Once again terror and commotion filled the streets of Tezcuco, as, at the head of his boyish band, Ixtlil' the young cacique, bent on instant revenge, stormed the houses of the old lords of his father's council and, one after another, dragged them from their homes. The people, thronging the azoteas, or broad, flat roofs of the low-walled houses, looked down in wonder and dismay upon this strangest of sights—six gray and honorable "uncles" or councillors of the king, bound neck to neck by the "manacles," or poles with leathern yokes, and driven through the city streets by a band of forty boys.

Young Ixtlil's vengeance was sharp and sudden. Ere night fell upon the city the dreadful garrote—the strangling stick and cord—plied by the boy executioners had done its dreadful work, and the six offending councillors lay dead in the tinguez, by the order of the fierce boy whom they had offended. And only when the last gray head had fallen a victim to boyish wrath did the stupor of surprise that had held the people give place to action. Then the bowmen of the king swept down upon the boy's brigade, and overcoming all resistance, took the young leader captive and dragged him for speedy sentence before his father, 'Hualpilli the 'tzin.



Ixtlil' the cacique knew what to expect. He could hope for no mercy from the king, who was called by his subjects the Wise and Just. He had committed an offence against the state that was punishable with death, and he remembered how, years before, this same wise and just king, his father, had condemned his eldest son to death for breaking the laws of the realm. But with the same Indian stoicism that marked the Aztec, as it did the less cultivated Algonquin and Sioux, the boy went, unresistingly, to meet his fate.

The 'tzin 'Hualpilli sat upon the "King's Tribunal" in his great hall of judgment. A gorgeous feather canopy emblazoned with the royal arms of the lords of Tezcuco hung above his head, and, seated thus, he gave audience to subjects and embassies, and sent out his fleet runners with royal dispatches to his governors and vassal rulers. Turning his head as he heard in the outer court a sudden and great commotion, his face grew troubled and anxious as he saw the cause of the tumult to be his favorite son, Ixtlil', bound, and in the hands of his officers of justice. For, spite of the lad's wild ways, the good 'tzin loved this unruly young cacique, and saw in his excesses and troublesome pranks the promise of a courage that might make him, in the years to come, a stalwart soldier and defender of the throne of his fathers. But justice must take its course and 'Hualpilli the 'tzin was called the Wise and Just.

"What charge bring you against this lad?" he asked, as captive and captors prostrated themselves before the "King's Tribunal." And when he had heard the details of the terrible crime of the young cacique he simply demanded of his son, "Are these things so?" and the boy boldly answered, "Yes, my Lord the King."

Then the face of the 'tzin grew stern and sombre. Rising, he said: "This is now no prank of an idle boy. It is a crime against the state and against the gods who rule the state. Lead him to the 'Tribunal of the Gods,'" and, attended by fourteen of his lords of highest rank, the king walked solemnly to where, across the great judgment-hall, another throne, called "the Tribunal of the Gods," faced "the King's Tribunal." It was the seat from which sentence of death was pronounced, and was a marvellous creation. Above a throne of pure gold was suspended a great feather canopy of many and brilliant hues, from the centre of which gleamed a blazing sun, made all of gold and jewels. Rich hangings of rare and colored fans, looped up with rings of gold and embroidered with many strange devices, lined the walls of the alcove which held the awful throne. Before the throne, high on a heap of weapons of war, shields and quivers and bows and arrows, rested a human skull, circled by an emerald crown and topped with a crest of feathered plumes and jewels.

Placing the triple crown of Tezcuco upon his head and taking in his hand the golden arrow of judgment, the 'tzin said to his son: "Ixtlil-o-chitl, cacique of Tezcuco, I charge you in the presence of the arrow and the skull to say, if you can, why sentence of death should not now be spoken against you for this, your wicked deed."

And the boy cacique, first prostrating himself before "the Tribunal of the Gods," rose and said: "O most dread Lord, my father and my king, I have in this matter done no more than is my right as a cacique of Tezcuco and as your son. For you have ever told me that to prepare for the life of a soldier is the best and noblest work befitting a son of Tezcuco and of Anahuac. You have said that this ambition was the only one worthy a cacique who, as I am, is the son and grandson of mighty kings. You have told me that a soldier is justified in defending his life, for that his life belongs to the state, and, more than this, that the life of a royal prince is doubly the state's. These your councillors, whom I have justly punished, have sought to turn your affection from me, your son, and only because I wished to prepare for a soldier's life, and to train my band of boys to deeds of daring and to love of war. They sought to take away my life, and I have acted but as you, my king and father, did counsel me. If they have suffered death, then have they only obtained what they had intended for me. I struck before they could seize the chance to strike at me—even as in totoloque, O King most Just and Wise, the game was rightly mine, because my score was reached the quickest and my aim was surest."

And the old Tezcucan chronicler says that "the king found much force in these reasons." Removing his crown from his head and dropping the arrow of judgment from his hand, he stepped down from "the Tribunal of the Gods," and, taking his son's hand, said: "Hear, people of Tezcuco! I cannot, in justice or in right, sentence this lad for what was not malice, but simply the overflow of a boy's daring spirit—a spirit that may in after years do great deeds in your defence and for the state's security," and so with a lecture and a stern warning "not to do so again," the boy culprit was set free—an unjust and far too lenient judgment it seems to us at this distance for so foul a deed.

* * * * *

Years passed away. The words of the good 'tzin proved true enough, as the boy cacique grew to be so dashing and daring a warrior that, before the age of seventeen, he had won for himself the rank and insignia of a valorous and trusted captain in the armies of Tezcuco. Still the years passed, and now 'Hualpilli the 'tzin, the Wise and Just, was dead. Amid great pomp and the sacrifice of three hundred slaves his body was cremated on a funeral pile, rich in jewels and incense and precious stuffs, and his royal dust, sealed in a golden urn, was placed in the great teocalli, or temple of 'Huitzil. His sons, Cacama and Ixtlil' both claimed the throne of Tezcuco, and as in duty bound laid the question for settlement before Montezuma, the lord and sovereign of all Anahuac. The Mexican emperor decided in favor of the elder brother, and hot with rage and wrath the defeated Ixtlil' withdrew to his little mountain princedom among the Cordilleras, biding his time for revenge. For the vindictive spirit of the boy, you see, never disciplined, increased with his years. The day for revenge arrived all too soon, for in the year 1519 came the Conquest. The Spaniards, first hailed as gods by the Aztecs, because of their fair skins, their "canoes with wings," their armor, their horses, and their artillery, conquered the country, laid waste the fair cities of the lakes and the valley, and, with iron heel, stamped out the last vestiges of Aztec civilization—"a civilization that," as one historian says, "might have instructed Europe."

And foremost in this work of destruction and of death stood Ixtlilochitl of Tezcuco, a traitor to his home-land, the vassal and the ally of Cortez the Spaniard. The prophecies of the "star-men" and the warnings of his father's councillors were fulfilled. He "united with the enemies of his country and helped to overturn its institutions and its religion."

Raised to the vacant throne of his father by the sword of Cortez ere yet he was twenty years old, Ixtlil' the cacique reigned for years as the last king of Tezcuco, and, converted to Christianity, was baptized under the Spanish name of Don Fernando, by which he was ever afterward known. Through all the dreadful days of Spanish conquest and Aztec patriotism he remained the firm friend and ally of the conquerors of his native land. For nearly a hundred years, in the grimy little chapel of St. Francis in the city of Tezcuco, the bones of these two friends lay side by side—Spaniard and Aztec, Cortez the conqueror and Ixtlil' the vassal, the once fierce and vindictive boy cacique of Tezcuco, who, wayward and hot-tempered as a lad, became the recreant as a man. Out of his hatred for Montezuma and for the brother who had supplanted him, Ixtlil', the last of the Aztec princes, turned his sword against the brave and beautiful land that had given him birth, thus achieving, says Prescott, the brilliant historian of the conquest, "the melancholy glory of having contributed more than any other chieftain of Anahuac to rivet the chains of the white man round the necks of his countrymen."

FOOTNOTES:

[Z] 'Tzin is the Aztec for prince, or lord. Thus the last of the Montezumas, the noblest of Aztec heroes, was Guatemo-tzin, the 'tzin or prince Guatemo.

[AA] Maxtlatl, the girdle or wide sash worn by runners and soldiers in battle.

[AB] Maguey, the great Mexican aloe, from the leaves of which the Aztec made their paper. This wonderful plant indeed was, as Prescott says, "meat, drink, clothing and writing materials to the Aztecs."

[AC] "Cacique in Mexico and prince in Wales."—Byron.

[AD] "The Hungry Fox" (Nezahual-Cayotl), "the greatest monarch who ever sat upon an Indian throne," according to Prescott the historian, was the father of Nezahual-pilli, the 'tzin of Tezcuco and the grandfather of Ixtlilochitl the boy cacique. The story of his life is full of marvel, and he was altogether one of the most attractive and remarkable characters in Aztec history.

[AE] Quetzal-Coatl, the Aztec god of the air. He was said to be fair-skinned, and the Aztecs had a prophecy that promised his return to earth. Hence the Spanish invaders were, at first, taken for gods and but little resistance offered them. Read General Lew Wallace's beautiful Aztec story: "The Fair God."

[AF] The kings of Tezcuco, like that celebrated Caliph of Arabian story, Haroun al-Raschid, would often mix in disguise with their people, talking with all classes, and frequently rewarding merit and punishing wrong-doers.

[AG] Transparent quills filled with gold dust, bags of cacao, (shining chocolate beans), and bits of tin cut in the form of a T, made up the circulating currency, or money, of the Aztecs.

[AH] Ixoxal, an Aztec word applied to cheating in the game of totoloque, and signifying false scoring.

