of his subjects, and thinking men and women everywhere, than when he
permitted the marriage of his second son, Prince Oscar, to a young
Swedish noblewoman, Fröken Ebba Munck, of Fulkila, who was also Queen
Sophie's maid-of-honor. While the prince had to renounce his right of
succession and his position as a royal prince of Sweden, his relations
to his father and the other members of the royal family remained the
same.

Of this incident in the history of the royal family of Sweden, the
following story is told:

The Queen interceded long and persistently with her husband for
permission for her second son to be married to the woman he loved.
Although the Munck family had played a very important part in the
history of the nation, the king was opposed to the _mésalliance_. "It
is Oscar's duty to be true to himself and to his love," she used to
say. But the king, who was not wont to refuse any of the wishes of
his consort, steadily refused to sanction the union. There were many
things against such a marriage, for Prince Oscar was the second son
of the king, and the very fact that the reigning House of Norway and
Sweden was one of the most youthful of the royal houses of Europe made
it all the more necessary that its scions should intermarry with the
members of the ancient reigning houses.

About this time the queen was seized with one of her serious attacks
of illness, and her state was such that at one time her life was
despaired of. Her physicians declared that her only hope of recovery
lay in an instant operation, which was both dangerous and extremely
painful.