Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/287

Rh those whom chance had presented with a sceptre.

At any rate the royal descendant of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, the son and successor of that Gustavus III who was preparing to lead the chivalry of Europe against French Jacobinism at the moment when he was so treacherously murdered by one of his own officers and subjects, was now our guest at Trieste, and living on the second floor in the same house with us. His generals had turned traitors, and dethroned him, and he was now travelling about Europe under the name of Count Gottorp.

He frequently came down to see us and would converse without any ceremony, but he always seemed to me to prefer the company of my brother and my sister-in-law, who never forgot that he had been King of Sweden, though he appeared to forget it himself and to wish that it should be forgotten. My imperturbable sister-in-law, though she joined in the conversation with good-sense and modesty, never neglected, on his account, to see to her household,