped by women, and had seen that
the women at the last were so moved because of
their beauty that they stuck the rods under their
arms and sobbed, themselves, instead of those they
tormented. Therefore have I become very curious
these days. . . - And the love songs which you play
sound so wonderful.”

Her speech pleased me not altogether, and |
found it little seemly to answer in the same spirit
by praising her figure and white arms. Instead
I took my flute and played my favorite hymn:
“Fen from the bottom of my heart I call Thee in
my need.”

After that we conversed of many things, and
though my store of words was small, we soon under-
stood each other so well that never didany dayseem
to me shorter.

CAPTURED 253

At mid-day, after she had clattered about with
jugs and plates and swung a palm-leaf fan over the
embers in the fireplace, she lifted down from the
ceiling a landing-net with which formerly her hus-
band had caught small fish in the river. In the net
she put a pan with steaming cabbage and a wooden
flask with kvass, and the handle was so long that
she could hand us the meal across the street. When
I drank to her, she nodded and smiled and said that
she did not regard it as wrong to feel pity for cap-
tured heathens. Toward evening she moved her
spinning-wheel to the window, and we kept on con-
versing when it was dusk. I no longer felt it as a
sin to be happy in the midst of the sorrow that sur-
rounded us, because my intent was innocent and
pure. Just as I had seen the stellaria shining over
heaps of ashes among the burned and desolate
houses by the ramparts as a song of praise to God’s
goodness, so seemed to me now the joy of my heart.

When it became night, and I had held prayer
with my Zaporogean and yet once more reproached
him that he had stolen my snuff-spoon, the garru-
lous man began to talk to me in an undertone and
say : “I see clearly, little father, that you are in love
a keodosova, and in truth she is a good and pure
woman whom you may take to wife. That you never
would enter upon any love-dealing of another sort
I have understood from the first.”

“Such stuff!’ answered I, “such stuff!”

254 THE CHARLES MEN

“Truth is in the long run less dangerous than
lying, you used to say.”

When he struck me with my own maxim-staff,
I became confounded, and he proceeded.

“The czar has promised good employment and
wages to every one of you Swedes who will become
his subject and be converted to the true faith.”

“You are out of your wits. But if I could steal off
and take her home with me on horseback, I would
dere:

Next morning, when I had played my hymn, I
learned that to-day it was my turn to go out under
the open heavens.

I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed
myself up even more carefully than at other times,
and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign coat, so as
not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated
with myself. Should I go up to her? What should
I say then? Perhaps, though, that would be the only
time in my life when I could get to speak with her,
and how should I not repent thereafter even to my
gray old age, if out of awkwardness I had missed
that one chance! My heart beat more violently than
at any affair with the enemy, when I had stood with
my bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I
stuck the flute into my pocket and went out.

When I came down on the street, she sat at the
window without seeing me. I would not go to her
without firstasking leave,and I did not knowrightly

CAPTURED 255
how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a
couple of steps forward.

Then she heard me and looked out.

I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long, ring-
ing burst of laughter she sprang up and cried,
““Flaha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”

I stood with my hand raised, and stared and
stared, and | had neither thought nor feeling. It
was as if my heart had swelled out and filled all
my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe
I stammered something. I only remember that I
did not know whither I shouldturn, that I heard her
still laughing, that everything in the world was in-
different to me, that freedom would have frightened
me as much as my captivity and my wretchedness,
that of a sudden I had become a broken man.

I remember vaguely a long and steep lane with-
out stone pavement, where I was accosted by other
Swedish prisoners. Perhaps, even, I answered them,
asked after their health, and took some puffs out of
the tobacco pipes they lent me.

I believe I disturbed myself over the fact that it
was so long till night, so that I had to return the
same way and pass her window in brightest day-
light. By every means I prolonged the time, speaking
now to one man, now toanother, but shortly the Rus-
sian dragoons came and ordered me to turn about
to my place.

As I went up the lane, I persuaded myself that

256 THE CHARLES MEN

I would not betray myself, but would salute in a
quite friendly manner before the window. Was it
her fault that so many of the Swedish soldiers, of
whom she had had such fine dreams, were now pitiful
cripples on wooden legs?