[AI] Tamane, the lowest order of Aztec slaves. Used as a term of contempt among the higher classes.

[AJ] Haloc, the Aztec god of the sea.

[AK] "The Smoking Hill," the signification of the name of the great Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl.





X.

LOUIS OF BOURBON, THE BOY KING.

(Louis XIV. of France; afterward known as the Grand Monarque.)

[A.D. 1651.]

"Hush!" Pretty little Olympia Mancini's night-capped head bobbed inquiringly out of the door that opened into the corridor of the Gallery of Illustrious Personages in the old Palais Royal, as a long, low, distant murmur fell upon her ears.

"Hark!" Through the opposite door popped the sleep-tousled head of the awakened Armand, the bright young Count of Guiche, as hoarser and higher rose the angry sound, while, in the Queen's Gallery, stout old Guitat, captain of the regent's guard, stopped in his rounds to listen. Louder and nearer it came until it startled even the queen regent herself. Then the quick, sharp roll of the rataplan sounded through the miserable streets of the old city, as with ever-increasing shouts of "Aux armes! aux armes! They are stealing the king!" all Paris swarmed down the Rue de Honore, and clamored at the outer gates of the great Palais Royal.

Did you ever hear or see a mob, boys and girls? Probably not; but ask father, or mother, or uncle, or any one you know who has ever had such an experience, if he thinks there is any sound more terrifying than that threatening, far-away murmur that grows each second louder and more distinct, until it swells and surges up and down the city streets—the hoarse, mad shouts of a mob. It was such a sound as this that on that dreary midnight of the tenth of February, 1651, filled the dark and narrow and dismal streets of old Paris, startling all the inmates of the Palais Royal, as under the palace windows rose the angry cry:

"The King! the King! Down with Mazarin!" The two anxious-faced young persons, a girl and a boy of thirteen or thereabout, who were peeping out into the corridor, looked at one another inquiringly.

"Whatever is the matter, Count?" asked dainty little Olympia, the pretty niece of the Queen's prime-minister, Mazarin.

But for answer the light-hearted young Armand, Count of Guiche, whom even danger could not rob of gaiety, whistled softly the air that all rebellious Paris knew so well:

"A wind of the Fronde Has this evening set in; I think that it blows 'Gainst Monsieur Mazarin. A wind of the Fronde Has this evening set in!"

"The Fronde!" exclaimed Olympia, hastily; "why, what new trick do they play?"

"Faith, mam'selle," the boy count replied, "'t is a trick that may set us all a livelier dance than your delightful la bransle. The people are storming the palace to save the little king from your noble uncle, my lord cardinal."

"But my uncle, Count Armand, is at St. Germain, as sure all Paris knows," Olympia replied, indignantly.

"Ay, 't is so, ma belle," young Armand replied, "but they say that the queen will steal away to St. Germain with his little Majesty, and so here come the people in fury to stay her purpose. Hark! there they go again!" and as, before the gates, rose the angry shouts, "The King! the King! Down with Mazarin!" these sprightly young people drew hastily back into the security of their own apartments.

"Down with Mazarin!" It was the rallying cry that stirred the excitable people of Paris to riot and violence in those old days of strife and civil war, over two hundred years ago,—the troublesome time of the Fronde. The court of the Queen Regent Anne, the Parliament of Paris, and the great princes of France were struggling for the mastery, in a quarrel so foolish and unnecessary that history has called it "the war of the children," and its very nickname, "the Fronde," was taken from the fronde, or sling, which the mischievous boys of Paris used in their heedless street fights. Probably not one half of those who shouted so loudly "Down with Mazarin!" understood what the quarrel was about, nor just why they should rage so violently against the unpopular prime-minister of the queen regent, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. But they had grown to believe that the scarcity of bread, the pinching pains of hunger, the poverty, and wretchedness which they all did understand were due, somehow, to this hated Mazarin, and they were therefore ready to flame up in an instant and to shout "Down with Mazarin!" until they were hoarse.

And now in the great palace all was confusion. Lights flashed from turret to guard-room, casting flickering shadows in the long passages, and gleaming on the gay liveries of the guard as it stood to arms in the gallery where Olympia and Armand had held hurried conversation. Below, the narrow postern opened hastily, and through the swaying and excited crowd pressed the Captain Destouches and his escort of Swiss guards, hurrying with his report to his master, the timorous Duke of Orleans, uncle of the king, and bitter enemy of Mazarin and the regent.

"The King! the King!" rose the people's cry, as they crowded Destouches' little band.

"He is in there," said the guardsman, pointing to the palace.

"Can one see him?" demanded a rough fellow, dashing a flambeau close to the guardsman's face.

Destouches shrugged his shoulders meaningly. "Friend," he said, "I have just seen his little Majesty asleep. Why should not you?"

"The King! the King! We must see the King!" shout the swaying crowd. There is a dash against the trellised gates of the palace, a dash and then a mighty crash, and, as the outer gate falls before the people's assault, the great alarm bell of the palace booms out its note of danger. Then guards and gentlemen press hastily toward the royal apartments in defence of the queen and her sons, while ladies, and pages, and servants scatter and hide in terror.

But Anne, Queen Regent of France, was as brave as she was shrewd.

"What is the people's wish?" she demanded, as the Duc de Beaufort entered her apartment.

"To see his Majesty with their own eyes, they say," was the reply.

"But can they not trust their queen, my lord?" she asked.

"Their queen, your Highness? Yes. But not Mazarin," said the blunt duke.

"Ho, there, d'Aumont," said the queen to the captain of the palace guard, "bid that the portals be opened at once! Draw off your guard. And you, my lords, stand aside; we will show the king to our good people of Paris and defeat the plots of our enemies. Bid the people enter."

"But——" said d'Aumont, hesitatingly, fearful as to the result of this concession to the mob.

"Give me no buts!" said Anne, imperiously. "Bid the people enter," and, unattended save by M. de Villeroi, the king's governor, and two of her ladies-in-waiting, she passed quickly through the gallery that led to the magnificent bedchamber of the little King Louis.

"What now, madame?" was the greeting she received from a handsome, auburn-haired boy of twelve, who, as she entered the apartment, was sitting upright in his bed. "Laporte tells me that the rabble are in the palace."

"Lie down, my son," said the queen, "and if ever you seemed to sleep, seem to do so now. Your safety, your crown, perhaps your life, depend upon this masking. The people are crowding the palace, demanding to see with their own eyes that I have not taken you away to St. Germain."

Young Louis of Bourbon flushed angrily. "The people!" he exclaimed. "How dare they? Why does not Villeroi order the Swiss guard to drive the ruffians out?"

"Hush, my Louis," his mother said. "You have other enemies than these barbarians of Paris. Your time has not yet come. Help me play my part and these frondeurs may yet feel the force of your sling. Hark, they are here!"

The angry boy dropped upon his pillow and closed his eyes in pretended sleep, while his mother softly opened the door of the apartment, and faced the mob alone. For, obedient to her order, the great portals of the palace had been opened, and up the broad staircase now pushed and scrambled the successful mob. The people were in the palace of the king.

"Enter, my friends," said the intrepid queen, as rough, disordered, and flushed with the novelty of success, the eager crowd halted in presence of royalty. "Enter, my friends; but—softly. The king sleeps. They said falsely who declared that I sought to steal the king from his faithful people of Paris. See for yourselves!" and she swung open the door of the chamber; "here lies your king!" With ready hand she parted the heavy curtains of the splendid bed, and, with finger on lip as if in caution, she beckoned the people to approach the bedside of their boy king.

And then came a singular change. For, as they looked upon the flushed face and the long, disordered hair of that beautiful boy, whose regular breathing seemed to indicate the healthy sleep of childhood, the howling, rebellious rabble of the outer gates became a reverent and loyal throng, which quietly and almost noiselessly filed past the royal bed upon which that strong-willed boy of twelve lay in a "make-believe" sleep.

For two long midnight hours on that memorable tenth of February, 1651, did mother and son endure this trying ordeal. At length it was over. The last burgher had departed, the great gates were closed, the guards were replaced, and, as shouts of "Vive le roi" came from the jubilant crowd without, the boy king sprang from his splendid bed and, quivering with shame and rage, shook his little fist toward the cheering people. For, from boyhood, young Louis of Bourbon had been taught to regard himself as the most important lad in all the world. Think, then, what a terrible shock to his pride must have been this invasion of his palace by the people, whom he had been taught to despise.

The angry quarrel of the Fronde raged high for full five months after this midnight reception in the king's bedchamber, but at last came the eventful day which was to fulfil the boy's oft-repeated wish—the day of his majority. For, according to a law of the realm, a king of France could be declared of age at thirteen; and young Louis of Bourbon, naturally a high-spirited lad, had been made even more proud and imperious by his surroundings and education. He chafed under the restraints of the regency, and hailed with delight the day that should set him free.

It was the seventh of August, 1651. Through the echoing streets of Paris wound a glittering cavalcade, gay with streaming banners and a wealth of gorgeous color. With trumpeters in blue velvet and heralds in complete armor, with princes and nobles and high officials mounted on horses gleaming in housings of silver and gold, with horse-guards and foot-guards, pages and attendants, in brilliant uniforms and liveries, rode young King Louis, "Louis the God-given," as his subjects called him, to hold his "Bed of Justice," and proclaim himself absolute king of France. He was a noble-looking young fellow, and he rode his splendid Barbary horse dressed so magnificently that he looked almost "like a golden statue." What wonder that the enthusiastic and loyal Aubery is carried away by his admiration of this kingly boy. "Handsome as Adonis," writes the chronicler. "August in majesty, the pride and joy of humanity, the king looked so tall and majestic that his age would have been thought to be eighteen."

