Times of Charles XII

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Part I.— The Blue. Interlude

WHOLE summer had passed since the Surgeon finished his former story. During the time, he had been seldom seen in town, and when he showed himself, in his gray fishing-jacket and heavy coarseseamed boots, he bore over his shoulder a knotty staff, on which hung as a trophy a respectable twenty pound pike destined for the old grandmother’s table. As a matter of course, Back was invited to dinner; and on his account there was served that day a dessert consisting of the most beautiful strawberries and rich new milk.

“Cousin puts on too little sugar,” grandmother used to say, with a kind look, although Back let whole drifts snow over the strawberries. He was certainly no epicure ; he could live for weeks together in his fisherman’s hut on sour milk and boiled catfish; but he had a weakness for sweet things, the honest old man, when they were offered. Grandmother knew this, and though she did not stir the sugar-sprinkler for herself, she said again, in a friendly way :

“A little more sugar, Cousin Back.”

Then the Surgeon heard what was new in the papers, and expressed himself in language not exactly polite concerning Don Miguel, whose devastations were car-

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ried on at that time. In exchange for the news, he generally told some amusing story of the forest or the sea; as, for example, how brother Svanholm lately went hunting. His comrades (including Back) had beforehand shot a hare, drawn it, and, having put in roasted meat, small herrings, and boiled potatoes, sewed it up again. When'this was done, they placed the hare in a suitable spot near the edge of the woods, and Svanholm was unsuspectingly led in that direction. The hounds started; the cry was: “ Keep watch ! ” and then some one shouted: “ Look out there, brother Svanholm ! ” Brother Svanholm was not slow to shoot; bang! the hare tumbled over and was carried in triumph to the cottage. A greater exploit Svanholm had not achieved since the famous retreat. The brave Captain was the hero of the day. He claimed for himself the right of cutting up the hare according to the rule of art, and of giving the heart and liver to the hounds. Miraculous! he found roast mutton in the hare. “ The d — 1, brother Svanholm! your hares eat up our sheep! ” Then he found the herring: “What, the deuce! — your hares go a fishing! ” At last the boiled potatoes: “A thousand d — brother Svanholm! your hares understand boiling as well as roasting! ” But Svanholm was quite furious over the affair, and growled under his moustaches at Back for a whole week afterwards.

The summer passed. When the end of August drew near, and Back, as usual, was invited to dine on his own pike, little Jonathan came one day, with rather an important air, and handed him a branch, on which were three large dark-red raspberries.

“ Well ? ” said the Surgeon, and, as was his wont, lifted the little fellow up by his collar, about as one lifts a kitten. ^

“ Yes, godfather,” answered Jonathan briskly, “now the raspberries are ripe in the woods.”

“That’s good,” said the Surgeon, and set the boy on his feet again, after a circumflex in the air.

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Anne Sophie was cutting up sugar at the sideboard close by. “Yes,” cried she, “the raspberries are ripe in the woods, and now we may demand a new story.”

“ H — m,” said the Surgeon, “the whitings are at their best now, and the broods of ducks are beginning to fly; in three weeks we shall see.”

Several objections to waiting were interposed, but none availed. Three weeks went by. The Surgeon had salted a goodly number of quarter-barrels of whitings, and had sent home a good many braces of seafowl with their legs tied together. It became too stormy, dark, and chilly to stay out on the water. Then one day at the dinner-table the old man was heard to say of his own accord: “ This evening we can begin.”

Said and done. At six o’clock, when it began to grow dark, the usual company sat again in the Surgeon’s chamber. Captain Svanholm, long since appeased, stroked his moustache before the hearth; Master Svenonius, the school-teacher, fixed the fire ; grandmother was knitting a stocking ; Anne Sophie was picking over whortleberries, and the boys were picking down, being seated at a little distance from her. that they might not be tempted too much by the berries.

The Surgeon looked at the agile, light-yellow flame, winding up about the white birch wood, and did not seem in any hurry to begin. The children grew impatient.