“ Hurry up there!” thundered the dragoons,and
I hastened my steps, so that the thumping of my
wooden leg echoed between the walls of the
houses.

“‘ Dear Heavenly Father,” I muttered, “faithfully
have I served my earthly master. Is this the reward
Thou givest me, that Thou makest of me in my
youth a defenceless captive, at whom women laugh?
Yea, this is Thy recompense, and Thou wilt abase
me into yet deeper humiliation, that thereby I may
at length become worthy of the crown of blessed-
Ness:

When I came under the window and carried my
handto my hat, Isaw that Feodosova wasaway. That
gave me no longer any relief. I stumbled up to my
prison, and at every step heard the thumping of
my wooden leg.

“J have talked with Feodosova,” whispered the
Zaporogean.

I gave him no reply. My ape my flower,
that had grown up over the heaps of ashes, lay
consumed; and if it had again shone out, I meee
in alarm, would have trampled it to death with my

CAPTURED 257

wooden leg. What signified to me the Zaporogean’s
whisperings?

“Ah!” he went on, “when you were gone, I re-
proached Feodosova and said to her that you were
fonder of her than she realized, and that, if you were
not a stranger and a heathen, you would ask her to
be your wife.”

In silence I clenched my hands and bit my lips
together, to lock up my vexation and embarrass-
ment, and I thanked God that He abased me every
moment more deeply in shame and ridicule before
men.

I opened the door to the outer hall and began
to talk to the other prisoners:

“‘As wild asses in the desert we go painfully to
seek our food. On a field that we do not own we
must go as husbandmen, and harvest in the vine-
vard of the ungodly, We lie naked the whole night
from lack of garments, and are without covering
against the cold. We are overwhelmed by the deluge
from the mountains,and from lack of shelter we em-
race the cliffs. But we beg Thee not for mitigation,
Almighty God. We pray only: Lead us, be nigh
anto us! Behold, Thou hast turned away Thy
countenance from our people and stuck thorns in
our shoes, that we may become Thy servants and
Thy children. In the mould of the battle-field our
brothers sleep, and a fairer song of victory than that

258 THE CHARLES MEN

of the conquerors by the sword Thou dost offer to
Thy chosen ones.”

“Yea, Lord, lead us, be nigh unto us!” echoed
all the prisoners murmuringly.

Then out of the darkest corner rose a lonely,
trembling voice, which cried: “Oh, that I were as
in former months, as in the days when God pro-
tected me, when His lamp shone upon my head,
when with His light I went into the darkness! As
I was in my autumn days, when God’s friendship
was over my tent, while yet the Almighty was with
me, and my children were about me! Thus my heart
cries out with Job, but I hear it no longer, and I
stammer forth nolonger: Takeaway my trials! With
the ear I have heard tell of Thee, O God, but now
hath mine eye beheld Thee.”

“ Quiet, quiet!’ whispered the Zaporogean, tak-
ing hold of me, and his hands were cold and trem-
bling. ‘It can be no one else than the czar who is
coming below in the lane.”

The lane had become filled with people, with beg-
gars and boys and old women and soldiers. In the
middle of the throng the czar, tall and lean, walked
very calmly, without a guard. A swarm of hopping
and shrieking dwarfs were his only retinue. Nowand
then, turning, he embraced and kissed the smallest
dwarf on the forehead in a fatherly way. Here and
there he stood still before a house, and was offered a

glass of brandy, which he jestingly emptiedatasingle

CAPTURED 259

gulp. It could be nobody but the czar, because one
saw directly that he alone ruled over both people
and city. He came so close under my window that I
could have touched his green cloth cap and the half-
torn-off brass buttons on his brown coat. On the
skirt he had a great silver button with an artificial
stone and on his legsrough woollen stockings. His
brown eyes gleamed and flashed, and the small black
moustaches stood straight up from his shining lips.

When he caught sight of Feodosova, he seemed
as if smitten with madness. When she came down
on the street and knelt with a cup, he pinched her
ear, then took her under the chin and lifted up her
head, so that he could look her in the eyes.

“Tell me,chid, heunquired, “where is there
a comfortable room in which [ can eat? May there
be one at your house?”

