I- 
 
 LIBRARY ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DiCeO J
 
 
 1 ^\ ^
 
 fr^-^./n*'''"'
 
 0U^^^-
 
 This series of Scandinavian Classics is published 
 by The American-Scandinavian Foundation in the 
 belief that greater familiarity with the chief literary 
 monuments of the North will help Americans to a 
 better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus serve 
 to stimulate their sympathetic cooperation 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 
 
 a 
 
 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, ig20, by The <iAmerican-Scandinavian Foundation 
 
 T>. "B. Updike The zMerrymount Tress "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 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 The Green Corridor 3 
 
 A Sermon 24 
 
 The Successor to the Throne 22 
 
 Midsummer Sport 57 
 
 Gunnel the Stewardess 73 
 
 French Mons 79 
 
 The Queen of the Marauders 102 
 
 Mazeppa and His Ambassador 1 23 
 
 Fifty Tears Later 136 
 
 The Fortified House 162 
 
 A Clean White Shirt 1 84 
 
 Poltava 1 90 
 
 Behold My Children! 228 
 
 At the Council Table 233 
 
 In the Church Square 237 
 
 Captured 242
 
 VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM 
 
 Author of '"The Charles Men'' 
 I 
 
 FOR 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 
 xA.merican 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
 
 X 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: Infandum^ Regina^ jubes reno- 
 vare dolor em. 
 
 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 sub specie aeternitatis. From this 
 point of view, T'he 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 the very 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 xiii 
 
 True, honorable y 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, 
 F-gypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor; while for nearly 
 eight vears 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 charge 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 Gerome 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 IVander-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 Endymion, published 
 in 1889, he displayed a picture of the East which 
 is stifled to death in the embrace of the West. In a 
 couple of hrochur^s^ Renascence (1889) and Pif/Z/^'j 
 Wedding [\S^o), the latter a rollicking yV d'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. These writings took on a decisive meaning 
 in the development of Swedish literature: during 
 the decade of 1 880 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, ^^^ 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! *Tis like a fortress 
 By walls securely shielded^ 
 Our worlds our own^ the one thing 
 We in this world have huilded. 
 
 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
 
 xviii 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, A People 
 (i 902), contains the lyric Fellow-Citizens^ where he 
 takes up the cause of universal suffrage and thor- 
 oughgoing democracy. 
 
 'The Charles M.en, 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. Birgittas Pilgrimage (1901), which 
 sets before us the greatest religious personality of 
 Sweden in the Middle Ages; Folke Filbyter (1905) 
 and The Legacy of Bjdlbo (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 t\t\e. 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 (i 9 1 5), 
 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 1 890 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 1900 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 191 7 he departed thence, after his 
 third marriage, like both of those preceding, had 
 been dissolved by divorce, and in 191 9 he betook 
 himself afresh to foreign travel. In 1910 he was 
 made an honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the 
 University of Stockholm; in 191 2 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
 
 XX 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 in the 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 gloomv scenes in black, gray, and 
 white from the wintry land in the North, but also 
 the variegated and highly colored representations
 
 VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM xxi 
 
 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 idyl of the 
 country manor is immortalized in the airy Midsum- 
 mer Sport.Th^ 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.
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Even when dispersed in slavery, they preserve their 
 sense of order and responsibility; they keep up their 
 muster-rolls and accounts, they are not a horde but 
 a people, a state {T'he 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 xxiii 
 
 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 tragic in 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 for a 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 honorweak- 
 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 is, 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 Funer a/ 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 is glorified in the conclud- 
 ing words o^ 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, 1 9 1 9
 
 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
 
 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 The Green Corridor 
 
 IN 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 is 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. 
 
 "I shall follow you, constable," he said, "or 
 lieutenant, or whatever I should call you." 
 
 " Lars Kkerot is a captain in His Gracious Ma- 
 jesty's battle fleet," answered Kkerot," 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 towers and roofs, small groups of people moved 
 on the frozen Malar between King's Island and
 
 THE GREEN CORRIDOR 5 
 
 Soder. 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." 
 
 "In God's name, do not talk so!" stammered 
 Hakon. "Do you see your visions waking or 
 asleep?" 
 
 "Between the two." 
 
 " I 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, when he came 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. 
 
 " In the room belowus to the left is Her Majesty, 
 the queen dowager. She has locked herself up dur- 
 ing these last davs, and not even Tessin slips in with 
 his portfolios. No one knows just what she is 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 jinglingof 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 it up." 
 
