city, but to-day he thought it might well be done, and therefore he
would not await Otto's visit but come over to pay one himself.

"Thou hast certainly seen our good king?" was his first question.
"Lord help the anointed one! he is then as vigorous and active as
ever--my good King Frederik!" And now he must relate a trait which
had touched his heart, and which, in his opinion, deserved a place
in the annals of history. This event occurred the last time that
the king was in Jutland; he had visited the interior of the country
and the western coast also. When he was leaving a public-house the
old hostess ran after him, and besought that the Father would, as a
remembrance, write his name with chalk upon a beam. The grand
gentlemen wished to deter her, but she pulled at the king's coat;
and when he had learned her wish he nodded in a friendly manner,
and said, "Very willingly!" and then turned back and wrote his name
on the beam. Tears came into the old man's eyes; he wept, and
prayed for his king. He now inquired whether the old tree was still
standing in the Regent's Court, and then spoke of Nyerup and
Abrahamson, whom he had known in his student days.

In fact, after all, he was himself the narrator; each of his
questions related to this or that event in his own life, and he
always returned to this source--his student-days. There was then
another life, another activity, he maintained. His royal idea of
beauty had been Queen Matilda. [Translator's Note: The unhappy wife
of Christian VII. and daughter of our George III.] "I saw her often
on horseback," said he. "It was not then the custom in our country
for ladies to ride. In her country it was the fashion; here it gave
rise to scandal. God gave her beauty, a king's crown, and a heart
full of love; the world gave her--what it can give--a grave near to