The Queen turned a wax-yellow color as her cold blood receded from her face.
“I think you are no company for a lady’s table,” she said bitterly.
Karl turned round passionately.
“Piper,” he cried, “Piper—did I not say I would have no more of old women?”
He tried to leave the table, but being unsteady on his feet and fastened in his place by a heavy chair could not at once do so; Count Piper—for some minutes on his feet—sprang forward to free him, but the King, with fierce impatience, pushed back the chair and stumbled towards the door.
One of his spurs had entangled in the lace border of the cloth, his impetuous movement violently dragged at this, and in an instant all that was on the table, plate, fruit, wine, glasses, and china, was pulled to the ground and scattered over the floor; the King, still with the lace clinging to his spur, staggered back against the wall beside the door and the Queen rose, rigid with anger and disgust.
Karl laughed, lifting his lip from his teeth; Count Piper stooped, tore off the lace from the King’s spur, seized him by the arm and led him from the room, closing the door on the wrecked table and the grim figure of the old Queen ringing furiously her silver bell.
Dexterously the councilor guided the King’s stupid steps down the short corridor; at the end of this they came face to face with two women, who were turning down the passage that led at right angles to the stairs.
One was the King’s elder sister, the Duchess of Holstein, who had come with her husband to Stockholm to implore her brother’s assistance; she was tall, fair, and finely made, like Karl, pure Scandinavian in type and of a demeanor rather cold.
She gave one glance under her lids at the two men and hurried on; but her companion lingered and gazed at the King with wide eyes; she was fairer than the Duchess, so fair that her hair was more like silver than gold, and her complexion more like a lily than a rose, if she should have been praised in poetry, but her eyes were a deep brown and, dilated as they were now, appeared black.