 " That she certainly does n't, for she is long since 
 married and old and uglv, and at her own home. 
 You live only in that which was and that which 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 still 
 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 Roval Majesty ! You see, warder, just 
 as everv 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 '11 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 
 easilv 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 that Hans 
 Wachtmeister wants to be himself "The fellow is 
 crazv!" he screamed on the deck, when I politely 
 asked him to raise his hat before he ordered me into
 
 lo 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 fit came 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 ii 
 
 " I 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 '11 wager you this 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 vou. 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 in the 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 Corridor and looked through the 
 keyhole. 
 
 Thegreen 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 
 Hght, and this restored me to a certain feehng 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 all 
 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 mv 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 I. All at once he seized me by the arm and 
 whispered through his teeth: "F/^/Zo di un cane! 
 Spy? What arevouPThequeen 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 comprehendedthat 
 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 iMEN 
 
 "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 thehall andclapped 
 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 cherel " 
 
 Hedwig Stenbock was then nearly thirty-five, 
 and she went so stiffly and rigidly to meet him that 
 I should not have belieyed she had either heart or 
 soulj 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, 
 "Aha, 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. Finallv, 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.
 
 i6 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. 
 
 " Long 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 hearingthat 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 addiol 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 nightwhen I came back 
 with Lindskiold. 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, 
 though all to hinder you watch and wake? Your 
 inclination gives more delectation than elevation. 
 Paff, poof! A poor master builder, who thrives bv 
 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."
 
 i8 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 down in the 
 light of the lantern. 
 
 " I have determined to marry Chamberlain Tes- 
 sin," said Hedwig Stenbock, " and that is how this 
 has happened." 
 
 Lindskiold 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!" 
 
 Lindskiold seized Tessin by the arm in a lofty, 
 threatening way, with a gesture as if he suddenly 
 threw off a spattered masquerade cloak. 
 
 " Let 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 mv 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, "are 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 
 lastletterofprophecyunderWallin's entry door and 
 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 thev 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 
 
 IN 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 genii. He sat stifliy, 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 ofi^ the black points on the ermine. 
 
 " Look at un," said a woman in one of the bot-
 
 A SERMON 25 
 
 torn 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 
 oppositeto him, nodded simperingly,but the young 
 princesses beside her laughed most of all. Ulrica 
 Kleanora 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 old 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 gay ety, 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 
 byamusing 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 thedizzying, triumphal intoxication ofvic- 
 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 ministershaken 
 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. 
 
 I n the room outside his sleeping-chamber lay the 
 books which were used in his rarer and rarer les- 
 son-hours. Already heliked 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 
 girl. 
 
 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 be as I have said," answered the king. 
 "And from to-morrow on the night-light is 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 I 
 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
 
 32 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 and the oppression of others misuse the power that 
 Thou lendest me. For Thy holy name's sake. 
 Amen."
 
 ^he Successor to the Throfie 
 
 HOW 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 
 ajack-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 Liel^er! There, 's something to do 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. Dishcloths to the saucepans! Rub and 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 earnestlv, "how 
 should a prince sacrifice himself for his people? 
 That sermon of last spring never leaves mv mind." 
 
 Wallenstedt had the habit when he talked of 
 puffing out his lips as if he were saving " 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 dearWallenstedt," the king mean- 
 while answered. " I, too, have alwavs felt within me 
 that my will urged me in that direction. On Atland's 
 throne a man must sit. It is 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.
 
 THE SUCCESSOR TO THE THRONE 37 
 
 The high dignitaries had 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 small 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, forward 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 thev heard the racket, they 
 were still a moment and listened, but Cronhjelm
 
 THE SUCCESSOR TO THE THRONE 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 whv 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 is impossible. Shall I give 
 orders for horses and torch-riders?" 
 
 "Have you any better suggestion?" 
 
 "All other suggestions are better, but " 
 
 "No, vou are right. We must ride to Kungsor 
 just because it seems impossible, and because we 
 will it." 
 
 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
 
 40 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 momentthekingdashedbyin 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 THRONE 41 
 
 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 make an 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. 
 
 " I lie here on one of the German galleons, and 
 would but have a mug of berry juice in your gar- 
 den. Schnelir' 
 
 He thrust a couple of coins into her hand and 
 pushed her aside. She was near to giving him a 
 blow, but, as it 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 thejuice, 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. 
 
 "Impudent villain!" muttered Mother Malin. 
 " I 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 wav, the young gen- 
 tleman flew from out the barberrv hedge, and roared 
 with the most disrespectful wrath, "Ha, you crone, 
 march ! I am 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 THE THRONE 43 
 
 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 yourfather 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 gooseberrv 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 aclast to drawfromher 
 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 in 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." 
 