And so through the same mob that five months before had howled around the palace of the imprisoned king, young Louis of Bourbon, rode on to the Palace of Justice while the streets echoed to the loyal shouts of "Vive le roi!" The glittering procession swept into the great hall of the palace and gathered around the throne. And a singular throne it was. On a broad dais, topped with a canopy of crimson and gold, five great cushions were arranged. This was the young king's "Bed of Justice," as it was called. Seating himself upon one cushion, "extending his arms and legs upon three others and using the fifth to lean against," this boy of thirteen, with his plumed and jewelled cap on his head, while every one else remained uncovered, said, in a clear and steady voice: "Messieurs: I have summoned my Parliament to inform its members that, in accordance with the laws of my realm, it is my intention henceforth to assume the government of my kingdom." Then princes and lords, from little "Monsieur," the ten-year-old brother of the king, to the gray old Marshals of France, bent the knee in allegiance, and back to the Palais Royal with his glittering procession, and amid the jubilant shouts of the people, rode the boy king of France, Louis of Bourbon, "King Louis Quatorze."

But alas for the ups and downs of life! This long-wished-for day of freedom did not bring to young Louis the absolute obedience he expected. The struggles of the Fronde still continued, and before the spring of the next year this same haughty young monarch who, in that gorgeous August pageant, had glittered like a "golden statue," found himself with his court, fugitives from Paris, and crowded into stuffy little rooms or uncomfortable old castles, fearful of capture, while not far away the cannons of the two great generals, Turenne and Conde thundered at each other across the Loire, in all the fury of civil war. Something of a bully by nature, for all his blood and kingliness, young Louis seems to have taken a special delight, during these months of wandering, in tormenting his equally high-spirited brother, the little "Monsieur"; and there flashes across the years a very "realistic" picture of a narrow room in the old chateau of Corbeil, in which, upon a narrow bed, two angry boys are rolling and pulling and scratching in a bitter "pillow-fight," brought on by some piece of boyish tyranny on the elder brother's part. And these two boys are not the "frondeurs" of the Paris streets, but the highest dignitaries, of France—her king and her royal prince. There is but little difference in the make-up of a boy, you see, whether he be prince or pauper.

But even intrigue and quarrel may wear themselves out. Court and people alike wearied of the foolish and ineffectual strivings of the Fronde, and so it came about that in the fall of 1652, after a year of exile, the gates of Paris opened to the king, while the unpopular Mazarin, so long the object of public hatred, the man who had been exiled and outlawed, hunted and hounded for years, now returned to Paris as the chief adviser of the boy-king, with shouts of welcome filling the streets that for so many years had resounded with the cry of "Down with Mazarin!"

And now the gay court of King Louis Fourteenth blazed forth in all the brilliancy of pomp and pleasure. The boy, himself, as courageous in the trenches and on the battle-field as he was royal and imperious in his audience-chamber, became the hero and idol of the people. Life at his court was very joyous and delightful to the crowd of gay, fun-loving, and unthinking young courtiers who thronged around this powerful young king of fifteen; and not the least brilliant and lively in the royal train were Olympia Mancini and the young Count of Guiche, both proud of their prominence as favorites of the king.

One pleasant afternoon in the early autumn of 1653, a glittering company filled the little theatre of the Hotel de Petit Bourbon, near to the Louvre. The curtain parted, and, now soft and sweet, now fast and furious, the music rose and fell, as the company of amateurs—young nobles and demoiselles of the court—danced, declaimed, and sang through all the mirth and action of one of the lively plays of that period written for the king by Monsieur Benserade.

In one of the numbers of the ballet, Mars and Venus stood at the wings awaiting their cue and watching the graceful dancing of a nimble dryad who, beset by a cruel satyr, changed speedily into the tuneful Apollo, vanquished the surprised satyr, and then sang to the accompaniment of his own lute the high-sounding praises of the great and glorious "King Louis Quatorze."

And Mars said to Venus: "Our noble brother Immortal sings divinely; does he not, Olympia?—or thinks he does," he added, in a whisper.

"Hush, Count Armand," Venus replied, holding up a warning finger. "Your last words are barely short of treason."

"Is it treason to tell the truth, fair Olympia?" asked the boy courtier. "Sure, you hear little enough of it from royal lips."

Olympia tossed her pretty head disdainfully. "And how can you know, Sir Count, that his Majesty does not mean truthfully all the pretty things he says to me? Ay, sir, and perhaps——"

"Well! perhaps what, Mam'selle?" Count Armand asked, as the imperious little lady hesitated in her speech.

"Perhaps—well—who knows? Perhaps, some day, Count Armand, you may rue on bended knee the sharp things you are now so fond of saying to me—to me, who may then be—Olympia, Queen of France!"

Armand laughed softly. "Ho, stands my lady there?" he said. "I kiss your Majesty's hand, and sue for pardon," and he bent in mock reverence above the beautiful hand which the young king admired, and the courtiers, therefore, dutifully raved over. "But——" he added, slowly.

"But what, Count?" Olympia exclaimed, hastily withdrawing her hand.

"Why, his Majesty says just as many and as pretty things, believe me, to all the fair young demoiselles of his court."

"Ay, but he means them with me," the girl protested. "Why, Count, who can stand before me in the king's eyes? Can the little square-nozed Montmorency, or the straw-colored Marie de Villeroi? Can—ah, Count, is it, think you, that very proper little girl sitting there so demurely by her mamma in the fauteuil yonder—is it she that may be foremost in the king's thoughts?"

"What, the Princess Henrietta of England?" exclaimed the count. "Ah, no, Olympia; trust me, le Dieu-donne looks higher than the poverty-stricken daughter of a headless king and a crownless queen. There is nought to fear from her. But, come, there is our cue," and, with a gay song upon their gossipy lips, Mars and Venus danced in upon the stage, while a terrible Fury circled around them in a mad whirl. And amid the applause of the spectators the three bowed low in acknowledgment, but the Fury received by far the largest share of the bravas—for you must know that the nimble dryad, the tuneful Apollo, and the madly whirling Fury were alike his gracious Majesty, Louis, King of France, who was passionately fond of amateur theatricals, sometimes appearing in four or five different characters in a single ballet.

That very evening the most select of the court circle thronged the spacious apartments of the queen-mother in attendance at the ball given to the widowed queen of England, who, since the execution of her unfortunate husband, Charles the First, had found shelter at the court of her cousin Louis. And with her came her daughter, the little Princess Henrietta, a fair and timid child of eleven.

The violins sounded the call to places in the bransle, the favorite dance of the gay court, and Count Armand noted the smile of triumph which Mam'selle Olympia turned toward him, as King Louis solicited her hand for the dance. And yet she paused before accepting this invitation, for she knew that the honor of opening the dance with the king belonged to the little Henrietta, the guest of the evening. She was still halting between desire and decorum, when Anne, the queen-mother, rising in evident surprise at this uncivil action of her son, stepped down from her seat and quietly withdrew the young girl's hand from that of the king.

"My Louis," she said, in a low voice, "this is but scant courtesy to your cousin and guest, the Princess of England."

The boy's face flushed indignantly at this interference with his wishes, and looking towards the timid Henrietta, he said, with singular rudeness: "'T is not my wish, madame, to dance with the Princess. I am not fond of little girls."

His mother looked at him in quick displeasure. And the Queen of England, who had also heard the ungallant reply, keenly felt her position of dependence on so ungracious a relative, as she hastened to say: "Pardon, dear cousin, but do not, I beg, constrain his Majesty to dance contrary to his wishes. The Princess Henrietta's ankle is somewhat sprained and she can dance but ill."

The imperious nature of Anne of Austria yielded neither to the wishes of a sulky boy nor to the plea of a sprained ankle. "Nay, your Majesty," she said, "I pray you let my desire rule. For, by my word, if the fair Princess of England must remain a simple looker-on at this, my ball, to-night, then, too, shall the King of France."

With a face still full of anger Louis turned away, and when the music again played the opening measures, a weeping little princess and a sulky young king danced in the place of honor. For the poor Henrietta had also overheard the rude words of her mighty cousin of France.

As, after the ball, the king and his mother parted for the night, Anne said to her son: "My dear Louis, what evil spirit of discourtesy led you to so ungallant an action towards your guest, this night? Never again, I beg, let me have need openly to correct so grave a fault."

"Madame," said Louis, turning hotly towards his mother, "who is the lord of France—Louis the King or Anne of Austria?"

The queen started in wonder and indignation at this outburst; but the boy's proud spirit was up, and he continued, despite her protests.

"Too long," he said, "have I been guided by your leading-strings. Henceforth I will be my own master, and do not you, madame, trouble yourself to criticise or correct me. I am the king."

And thus the mother who had sacrificed and suffered so much for the son she idolized found herself overruled by the haughty and arrogant nature she had, herself, done so much to foster. For, from that tearful evening of the queen's ball to the day of his death, sixty-one years after, Louis of Bourbon, called the Great, ruled as absolute lord over his kingdom of France, and the boy who could say so defiantly "Henceforth I will be my own master," was fully equal to that other famous declaration of arrogant authority made, years after, in the full tide of his power, "I am the state!"

On the afternoon of an April day in the year 1654 a brilliant company gathered within the old chateau of Vincennes for the royal hunt which was to take place on the morrow. In the great hall all was mirth and fun, as around the room raced king and courtiers in a royal game of "clignemusette"—"Hoodman Blind," or "Blindman's Buff," as we now know it. Suddenly the blindfolded king felt his arm seized, and the young Count of Guiche, who had just entered, whispered: "Sire, here is word from Fouquet that the parliament have moved to reconsider the registry of your decree."