“ Now we shall hear about Charles XII,” whispered Jonathan, purposely so loud that the others heard it.

“ Be quiet ! ” said Svanholm. “ Brother, you have a devilish good comrade to deal with. Those who have smelled a little powder in their day, as you and I have, understand Charles XII rather better than the quill-fighters who have written about him.”

“Powder-smoke only makes men black,” said the schoolmaster, aroused by this challenge. “ I hold that Charles XII has to thank the quill-fighters who have written concerning him, for much of his greatness.

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Suppose one had asked the much-bled, depopulated, and famished country, after his death — ”

“ Yes, only ask,” interrupted the Captain, “ only ask, and the poorest cottager will answer: ‘ We have beaten the Dane and the German and the Turk and the Russian ; devils and heroism! that have we done, sir, and that have we done under Charles XII.’ He was no fault-finding, niggardly fellow, like his father, and if he did not spare others, neither did he spare his own royal person. Quill-fighters would have done something for his honor ? They would have blotted his blue and gold banner with ink! ”

“ Bernhard Bertelskold is now dead,” said the old grandmother, in order to stop the controversy. “ It seems to me that I have known him from childhood, and a good man he was; yes, I must say that I liked him from the first.”

“ D — d if I did,” broke in the Captain, bluntly. “ Such sweet-milk counts haven’t two stivers’ worth of backbone in them.”

Grandmother lowered her voice, and said, in a tone which immediately silenced the brave Captain :

“ I have said many times that it is indecent for cousin Svanholm to swear so before the children. If cousin had let me speak to the end, I would have said something more. Cousin ought to bear in mind that the departed Count Bertelskold was in more battles than even cousin has lived through, and if he was a courteous, good-natured and cultured gentleman instead of a ruffian and brawler, he was not the less a braver man than cousin, and was not at all made of either sweet or sour milk. But I cannot reconcile myself to his end. I think it is unchristian and awful that a man so good of heart and mind should at the last become such a captive to unbelief and worldly thoughts that he entirely forgets to think of his poor soul. What did he live for ? The supremacy of the nobility ? We are all of us common people ; we cannot understand that.”

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“ Our class will certainly come to the front, when it is the Larssons’ time,” remarked Svenonius. “ Between the power of the nobility, the people, and the king, the strife is per scecula sceculorum. Sometime I will tell cousin about the old patricians and plebeians of Rome. ”

“ Thanks, cousin, but I am not curious ; I prefer to keep out of the way of papists. There must be some papal spell connected with the king’s ring. Righteous heavens ! What a forboder of misfortune ! We shall see that that ring will yet destroy the whole Bertelskold family. I cannot forgive the excellent Greta for not casting the ring into the sea, as she thought of doing. It would have been a wise and discreet thing to do, instead of allowingjherself to be beguiled into giving the bewitched thing to the count. Mark my word: I believe Torsten Bertelskold will give her little thanks for that.”

“But,” interrupted Anne Sophie quickly, “ to succeed in everything ! Think of it, grandmother ! The power of that family continually increases, and the ring descending from father to son, in the sixth generation one becomes a king ! It is already in the third or fourth generation, in possession of Torsten Bertelskold. What a pity we cannot turn over the leaves in godfather’s mind, as one turns over the leaves of a book when he would know the result beforehand ! ”

“ My dear child,” said the grandmother seriously, “ it seems to me that the king’s ring ought deeply to impress upon us the words : 4 What is a man profited,

if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?' What happiness or what benefit had the elder Bertelskold and Janssen from all their good fortune? Two men, intended for something better, has the ring already destroyed ; the third, it turned away from God at the close of life. Be sure of this : it will destroy still more. Moreover, I do not like young Torsten, and his brother Gustaf Adolph I am yet too little acquainted with. With the exception of Greta, all that I had any

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friendship for in the former story are already gone. We must have new people now, since we have a new era.”