 "I see across the wall that light is shining through 
 the heart in 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 TO THE THRONE 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- 
 str6m,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, thev lifted one of the planks by the half-
 
 THE SUCCESSOR TO THE THRONE 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, 
 bovs! Devil take you. Vivat Carolus, king of Swe- 
 den and of scandals ! " 
 
 Shirts were fluttering out; hats, wigs, and gloves 
 lav on the street; hoofs struck sparks, and the 
 horses rushed forward as in 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. 
 
 ''Vorwdrtsf shouted the king, as he stormed 
 with all his following into the chapel, and slashed 
 amain at the pews. " They shall get splinters in their 
 breeches here o' Sunday." 
 
 The duke pounded on the floor demanding si- 
 lence, and Klinckowstrom, 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 beautifving 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 hisembarrassment, he winked 
 at the page from the inn and pounded anew on the 
 floor. 
 
 "Verv 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 outof 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 ! H ey ! Beat 
 and break, snap and crack ! Stamp on the floor ! 
 Herr Cott^ bring water! The king is sick. Water or 
 wine just wine wine!" 
 
 1 he 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. 
 Whv 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 wenttogetheralongthe stairs and corridors, 
 and came, at length, to his sleepingapartment. Here 
 Wailenstedt and a couple of other high nobles were 
 already waiting. Wailenstedt 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." 
 
 " If it concerns a criminal matter, yes," answered
 
 THE SUCCESSOR TO THE THRONE 51 
 
 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. 
 
 "What 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 ni^ht-table, and answered : " My name is 
 Rhoda Rhoda d'Klleville."
 
 52 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,andbowing 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 TO THE THRONE 53 
 
 " I 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. 
 
 " Not so, not so. Sit, 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. You are 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 is so innate that" she laughed playfully 
 "I 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 ! " 
 
 " I 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 ha\'e 
 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 trom 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 eves 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 ofi^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 '11 become a devil. 
 When such a bird does n'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 
 
 TWO 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 on a 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 we 7/ 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- 
 craft. 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 up in time no doubt, little one, 
 and become a help to Axel Frederick." 
 
 "If 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 is 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 him in 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 p)ork with shallot." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said grandfather; "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. " Idon'tunder- 
 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
 
 6o 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 6i 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " It 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. When the 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. 
 
 "In 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, I 
 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 is 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 ojff." 
 
 " Let '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 monotonouslv, 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." 
 
 "Eight 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 staved 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 o^ aqua for tis^ 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 : 
 
 " L.ike as my forefathers have done, even so will 
 I 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-sk-in 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 for tis. 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 rve, to see 
 which has grown highest the next morning " 
 
 " Now it's all ready," broke in grandfather, who 
 had not heard her; "and God be with both vou 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 a few 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 ofi^ 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 hard as thirst. If thegentleman 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 ofwhichhe 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 but 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 the sea, 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 anv old and de- 
 crepit men or greedy bickerers; it was an army of 
 youths.
 
 MIDSUiMMER SPORT 71 
 
 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 
 I can catch up?" 
 
 A few days afterward 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 ofiicer, set their entry doors ajar, 
 and asked if it 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, whichwas 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. 
 
 " I brought him home with 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 
 
 IN a vault of the fortress at 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, and a 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 '11 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 
 citv. 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 me as 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 the crooked 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. 
 
 "I 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?"
 
 GUNNEL THE STEWARDESS 75 
 
 She laughed and trod the spinning-wheel faster 
 and faster. 
 
 "Haha! 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 
 God, be God, 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. 
 
 Now it 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 a reminder 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 heavilyand opened her dulling eyes. 
 
 "I 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 
 
 AHIDE-COVEREDfieldwagon 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.
 
 8o 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 in 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?" 
 
 " Just so." 
 
 " '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 8i 
 
 " 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 
 affiard 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 Mens 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, he leaned forward and 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. 
 
 " I 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." 
 
 The serving-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 Mens 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 your hearts more shrunken. 
 One believes In 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, while 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 lamps are insane. Their mother was an 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. 
 
 " I 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 vou a count?"
 
 86 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 "I? No." 
 
 "Are you a baron?" 
 
 " No, I 'm not a baron yet." 
 
 "Are you not at least a plain nobleman?" 
 
 "Is it my lord's intention to insult?" 
 
 French Monsflushed with embarrassment. "The 
 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 saw the 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 
 old." 
 
 "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. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I 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 hache of lamb 
 with thyme. Much in this part of theworld depends 
 on the sauce. Oh, I do not long to be back home 
 with oatmeal and pitchy darkness." 
 
 " Pitch darkness? Are you thinking of the sum- 
 mer nights? " 
 
 " They 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." 
 " I 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 roi 
 Soleiiy 
 
 "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 is, for he makes us noticed in foreign 
 countries, but how poor for all that!" 
 
 " Mightily poor in Warsaw latelv. 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?" 
 
 "Poor? I?" 
 
