“Good morning, Mr. Riis,” said he. “I hope you are well, and your wife, since last we met.”
It must surely be that I am getting old and foolish. The voice I knew; there are few as pleasing. But the man—I stood and looked at him, while a smile crept over his features and broadened there. All at once I knew.
“But, good gracious, your Royal Highness,” I said, “who would expect to find you here before any one is up and stirring? You are really yourself to blame.”
He laughed. “We are early risers, my children and I. We have been up and out since six o’clock.” And so they had, I learned afterwards, to the despair of the cook at the Bishop’s house where they were staying. He introduced his son and daughter. “And now,” said the Prince with a smile that had a challenge in it, “where do you suppose we have been? Down at the river to look at the bridge where you first met your wife. You see, I have read your book. But we did not find it.”
I explained that the Long Bridge had been but a memory these twenty years, but to me a very dear one, and he nodded brightly, “Give her my warm regards.” She was glad when I told her, for her loyal heart had made room for him beside his sweet sisters from our childhood. When the lilacs bloomed again, I was alone, and he sent me a message of sorrow and sympathy. And because of that, for his liking of her, he shall always have a place in my heart.
They told no end of stories of the delight he had given by this gift, so invaluable in a public man, of remembering and recognizing men after the lapse of years. One peasant, come to town to see the show, was halted by Prince Frederik in the market square, as was I, and greeted as an old comrade. They had been recruits together in one regiment; for the royal princes in Denmark have to serve in the ranks with their fellow-citizens. They are not made generals at birth. In Copenhagen I was told that the Prince kept tab on all that went on in the Rigsdag, and the man without convictions dreaded nothing so much as his long memory. With reason it would seem; for not long before, when a certain member of the Opposition made a troublesome speech, the Crown Prince calmly brought out his scrap-book and showed the embarrassed minister where the same man had taken the exactly opposite stand half a score of years before. It is not hard to understand how a memory like that might become potent in the deliberations of a parliamentary body, particularly among a people with a keen sense of the ridiculous, like the Danes. However, they have something better than that. They are above all a loyal people. I have never seen anything more touching or more creditable to a nation than the way the Danes put aside their claims when the dispute between them and King Christian’s ministers over constitutional rights became bitter, and the King, loyal himself to the backbone, would not let the ministers go.
“He is of the past that does not comprehend,” they said, “but he is our good old King and we love him.”
And the clouds blew over, and the people and their ruler were united in an affection that wiped out every trace of resentment. King Frederik is of the present. He knows his people, and they trust him with the love they gave his father. Stronger buttress was never built for a happy union of Prince and People.