With these words the grandmother cast a questioning glance at the old Surgeon, who silently and contemplatively continued to gaze at the flames sporting in the great old-fashioned open fire-place. As the firelight fell upon his tall figure and his sunburnt but still strong features, it occurred to all that an unusually stern expression rested on his furrowed brow. Often before had this simple, humble man grown as it were with his subject, so that he was no longer the same person while he talked. Now his seriousness became so gloomy that the children looked at him almost with affright. And he said, as if to himself :

“A new era !”

Thereupon, his presence of mind regained, his countenance cleared up; and he turned to Anne Sophie saying : “Put more wood on the fire, my girl; I would rather see flames than ashes. And seat yourself so that I can see you better, my child. It will help my story if I can all the while look upon your kind and cheerful face.”

Chapter I. The Lion Sleeps

THE grand, powerful and high-minded seventeenth century had just laid the last stone upon its portion of the structure of the world’s history. The curtain had fallen upon its mighty conflicts for power and light; its long series of years and achievements unrolled like a panorama to the view of the thoughtful, and people asked themselves what might now come.

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For it was not the accidental change of dates and figures that made a new era for the world; stars had disappeared and powers decayed, and new kingdoms and new thoughts were working themselves forward, and where was the man who could govern them? He who now for more than a generation had been the acknowledged lawgiver for both genius and power, he who in the opinion of his admirers gave a name to the whole epoch — King Louis XIV of France — still lived, and believed himself called to write laws for the new century as he had done for the old. But while the bards still sung his praises, and kings feared his statesmanship even more than his arms or his gold, his head began to grow heavy with age, and his mind with ceaseless penitence. Whilst he stretched out his hand after new sceptres, his own began to wear away; and doubt, hitherto dumb, and scorn, tired of sealed lips, began to scrutinize the encomiums of contemporaries and thus disclose the destiny of all mortals — that fate which, sooner or later, overtakes the glory of the world.

The lower the sun sank toward the horizon of the epoch of Louis XIV, the clearer it became to the thoughtful, and to the instinct of the masses themselves, that the times demanded new men as much as new ideas. The ideas came of themselves. They had long grown in silence, and waited only for sun and air to put forth new leaves. But in vain did one look about for men. Eugene and Marlborough were thought of; the great strife between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs was closely watched. England was seen rapidly increasing, and gaining more and more advantage over her rival, Holland; the eye was turned from Spain fallen and oppressed, from Germany sundered and enfeebled, from Poland egotistic and suicidal, to the hopeful prospect of Turkey’s incipent weakness— Europe’s bugbear stripped of its mask. Everywhere were found masses and powers, but seldom men. Few were they who looked to the north. Barbarous

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Russia lay in apparent lifelessness and debated whether the sign of the cross should be made with two fingers or with three, Sweden, mistress of the Baltic, had negotiated peace at Ryssvik, but its sword had rested; gold flowed into Charles XI’s treasury under the Reduction, and a beardless youth without ambition or ability — so they said — had mounted the throne to hunt bears.

They did not know then that Peter the First worked as a carpenter in the shops at Saardam. They did not know then that Charles XII as a child had said when he read Curtius, and was asked what he thought of Alexander the Great, “ I will be like him.’' And when he was told, “ Alexander the Great only lived to be thirty-two years old,” the twelve-year-old prince Charles answered: “ Is not that enough for one who has conquered empires ?”

They wrote 1700 for the new date. It was a cold but clear winter evening. The stars looked down on Lake Malaren, covered with ice, where the tramp of horses’ feet and the jingling of bells was now and then heard through the frosty air. A few hours before, the scene was livelier. A pleasure party from the court had driven out in elegant sleighs trimmed with fringe; and the cheeks of many a rosy little maiden had grown still rosier, and many a high-born gallant had with his own hands guided his snorting charger over the icefield. But this evening had the queen dowager Hedvig Eleonora, the king’s paternal grandmother, invited the court to an evening assembly at Drottningholm. The widowed queen had found circumstances unpleasant. She would willingly have had a hand in governing the kingdom, as she had had in Charles XI’s youth; but she had become old, and her grandson’s hasty words to Count Piper at the review of a company, that he would himself command such brave men, had been fulfilled almost as soon as spoken. Hedvig Eleonora formed her resolution. She continued to build pleasure resorts, surrounded herself with young and gay people,

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especially artists, and thus right cheerfully spent her remaining days and her generous income.