The boy king tore the bandage from his eyes. "How dare they," he said; "how dare they question my demands!"

Now it seems that this decree looked to the raising of money for the pleasures of the king by M. Fouquet, the royal Minister of Finance, and so anxious had Louis been to secure it that he had attended the parliament himself to see that his decree received prompt registry. How dared they then think twice as to the king's wishes?

"Ride you to Paris straight, De Guiche," he said, "and, in the king's name, order that parliament reassemble to-morrow. I will attend their session, and then let them reconsider my decree if they dare!"

Olympia Mancini heard the command of the king. "To-morrow? Oh, sire!" she said; "to-morrow is the royal hunt. How can we spare your Majesty? How Can we give up our sport?"

"Have no fear, mam'selle," said the king, "I will meet my parliament to-morrow, but this trivial business shall not mar our royal hunt. Together will we ride down the stag."

At nine o'clock the next morning parliament re-assembled, as ordered by the king, and the representatives of the people were thunderstruck to see the king enter the great hall of the palace in full hunting costume of scarlet coat, high boots, and plumed gray beaver. Behind him came a long train of nobles in hunting suits also. Whip in hand and hat on head, this self-willed boy of sixteen faced his wondering parliament, and said:

"Messieurs: It has been told me that it is the intention of some members of your body to oppose the registration of my edicts as ordered yesterday. Know now that it is my desire and my will that in future all my edicts shall be registered at once and not discussed. Look you to this; for, should you at any time go contrary to my wish, by my faith, I will come here and enforce obedience!"

Before this bold assertion of mastership the great parliament of Paris bent in passive submission. The money was forthcoming, and in less than an hour the boy king and his nobles were galloping back to Vincennes, and the royal hunt soon swept through the royal forest.

Thus, we see, nothing was permitted to stay the tide of pleasure. Even the battle-field and the siege were turned into spectacles, and, by day and night, the gay court rang with mirth and folly.

In the great space between the Louvre and the Tuileries, since known as the Place de Carrousel, the summer sky of 1654 arched over a gorgeous pageant. Lists and galleries in the fashion of the tournaments of old, fluttering streamers, gleaming decorations, and rich hangings framed a picture that seemed to revive the chivalry of by-gone days. Midway down the lists, in the ladies' gallery, a richly-canopied fauteuil or arm-chair, draped in crimson and gold, held the "queen of beauty," the fair-faced Olympia Mancini—the imperious young lady "whom the king delighted to honor." The trumpets of the heralds sounded, and into the lists, with pages and attendants, gallant in liveries of every hue, rode the gay young nobles of the court, gleaming in brilliant costume and device, like knights of old, ready to join in the games of the mock tournament. But the centre of every game, the victor in all the feats of skill and strength, was the boy king, Louis of Bourbon, as in a picturesque suit of scarlet and gold he rode his splendid charger like a statue. And as the spectators noted the white and scarlet scarf that fell from the kingly shoulder in a great band, and the scarlet hat with snow-white plume, they saw, by looking at the fair young "queen of beauty," Olympia Mancini, in her drapery of scarlet damask and white, that King Louis wore her colors, and thus announced himself as her champion in the lists.

And Count Armand could see by the look of triumph and satisfaction in Olympia's pretty face, as she ruled queen of the revels, that already she felt herself not far from the pinnacle of her ambition, and saw herself in the now not distant future as Olympia, Queen of France!

But alas for girlish fancies! Louis, the king, was as fickle in his affections as he was unyielding in his mastership.

"Sire," said the Count de Guiche, as the next day a gay throng rode from the mock tournament to another great hunt in the forest of Vincennes, "why does not the fair Olympia ride with the hunt to-day?"

"Ah, the saucy Mazarinette," the king said, surlily, using the popular nickname given to the nieces of his minister, "she played me a pretty trick last night, and I will have none of her, I say"; and then he told the condoling count, who, however, was in the secret, how at the great ball after the tournament, the maiden, whose colors he had worn, had exchanged suits with his brother, the little "Monsieur," and so cleverly was the masquerading done, that he, the great King Louis, was surprised by the laughing Olympia, making sweet speeches to his own brother, thinking that he was talking to the mischievous maiden.

"My faith, sire," said the laughing count, "Monsieur makes a fair dame when he thus masquerades. Did he not well bear off the character of the Mancini?"

"Pah, all too well, the ugly little garcon," ruefully replied the king. "But I gave him such a cuff for his game on me as he shall not soon forget. And as for her——"

"Well," said the young count, "what did you, sire, to the fair Olympia?"

"Fair, say you?" said the king, wrathfully; "she is aught but fair, say I, Armand—a black face and a black soul! What think you? She strutted forth with all the airs of the great Bayard or—of myself, and clapping hand to sword, she rescued Monsieur from my clutch, saying: 'I am a chevalier of France, and brook no ill usage of so fair a dame!'"

This was too much even for the young courtier, and he burst out a-laughing. But the king was sulky. For Louis of Bourbon, like many a less-titled lad, could enjoy any joke save one played upon himself, and the mischievous Olympia lived to regret her joking of a king. Once at odds with her, the king's fancies flew from one fair damsel to another, finally culminating when, in 1660, he married, for state reasons only, in the splendid palace on the Isle of Pheasants, reared specially for the occasion, the young Princess Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain, and daughter of his uncle, King Philip the Fourth.

From here the boy merges into the man, and we must leave him. Strong of purpose, clear-headed and masterful, Louis the Fourteenth ruled as King of France for seventy-two years—the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Handsome in person, majestic in bearing, dignified, lavish, and proud; ruling France in one of the most splendid periods of its history—a period styled "the Augustan age" of France; flattered, feared, and absolutely obeyed, one would think, boys and girls, that so powerful a monarch must have been a happy man. But he was not. He lived to see children and grandchildren die around him, to see the armies of France, which he had thought invincible, yield again and again to the superior generalship of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and to regret with deep remorse the follies and extravagance of his early days. "My child," he said, in his last hours, to his great-grandson and heir, the little five-year-old Louis, "you are about to become a great king; do not imitate me either in my taste for building, or in my love of war. Endeavor, on the contrary, to live in peace with the neighboring nations; render to God all that you owe him, and cause his name to be honored by your subjects. Strive to relieve the burdens of your people, as I, alas! have failed to do."

It is for us to remember that kings and conquerors are often unable to achieve the grandest success of life,—the ruling of themselves,—and that flattery and fear are not the true indications of greatness or of glory. No sadder instance of this in all history is to be found than in the life-story of this cold-hearted, successful, loveless, imperious, all-supreme, and yet friendless old man—one of the world's most powerful monarchs, Louis of Bourbon, Louis "the Great," Louis "the God-given," Louis the Grande Monarque, Louis the worn-out, unloving and unloved old man of magnificent Versailles.





XI.

CHARLES OF SWEDEN: THE BOY CONQUEROR.

(Known as King Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.)

[A.D. 1699.]



In an old, old palace on the rocky height of the Slottsbacke, or Palace Hill, in the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, there lived, just two hundred years ago, a bright young prince. His father was a stern and daring warrior-king—a man who had been a fighter from his earliest boyhood; who at fourteen had been present in four pitched battles with the Danes; and who, while yet scarce twelve years old, had charged the Danish line at the head of his guards and shot down the stout Danish colonel, who could not resist the spry young warrior; his mother was a sweet-faced Danish princess, a loving and gentle lady, who scarce ever heard a kind word from her stern-faced husband, and whose whole life was bound up in her precious little prince.



And this little Carolus, Karl, or Charles, dearly loved his tender mother. From her he learned lessons of truth and nobleness that even through all his stormy and wandering life never forsook him. Often while he had swung gently to and fro in his quaint, carved, and uncomfortable-looking cradle, had she crooned above him the old saga-songs that told of valor and dauntless courage and all the stern virtues that made up the heroes of those same old saga-songs. Many a time she had trotted the little fellow on her knee to the music of the ancient nursery rhyme that has a place in all lands and languages, from the steppes of Siberia to the homes of New York and San Francisco:

"Ride along, ride a cock-horse, His mane is dapple-gray; Ride along, ride a cock-horse, Little boy, ride away. Where shall the little boy ride to? To the king's court to woo"——

and so forth, and so forth, and so forth—in different phrases but with the same idea, as many and many a girl and boy can remember. And she had told him over and over again the saga-stories and fairy tales that every Scandinavian boy and girl, from prince to peasant, knows so well—of Frithiof and Ingeborg, and the good King Rene; and about the Stone Giant and his wife Guru; and how the Bishop's cattle were turned into mice; and about the dwarfs, and trolls, and nixies, and beautiful mermaids and stromkarls. And she told him also many a story of brave and daring deeds, of noble and knightly lives, and how his ancestors, from the great Gustavus, and, before, from the still greater Gustavus Vasa, had been kings of Sweden, and had made the name of that northern land a power in all the courts of Europe.

Little Prince Charles was as brave as he was gentle and jolly, and as hardy as he was brave. At five years old he killed his first fox; at seven he could manage his horse like a young centaur; and at twelve he had his first successful bear hunt. He was as obstinate as he was hardy; he steadily refused to learn Latin or French—the languages of the court—until he heard that the kings of Denmark and Poland understood them, and then he speedily mastered them.

His lady-mother's death, when he was scarce twelve years old, was a great sadness, and nearly caused his own death, but, recovering his health, he accompanied his father on hunting parties and military expeditions, and daily grew stronger and hardier than ever.

In April, 1697, when the Prince was not yet fifteen, King Charles the Eleventh, his stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king succeeded to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of Livonia, Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel, of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun,"—one of the finest possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing what is now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large part of Northern Germany.

