“Few Swedes are,” said Birger; “remember Finland and Pomerania.”
“Besides, it is not over-pleasant to have a great White Bear sitting perpetually at one’s gate, always ready to snap up any of one’s little belongings that may come in its way. The Russian fleet is getting formidable, and Revel and Kronstadt are not very far from the mouth of the Mälar.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Birger, gallantly; “we are the sons of the men who, under Gustaf, taught that fleet a lesson.”
“You are a gallant set of fellows,” said the Parson; “and Sweden would be a precious hard nut to crack. But your long-armed friends over the water know the value of a ring fence, and would dearly like a seaboard. Only fancy that overpowering country, which is now kept in order by the rest of Europe, only because, just at present, it lies at the back of creation, and cannot get out of the Baltic, Black, and White Seas, to do harm to any one,—only fancy that pleasant land, with its present unlimited resources, and Gothenborg for its Portsmouth, and Christiania, and Frederiksvärn and Christiansand for its outports—a pleasant vision, is it not, Mr. Guardsman? Don’t you think it probable that something of this sort has soothed the slumbers of the White Bear we were speaking of, before this?”
“Did you ever hear of Charles the Twelfth? He taught that White Bear to dance.”
“He taught that White Bear to fight,” said the Captain, “and an apt scholar he found him. There was more lost at Pultava than Charles’s gallant army.”
“There are men in Sweden yet,” said Birger, slightly paraphrasing the legend of “Holger.”
“There are,” said the Parson; “and if you could only agree among yourselves, you might have hopes of muzzling the White Bear yet. Another union of Calmar?”
“O, hang the union of Calmar; there is no more honesty in a Dane or a Norseman than there is in a Russ. We are not going to have another Bloodbath at Stockholm. My mother is a Lejonhöved,[1] and I am not likely to forget that day.”