Karl sat in a folding camp-chair, a mantle of rough blue cloth over his usual uniform, his hands, covered by the long elbow gloves, employed in turning over a few notes and maps on a plain pine table.
The arduous labors and unceasing fatigues of this last campaign had told even on his superb physique.
He was thinner and pale, under the brown of exposure; his blue eyes seemed slightly tired, but had lost nothing of their calm, courageous stare.
Near him sat Count Piper, looking ill and old, wrapped in a heavy cloak of marten skin, lined with scarlet and gold brocade, the spoil of war of some flying Russian Prince.
Only a few of Karl’s generals, such as Rehnsköld, Gyllenburg, and Wurtemberg, were present; it was his habit to confide his designs to as few as possible. Piper, whose forebodings had been silenced by the splendid success of the Swedish advance into Russia, had now begun to feel uneasy and to rediscover all his objections to the campaign. He thought that Karl should have accepted Peter’s offer to treat for peace; the barbarous country and the arctic climate told severely on his spirits; he was in poor health and homesick. Whatever sentiment he may have had left for his master had vanished when the cruel sentence on General Patkul was carried out, and he was broken on the wheel, suffering a death of frightful torture.
Piper had heard that Hélène D’Einsiedel had not lived to hear this news.
She had died in a Russian camp soon after her arrival there, and the messages Patkul had sent to her by the chaplain who attended him on the scaffold had been sent to one beyond the reach of comfort.
Piper never spoke of these things, but he often thought of them now that misfortune seemed at last to be overtaking his master.
He considered now that Karl was in the most dangerous position he had yet found himself in, and he did not hesitate to say so, unpalatable and unacceptable as he knew his advice must be.
“Your Majesty, in common prudence,” he remarked, shivering a little in his furs, “can do nothing but await the arrival of Lewenhaupt.”
This general, who was coming to Karl’s assistance with 15,000 men and a quantity of provisions, was believed to be within a few days’ march of the present Swedish camp.