The czar had seldom with him on his excursions
any master of ceremonies orothercourtier. He took
along neither bed nor bed-clothes nor cooking uten-
sils; no, not even a cooking or eating vessel; but
everything had to be provided in the turn of a hand
wherever it occurred to him to take lodging. It was
for this reason that there was now running and clat-
tering at all the gates and stairs. rom this direction
came a man with a pan, from that another with an
earthen platter, from yonder a third with a ladle and
drinking utensils. Up in Feodosova’sroom the floor
was strewn deeply with straw. The czar helped with

260 THE CHARLES MEN

the work like a common servant,and the chief direc-
tion was carried on by a hunchbacked dwarf, who
was called the Patriarch. The dwarf every once in
a while put his thumb to his nose and blew it in the
air straight in front of the czar’s face, or invented
rascal tricks of which I cannot relate before a lady
of quality.

Once when the czar turned with crossed arms to
the window, he noticed me and the Zaporogean, and
nodded likeacomrade. The Zaporogean threw him-
self prostrate on the floor and stammered his “I
Shwede. Devil-damn!”’ But I pushed him aside with
my foot and told him once for all to be silent and
get up, because no Swede conducted himself in that
fashion. To cover himas muchas possible, I stepped
in front of him and took my position there.

“Dat is nit ubel,” said the czar, but at once fell
back into his mother speech, and asked who I was.

“Blomberg, surgeon with the Uppland regi-
ment,” I answered.

The czar scanned me with a narrowing gaze, so
penetrating that I have never seen a more all-dis-
cerning look.

“Your regiment exists no longer,” he said, ‘and
here you see Rehnskidld’s sword.” He lifted the
sword with its scabbard from his belt and threw it
on the table, so that the plates hopped. “ But for
certain you are a rogue, for you wear a captain’s or
ensign’s uniform.”

CAPTURED 261

I answered, “‘ That is a hard saying,’ saith John
the Evangelist. The coat I borrowed after my own
fell in rags, and if that be ill done, I will yet hope
for grace, because this is my maxim: Totellthetruth
is in the long run less dangerous than to lie.”

‘Good. If that is your motto, you shall take your
servant with you and come over here, so that we
may prove it.”

The Zaporogean trembledand tottered,as he fol-
lowed behind me, but as soon as we entered, the czar
pointed me toa chair among the others at the table,
as if I had been his equal, and said, ‘Sit, Wooden-
eal

He had Feodosova on his knee, without the least
consideration of what could be said about it, and
round them stamped and whistled the dwarfs and
a crowd of Boyarswho now began to collect. A dwarf
who was called Judas, because he carried a likeness
of that arch-villain on the chain around his neck,
seized a handful of shrimps from the nearest plate
and threw them to the ceiling, so that they fell in
a rain over dishes and people. When in that way he
had made the others turn toward him, he pointed
at the czar with many grimaces and called quite
coolly to him: “You amuse yourself, you Peter
Alexievitch. Even outside of the city I have heard
tell of the pretty Feodosova of Poltava, I have; but
you always scrape together the best things for your-
self, you little father.”

262 THE CHARLES MEN

“That you do,” chimed in the other dwarfs in
' aring around the czar. “ You are an arch-thief, you
Peter Alexievitch.”

Sometimes the czar laughed or answered, some-
times he did not hearthem, butsat seriousand medi-
tative,and hiseyes moved meanwhile like twogreen-
glinting insects in the sunlight.

I called to mind how I had once seen the most
blessed Charles the Eleventh converse with Rud-
beck, and how it then came over me that Rudbeck,
for all his bowings, amounted to far more than the
king. Here it was the other way about. Although
the czar himself went around and did the waiting,
and let himself be treated worse than a knave, I saw
only him—and Feodosova. I read his purpose in
the smallest things. I recognized it in the forcibly
curtailed caftans and shaven chins at the city gate.

There was a buzzing in my head, and I knelt
humbly on the straw and stammered: “ Imperial
Majesty! To tell the truth is in the long run less
dangerous than to lie, and the Lord said to Moses:
‘Thou shalt not hold with the great ones in that
whichisevil.’ Therefore I beseech that I may forego
further drinking. For behold, I am soon done with
the game, and my gracious lord —who 1s both like
and unlike Your Imperial Majesty — has in the last
year turned me to drinking filtered marsh water.”