A certain amount of restraint is best for us all. As the just restraints of the law are best for men and women, so the proper restraints of home are best for boys and girls. A lad from whom all restraining influences are suddenly withdrawn—who can have his own way unmolested,—stands in the greatest danger of wrecking his life. The temptations of power have been the cause of very much of the world's sadness and misery. And this temptation came to this boy king of Sweden, called in his fifteenth year to supreme sway over a large realm of loyal subjects. Freed from the severity of his stern father's discipline, he found himself responsible to no one—absolutely his own master. And he did what too many of us, I fear, would have done, in his position—he determined to have a jolly good time, come what might; and he had it—in his way.

He and his brother-in-law, the wild young Duke of Holstein, turned the town upside down. They snapped cherry pits at the king's gray-bearded councillors, and smashed in the windows of the staid and scandalized burghers of Stockholm. They played ball with the table dishes, and broke all the benches in the palace chapel. They coursed hares through the council-chambers of the Parliament House, and ran furious races until they had ruined several fine horses. They beheaded sheep in the palace till the floors ran with blood, and then pelted the passers-by with sheep's heads. They spent the money in the royal treasury like water, and played so many heedless and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly was known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes, was Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

But at last, even the people—serfs of this boy autocrat though they were—began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen preached from the text: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child," the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good mother and recalled the glories of his ancestors, saw how foolish and dangerous was all this reckless sport, turned over a new leaf, became thoughtful and care-taking, and began his career of conquest with the best victory of all—the conquest of himself!

But though he curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful "skylarking," he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his ancestors—those rough old vikings who "despised mail and helmet and went into battle unharnessed"—to become altogether gentle in manners or occupation. He hated his fair skin, and sought in every way to tan and roughen it, and to harden himself by exposure and neglect of personal comfort. Many a night was passed by the boy on the bare floor, and for three nights in the cold Swedish December he slept in the hay-loft of the palace stables, without undressing and with but a scanty covering.

So he grew to be a lad of seventeen, sturdy, strong, and hardy, and at the date of our story, in the year 1699, the greater part of his time was given up to military exercises and field sports, with but little attention to debates in council or to the cares of state.

Among his chief enjoyments were the sham fights on land and water. Many a hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men who made up his guards and crews, and who would be divided into two or more opposing parties, as the plan of battle required. This was rough and dangerous sport, and was attended often with really serious results. But the participants were stout and sturdy Northern lads, used to hardships and trained to physical endurance. They thought no more of these encounters than do the boys of to-day of the crush of football and the hard hitting of the base-ball field, and blows were given and taken with equal good nature and unconcern.

One raw day in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn, a stout, blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with a gleam of fun in his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as it bobbed on the crest of the choppy Maelar waves. He hailed the king's yacht.

"Holo; in the boat there! Stand for your lives!" he shouted, and levelled his long squirt-gun full at the helmsman.

Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the helmsman's face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore he dropped the tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling loudly for help.

Help came speedily, and as the crew of the king's yacht manned the rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe" naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back, while as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring to the forechains and board his prize. But even before he could steady himself for the jump, another tall and fair-haired Stockholm lad, darting out from the high cabin, rallied the defeated crew and bade them man the pumps at once.

A clumsy-looking fire-engine stood amidship, and the crew leaped to its pumps as directed, while the new-comer, catching up a line of hose, sprang to the rail and sent a powerful stream of water straight against the solitary rover.

"Repel boarders!" he cried, laughingly, and the sudden stream from the fire-engine's nozzle sent young Arvid Horn staggering back into his boat.

But he rallied quickly, and with well-charged squirt-gun attacked the new defender of the yacht. The big nozzle, however, was more than a match for the lesser squirt-gun, and the small boat speedily began to fill under the constant deluge of water from the engine.

"Yield thee, yield thee, Arvid Horn; yield thee to our unconquerable nozzle," came the summons from the yacht; "yield thee, or I will drown you out like a rat in a cheese-press!"

"Arvid Horn yields to no one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer, and with a parting shot and a laughing "Farval" he leaped from the sinking boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out he swam twice round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy; now ducking to escape the pursuing stream, or now, while floating on his back, sending a return shot with telling force against the men at the pump—for he still clung to his trusty squirt-gun.

The fair-faced lad in the yacht looked at the swimmer in evident admiration.

"Is it, then, hard to swim, Arvid Horn?" he inquired.

"Not if one is fearless," called back the floating boy.

"How; fearless?" exclaimed the lad on the yacht, hastily. "Do you perhaps think that I am afraid?"

"I said not so," replied young Arvid, coolly sending a full charge from his squirt-gun straight up in air.

"No; but you mean it—good faith, you mean it then," said the lad, and flinging off wig, cocked hat, and long coat only, without an instant's hesitation, he, too, leaped into the Maelar lake.

There is nothing so cooling to courage or reckless enthusiasm as cold water—if one cannot swim. The boy plunged and floundered, and, weighty with his boots and his clothing, soon sank from sight. As he came spluttering to the surface again, "Help, help, Arvid," he called despairingly; "I am drowning!"

Arvid, who had swum away from his friend, thinking that he would follow after, heard the cry and caught a still louder one from the yacht: "The king, the king is sinking!"

A few strokes brought him near to the over-confident diver, and clutching him by his shirt collar, he kept the lad's head above water until, after a long and laborious swim, he brought his kingly burden safe to land—for the fair-haired and reckless young knight of the nozzle was none other than His Gracious Majesty, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.

"Truly it is one thing to be brave and another to be skilful," said the king, as he stood soaked and dripping on the shore. "But for you, friend Arvid, I had almost gone."

"You are very wet, sire, and may take cold," said Arvid, "let us hasten at once to yonder house for warmth and dry clothes."

"Not so, Arvid; I do not fear the water—on land," said the king. "I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire. See, this is the better way;" and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout at "single-stick."

They were soon thoroughly warmed up by this vigorous exercise, and forgot their recent bath and the king's danger. It was a drawn battle, however, and, as they paused for breath, King Charles said: "Trust that to drive away cold and ague, Arvid. Faith, 't is a rare good sport."

"Could it be done on horseback, think you?" queried Arvid, always on the look-out for sensation.

"And why not? 'T is well thought," said the king. "Let us straight to the palace yard and try it for ourselves."

But ere they reached the palace the idea had developed into still greater proportions.

The king's guards were summoned, and divided into two parties. Their horses were unsaddled, and, riding "bareback" and armed with nothing but hazel-sticks, the two forces were pitted against each other in a great cavalry duel of "single-stick."

King Charles commanded one side, and young Arvid Horn the other. At it they went, now one side and now the other having the advantage, the two leaders fighting with especial vigor.

Arvid pressed the king closely, and both lads were full of the excitement of the fray when Charles, careless of his aim and with his customary recklessness, brought his hazel-stick with a terrible thwack upon poor Arvid's face. Now, Arvid Horn had a boil on his cheek, and if any of my boy readers know what a tender piece of property a boil is, they will know that King Charles' hazel-stick was not a welcome poultice.

With a cry of pain Arvid fell fainting from his horse, and the cavalry battle at "single-stick" came to a sudden stop. But the heat and the pain brought on so fierce a fever that the lad was soon as near to death's door as his friend King Charles had been in the sea fight of the squirt-guns.

The king was deeply concerned during young Arvid's illness, and when the lad at last recovered, he made him a present of two thousand thalers, laughingly promising to repeat the prescription whenever Arvid was again wounded at "single-stick." He was greatly pleased to have his friend with him once more, and, when Arvid was strong enough to join in his vigorous sports again, one of the first things he proposed was a great bear-hunt up among the snow-filled forests that skirted the Maelar Lake.

A day's ride from Stockholm, the hunting-lodge of the kings of Sweden lay upon the heavily drifted hill-slopes just beyond the lake shore, and through the forests and marshes two hundred years ago the big brown bear of Northern Europe, the noble elk, the now almost extinct aurochs, or bison, and the great gray wolf roamed in fierce and savage strength, affording exciting and dangerous sport for daring hunters.

And among these hunters none excelled young Charles of Sweden. Reckless in the face of danger, and brave as he was reckless, he was ever on the alert for any novelty in the manner of hunting that should make the sport even more dangerous and exciting. So young Arvid Horn was not surprised when the king said to him:

"I have a new way for hunting the bear, Arvid, and a rarely good one too."

"Of that I'll be bound, sire," young Arvid responded; "but—how may it be?"

"You shall know anon," King Charles replied; "but this much will I say: I do hold it but a coward's part to fight the poor brute with fire-arms. Give the fellow a chance for his life, say I, and a fair fight in open field—and then let the best man win."

Here was a new idea. Not hunt the bear with musket, carbine, or wheel-lock? What then—did King Charles reckon to have a wrestling bout or a turn at "single-stick" with the Jarl Bruin? So wondered Arvid Horn, but he said nothing, waiting the king's own pleasure, as became a shrewd young courtier.

And soon enough he learned the boy-hunter's new manner of bear-hunting, when, on the very day of their arrival at the Maelar lodge, they tracked a big brown bear beneath the great pines and spruces of the almost boundless forest, armed only with strong wooden pitchforks. Arvid was not at all anxious for this fighting at close quarters, but when he saw King Charles boldly advance upon the growling bear, when he saw the great brute rise on his hind legs and threaten to hug Sweden's monarch to death, he would have sprung forward to aid his king. But a huntsman near at hand held him back.

"Wait," said the man; "let the 'little father' play his part."

And even as he spoke Arvid saw the king walk deliberately up to the towering bear, and, with a quick thrust of his long-handled fork, catch the brute's neck between the pointed wooden prongs, and with a mighty shove, force the bear backward in the snow.

