itution. 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?

Moreover, the glow was too vivid to proceed from a single torch. It might
well be occasioned by a conflagration, but the king could see no smoke,
the window-panes were intact, and not a sound disturbed the stillness of
the night; every indication pointed rather to an illumination.

Charles watched the windows for a time in silence. Count Brahe reached for
the bell-rope, purposing to summon a page to investigate this
unaccountable brilliancy, but the king checked him.

"I will go myself to the state hall," he said.

As he finished speaking these words his companions noted the sudden pallor
and the expression of religious awe which overspr