They allowed him to pass; the crime had no other evidence than itself, a pistol, and a knife, sharpened as a poignard, found beneath the masks and flowers on the floor of the opera. The weapon revealed the hand. A gunsmith at Stockholm identified the pistol, and declared he had recently sold it to a Swedish gentleman, formerly an officer in the guards, named Ankastroem. They found Ankastroem at his house, neither thinking of exculpation nor of flight. He confessed the weapon and the crime. An unjust judgment, he averred, in which however the king spared his life, the wearisomeness of an existence which he had cherished to employ and make illustrious at its close for his country's advantage, the hope, if he succeeded, of a national recompence worthy of the deed, had, he declared, inspired this project; and he claimed to himself alone the glory or disgrace. He denied all plot and all accomplices. Beneath the fanatic he masked the conspirator.
He failed in his part, after a few days, beneath the truth and his remorse. He avowed the conspiracy, named the guilty, and the reward of his crime. It was a sum of money, that had been weighed, rix-dollar by rix-dollar, against the blood of Gustavus. The plot, planned six months before, had been thrice frustrated, by chance or destiny—at the diet of Jessen, at Stockholm, and at Haga. The king killed, all his favourites—all the instruments of his government—must be sacrificed to the vengeance of the senate and the restoration of the aristocracy. Their heads were to have been carried at the tops of pikes, in the streets of the capital, in imitation of the popular punishments of Paris. The duke of Sudermania, the king's brother, was to be sacrificed. The young monarch, handed over to the conspirators, was to serve as a passive instrument to re-establish the ancient constitution, and legitimate their crime. The principal conspirators belonged to the first families in Sweden; the shame of their lost power had debased their ambition, even to crime. They were the Count de Bibbing, Count de Horn, Baron d'Erensward, and Colonel Lilienhorn. Lilienhorn, commandant of the guards, drawn from misery and obscurity by the king's favour, promoted to the first rank in the army, and admitted to closest intimacy in the palace, confessed his ingratitude and his crime; seduced, he declared, by the ambition of commanding, during the trouble, the national guard of Stockholm. The part played by La Fayette in Paris seemed to him the ideal of the citizen and the soldier. He could not resist the fascination of the perspective; half-way in the conspiracy, he had endeavoured to render it impossible, even whilst he meditated it. It was he who had written the anonymous letter to the king, in which the king was warned of the failure in the attempt at Haga, and that which threatened him at this fête; with one hand he thrust forward the assassin—with the other he held back the victim, as though he had thus prepared for himself an excuse for his remorse after the deed was done.
On the fatal day he had passed the evening in the king's apartments—had seen him read the letter—had followed him to the ball. Enigma of crime—a pitying assassin! the mind thus divided between the thirst for, and horror of, his benefactor's blood.
VIII.
Gustavus died slowly: he saw death approach and recede with the same indifference, or the same resignation; received his court, conversed with his friends, even reconciled himself to the opponents of his government, who did not conceal their opposition, but did not push their aristocratic resentment to assassination. "I am consoled," he said, to the Count de Brahé, one of the greatest of the nobility and chief of the malcontents, "since death enables me to recover an old friend in you."
He watched to the very last over his kingdom; nominated the Duke of Sudermania regent, instituted a council of regency, made his friend Armsfeld military governor of Stockholm, surrounded the young king, only thirteen years of age, with all that could strengthen his position during his minority. He prepared his passage from one world to another, awaiting his death, so that it should be an event to himself alone. "My son," he wrote, a few hours before he died, "will not come of age before he is eighteen, but I hope he will be king at sixteen;" thus predicting for his successor that precocity of courage and genius which had enabled him to reign and govern before the time. He said to his grand almoner, in confessing himself, "I do not think I shall take with me great merits before God, but at least I shall have the consciousness of never having willingly done harm to any person." Then, having requested a moment's repose to acquire strength, in order to embrace his family for the last time, he bid adieu, with a smile, to his friend Bergenstiern, and, falling asleep, never waked again.
The prince royal, proclaimed king, mounted the throne the same day. The people, whom Gustavus had emancipated from the yoke of the senate, swore spontaneously to defend his institutions in his son. He had so well employed the day, which God had allowed him between assassination and death, that nothing perished but himself, and his shade seemed to continue to reign over Sweden.
This prince had nothing great but his soul, nor handsome but his eyes. Small in size, with broad shoulders, his haunches badly set on, his forehead singularly shaped, long nose, large mouth, the grace and animation of his countenance overcame every imperfection of figure, and rendered Gustavus one of the most attractive men in his dominions; intelligence, goodness, courage, beamed from his eyes, and pervaded his features. You felt the man, admired the king, appreciated the hero. There was heart in his genius, as there is in all really great men. Well informed, deeply read, eloquent, he applied all his endowments to the empire; those whom he had conquered by his courage, he vanquished by his generosity, and charmed by his language. His faults were display and pleasure; he liked the glory of those enjoyments and amours which are found and pardoned in heroes; his vices were those of Alexander, Cæsar, and Henri IV. The revenge of a disgraceful amour had something to do with the conspiracy which destroyed him; to resemble these great men, he only wanted their destiny.
When almost a child, he had rescued himself from the tutelage of the aristocracy; in emancipating the throne, he had emancipated the people. At the head of an army, recruited without money, and which he disciplined by its enthusiasm, he conquered Finland, and went on from victory to victory to St. Petersburgh. Checked in his greatness by a revolt of his officers, surrounded in his tent by his guards, he had escaped by flight, and had gone to the succour of another portion of his kingdom, invaded by the Danes. Again a victor against these deadly enemies of Sweden, the gratitude of the nation had restored to him his repentant army; and his sole vengeance was in again leading them to conquest.
He had subdued all without, tranquillised all within, and had only one ambition left—disinterested from every consideration but fame—to avenge the forsaken cause of Louis XVI., and to secure from her persecutors a queen whom he adored at a distance. This was the vision of a hero; it had but one mistake—his genius was vaster than his empire. Heroism with disproportioned means makes the great man resemble an adventurer, and transforms gigantic designs into follies. But history does not judge like fortune, and it is the heart rather than success that makes the hero. The romantic and adventurous character of Gustavus is still the greatness of a restless and struggling soul in the pettiness of its destiny. His death excited a shriek of joy amongst the Jacobins, who deified Ankastroem; but their burst of delight on learning the end of Gustavus, proved how insincere was their affected contempt for this enemy of the constitution.