A twitching and trembling began in the czar’s
right cheek near the eye.

CAPTURED 263

“Yes, by Saint Andreas!” said he. “I am unlike
my brother Charles, for he hates women like a
woman and wine like a woman, and offers up his
people’s richesasa woman her husband’s,and abuses
me like a woman; but I respect him like a man.
His health, Wooden-Leg! Drink, drink!”

The czar sprang forward, seized me by the hair,
and held the goblet to my mouth, so that the As-
trakan ale foamed over my chin and collar. As we
drank the prescribed health, two soldiers entered in
brownish yellow uniforms with blue collars and dis-
charged their pistols, so that the hot room, which
was already filled with tobacco clouds and onion
smell, was now also enveloped in powder smoke.

The czar sat down again at the table. Even in all
that noise he wanted to sit and think, but he never
allowed any one else to shirk the duty of drinking
and become serious like himself. He drew Feodo-
sova afresh to his knee. Poor, poor Feodosova! She
sat there,a bit sunk together, witharms hanging and
mouth impotently half-open, as if she waited cuffs
and blows amid the caresses. Why had she not
courage to pull the sword to her from the table,
press her wrist against the edge,and save her honor,
before it was too late? Over and over she night
have laughed at my wooden leg and my disgrace,
if with my life I could have preserved her honor.
Nor had I ever before been so near her and seen
so clearly to what a wondrous work she had been

264 THE CHARLES MEN

formed in the Heavenly Creator’s hands. Poor, poor
Feodosova, if you had but felt in your heart with
what a pure intent a friend regarded you in your
humiliation, and howhe prayed for your well-being!

Hour after hour the banquet continued. Those
of the Boyars and dwarfs who were most completely
overcome already lay relaxed in the straw and vom-
ited or made water, but the czar himself always rose
up and leaned out through the window. “ Drink,
Wooden-Leg, drink!”” he commanded, and hunted
me around the room with the glass, making the
Boyars hold me till I had emptied every drop. The
twitching in his face became ever more uncanny,
and when wewere finally together at the table again,
he moved three brimful earthen bowls in front of
me and said: “ Now, Wooden-Leg, you shall pro-
pose a health to be drunk all round and teach us to
understand its meaning with your maxim.”

I raised myself again as well as I could.

“ Your health, czar!” I shouted, “for you are as-
suredly born to command.”

“Why,” he asked, “should the soldiers present
arms and salute me if any other was worthier to
command! Where is there anything more pitiful
than an incompetent ruler? The day I find my own
son unworthy to inherit my great, beloved realm,
that day shall he die. Your first truth, Wooden-
Leg, requires no bowl.”

The pistols cracked, and all drank but the czar.

CAPTURED 265

Then I gathered the fragments of my under-
standing as a miser his coins, for I believed that, if
I could catch the czar in a gracious and mild humor,
I might perhaps save my Feodosova.

“Well, then, Imperial Majesty,” I continued,
therefore, lifting one of the bowls on high, “this is
Astrakan ale, brewed of mead and brandy with pep-
per and tobacco. It burns much before it delights,
and when it delights, it puts one to sleep.”

With that I threw the bowl to the groundso that
it broke in a thousand pieces. Then I lifted the next
bowl.

“’This is Hungarian wine. ‘ Drink no more only
water, writes the Apostle Paul to Timothy,‘ but use
alittle wine for thy stomach’s sake, and because
thou art so often sick.’ So speaks a holy one to
weakly men and stay-at-homes. But go out on the
battle-field amid frost and wailing and tell me, to
how many of the groaning would this bowl of
sweetish wine give relief from pain and a softer
death?”

Therewith I threw that bowl also to the ground
so that it broke. Then I lifted the third bowl.