 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 I 
 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 Rnj grands seigneurs. aowGYer 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. 
 
 "I 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 recluse 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. 
 
 "It's getting dark," he said to the serving-wo- 
 man, " and I 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 onlv 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.
 
 90 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 sufficientlv, because all the corners 
 and recesses were dark. He raised his lorgnette, 
 sharpened his gaze, and turned his eyes on all sides, 
 but otherwise lay quite motionless. 
 
 Then he saw by the door-jamb close behind the 
 curtain at the head of his bed a tall, thin lackey in a 
 brown coat with black braid. 
 
 A cramp-like dread caught him by the throat, he
 
 FRENCH MONS 91 
 
 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 lackev 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 mv boot, Jonathan!" 
 
 His voice was now barelv 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 thecar- 
 riage entrance neighed long and piercingly, and far 
 off in the snowstorm many horses answered.
 
 92 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 1 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 rubbed against 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. 
 
 " I said that you were a fool," 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!" 
 
 " I 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?" 
 
 " Like an excellency." 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Oohaho! 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. 
 
 " I fancy we 're going to have a prettv 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 stockade and counted 
 half aloud : " Eight, 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 to him in his dr?ssing-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, vou 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 have my 
 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 ! " he whispered. " 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 
 Dumkv 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 kettledrums and 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 
 andthegold-bound Bible,stooda littlesilver-plated 
 imageof 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 Snuffler, 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 praver
 
 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 theOldTestament, totheaveng- 
 ing Lord of Sabaoth, whose commands he heard in 
 his soul without needing to pray for them; and it 
 wasThor 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, propped against 
 the gallant Captain Schmiedeberg, who himself still 
 went on a 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 
 proudlv 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
 
 loo 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 iir-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 herein 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 Mens 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 loi 
 
 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 ^ueen of the Marauders 
 
 THE tocsin in the church tower at Narva had 
 ceased. In a 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 still 
 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 
 melee the inhabitants had thrown down firebrands 
 and tiles, and where the blood of the slain was still 
 running in the gutters, were for manv davs piled 
 up with rusty or half-blackened coffins. The hair 
 on some of the bodies had grown so that it hung
 
 THE QUEEN 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 off and 
 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 in a 
 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 be in his companv. 
 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 in 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 for a 
 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-
 
 io6 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. 
 
 " I did not know that in my simple house folk had 
 learned such a ceremonious feeling of delicacy," said 
 he, and gave herafriendlv paton 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 T like 
 people to talk 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 T have a 
 Riga rlx-dollar in my pocket. Who asks about a 
 ragged old man ? It 's another affair with you, Lina. 
 I 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 QUEEN 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 
 aKvays 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.
 
 io8 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 109 
 
 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.
 
 no THE CHARLES MP:N 
 
 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. 
 
 "I '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 vou 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 QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS iii 
 
 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. 
 
 "Is 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 ! " 
 
 T'he soldiers pried it open with their blades, and 
 the dark lid rattled to one side. 
 
 Ogilvy stared. With that he burst out laughing.
 
 112 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. 
 "I 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 Hke 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 pufFof 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 sav: "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 evervthing 
 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.
 
 THE 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. 
 
 " Dare I be frank? " 
 
 "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-
 
 ii6 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 as a 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 hacks and sang in tune with the pipe. 
 
 " Do you think 1 'II scour your bunks?"said she.
 
 ii8 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?" 
 
 ''Tour women? Who are you?" 
 
 She pointed to her bracelet. " I 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. Krost and
 
 I20 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. 
 
 But when the army came to the 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 QUEEN OF 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. 
 
 " Is 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. Each 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 
 anv straggling marauders, were sneakingup through 
 the bushes on their hands and knees.
 
 122 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 
 
 IN 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 door a 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, vour 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 
 loyalty."
 
 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 did n'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 
 liar!" 
 
 " 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: This is Mazeppa's ambassa- 
 dor!" 
 
 "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-Hds 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?" 
 
 " I warn you. I predict misfortunes. I saw an 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 drums rattle 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 himselt 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: 
 "I 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, mv 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 mv steps 
 to your particular door?"
 
 MAZEPPA AND HIS AMBASSADOR 129 * 
 
 "You were driven from your episcopal see be- 
 cause of vour unfaith and your pranks." 
 
 " It 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 in a 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 mv Machiavelli in peace, 
 and to whom I might say : 'Agreed, old fellow! It 's 
 all a shadow plav, even this that you are lord and 
 I servant.' Therefore I came to you. Mv adven- 
 turer's blood cannot bear to sit still, and I wearv 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 hisgrand- 
 mothcr 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 in a 
 little side-room, and sat dowti 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 iMEN 
 
 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, vour 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 Mazeppa was 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 
 head and 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." 
 
