He also mentions that Konrad had grown somewhat florid, and rather more round in form, than when he had placed the ring on Anna’s hand before that magnificent altar; and that she too, though retaining her youthful bloom, had (alas, for romance!) lost much of her slender and graceful aspect, and looked quite like the mother of the five chubby little ones, each of whom clung to her skirts with one hand, while the other was occupied with a great piece of the spiced christening cake, on which they were regaling with a satisfaction, equalled only by that of the Danish soldier, who, having again found the can and the cake offered on this occasion to Nippen, had appropriated them both to himself.
Ten years have elapsed since the reader last heard in these pages of Bothwell’s hapless earl, and the lonely towers of Malmö.
And in all that long and weary time he had been a fettered felon within the iron walls of Malmö. Pining hopelessly in a captivity the most crushing to a heart so fierce and proud—to a soul so high-spirited and restless, with one thought ever before him—liberty and home; and though forgotten by Mary, or remembered only with a shudder, his old love for her had never died; and many a futile effort he made, by piteous letters and petitions, to Frederick II. of Demark—petitions so humble, that his once proud nature would have shrunk from their tenor—to interest himself, "pour la deliverance de la Royne sa Princesse Marie."[*]
[*] See Les Affaires de le Cante du Boduel.
But neither her deliverance or his own were ever achieved; for, were such a thing possible, even God seemed to have abandoned them to a fate that was alike inexorable and irresistible.
Year after year wore away, and the seasons succeeded each other in dreary and monotonous succession. This monotony was most intolerable in winter—the long and desolate winter of the north; when the descending avalanche roared between the frozen peaks—when the ice cracked and burst in the narrow fiords, where the seals and walrusses slept in the rays of the moon—and when the northern lights, as they flashed behind the summits of the distant hills, filled the midnight sky with figures that were equally beautiful and terrible.