The wax candles in Drottningholm’s high windows shone brilliantly out over the lake, when two horsemen, wrapped in short army cloaks, galloped forward over the ice toward the castle, while three or four sleighs in the distance seemed vainly endeavoring to overtake them. Having reached the castle court, one of the riders dismounted and approached the other, who remained on his horse and said something half aloud. Thereupon the first rider fastened his horse at the gate and ran up the castle steps, while the other sat there in the sharp winter cold and seemed inclined to conceal his face from the glare of the torches and tar-barrels that were burning in the court.

In a moment the first returned, and said, in a low voice : “ Hard is sick; he cannot go along, much as he wishes it. His eyes sparkled in his head as I told him of your majesty’s adventure, and he answered merely : 4 She never would have broken through the net if I had been along.’ ”

“ If he had been along ?” repeated the other, annoyed. “ Did he say that, the old stiff-neck ? Well, it is honor enough for him that I came to Drottningholm on purpose to fetch him. We will ride back to the city, the sleighs will follow us, and we will try our luck again in the morning.”

“ It is hardly worth while to try the contemptible she-bears when Hard is absent,” said his companion. “ Your majesty has to-day struck down the shaggiest paw that ever broke a spear in pieces. I will wager that the sainted king’s hunting record can show nothing to equal it. ’

“We will try again to-morrow,” was the curt answer.

The king, for it was he, turned his horse to ride away again, when the queen dowager’s equerry, Hoghusen, followed by servants with torches, besought on behalf of his mistress that his majesty would honor E 1*

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the assembly in the castle with his noble presence. Taken aback at being recognized, like a boy caught in a neighbor’s fruit tree, the king wheeled his horse, let him make a spring toward the stairs, and purposely rode straight over an elegant chamberlain who was tripping across the court, in silk stockings and shoes, bearing dishes of preserved fruits and other delicacies for the court ladies. The joke was rather a severe one ; the poor fellow stumbled and went down with a bloody nose, and all the rare contents of his salver were spilled into the snow. The king, laughing, threw him a gold coin, and went up to his grandmother in a much better mood than he would have been in but for this circumstance.

The inner staircase in Drottningholm castle is, as is well known, a masterpiece by Nicodemus Tessin — a work in so light and agreeable a style, that it seems to be built especially for the feet of the Graces and the tiptoes of princesses. The king tramped up the stairs with rattling spurs and steps so heavy that one might easily believe he was riding up. In the upper vestibule he was met by the queen-dowager, costumed as Ceres — at least she had a cornucopia and a bunch of silvered grainheads; and after a few compliments, which on the part of the king were quite monosyllabic, he was led into one of the great halls, on the walls of which are still seen and admired the battle-pieces of Charles Gustaf and Charles XI, painted by Ehrenstrahl.

Charles XII had inherited much of his father’s shyness in the presence of women, and was, if possible, still more indifferent than he to the allurements of pleasure. Seventeen years old, nearly three years a king, what an object he would have been for all seductive arts and innocent admiration, had not his thorough indifference warded off the shafts of beauty in advance ! When he entered the hall, where a motley multitude swarmed about in the brightest costumes, it suddenly became silent as if a winter snow had fallen

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down over the spring of youth and gayety which just now were making merry in the lustre of the wax-lights. The king went, somewhat embarrassed it seemed, with slight bows and brief salutations, along the brilliant lines, until at the farther end of the hall he found some of the officers of the life-guard, with whom he entered into conversation, glad in that way to avoid the curious glances which annoyed him.