“This is brandy. It is despised by the fortunate
and the rich, because they thirst not after refresh-
ment as the desert for coolness, but would only
gibe at the pleasure it gives. But brandy assumes
power inthe very moment it glides over the tongue,
like a despot in the moment he steps across a

266 _ THE CHARLES MEN

threshold, and the bleeding and dying draw com-
fort from a few drops. Therefore I call brandy the
best, for I speak as a warrior, and to tell the truth
is in the long run less dangerous than to lie.”

“Right, right!”’ acclaimed the czar, and took the
bow! and drank, at the same time that he handed
me two gold-pieces, while the pistols cracked. “ You
shall have a pass and a horse to go your way, and
wherever you come, you shall tell about Poltava.”’

Then I knelt yet again in the straw and stam-
mered: ‘ Imperial Majesty —in my pettiness and
weakness — beside you sits a—a pure and good
woman.’

“Haha!” screamed the dwarfs and Boyars, who
tottered to their feet. “‘ Haha! haha!”

The czar got up and led Feodosova toward me.

“I understand. He who limps on a wooden leg
may fall in love, too. Good. I present her to you just
as she is, and you shall have a good situation with
me. I have promised every Swede who enters into
my service and is baptized in our faith that he shall
become one of our people.”

Feodosovastood likeasleep-walker and stretched
her hands towards me. What did it matter that she
had laughedat me? I shouldsoon have forgotten that,
and she would soon not have seen my wooden leg,
for I should have cared for her and worked for her
and prayed with her and made her home bright and
tranquil. I should have lifted her up to my bosom

CAPTURED 267
as a child and asked her if an honest and faithful
heart could not make another heart throb. May-
hap she already bore the answer on her tongue, for
slowly she beamed up and became flushed, and her
whole face became transfigured. Far away in a cor-
ner house on Prastgatan in Stockholm a lonely old
woman sat with her sermon-book and listened and
wondered whether a letter would not be left for her
through the door, whether no disabled man would
step in with a greeting from the remote wilderness,
whether I never should come or whether I lay al-
ready dead and buried. I had prayed for her every
night. I had thought of her in the tumult in the
midst of stretchers and wailing wounded. Butatthat
moment | thought of her no longer; I sawand heard
nothing else but Feodosova. And yet I was angry
and strove against something heavy which weighed
upon my heart and which I did not understand, but
was only slowly and gradually able to make out.

I bent to Feodosova to kiss her hand, but she
whispered, “The czar’s hand, the czar’s hand.”

Then I stretched myself toward the czar and
kissed his hand.

« My faith,” I whispered equally softly, “and my
royal lord I may not desert.”

The czar’s cheek still twitched, and the dwarfs
in their terror pulled forth the Zaporogean from his
nook to make the czar laugh at his ridiculous figure.
But then the czar’s arms began to move convul-

268 THE CHARLES MEN

sively. His face grew gray and he trembled in one
of his dreaded fits. He went toward the Zaporogean
and struck him in the face with clenched fist so that
the blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and
with such a hoarse and altered voice that it could
no longer be recognized he hissed: “I have seen
through you, liar, from the moment you came into
the room. You are a Zaporogean, a renegade, who
have hidden yourself in Swedish clothes. — To the
wheel with him, to the wheel!”

All, even the drunken men, began to tremble and
feel toward the doors, and in his terror one of the
Boyars whispered: “Bring forward the woman!
Shove her forward! As soon as he gets to see pretty
faces and woman’s limbs, he grows quiet.”

They seized her, her bodice was cut over the
bosom, and, softly wailing, she was supported for-
ward step by step to the czar.

It grew black around me, and I staggered back-
ward out of the room. I remained standing on the
street under the stars, and I heard the clamor grow
muffled and the dwarfs begin to sing.

Then I clenched my hands and remembered a
promise on the field of battle to pray for a poor sin-
ner’s soul. But the more fervently I spoke with my
God, the further went my thoughts, and my invo-
cation became a prayer for a yet greater sinner who
with his last faithful followers wandered about on
the desolate steppes.

CAPTURED 269

The surgeon ceased with an anxious glance toward
the coffin,and the lady-in-waiting followed him for-
ward to the catafalque.

“Amen!” said she, and the two again spread
the covering over the wax-pale Queen Dowager,
mother of the Charleses.

EN DLOF “PART 1

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