 "It 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. 
 
 " When I 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 such a 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 fororet 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 Tears Later 
 
 WHEN the porridge had been eaten and the 
 branch candlesof tallow which shone on 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 Hook, 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 I 
 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, [ 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. LLs 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 on a 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. 
 
 T 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 T 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-harddiscipline." Will you 
 not obey your own ensign, fellow?" 
 
 " Halt ! Stand ! " he repeated, but continued on as 
 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 
 Lnsign 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, and on a shelf gleamed pots of pewter. 
 
 The serving-maid ran awav 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 they 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 anv evil in mind. 1 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. His incredible obstinacy gave agiant's strength 
 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 whiffy 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 davs 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 me a coat of stiffs cloth-of-silver, which
 
 146 THE 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." 
 
 I 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 is 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. l^he next instant I shall
 
 148 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 feel it as a lightning-flash through my head and 
 then all's ov^er. 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 me as if every thing 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 I 
 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 a shaggy 
 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 like an old-fashioned morion, she shouted her 
 " Forward!" Then I built barricades of tables and 
 gilded leather chairs, until in the midstof 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 mv 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 down after Herr Ensign into the lighted 
 cellar, where he was already absorbed in breaking 
 open a locked wooden door. 
 
 " Let that alone ! " I commanded him, and he as- 
 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. At a 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 
 fere. . . . 
 
 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 shee'pskin 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 did n'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 
 ... I 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 angtT, 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 Jan aside 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 asidewith 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. 
 
 " I 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 as I 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 vou 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
 
 i6o THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 embraces did I not have to give, how many ad- 
 ventures to describe ! 1 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. 
 
 "Shot long ago." 
 
 "I 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 i6i 
 
 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 
 
 SURPRISED 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 from all 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. Underthesheltered sideof thecity 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 the street, 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 threw it down by the 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. 
 
 " I 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 forth in the room like a 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
 
 i64 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 Rehnskiold 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," I do not ask that His 
 Majesty should understand statesmanship. But can 
 he lead troops .f* 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 mediatingand 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 Rehnskiold 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 icv gust of
 
 i66 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. 
 
 "I 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 have already 
 two dragoons with me." 
 
 " But, Your IVI ajesty ! 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- 
 skiold hastened out. None of the others in the circle 
 considered it necessary to break the silence or to 
 move. 
 
 Onlv after a very long pause did the king bow 
 again to every one separately, and go out into the 
 open air. 
 
 "Well?" inquired 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 eve to eye with 
 His Majesty." 
 
 " I had never expected he would be like that." 
 
 " He is always like that. He is too kingly to com- 
 mand." 
 
 They followed after the king, who clambered over
 
 i68 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 wagons and fallen animals. His motions were agile, 
 never abrupt, but measured and quite slow, so that 
 heneverfor a momentlost his dignity. When hehad 
 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 bv 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 melee 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 formerlv 
 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 heroicAjax!" said he, and patted his steam- 
 ing horse," vou are indeed an old manger-biter, but 
 I have no right to founder you for no good cause, 
 and I mvself 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
 
 I70 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 
 
 I'he answer pleased the king in the highest de- 
 gree, and with a leap he stood on the ground. 
 
 " We '11 tie our steeds here in the 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. 
 
 "Look!" 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 
 courtvard, pursued by the king. 
 
 Then the king wiped ofi"' 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 thedark- 
 ness lay a starved white horse bound to an 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 
 . . . My gratitude " . . . 
 
 Thekingcheerily 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 
 
 sackfacesraised themselves spy ingabove the bushes, 
 and borne in the wind sounded the roving plun- 
 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 the ensign 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, " It 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 a lafran- 
 fois; but his first and last wort always runs, 'For 
 Russia's goot!' King Carolus leafs his lants as
 
 THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 175 
 
 smoking ash-heaps, and does not possess a single 
 frient, not efen among his nearest. King Carolus is 
 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 in the work 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." 
 
 "I 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. 
 Ah, I can't bear 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 liaison. 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 is still pure- 
 hearted and supreme among all, if only his bloot is 
 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 
 davs ! 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 
 
 Thecoarsest 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 to him 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.
 
 i8o 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 own sword, 
 but longs for another's."
 
 THE FORTIFIED HOUSE i8i 
 
 "Now I hear his steps even down here. They 
 are getting still more violent and restless. He is so 
 lonelv. 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 
 
 Aly poor weak soul would I commend. 
 
 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-
 
 i82 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, thev 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 hisbroadswordglimmered 
 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 Wlitte Shirt 
 
 PRIVATE Bengt Geting 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 Rabenms 
 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 am a 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 authoritv to the dying man himself For 
 three vears 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
 
 i86 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, nov/ 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 a message? " 
 
 "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?'" 
 