He had scarcely disappeared in the crowd before youth and levity resumed the full enjoyment of their rights. Roguish laughter, mingled with cutting remarks, played upon the lips of the young ladies and their cavaliers. They looked down at the waxed floor and then at each other, while they sought to conceal a merriment which by that very means became more ungovernable. The cause was evident. Without thinking about it, the king had come into the dancing hall just as he was, after a twenty mile ride on an adventurous chase. The marks thereof were visible enough on his dress; probably he was still spattered with the bear’s blood which so lately flowed before his short spear. But they were accustomed to such things, and the courage of the hunter, like that of the warrior, seldom fails of its impression on vivacious temperaments. There was something besides this which increased the mirth of the company, — a little circumstance which not even a king can forget unpunished by laughter — and that was, that he had entered in his high hunting-boots, which were covered with snow. The result was that every step the royal youth took over the brightly polished floor, which seemed designed to be trodden by silken shoes only, left dark wet tracks of his great boots, which royal footprints the young people jocosely pointed at, when one of the ladies was bold enough to ask her friends to behold “King Charles’s galaxy.”

They did not then know, these gay and bustling court butterflies, that King Charles would leave many a track after him as he went through the world — not of

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the white snow, but blood-red tracks, which should lead from Stockholm’s saloons right across Europe even to the shore of the Black Sea.

Among those who did not spare their witticisms at these innocent traces of the royal feet, was a tall slim youth of a pale and sickly appearance, with blonde hair and refined and intelligent but somewhat scornful features. A jest concerning the “ bear’s paws” had just escaped his lips, when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and heard some one whisper in his ear in a voice trembling with wrath : “ Be careful, Torsten, of

playing tricks with the bear ; it might be that you would find yourself in the lion’s claws.”

The person addressed turned around and saw before him a handsome black-haired youth of scarcely sixteen years, but so full-chested and broad-shouldered that in spite of his youth he was evidently an opponent not to be despised. This youth was the same horseman who had accompanied the king to Drottningholm, and he wore the same hunting dress which had drawn upon his master the jests of the court.

The pale youth, costumed as Mercury, measured the other with a look which might indicate fatherly solicitude but which really implied a great deal of ridicule. “ What ails you, Gustaf ?” said he ; “what a dress ! Look about you, my friend; you are not just at present out in the woods. Make no mistake about high standing. This company is not pines nor firs; and above all, mon coeur , do not mistake the ladies for junipers. Are you sure of being invited, pauvre Gustaf ? I pray you, borrow my wings and make yourself distant, or at least change your costume ; you might, for example, represent Cerberus.”

The dark youth, whose arm was certainly stronger than his tongue, would probably have given a passionate answer, if at that instant a very young girl, scarcely fifteen, in the costume of a wood-nymph, had not taken him by the arm and whispered: “Never mind him,

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Gustaf; he is in the habit of sharpening his words on the keen maids of honor. Come, I belong to the woods too ; I will get you a cap with a green plume, and then an attendant shall brush your coat. You are handsomer than all the rest of them now,” she added playfully, and with such kindness beaming in her mild blue eyes that Gustaf felt pacified and willingly let her lead him to one of the side rooms.

Torsten smiled, and turned on his heel to seek new targets for his shafts of wit.

“ Can your ladyship tell me who are those three young people over there ?” said a newly arrived foreign ambassador to one of the queen’s waiting women. “One seems to be head, another hand, and the third heart, of the same family.”

