There was a moment's silence in the private chamber, and Count Henrik drew breath with difficulty. "Strange!" said the king's voice again; "but no--it is impossible. I will defer forming an opinion of your wisdom, Master Thrand, until I have seen the marvellous things you speak of. As far as I understand you, you seem to consider yourself not only as the lord and master of nature, but of Deity itself: such discourse sounds to me like the greatest and most presumptuous madness."
"Madness and wisdom, lying and truth, evil and good, darkness and light, border closely on each other, noble king," again whispered the well-oiled tongue of Thrand. "This must especially be the case in all transitions from night to day, from error to truth, from one age to another. That which I have here dared to whisper to you in this private chamber, in reliance on the strength of your royal mind, will one day be openly announced from the lowest seat of learning, and seem but as the pastime of children to the mature in spirit. How each one of us will picture to himself the divinity is in fact his own affair; that will depend on his own individual mental vision; and will be a necessity like all other things. What is divine is, and must ever partly remain, a mystery to the majority; but we can all attain clear views of time and its mutable concerns: this lies within the sphere of our common vision, and so far I flatter myself I shall be able to open your penetrating eyes, great king, that no part of time shall be wholly hidden from you, and that you may be able to look as clearly into the future as back upon the past perishable world of things and actions."
"Well then," said the king, impatiently, "teach me to see more clearly with the mind's eye, if you are able. I have all reverence for your bodily glass eyes, and you have certainly opened to me a wider view of the outer world. One mirror of the past I know already in the study of our chronicles; if there is also a natural mirror of the future, show it me."
"There are two, gracious king!" answered Master Thrand, with emphasis; "we call them providence and divination: we can possess ourselves of both by keen wisdom, and awakened inner sense. With the first you can see much; with the second more; with both almost every thing. Of the highly-important step you are about to take to-morrow your grace can only judge by means of such a twofold insight."
"What!" exclaimed the king, with vehemence; "think ye I am now about to use my understanding for the first time, and consider the step which, with well-advised purpose and with the help of God, I have already taken, and which is my highest happiness? Be the consequences what they may, and whatever the Almighty Ruler of the world hath ordained for me and my kingdom, on this point the clearest insight into futurity cannot change my will or extinguish the fairest hope of my life."
"But look, great sovereign!" continued Master Thrand, with eagerness; "cast an unprejudiced and dispassionate glance into those person's souls which you would link with yours. Three royal brothers--your future brothers-in-law--stand yonder beside a throne; the weakest, the least gifted, hath been chosen to fill it; but the superior mind and power and courage of his brothers increase mightily. The nobler spirit can never bow before its inferior; the fermenting forces must develope themselves; opposing ones must separate; those of close affinity must combine; what hath been arbitrarily joined must be forcibly severed; and he who plunges into the wild tumultuous stream must be swept along with it and perish."
"Silence! With thy presumptuous talk," interrupted the king, in a loud voice, and stamping hard on the ground; "no contemptible calculation and dread of the future shall stop my progress, or disquiet my soul. Whatever may be working in the minds of those princes, crowns are not left to be the sport of wild passions; justice and the highest power are not subject to the will and authority of man, but to that of the Almighty. A royal sceptre may repose secure in the hand of a child when God is with him, even though that child stands surrounded by traitors and murderers. This I have myself experienced."
"But, your royal grace, when the minor, as yonder, never attains to majority in mind," objected Thrand, "when the power proceeding from the will of a free and powerful nation is, through foolish superstition and misconception, linked to the phantom which theologians call God's grace--an idea which only hath meaning and significance when we see that grace revealed in the great and noble, though mutable, will of the people, to which all connection with the weaker unapt spirit is destruction----"
"By all the holy men, the highest might and authority comes from above!" interrupted the king, with vehemence, "In man's will only, not in the Lord's, is there vacillation and change; he who justly wears a crown hath a power in the will of God, which no mortal shall defy unpunished. But enough of this. I called you not hither to consult with you on state affairs. Knew I not you were a philosopher who takes but little interest in worldly government, I should be tempted to believe you were a wily emissary from my foes, and those who secretly strive to undermine my happiness."
"Heaven forefend! your grace," exclaimed Master Thrand, in dismay.