 "Have vou then anything to repent?" 
 
 " I 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, I didn't stepforwardandstrikeyou down 
 with m v musket, But do you want to know what 
 causes me dread ? Have you never heard the wagon- 
 drivers andoutposts 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 a coffin of a couple 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. I 'm so deep- 
 ly sunk in 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 it you believe in it now 
 you will have great company. Gvldenstolpe 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 vou 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 vet deeper, and felt the man's 
 forehead and hands.
 
 i88 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 " In 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 theyounger 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 arms as if for an 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 able to 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. 
 
 "I shall see to it," he whispered, "that you get 
 a clean white shirt. You know that the king does 
 notregardhimselfas more than thehumblestsoldier, 
 and it is so that he himself wishes sometime to lie."
 
 Poltava 
 
 ON the first of 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 neither of them 
 is coming. Europe begins to forget our courts la 
 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. 
 
 "I believe those fellows in the town have gone 
 crazy, and are going to defend themselves." 
 
 He sprangout and threw himself into the saddle. 
 All arose and heard a continuous firing.
 
 POLTAVA 191 
 
 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,andbegan instead tolight theirport-fires 
 and shoot. Fire-balls that rose aloft threw their light 
 over the hills and meadow-land, and were reflected 
 in the hurrying watersof 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 the advance. 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 th?,n a scaling-post." 
 
 " But here we need to shoot away many hun- 
 dreds." 
 
 "If 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 
 onewished 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 '11 be shot ! " cried 
 the soldiers, rushing forward and driving the Zapo- 
 rogeans among them. Again thev seized the spades, 
 and again the Zaporogeans tore up the turf and 
 opened the earth, so that thev 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 the soldiers, 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 bv accident, and Klinckowstrom, 
 the friend of his youth, shot dead. Me felt tiie 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 
 everyday to have relish. He began to see the great 
 clamorous victories in a colder light as they became 
 rarer. To be sure 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 become a 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 eve, 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 have a ducat in my pocket. Take it! You 
 see,my child, I'm a 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 
 sottly 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. 
 
 "Is vour mother living.^" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "What's your name?" 
 
 " Dunva." 
 
 He wanted to kiss her again on the cheeks, but 
 she moved awav. 
 
 "Give me a kopek first!" 
 
 He went back to the camp and begged kopek 
 pieces of all whom he met. 
 
 " 1 will watch over her when there is 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 to d' Albedy hll'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, hut 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 melancholv Lewenhaupt with his great clear 
 eves 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 Gvllenkrona 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 thedoor,in 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, manv 
 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 in- 
 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 to the 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 ot gloomv 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 harder and more set. 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 past and 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,on a sweating 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 verv place, three hundred vears 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 I 
 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 yourselt ? 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 begjinning." 
 
 "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 
 kingisnowtooill 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 " 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 "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 rank and 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 
 obeved. 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
 
 2o6 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 theofficers' knowing where theyshouldlead 
 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 drew up the infantry in line against 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. 
 
 "Is it Your Majestv 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,"heanswercJ reluctantly,hut became blush- 
 ing red, and all understood that he lied.
 
 2o8 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 fordaysandmonths. 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 andpun- 
 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 like an interrogated bag- 
 gage-driver. He could 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, his 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." 
 
 Then Gyllenkrook commended the king 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 I 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 betore the battalions, 
 pale as corpses, in time with the music, as if they 
 had fileduptoaparadein thccitadel square by theold
 
 210 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 Three Crowns; but the soldiers 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 thatthegreen 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, who in 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 
 oftheNylandregimentfellCo]onelTorstenson,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-
 
 POLTAVA 211 
 
 hjelm lay with his leg shot off; and by the corpse of 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Silversparre Ensign Djurklo 
 foughtwith brokensword tosavethebanner,untilhe 
 sank downdying. Around him lay half the non-com- 
 missioned officers and half the men as a 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 Mor- 
 nertook 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 bleedingfrom 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?" 
 
 "Thev 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 lav 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 pikes and butts and sabres 
 Colonel Stjernhook was stretched on the ground, 
 as he stammered: "Now is the time when we mav 
 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 Diiben already 
 lay in the throes of death. "Stand, boys, stand!" 
 shouted officers and soldiers, and fell over one an-
 
 POLTAVA 213 
 
 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 men could 
 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!" thev 
 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 clav-spotted cloak of the 
 slain trooper Oxehufvud. The stiffened face was 
 raven-black with grime, but the eves kindled, and 
 he stammered: "Swedes! Swedes!" 
 
