The physician, in turn, discoursed upon the evils wrought by late hours on the constitution. Charles answered him between his teeth:
"Stay. I am not ready to sleep yet."
They strove to converse of divers matters, but each topic was exhausted with the second sentence, or, at most, the third. His majesty, it was apparent, was in one of his blackest moods, and in like circumstance a courtier's position is of the most delicate.
Count Brahe, surmising that the king's grief emanated from the regrets to which his consort's loss had given rise in his mind, gazed for a time at a portrait of the queen which hung upon the study walls, finally exclaiming, with a huge sigh:
"What a resemblance! The portrait has her very expression, so majestic, and, withal, so sweet——"
"Bah!" bruskly interrupted the king, who saw a reproach in every mention made of the queen in his presence, "the portrait flattered her. The queen was ugly."
Then, secretly ashamed of his own harshness, he rose and wandered about the room to conceal an emotion for which he blushed. He paused before a window looking upon the court. The night was dark, and the moon in her first quarter.
The palace where the Swedish sovereigns reside to-day was not then completed, and Charles XI, who began it, dwelt at the time in the old palace, situated at the head of the Ritterholm, which overlooks Lake Moeler. It is a huge structure in the shape of a horseshoe. The king's study was located in one extremity of the horseshoe, while almost opposite was the great hall in which the Estates were convoked to receive the communications of the Crown.
The windows of this room now appeared to be brilliantly lighted.
This seemed strange to the king. He at first attributed it to a reflection from some lackey's torch. But what could he be doing at this hour in an apartment which had not been opened for a long time past?