"I am embroidering the banner of the Holy Faith for Germany," replied Regina proudly. "When it one day waves, the heretics will flee before the wrath of the mother of God."
"When I think of the mother of God," said Meri, "I imagine her mild, good, and peaceful; I imagine her as a mother alone with her love." Meri said these words with a peculiar tremor in her voice.
"The mother of God is Heaven's queen; she will fight against the godless and destroy them."
"But when the mother of God takes to strife, King Gustaf Adolf will meet her with uncovered head and lowered sword, bend his knee to her, and say: 'Holy Virgin, I am not fighting for thy glory, but for that of thy son, our Saviour.' 'He that fights for my son also fights for me,' she will reply, 'because I am a mother.'"
"Your king is a heretic," excitedly answered Regina. Nothing irritated her more than opposition to the Catholic faith, of which the doctrine of the Holy Virgin as Heaven's ruler is a constituent. "Your king is a tyrant and unbeliever who deserves all the anger of the saints on his head. Do you know, Meri, that I hate your king?"
"And I love him," said Meri in a scarcely audible voice.
"Yes," continued Regina, "I hate him like sin, death, and perdition. If I were a man and had an arm and sword, it would be the aim of my life to destroy his hosts and his work. You are happy, Meri, you know nothing about the war, you do not know what Gustaf Adolf has done to the poor Catholics. But I have seen it, and my faith and my country cry out for revenge. There are moments when I could kill him."
"And when Lady Regina lifts her white hand with the gleaming dagger over the king's head, then the king will expose his breast where the great heart beats; look at her little white hand with a glance of sublime calmness and say, 'Thou delicate white hand, which worketh the image of the mother of God, strike, if thou canst, my heart is here, and it beats for the freedom and enlightenment of the world;' then the white hand will sink slowly down, and the dagger will drop from it, unnoticed, and God's mother on the cloth will smile again. She knew well that it would be so. It would have been just the same with herself. For King Gustaf Adolf none can kill, and none hate, because God's angel walks by his side and turns human beings' hate to love."
Regina forgot her work, and regarded Meri with her large, dark, moist eyes. There was so much that surprised and astonished her in these words, but she kept silent. Finally she said:
"The king wears an amulet."