“Oh, nonsense, nonsense! Your Excellency will do as I have said. Some one of the generals present, who is at leisure, may also mount and take one of his men.”
Lewenhaupt bowed.
The king regarded him a trifle irresolutely without answering, and remained standing after Rehnskiöld hastened out. None of the others in the circle considered it necessary to break the silence or to move.
Only after a very long pause did the king bow again to everyone separately and go out into the open air.
“Well?” inquired Lewenhaupt and clapped the ensign on the shoulder with the return of his natural kindliness. “The ensign shall go along! This is the first time the ensign has stood eye to eye with His Majesty.”
“I had never expected he would be like that.”
“He is always like that. He is too kingly to command.”
They followed after the king, who clambered over wagons and fallen animals. His motions were agile, never abrupt, but measured and quite slow, so that he never for a moment lost his dignity. When he had finally made his way forward through the throng to the city gate, he mounted to the saddle with his attendants, who were now seven men.
The horses stumbled on the icy street, and some fell, but Lewenhaupt’s remonstrances only induced the king not to use his spurs yet more heartlessly. The lackey Hultman had read aloud to him all night or had related sagas, and had at length coaxed him into laughing at the prophecy that, had he not been exalted by God to be a king, he would for his whole life have become an unsociable floor-pacer, who devised much more wonderful verses than those of the late Messenius of Disa on Bollhus, but especially the mightiest battle stories. He tried to think of Rolf Gotriksson, who ever rode foremost of all his men, but today it did not please him to bound his thoughts within the playroom of a saga. The restlessness which during the last few days had struck its claws into his mind would not let go of its royal prey. At the chancellery he had just seen the heated faces. Ever since the pranks of his boyhood he had been rapt in his own imaginary world of the past. He had sat deaf to the piercing cries of distress along the way, while he became distrustful of each and all who exhibited a more sensitive hearing. Today as at other times he hardly noted that they offered him the best-rested horse and the freshest cake of bread, that in the morning they laid a purse with five hundred ducats in his pocket. He challenged the horseman at the first mêlée to form a ring about him and offer themselves to death. On the other hand he noticed that the soldiers saluted him with gloomy silence, and misfortunes had made him suspicious even of those nearest to him. The most cautious opposition, the most concealed disapproval, he made a note of without betraying himself, and every word remained and gnawed at his soul. Every hour it seemed to him that he lost an officer on whom he had formerly relied, and his heart became all the colder. His thwarted ambition chafed and bled under the weight of failure, and he breathed more lightly the farther behind him he left his headquarters.
Suddenly Lewenhaupt came to a stand, debating within himself how to exercise an influence upon the king.