During this scene of self-sacrifice on one side, and rudeness on the other, a group of strangers had arrived over the left castle bridge, and asked to be conducted to the Governor.
The soldiers regarded them with curiosity. They wore the common garb of peasants, but their whole appearance betrayed their foreign origin. An old man, with dark squinting eyes and sallow complexion, came first; his face partly hidden under a woolly cap of dog-skin, which with its ear-flaps covered the greater portion of the head. After him followed a young woman in a striped home-spun skirt, and a tight-fitting jacket of new and fine white sheep-skin. Her face, also, is almost entirely concealed under a hood of coarse felt, bordered with squirrel-skin, the fine fur of which is covered with frost. One only saw a pair of beautiful dark eyes of unusual brilliancy, which peeped forth from the hood. The third of the company was a little old woman, so wrapped up in furs that her short figure had widened out into the shape of a well-stuffed cushion.
All these persons were conducted to the Governor. The man in the dog-skin cap showed a passport, according to which, Albertus Simonis, in his royal Majesty's service, was appointed army physician to the troops which were to go to Germany the following spring, and was now, with his wife and daughter, on a journey from Dantzig to Stockholm, by way of the north road through Wiborg and Kajana. The Governor closely examined both the document and the man, and seemed to find a satisfactory conclusion to his survey. Then he sent the travellers to a room in the east wing of the castle, and gave orders for them to be provided with the necessary refreshments after such a long journey in the severe cold.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRISONER OF STATE.
The room which we now enter is situated in the south tower of the castle, and is not very inviting. It is large and dark. Although with a sunny aspect, the narrow window, with its thick iron gratings, only admits a few of the winter's day sunbeams. A large open fire-place, with a granite hearth, occupies one corner of the room; a rough unpainted bed, a couple of benches, two chairs, a clothes-chest, a large table under the window, and a high cupboard next to it, make up the furniture of the room. All these things have a new appearance, which to some degree reconciles the eye to their coarseness.
But the room is a curious combination of kitchen and study. Learning has established its abode at the upper end nearest the window. The table is adorned with ink spots, and covered with old yellow manuscripts and large folios of parchments. The door of the cupboard is open, and shows its use as a library. The lower part of the room, near the fire-place, has a different appearance. Here stands a wash-tub by a sack of flour; a kettle is waiting to receive some dried pike and bits of salt pork, and leaves room for a bucket of water, and a shelf filled with coarse stone dishes.
Such was the habitation which Governor Wernstedt had assigned to the state prisoner, Johannes Messenius, his wife, and servant, instead of the horrible place where Messenius' tormentor, old Erik Hare, for so many years confined these unfortunate beings. The room was at least high and dry above the ground, and its furniture was likewise a friendly gift from the Governor. Messenius occupied the upper part, and the women of his household the lower.
By the large ink-spotted table sat a grey-haired man, with his body wrapped in furs, his feet clad with reindeer boots, and his head covered with a thick woollen cap. One who had seen this man in the days of his prosperity, when he occupied the rostrum in Upsala "Consistorium," or proud as a king on his throne, exercising sole control over all the historical treasures of the Swedish state archives, would scarcely now recognise in this withered form, bent by age and misfortune, the man with the arrogant mind, the opponent of Rudbeck and Tegel, the learned, gifted, haughty, Jesuit conspirator, Johannes Messenius.
But if one looked deep into those keen, restless eyes, which seemed constantly trying to penetrate the future as they had done the past, and read the words which his shaking hand had just penned—words full of egotism even to presumption—then one could divine that within this decayed tenement toiled a soul unbroken by time and events, proud as it had always been, ambitious as it could never cease to be.