Then, answering his cry of "Holo, all!" the huntsmen sprang to his side, flung a stout net over the struggling bear, and held it thus, a floundering prisoner, while the intrepid king coolly cut its throat with his sharp hunting-knife.

Arvid learned to do this too in time, but it required some extra courage even for his steady young head and hand.

One day when each of the lads had thus transfixed and killed his bear, and as, in high spirits, they were returning to the hunting-lodge, a courserman dashed hurriedly across their path, recognized the king, and reining in his horse, dismounted hastily, saluted, and handed the king a packet.

"From the council, sire," he said.

Up to this day the young king had taken but little interest in the affairs of state, save as he directed the review or drill, leaving the matters of treaty and of state policy to his trusted councillors. He received the courserman's despatch with evident unconcern, and read it carelessly. But his face changed as he read it a second time; first clouding darkly, and then lighting up with the gleam of a new determination and purpose.

"What says Count Piper?" he exclaimed half aloud; "Holstein laid waste by Denmark, Gottorp Castle taken, and the Duke a fugitive? And my council dares to temper and negotiate? Ack; so! Arvid Horn, we must be in Stockholm ere nightfall."

"But, sire, how can you?" exclaimed Arvid. "The roads are heavy with snow, and no horse could stand the strain or hope to make the city ere morning."

"No horse!" cried King Charles; "then three shall do it. Hasten; bid Hord the equerry harness the triple team to the strongest sledge, and be you ready to ride with me in a half hour's time. For we shall be in Stockholm by nightfall."

And ere the half hour was up they were off. Careless of roadway, straight for Stockholm they headed, the triple team of plunging Ukraine horses, driven abreast by the old equerry Hord, dashing down the slopes and across the Maelar ice, narrowly escaping collision, overturn, and death. With many a plunge and many a ducking, straight on they rode, and ere the Stockholm clocks had struck the hour of six, the city gates were passed, and the spent and foaming steeds dashed panting into the great yard of the Parliament House.

The council was still in session, and the grave old councillors started to their feet in amazement at this sudden apparition of the boy king, soiled and bespattered from head to foot, standing there in their midst.

"Gentlemen," he said, with earnestness and determination in his voice, "your despatch tells me of unfriendly acts on the part of the king of Denmark against our brother and ally of Holstein-Gottorp. I am resolved never to begin an unjust war, but never to finish an unjust one save with the destruction of mine enemies. My resolution is fixed. I will march and attack the first one who shall declare war; and when I shall have conquered him, I hope to strike terror into the rest."

These were ringing and, seemingly, reckless words for a boy of seventeen, and we do not wonder that, as the record states, "the old councillors, astonished at this declaration, looked at each other without daring to answer." The speech seemed all the more reckless when they considered, as we may here, the coalition against which the boy king spoke so confidently.

At that time—in the year 1699—the three neighbors of this young Swedish monarch were three kings of powerful northern nations—Frederick the Fourth, King of Denmark, Augustus, called the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Peter, afterward known as the Great, Czar of Russia. Tempted by the large possessions of young King Charles, and thinking to take advantage of his youth, his inexperience, and his presumed indifference, these three monarchs concocted a fine scheme by which Sweden was to be overrun, conquered, and divided among the three members of this new copartnership of kings—from each of whom, or from their predecessors, this boy king's ancestors had wrested many a fair domain and wealthy city.

But these three kings—as has many and many another plotter in history before and since—reckoned without their host. They did not know the mettle that was in this grandnephew of the great Gustavus.

Once aroused to action, he was ready to move before even his would-be conquerors, in those slow-going days, imagined he had thought of resistance. Money and men were raised, the alliance of England and Holland were secretly obtained, a council of defence was appointed to govern Sweden during the absence of the king, and on the twenty-third of April, 1700, two months before his eighteenth birthday, King Charles bade his grandmother and his sisters good-bye and left Stockholm for ever.

Even as he left the news came that another member in this firm of hostile kings, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, had invaded Sweden's tributary province of Livonia on the Gulf of Finland. Not to be drawn aside from his first object—the punishment of Denmark—Charles simply said: "We will make King Augustus go back the way he came," and hurried on to join his army in Southern Sweden.

By the third of August, 1700, King Charles had grown tired of waiting for his reserves and new recruits, and so, with scarce six thousand men, he sailed away from Malmo—clear down at the most southerly point of Sweden—across the Sound, and steered for the Danish coast not twenty-five miles away.

Young Arvid Horn, still the king's fast friend, and now one of his aids, following his leader, leaped into the first of the small barges or row-boats that were to take the troops from the frigates to the Danish shore. His young general and king, impatient at the slowness of the clumsy barges, while yet three hundred yards from shore, stood upright in the stern, drew his sword, and exclaimed: "I am wearied with this pace. All you who are for Denmark follow me!" And then, sword in hand, he sprang over into the sea.

Arvid Horn quickly followed his royal friend. The next moment generals and ministers, ambassadors and belaced officials, with the troops that filled the boats, were wading waist-deep through the shallow water of the Sound, struggling toward the Danish shore, and fully as enthusiastic as their hasty young leader and king.

The Danish musket-balls fell thick around them as the Danish troops sought from their trenches to repel the invaders.

"What strange whizzing noise is this in the air?" asked the young king, now for the first time in action.

"'T is the noise of the musket-balls they fire upon you," was the reply.

"Ack, say you so," said Charles; "good, good; from this time forward that shall be my music."

In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were carried by fierce assault, and King Charles' first battle was won. Two days later, Copenhagen submitted to its young conqueror, and King Frederick, of Denmark, hastened to the defence of his capital, only to find it in the possession of the enemy, and to sign a humiliating treaty of peace.

The boy conqueror's first campaign was over, and, as his biographer says, he had "at the age of eighteen begun and finished a war in less than six weeks." Accepting nothing for himself from this conquest, he spared the land from which his dearly-remembered mother had come, from the horrors of war and pillage which, in those days, were not only allowable but expected.

King Augustus, of Poland, seeing the short work made of his ally, the king of Denmark, by this boy king, whom they had all regarded with so much contempt, deemed discretion to be the better part of valor and, as the lad had prophesied, withdrew from Livonia, "going back by the way he came." Then the young conqueror, flushed with his successes, turned his army against his third and greatest enemy, Czar Peter, of Russia, who, with over eighty thousand men, was beseiging the Swedish town of Narva.

A quaint old German-looking town, situated a few miles from the shores of the Gulf of Finland, in what is now the Baltic provinces of Russia, and near to the site of the Czar's later capital of St. Petersburg, the stout-walled town of Narva was the chief defence of Sweden on its eastern borders, and a stronghold which the Russian monarch especially coveted for his own. Young Arvid Horn's uncle, the Count Horn, was in command of the Swedish forces in the town, which, with a thousand men, he held for the young king, his master, against all the host of the Czar Peter.



The boy who had conquered Denmark in less than six weeks, and forced a humiliating peace from Poland, was not the lad to consider for a moment the question of risk or of outnumbering forces. In the middle of November, when all that cold Northern land is locked in ice and snow, he flung out the eagle-flag of Sweden to the Baltic blasts, and crossed to the instant relief of Narva, with an army of barely twenty thousand men. Landing at Pernau with but a portion of his troops, he pushed straight on, and with scarce eight thousand men, hurried forward to meet the enemy. With a courage as daring as his valor was headlong he surprised and routed first one and then another advance detachment of the Russian force, and soon twenty-five thousand demoralized and defeated men were retreating before him, into the Russian camp. In less than two days all the Russian outposts were carried, and on the noon of the 30th of November, 1700, the boy from Sweden appeared with his eight thousand victory-flushed though wearied troops before the fortified camp of his enemy, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered instant battle.

"Sire," said one of his chief officers, the General Stenbock, "do you comprehend the greatness of our danger? The Muscovites outnumber us ten to one."

"What! then," said the intrepid young king, "do you imagine that with my eight thousand brave Swedes I shall not be able to march over the bodies of eighty thousand Muscovites?" and then at the signal of two fusees and the watchword, "With the help of God," he ordered his cannon to open on the Russian trenches, and through a furious snow-storm charged straight upon the enemy.

Again valor and enthusiasm triumphed. The Russian line broke before the impetuosity of the Swedes, and, as one chronicler says, "ran about like a herd of cattle"; the bridge across the river broke under the weight of fugitives, panic followed, and when night fell the great Russian army of eighty thousand men surrendered as prisoners of war to a boy of eighteen with but eight thousand tired soldiers at his back.

So the boy conqueror entered upon his career of victory. Space does not permit to detail his battles and his conquests. How he placed a new king on the throne of Poland, kept Denmark in submission, held the hosts of Russia at bay, humbled Austria, and made his name, ere yet he was twenty, at once a wonder and a terror in all the courts of Europe. How, at last, his ambition getting the better of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and fool-hardy endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once again at the head of Swedish troops, instead of defending his own home-land of Sweden, he invaded Norway in the depth of winter, and was killed, when but thirty-six, by a cannon shot from the enemy's batteries at Frederickshall on the 11th of December, 1718.

Charles the Twelfth of Sweden was one of the most remarkable of the world's Historic Boys. Elevated to a throne founded on despotic power and victorious memories, at an age when most lads regard themselves as the especial salt of the earth, he found himself launched at once into a war with three powerful nations, only to become in turn the conqueror of each. A singularly good boy, so far as the customary temptations of power and high station are concerned—temperate, simple, and virtuous in tastes, dress, and habits,—he was, as one of his biographers has remarked, "the only one among kings who had lived without a single frailty."

