The king cheerily interrupted his talk and turned to the ensign: “Bring up the two horses to the stable! Three men cannot ride comfortably on two horses, and therefore we shall stay here till a few Cossacks come by, from whom we can take a new horse. Let the gentleman also stand guard at the gate.”
After that the king went back to the dwelling-house and shut the door after him. The horses which, desperate with hunger, had been greedily gnawing the bark from the bushes, were meanwhile led up to the stable, and the ensign went on guard.
Slowly the hours went by. When it began to draw towards dusk, the storm increased in bitterness, and in the light of sunset the snow whirled over the desolate snow-plain. Deathly yellow Cossack faces raised themselves spying above the bushes, and long in the blast sounded the roving plunderers’ “Oohaho! Oohaho! Oohaho!”
Then Feuerhausen stepped out of the stable, where he had sat between the horses so as not to get frost in his wounds from the ropes with which he had been bound. He went forward to the barred doors of the dwelling-house.
“Your Majesty!” he stammered, “the Cossacks are gathering more and more, and darkness is coming soon. I and the ensign can both sit on one horse. If we delay here, this night will be Your Mightiest Majesty’s last, which Gott in His secret dispensation forbit!”
The king answered from within, “It must be as we said. Three men do not ride comfortably on two horses.”
The Holsteiner shook his head and went down to the ensign.
“Such is His Majesty, you damt Swedes. From the stable I heard him walk and walk back and forvart. Sickness and conscience-torture will come. Like a pater familiæ the Muscovite czar stands among his subjects. A sugar-baker he sets up as his friend and a little serving-boy he raises on his glorious imperial throne. Detestable are his gestures when he gets drunk, and he treats women à la françois; but his first and last word always runs: ‘For Russia’s good!’ King Carolus leafs his lands as smoking ash-heaps and does not possess a single frient, not efen among his nearest. King Carolus is more lonely than the meanest wagon-drifer. He has not once a comrade’s knee to weep on. Among nobles and fine ladies and perukes he comes like a spectre out of a thousand-year mausoleum—and spectres mostly go about without company. Is he a man of state? Oh, have mercy! No sense for the public. Is he a general? Good-bye? No sense for the big masses. Only to make bridges and set up gabions, clap his hands at captured flags and a couple of kettle-drums. No sense for state and army, only for men.”
“That may be also a sense,” replied the ensign.
He walked vigorously back and forward, for his fingers were already so stiff with cold that he scarcely could hold his drawn blade.