In silence the minister stared at the King, whose noble face was in the shadow beyond the deep glow of the oil lamp.
“At last we are face to face!” cried Karl, with an excitement that he would never have shown but for the fever in his blood. “Peter Alexievitch and I, after nearly ten years! He has always fled from me--ever since Narva.”
Sitting up in his bed, Karl reached out his hand for his sword, then let it drop while he stared at Piper.
“I met a man crying because he could get no news from his wife,” remarked the King, “and another who was sad for fear he should not see Stockholm again; those who follow me must learn to forget family and country--” pausing, he again put his hand to his forehead. “Aurora von Königsmarck once foretold disaster for me,” he added. “Had I been a greater prince if I had spared Patkul?”
Piper thought that the King must be delirious to talk like this; never had he known him to so unbosom himself, or to refer to these personal matters, or to speak in this tone of excitement; it frightened him to see his stern monarch thus reduced to ordinary humanity, and he went up to the bed and caught Karl’s hand, which was burning hot.
The King, however, had again perfect command of himself.
He gazed at Count Piper with the usual serenity in the blue eyes now hot and blood-flushed with pain.
“I am still Karl XII,” he said grimly, “and my men are still Swedes. Go to your prayers, Count, and leave me to my rest.”
With this he lay down, and put his head on the hard pillow.
A faint, half-stifled sigh escaped him, then he lay silent and still, and either was or feigned to be asleep.
Count Piper did not leave the tent, but stood at the open door, looking sometimes at the tall figure of the King stretched on his narrow bed, and sometimes at Poltava, dark against the paling midnight sky up into which the moon was rising.
A sadness was on Count Piper and yet a calm; at that moment his was the clear vision of a man who has a premonition that his work is over, and looks back quietly and steadily on his life.
What had he not meant to do for Sweden. Karl XI, his beloved master, had left his country greater than she had ever been before, and Count Piper had resolved to continue his work, to carefully add stone to stone till the fair edifice was complete--to do in his way and with his means what Peter was doing for Russia.