 In the vielding ranks manv 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. Again and 
 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 : " We are 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 
 constantlv, 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
 
 2i6 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 above, under the Trinity, was his own likeness. 
 
 The Swedish fugitives gathered around the king 
 bv 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 Adierfeldt, 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, vour 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 are shot, all of 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 cofiin unburied ? There 
 was none who dared to do that.
 
 POLTAVA 217 
 
 "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 lastCossacks andcountless 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
 
 2i8 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 grass and 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 foundLieutenant-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, Rosenskiold, 
 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 twentv 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 lame 
 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 221 
 
 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. 
 
 "If 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 to a gouty 
 statesman. You should never talk to him as to a 
 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 thegloves 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?" 
 
 " I fight ill with the pen that 's what I 'm think-
 
 222 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 ing of. 1 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 1 under- 
 stand the highest longing of a hero. If Your Maj- 
 esty shouldgetyour bullet . . . well, so be it, in Jesus' 
 name ! But to-day Your Majesty can no longer stay 
 in the saddle. God forgivemy 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.
 
 POLTAVA 223 
 
 disgraceful dolt ! Look, look ! And he took the plate 
 and money-barrels from Saxony along instead of 
 leavingevery thing to theRussians. 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 to understand 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 ofi^er 
 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 hacks, 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 Russiangeneral 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-drums and horns and 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 thev were like 
 dead men. Ensign Piper, not vet full-grown, who 
 had lost his heels, stumbled up on crutches. There 
 camethecourtierGunterfelt, 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 eves. 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 down and pointed to the empty tent ofthe king. 
 
 "iff 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 
 knowthat 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
 
 POLTAVA 227 
 
 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! 
 
 CORPORAL 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 
 
 sacksof hay on his wagon. Theking'slips 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, " I 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 hotlv, he 
 saw a grav-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 soon as 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 gold and 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 necessltv 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 231 
 
 Towards dusk a halt was made to bury those who 
 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 againbecoinevisible 
 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 soldier in 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 after 
 righteousness," he said. 
 
 Like an acolyte who gives the sacrament, he bore 
 the canteen in front of him and held it to the mouth 
 of the soldier, and the dying man drank the water 
 to the last 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 placeformeonthewagons/'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 
 
 IN 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 Frolich, 
 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 vou 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, pickingup his chairand sittingdown. 
 '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 thev 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 mv 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 sav 
 to you that never, never amid the victory-banners 
 in former years has our little people come nearer 
 to imperishable greatness than to-dav." 
 
 Horn went into the assemblv hall, but on the 
 wav he turned to Falkenberg with lowered voice: 
 "My mother had many sons besides me. Thev 
 have got their bullets. Shall I be worse than thev r 
 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 in an undertone: "And the people who 
 have borne so much would you to-day forbid 
 that people to press fast the crown of martyrdom? " 
 
 The lords entered the hall, but, propped on his 
 stick, Falkenberg 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, 
 a pen!
 
 In the Church Square 
 
 BROAD-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. 
 
 "I 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 loaf with the back 
 of an axe : " What 's a man to do when he 's starv- 
 
 ing? 
 
 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 havloft. 
 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!" 
 
 "It's truly spoken, that. We'll go with you," 
 said Mons and got up, swaving 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 SQUARE 239 
 
 ing voice. " We must hold bv our ancient rights and 
 Hberties!" 
 
 "I '11 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 ot 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. 
 
 " What do you say ? " 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 
 
 the third 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." 
 
 "It'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. Bv God ! vou good men of the 
 Dale, if the king is taken, then wedemand that thev 
 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. 
 
 " Look vou, that is a demand that belongs to our 
 ancient rights and liberties." 
 
 "It '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 
 
 FAR 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 now a 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 in a 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 
 in every way tried to subdue 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. 
 
 "Is it not seven o'clock yet, Blomberg!" she 
 whispered. 
 
 "It has just struck six. It's an 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 Ekerot prophesied 
 misery and conflagration. And perhaps the fire 
 did n'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. 1^'orgive my free- 
 dom, gracious mistress, but to tell the truth is in 
 the long run less dangerous than to lie. I'hat'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 1
 
 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 c/ar, whom 
 we faithlesslv 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 me a 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 pocker. I saw by the 
 address that Falkenberg was the name of the bo\ 
 who had bled to death. He lav 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 T had only time to 
 spell out the words which from that hour became 
 my favorite maxim: "I'o 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 onlv Swedish words he had learned in the 
 campaign: "I Shwede. Devil-damn I" 
 
 My Zaporogean and I, with eight of mv 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 Httle 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, 
 asoftenas I played, a young woman came to 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 gallant intrigues. " Let everv 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 is 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 glance when 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 Miiller's Sermons, and I 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 T 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 morningagain, 
 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 praver, I should 
 still never venture to (jo up there.
 
