Karl had completely abandoned the government of his country to the Council of Regency; he hardly troubled to acquaint himself with their proceedings, and often left unread the home dispatches.
Patriotism did not touch his dreams of the cold greatness he had conceived for himself. “I told my people,” he said, looking, not at his minister, but out of the window at the summer sunshine on the dusty road, “that I would never make an unjust war nor abandon a just one, without the punishment of the offenders.”
“Are not these same offenders already sufficiently punished?” demanded Piper quickly.
“No,” replied the King, and now his strange eyes showed a faint but fierce fire like those of a noble animal roused from slumber to anger. “Not unless they are dethroned.”
“Is it your Majesty’s ambition to wear these crowns?”
“I want nothing but to punish my enemies,” he replied. “What are crowns to me?”
Boastful as the words sounded, Count Piper believed they were sincere; he had already seen how, in the defeat of Denmark, Karl had astonished the world by demanding nothing for himself, and he could credit that Karl was capable of exhausting his country and spending himself in the effort to gain countries only to give them away when he had conquered them; he did not want Russia, only the pleasure of dethroning the Czar; he had no desire to reign over Poland, only the wish to seize that country from Saxony.
“I think your Majesty is wrong,” said the minister. “As one who was your father’s friend and is the friend of Sweden, forgive me if I say so, sire, if you stop now you are safe and glorious, if you go on, it may be to disaster.”
The King winced at the sound of that word which no one had ever dared to utter to him before.
“When I have humbled these two kings and punished one other we may talk of peace,” he said curtly. “I speak of John Rheinhold Patkul.”
His fair face, so beautiful in line, but so devoid of expression as to lack all attraction, hardened into an aspect of sheer cruelty new to Count Piper; the King whose first act had been to abolish judicial torture from his statute books had hitherto been considered as of a merciful disposition, nor had his campaigns been stained even by the usual excesses of war; yet his look as he spoke of the Livonian was one of fierce hate and cruelty.