But this valorous boy, who had first bridled his own spirit, and then conquered the Northern world, "reared," as has been said, "under a father cold and stern, defectively educated, taught from childhood to value nothing but military glory," could not withstand the temptation of success. An ambition to be somebody and to do something is always a laudable one in boy or girl, until it supplants and overgrows the sweet, true, and manly boy and girl nature, and makes us regardless of the comfort or the welfare of others. A desire to excel the great conquerors of old, joined to an obstinacy as strong as his courage, caused young Charles of Sweden to miss the golden opportunity, and instead of seeking to rule his own country wisely, sent him abroad a homeless wanderer on a career of conquest, as romantic as it was, first, glorious, and at the last disastrous.

In the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, surrounded by palaces and gardens, theatres, statues, and fountains, stands Molin's striking statue of the boy conqueror, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Guarded at the base by captured mortars, the outstretched hand and unsheathed sword seem to tell of conquests to be won and victories to be achieved. But to the boy and girl of this age of peace and good fellowship, when wars are averted rather than sought, and wise statesmanship looks rather to the healing than to the opening of the world's wounds, one cannot but feel how much grander, nobler, and more helpful would have been the life of this young "Lion of the North," as his Turkish captors called him, had it been devoted to deeds of gentleness and charity rather than of blood and sorrow, and how much more enduring might have been his fame and his memory if he had been the lover and helper of his uncultivated and civilization-needing people, rather than the valorous, ambitious, headstrong, and obstinate Boy Conqueror of two centuries ago.





XII.

VAN RENSSELAER OF RENSSELAERSWYCK: THE BOY PATROON.

(Afterward Major-General, and Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York.)

[A.D. 1777.]



I question whether any of my young readers, however well up in history they may be, can place the great River of Prince Maurice (De Riviere Van den Voorst Mauritius), which, two hundred years ago, flowed through the broad domain of the lord patroons of Rensselaerswyck. And yet it is the same wide river upon whose crowded shore now stands the great city of New York; the same fair river above whose banks now towers the noble front of the massive State Capitol at Albany. And that lofty edifice stands not far from the very spot where, beneath the pyramidal belfry of the old Dutch church, the boy patroon sat nodding through Dominie Westerlo's sermon, one drowsy July Sunday in the summer of 1777.

The good dominie's "seventhly" came to a sudden stop as the tinkle of the deacon's collection-bell fell upon the ears of the slumbering congregation. In the big Van Rensselaer pew it roused Stephanus, the boy patroon, from a delightful dream of a ten-pound twaalf, or striped bass, which he thought he had just hooked at the mouth of Bloemert's Kill; and, rather guiltily, as one who has been "caught napping," he dropped his two "half-joes" into the deacon's "fish-net"—for so the boys irreverently called the knitted bag which, stuck on one end of a long pole, was always passed around for contributions right in the middle of the sermon. Then the good dominie went back to his "seventhly," and the congregation to their slumbers, while the restless young Stephanus traced with his finger-nail upon the cover of his psalm-book the profile of his highly respected guardian, General Ten Broek, nodding solemnly in the magistrate's pew. At last, the sands in the hour-glass, that stood on the queer, one-legged, eight-sided pulpit, stopped running, and so did the dominie's "noble Dutch"; the congregation filed out of church, and the Sunday service was over. And so, too, was the Sunday quiet. For scarcely had the people passed the porch, when, down from the city barrier at the Colonie Gate, clattered a hurrying horseman.

"From General Schuyler, sir," he said, as he reined up before General Ten Broek, and handed him an order to muster the militia at once and repair to the camp at Fort Edward. St. Clair, so said the despatch, had been defeated, Ticonderoga was captured, Burgoyne was marching to the Hudson, the Indians were on the war-path, and help was needed at once if they would check Burgoyne and save Albany from pillage.

The news fell with a sudden shock upon the little city of the Dutchmen. Ticonderoga fallen, and the Indians on the war-path! Even the most stolid of the Albany burghers felt his heart beating faster, while many a mother looked anxiously at her little ones and called to mind the terrible tales of Indian cruelty and pillage. But the young Van Rensselaer, pressing close to the side of fair Mistress Margarita Schuyler, said soberly: "These be sad tidings, Margery; would it not be wiser for you all to come up to the manor-house for safety?"

"For safety?" echoed high-spirited Mistress Margery. "Why, what need, Stephanus? Is not my father in command at Fort Edward? and not for Burgoyne and all his Indians need we fear while he is there! So, many thanks, my lord patroon," she continued, with a mock courtesy; "but I'm just as safe under the Schuyler gables as I could be in the Van Rensselaer manor-house, even with the brave young patroon himself as my defender."

The lad looked a little crestfallen; for he regarded himself as the natural protector of this brave little lady, whose father was facing the British invaders on the shores of the Northern lakes. Had it not been one, almost, of the unwritten laws of the colonie, since the day of the first patroon, that a Van Rensselaer should wed a Schuyler? Who, then, should care for a daughter of the house of Schuyler in times of trouble but a son of the house of Rensselaer?

"Well, at any rate, I shall look out for you if danger does come," he said, as he turned toward the manor-house. "You'll surely not object to that, will you, Margery?"

"Why, how can I?" laughed the girl. "I certainly may not prevent a gallant youth from keeping his eyes in my direction. So, thanks for your promise, my lord patroon, and when you see the flash of the tomahawk, summon your vassals like a noble knight and charge through the Colonie Gate to the rescue of the beleaguered maiden of the Fuyck.[AL] Why, it will be as good as one of Dominie Westerlo's Northland saga-tales, won't it, Stephanus?" And, with a stately good-by to the little lord of seven hundred thousand acres, the girl hastened homeward to the Schuyler mansion, while the boy rode in the opposite direction to the great brick manor-house by the creek.

Twenty-four miles east and west, by forty-eight miles north and south, covering forest and river, valley and hill, stretched the broad colonie of the patroons of Rensselaerswyck, embracing the present counties of Albany, Rensselaer, and Columbia, in the State of New York; and over all this domain, since the days of the Heer Killian Van Rensselaer, first of the lord patroons, father and son, in direct descent, had held sway after the manner of the old feudal barons of Europe. They alone owned the land, and their hundreds of tenants held their farms on rentals or leases, subject to the will of the "patroons," as they were called,—a Dutch adaptation of the old Roman patronus, meaning patrician or patron.

Only the town-lands of Beverwyck, or Albany, were free from this feudal right—a territory stretching thirteen miles north-west, by one mile wide along the river front, and forced from an earlier boy patroon by the doughty Peter Stuyvesant, and secured by later English governors; and at the time of our story, though the old feudal laws were no longer in force, and the rentals were less exacting than in the earlier days, the tenantry of Rensselaerswyck respected the authority and manorial rights of Stephen Van Rensselaer, their boy patroon, who, with his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters, lived in the big brick manor-house near the swift mill creek and the tumbling falls in the green vale of Tivoli, a mile north of the city gate.

And now had come the Revolution. Thanks to the teaching of his tender mother, of his gallant guardian, and of the good Dominie Westerlo, young Stephen knew what the great struggle meant—a protest against tyranny, a blow for human rights, a defence of the grand doctrine of the immortal Declaration that "All men are created free and equal." And he had been told, too, that the success of the Republic would be the death-blow to all the feudal rights to which he, the last of the patroons, had succeeded.

"Uncle," he said to his guardian, that stern patriot and whig, General Abram Ten Broek, "you are my representative and must act for me till I grow to be a man. Do what is best, sir, and don't let the Britishers beat!"

"But, remember, lad," said his uncle, "the Revolution, if it succeeds, must strip you of all the powers and rights that have come to you as patroon. You will be an owner of acres, nothing more; no longer baron, patroon, nor lord of the manor; of no higher dignity and condition than little Jan Van Woort, the cow-boy of old Luykas Oothout on your cattle farm in the Helderbergs."

"But I'll be a citizen of a free republic, won't I, Uncle?" said the boy; "as free of the king and his court across the sea as Jan Van Woort will be of me and the court-leet of Rensselaerswyck. So we'll all start fair and even. I'm not old enough to fight and talk yet, Uncle; but do you fight and talk for me, and I know it will come out all right."

And so, through the battle-summer of 1777, the work went on. Men and supplies were hurried northward to help the patriot army, and soon General Ten Broek's three thousand militia-men were ready and anxious for action. The air was full of stirring news. Brandt and his Indians, Sir John Johnson and his green-coated Tories, swarmed into the Mohawk Valley; poor Jane McCrea fell a victim to Indian treachery, and the whole northern country shuddered at the rumor that twenty dollars had been offered for every rebel scalp. And fast upon these came still other tidings. The noble General Schuyler, fair Mistress Margery's father, had, through the management of his enemies in the Congress and in the camp, been superseded by General Gates; but, like a true patriot, he worked just as hard for victory nevertheless. Herkimer had fallen in the savage and uncertain fight at Oriskany; in Bennington, stout old Stark had dealt the British a rousing blow; and Burgoyne's boast that with ten thousand men he could "promenade through America" ended dismally enough for him in the smoke of Bemis Heights and the surrender at Saratoga.

But, before that glorious ending, many were the dark and doubtful days that came to Albany and to Rensselaerswyck. Rumors of defeat and disaster, of plot and pillage, filled the little city. Spies and Tories sought to work it harm. The flash of the tomahawk, of which Mistress Margery had so lightly jested, was really seen in the Schuyler mansion. And the brave girl, by her pluck and self-possession, had saved her father and his household from the chance of Tory pillage and Indian murder. Good Dominie Westerlo kept open church and constant prayer for the success of the patriot arms through one whole anxious week, and on a bright September afternoon, General Ten Broek, with a slender escort, came dashing up to the "stoop" of the Van Rensselaer manor-house.