 250 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 When 1 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 1 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 
 mvself 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 
 bv 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 Feodosova with a great, 
 splendid bouquet of stellaria, which reminded one 
 of irises. First she did n'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, h'eodosova sat pick-
 
 252 THE CHARLES MEN 
 
 ing the flowers apart, pulling oft 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 v/hich you play 
 sound so wonderful." 
 
 Her speech pleased me not altogether, and I 
 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: 
 "E'en 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 did anv day seem 
 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 : " 1 see clearly, little father, that vou are in love 
 with Feodosova, and in truth she is a good and pure 
 woman whom you may take to wife. That vou 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 
 do it." 
 
 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 firstaskingleave,and I didnot knowrightly
 
 CAPTURED 255 
 
 how I should conduct myself. Pondering, 1 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, 
 "Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!" 
 
 I stood with my hand raised, and stared and 
 stared, and I 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 T prolonged the time, speaking 
 now to one man, now to another,but shortly the Rus- 
 sian dragoons came and ordered me to turn about 
 to my place. 
 
 As I went up the lane, I persuadeti 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 hadhad 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 
 hand to my hat, I saw that Feodosova was away . That 
 gave me no longer any relief I stumbled up to my 
 prison, and at every step heard the thumping of 
 my wooden leg. 
 
 "I have talked with Feodosova," whispered the 
 Zaporogean. 
 
 I gave him no reply. My happiness, my flower, 
 that had grown up over the heaps of ashes, lay 
 consumed; and if it had again shone out, I myself, 
 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 bv the deluge 
 from themountains,and from lack of shelter we em- 
 (>race the cliffs. But we beg Thee not for mitigation. 
 Almighty God. We prav only: Lead us, be nigh 
 unto us! Behold, Thou hast turned away Thy 
 countenance from our people and stuck thorns in 
 our shoes, that we mav become Thv servants and 
 rhy children. In the mould of the battle-field our 
 brothers sleep, and a fairer song; of victorv 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 no longer: Take away 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 calmlv, without a guard. A swarm of hopping 
 and shriekingdwarfs were his only retinue. Now and 
 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 ofbrandy, which he jestingly emptied at a single
 
 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 halt- 
 torn-ofF brass buttons on his brown coat. On the 
 skirt he had a great silver button with an artificial 
 stone and on his legs rough 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, child," he inquired, "where is there 
 a comfortable room in which I can eat? May there 
 be one at vour house?" 
 
 The czar had seldom with him on his excursions 
 any master of ceremonies orothercourtier. He took 
 along neither bed norbed-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. Prom this direction 
 came a man with a pan, from that another with an 
 earthen platter, from ^'onder a tliird witli a ladle and 
 drinking utensils. Up in {"'eodosova'sroom the floor 
 was strewn deeply with straw. The czar helped with
 
 26o 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 likea comrade. The Zaporogean threw him- 
 self prostrate on the floor and stammered his "I 
 Shwede. Devil-damn!" Butlpushed himasidewith 
 my foot and told him once for all to be silent and 
 get up, because no Swede conducted himself in that 
 fashion. To cover him as much as possible, I stepped 
 in front of him and took my position there. 
 
 "Dal is nit iibel," 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 Rehnskiold'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 : To tell the truth 
 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." 
 
 TheZaporogean trembled and tottered, as he fol- 
 lowed behind me, but as soon as we entered, the czar 
 pointed me to a chair among the others at the table, 
 as if I had been his equal, and said, "Sit, Wooden- 
 Leg!" 
 
 He had Feodosova on his knee, without the least 
 consideration of what could be said about it, and 
 round them stamped and whistled the dwarts and 
 a crowd of Boyarswho now began to collect. Adwarf 
 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. liven 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 
 a ring 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 his eyes moved meanwhile hke 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 
 which is evil.' Therefore I beseech that I may forego 
 further drinking. For behold, I am soon done with 
 the game, and my gracious lord who is both like 
 and unlike Your Imperial Majesty has in thelast 
 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 riches asawoman herhusband'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 Asr 
 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 impotentlv 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 might 
 have laughed at my wooden leg and my disgrace, 
 if with mv life I could have preserved her honor. 
 Nor had I ever before been so near her and seen 
 so clear! v 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 how he 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 we were 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- 
 suredlv 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 ground so 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 
 a little 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 in the 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 
 bowl 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." 
 
 Feodosova stood like a sleep-walker and stretched 
 her hands towards me. What did it matter that she 
 had laughed at me? I should soon 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 I thought of her no longer;! 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," T whispered equaIlysoftly,"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 (^ueen Dowager, 
 mother of the Charleses. 
 
 END OF PART I
 
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