Christina again broke into a loud and merry laugh.
“Hark to the little burgomaster,” (1) she cried; “much travel hath made him, I do fear me, soft in heart and head. Childish promises, Karl. Let such things be forgotten now. You are to be a soldier—I, a queen.”
(1) Prince Charles Gustavus, afterward Charles XI., King of Sweden, and father of the famous Charles XII., was cousin to Christina. He was short and thick-set, and so like a little Dutchman that Christina often called him “the little burgomaster.” At the time of this sketch he had just returned from a year of travel through Europe.
“And yet, Madam,” said Mathias, her tutor, “all Europe hath for years regarded Prince Karl as your future husband.”
“And what care I for that?” demanded the girl, hotly. “Have done, have done, sirs! You do weary me with all this. Let us to the hunt. Axel Dagg did tell me of a fine roebuck in the Maelar woods. See you to the courier of the Emperor and to his dispatches, Lord Chancellor; I care not what you tell him, if you do but tell him no. And, stay; where is that round little Dutchman, Van Beunigen, whom you did complain but yesterday was sent among us by his government to oppose the advices of our English friends. He is a greater scholar than horseman, or I mistake. Let us take him in our hunting-party, Karl; and see to it that he doth have one of our choicest horses.”
The girl’s mischief was catching. Her cousin dropped his serious look, and, seeking the Dutch envoy, with due courtesy invited him to join the Queen’s hunt.
“Give him black Hannibal, Jous,” Christina had said to her groom; and when the Dutch envoy, Van Beunigen, came out to join the hunting-party, too much flattered by the invitation to remember that he was a poor horseman, Jous, the groom, held black Hannibal in unsteady check, while the big horse champed and fretted, and the hunting-party awaited the new member.
But Jous, the groom, noted the Dutchman’s somewhat alarmed look at the big black animal.
“Would it not be well, good sir,” he said, “that you do choose some steadier animal than Hannibal here? I pray you let me give you one less restive. So, Bror Andersson,” he called to one of the under-grooms, “let the noble envoy have your cob, and take you back Hannibal to the stables.”
But no, the envoy of the States of Holland would submit to no such change. He ride a servant’s horse, indeed!