despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen dowager of Sweden,
thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also
known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and
had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high
widowhood she had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner
unexampled. Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were, King Harald
Graenske (a cousin of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in some
district, by sufferance of the late Hakon's),--this luckless Graenske
and the then Russian Sovereign as well, name not worth mentioning,
were zealous suitors of Queen Dowager Sigrid, and were perversely slow
to accept the negative, which in her heart was inexorable for both,
though the expression of it could not be quite so emphatic. By
ill-luck for them they came once,--from the far West, Graenske; from
the far East, the Russian;--and arrived both together at Sigrid's
court, to prosecute their importunate, and to her odious and tiresome
suit; much, how very much, to her impatience and disdain. She lodged
them both in some old mansion, which she had contiguous, and got
compendiously furnished for them; and there, I know not whether on the
first or on the second, or on what following night, this unparalleled
Queen Sigrid had the house surrounded, set on fire, and the two
suitors and their people burnt to ashes! No more of bother from these
two at least! This appears to be a fact; and it could not be unknown
to Tryggveson.

In spite of which, however, there went from Tryggveson, who was now a
widower, some incipient marriage proposals to this proud widow; by
whom they were favorably received; as from the brightest man in all
the world, they might seem worth being. Now, in one of these
anti-heathen onslaughts of King Olaf's on the idol temples of
Hakon--(I think it was that case where Olaf's own battle-axe struck