"What now, Uncle?" asked young Stephen, as he met the General in the broad hall.

"More supplies—we must have more supplies, lad," replied his uncle. "Our troops need provisions, and I am here to forage among both friends and foes."

"Beginning with us, I suppose," said the young patroon. "Oh, Uncle, cannot I, too, do something to show my love for the cause?"

"Something, Stephen? You can do much," his uncle replied. "Time was, lad, when your ancestors, the lord patroons of Rensselaerswyck, were makers and masters of the law in this their colonie. From their own forts floated their own flag and frowned their own cannon. Their word was law and from Beeren's Island to Pafraet's Dael the Heer Van Rensselaer's orders were obeyed without question. Forts and flags and cannon are no longer yours, Stephen, and we would not have it otherwise; but your word still holds as good with your tenantry as did that of the first boy patroon, Johannes the son of Killian, when, backed by his gecommitteerden and his schepens,[AM] he bearded the Heer General Stuyvesant and claimed all Rensselaerswyck as his 'by right of arms.' Try your word with them, lad. Let me be your gecommitteerden and, in the name of the patroon, demand from your tenantry of Rensselaerswyck provisions and forage for our gallant troops."

"Oh, try it, Uncle, try it—do," young Stephen cried, full of interest; "but will they give so much heed, think you, to my word?"

"Ay, trust them for that," replied the general. "So strong is their attachment to their young patroon that they will, I know, do more on your simple word than on all the orders and levies of the king's Parliament or the Continental Congress."

So, out into the farm-lands that checkered the valley and climbed the green slopes of the Helderbergs, went the orders of the boy patroon, summoning all "our loyal and loving tenantry" to take of their stock and provender all that they could spare, save the slight amount needed for actual home use, and to deliver the same to the commissaries of the army of the Congress at Saratoga. And the "loyal and loving tenantry" gave good heed to their patroon's orders. Granaries and cellars, stables and pigsties, pork-barrels and poultry-sheds, were emptied of their contents. The army of the Congress was amply provisioned, and thus, indeed, did the boy patroon contribute his share toward the great victory at Saratoga—a victory of which one historian remarks that "no martial event, from the battle of Marathon to that of Waterloo—two thousand years,—exerted a greater influence upon human affairs."

The field of Saratoga is won. Six thousand British troops have laid down their arms, and the fears of Northern invasion are ended. In the Schuyler mansion at Albany, fair Mistress Margery is helping her mother fitly entertain General Burgoyne and the paroled British officers, thus returning good for evil to the man who, but a few weeks before, had burned to the ground her father's beautiful country-house at Saratoga. Along the fair river, from the Colonie Gate to the peaks of the Katzbergs, the early autumn frosts are painting the forest leaves with gorgeous tints, and to-day, the first of November, 1777, the children are joyously celebrating the thirteenth birthday of the boy patroon in the big manor-house by the creek. For, in Albany, a hundred years ago, a children's birthday party really meant a children's party. The "grown-folk" left home on that day, and the children had free range of the house for their plays and rejoicing. So, through the ample rooms and the broad halls of the Van Rensselaer mansion the children's voices ring merrily, until, tired of romp and frolic, the little folks gather on the great staircase for rest and gossip. And here the fresh-faced little host, in a sky-blue silk coat lined with yellow, a white satin vest broidered with gold lace, white silk knee-breeches, and stockings tied with pink ribbons, pumps, ruffles, and frills, is listening intently while Mistress Margery, radiant in her tight-sleeved satin dress, peaked-toed and bespangled shoes, and wonderfully arranged hair, is telling the group of girls and boys all about General Burgoyne and the British officers, and how much they liked the real Dutch supper her mother gave them one day—"suppawn and malck[AN] and rulliches,[AO] with chocolate and soft waffles, you know,"—and how General the Baron Riedesel had said that if they stayed till Christmas he would play at Saint Claes (Santa Claus) for them.

"Oh, Margery!" exclaimed Stephen, "you wouldn't have a Hessian for good old Saint Claes, would you?"

"Why not?" said Mistress Margery, with a toss of her pretty head. "Do you think you are the only patroon, my lord Stephen?"

For Santa Claus was known among the boys and girls of those old Dutch days as "the children's patroon" (De Patroon van Kinder-vreugd).

"I saw the Hessian baron t' other night, Margarita," said Stephen's best boy-friend, Abram Van Vechten; "he never could play at Santa Claus. He's not the right shape at all. And then a Hessian! Why, I'd sooner have old Balthazar!"

"Oh, dear, what a Saint Claes he'd make!" cried all the girls and boys, for old Balthazar Lydius was the terror of the Albany children in those days—"a tall, spare Dutchman, with a bullet head," a sort of Bluebeard to their imaginations, living in his "big mahogany house with carved beams," near the old Kerk, and scowling and growling at every Kind who passed his door.

"No, no, Abram," protested Margery, "I'd rather have the baron, even if he is a Hessian. Only imagine old Balthazar playing at Saint Claes, girls! Why, he's as sour as a ladle of Aunt Schuyler's kool-slaa. Show us how he looks, Stephen; you can, you know."

"Yes, do, do!" shouted all the girls and boys. "Show us Abram's sour face. Let's see which is the best patroon."



So the boy lengthened down his face and pulled in his cheeks and looked so ferociously sour that the children fairly shrieked with delight at the caricature, and Abram cried: "That's it; that's old Balthazar as sure as you live! That's just the way he looked at me last winter when I almost ran into him as I was sliding down the long coast at Fort hill. My! I was so scared that I ran as fast as my legs could carry me from way below the Kerk clear past the Van der Hayden palace."[AP]

But, in the midst of the laughter, a quick step sounded in the hall, and General Ten Broek came to the children-crowded staircase. "The Helderberg farmers are here, lad," he said to his nephew; and the young patroon, bidding his guests keep up the fun while he left them awhile, followed his uncle through the door-way and across the broad court-yard to where, just south of the manor-house, stood the rent-office. As the boy emerged from the mansion, the throng of tenants who had gathered there at his invitation gazed admiringly at the manly-looking little lad, resplendent in blue and yellow, and gold lace, and greeted him with a rousing birthday cheer—a loyal welcome to their boy patroon, their young Opperhoofdt, or chief.

"My friends," the lad said, acknowledging their greeting with a courtly bow, "I have asked you to come to the manor-house on this, my birthday, so that I might thank you for what you did for me before the Saratoga fight, when you sent so much of your stock and produce to the army simply on my order. But I wish also to give you something besides thanks. And so, that you may know how much I value your friendship and fealty, I have, with my guardian's approval, called you here to present to each one of you a free and clear title to all the lands you have, until now, held in fee from me as the patroon of Rensselaerswyck. General Ten Broek will give you the papers before you leave the office, and Pedrom has a goodly spread waiting for you in the lower hall. Take this from me, my friends, with many thanks for what you have already done for me."

Then, what a cheer went up! The loyal tenantry of the Helderberg farms had neither looked for nor expected any special return for their generous offerings to the army of the Congress, and this action of the boy patroon filled every farmer's heart with something more than gratitude; for now each one of them was a land-owner, as free and untrammelled as the boy patroon himself. And, as fair Portia says in the play,

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world,"

that, when young Stephen Van Rensselaer went joyfully back to his children's party, and the Helderberg farmers to black Pedrom's "spread" in the lower hall, it would have been hard to say which felt the happier—the giver or the receivers of this generous and manly gift.

The years of battle continued, but Dominie Doll's boarding-school, smoked out of 'Sopus when the British troops laid Kingston in ashes, found shelter in Hurley; and here the boys repaired for instruction—for school must go on though war rages and fire burns. The signs of pillage and desolation were all around them; but, boy-like, they thought little of the danger, and laughed heartily at Dominie Doll's story of the poor 'Sopus Dutchman who, terribly frightened at the sight of the red-coats, fled wildly across a deserted hay-field, and stepped suddenly upon the end of a long hay-rake left behind by the "skedaddling" farmers. Up flew the long handle of the rake and struck the terrified Dutchman a sounding whack upon the back of his head. He gave himself up for lost. "Oh, mein Got, mein Got!" he cried, dropping upon his knees and lifting imploring hands to his supposed captors, "I kivs up, I kivs up, mynheer soldiermans. Hooray for King Shorge!"

Nearly two years were passed here upon the pleasant hill-slopes that stretch away to the Catskill ridges and the rugged wildness of the Stony Clove; and then, in the fall of 1779, when the boy patroon had reached his fifteenth birthday, it was determined to send him, for still higher education, to the College of New Jersey, at Princeton. Of that eventful journey of the lad and his half-dozen school-fellows, under military escort, from the hills of the Upper Hudson to the shot-scarred college on the New Jersey plains, a most interesting story could be told. I doubt whether many, if any, boys ever went to school under quite such delightfully exciting circumstances. For their route lay through a war-worried section; past the dismantled batteries of Stony Point, where "Mad Anthony Wayne" had gained so much glory and renown; past the Highland fortresses, and through the ranks of the Continental Army, visiting General Washington at his headquarters at West Point, and carrying away never-forgotten recollections of the great commander; cautiously past roving bands of cruel "cow-boys" and the enemy's outposts around captured New York, to the battered college buildings which had alternately been barracks and hospital for American and British troops. And an equally interesting story could be told of the exciting college days when, almost within range of the enemy's guns, the boom of the distinct cannon would come like a punctuation in recitations, and the fear of fusillades would help a boy through many a "tight squeeze" in neglected lessons. But this was education under difficulties. The risk became too great, and the young patroon was finally transferred to the quieter walls of Harvard College, from which celebrated institution he graduated with honor in 1782, soon after his eighteenth birthday.