“ Rightly guessed, my good viscount,” answered the maid of honor. “ You see there the three children of the Bertelskold family; perhaps you were acquainted with the late Count, an amiable gentleman, but ruined by the Reduction. The pale young man, Count Torsten, is devoting himself to diplomacy, and has lately obtained a situation with the Swedish legation in Paris. The younger, Count Gustaf Adolf, is an ensign in the life-dragoons, and is one of our young king’s va-partout. The sweet fair girl is Ebba Cecelia Bertelskold, of whom all the malice in the court finds nothing ill to say, although through her aunt, the Countess Sparre, she has lately been appointed acting maid of honor to the princess Ulrika Eleonora. There, my dear viscount, have I not given you an edifying little family history ? But what do I see ! It has pleased his majesty to assume the costume of Mars, the god of war. I venture most humbly to suggest that our god of war lacks one little attribute which the ancients never forgot to endow him with — and that is, whiskers. Upon my honor, viscount, a beardless war-god ! — it appears to me that is as natural as the Graces in mustaches !”

The viscount smiled, and upon his lips there faltered

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one of those objections which are made merely to be refuted. But before we listen further to this conversation, let us seek an explanation of how it was possible to induce this morose young king, just returned from a bear-hunt, to masquerade at a court ball.

The queen-dowager Hedvig Eleonora had the same solicitude for her grandson Charles XII as she formerly had for her son Charles XI. This wild, unbrushed and unkempt boy, who could not talk French, must be taught common-sense and royal manners ; in her motherly solicitude it was not esteemed sufficient that he could drill soldiers and talk Latin; in order to govern a kingdom, he must also be able to address a brilliant lady and figure in a ballet. Unfortunate mother ! her endeavors in that direction had altogether failed in the case of Charles XI, as she had realized with grief during the long twenty-five years when the court chronicles were filled with devotional exercises, army drills, racing, hunting, and ice-fishing. Queen Ulrika Eleonora had never learned to play femkort and ruff ; but the time had now come to enjoy a gayer life in Sweden. Charles XII must be reared a gentleman ; this was difficult; and the day when, at his coronation, he set the crown on his own head, the old grandmother began to fear that the boy, by being made a governor himself, had become ungovernable for others.

What tribulations she had already had with little Charles, when he had told Behm, the court painter, to his face, that he looked like a monkey ! The queen-dowager took the artist’s part ; the prince must beg his pardon — but no, he stood by his words : “ Behm looked like a monkey.” It was not easy to make so stubborn a will bend to courtesy. The old grandmother held firmly to her convictions; and she certainly meant well, according to her view of the matter. She recalled with regret the splendor of the old regency days ; scarcely had Charles XI closed his eyes, and there had hardly been time to recover one’s self after the great fire at the castle, before, in the first place, the king’s burial was celebrated with such pomp as had not been seen in Sweden for a long time. Next came the coronation, and then a royal wedding ; and thus the court festivities by degrees were set on foot. The young king assented, with the stipulation that he should be allowed to pursue his own pleasure, according to his own will. But neither his own inclinations nor his submissiveness to his grandmother led Charles XII upon this round of brilliant amusements. It was his affection for his beloved and amiable elder sister, Hedvig Sophie, just then, in the flower of her youth, married to the young and gay Duke Frederick of Schleswig Holstein. For her sake, silver gathered by the Reduction flowed from Charles XI’s treasury for masquerades and court-balls; for her sake, Charles XII many a time forgot his own hunting excursions to take part in his sister’s gentler pleasures. It was she, the good and happy royal child — child enough still to exchange the offer of the crown of England for a little disputed dukedom, and innocent enough not to notice her little highness’s early crown of thorns — it was she who caused Europe to mistake the young lion’s temper, and thereby indirectly wove together the tangled threads of the great northern war.

Hedvig Sophie was now at Kiel, and from there wrote the letters of a princess of eighteen to a seventeen year old prince. A courier had just arrived with one of these letters, so full of childish innocence, and the queen dowager had received it in the king’s absence. The old lady knew how to conceal her vexation at the king’s entrance to her brilliant ball in his stained hunting dress, and she once more determined to “ bring up ” her lordly grandson. She sought him out among the officers, pretending that she had an important matter to lay before him. This important matter was Hedvig Sophie’s letter, accompanied by an elegant harlequin’s mask in a richly ornamented Holstein basket.