Alas, fatal moment. For while he yet swayed and jolted upon the back of the restive Hannibal, and even endeavored to discuss with the fair young scholar who rode beside him, the “Melanippe” of Euripides, the same fair scholar--who, in spite of all her Greek learning was only a mischievous and sometimes very rude young girl--faced him with a sober countenance.
“Good Herr Van Beunigen,” she said, “your Greek is truly as smooth as your face. But it seems to me you do not sufficiently catch the spirit of the poet’s lines commmencing
[gr andrwn de polloi tou gelwtos ouneka].(1)
I should rather say that [gr tou gelwtos] should be----”
(1) The commencement of an extract from the “Melanippe” of Euripides, meaning, “To raise vain laughter, many exercise the arts of satire.”
Just what [gr tou gelwtos] should be she never declared, for, as the envoy of Holland turned upon her a face on which Greek learning and anxious horsemanship struggled with one another, Christina slyly touched black Hannibal lightly with her riding-whip.
Light as the touch was, however, it was enough. The unruly horse reared and plunged. The startled scholar, with a cry of terror, flung up his hands, and then clutched black Hannibal around the neck. Thus, in the manner of John Gilpin,
“His horse, who never in that way Had handled been before, What thing upon his back had got Did wonder more and more.
“Away went Gilpin, neck or nought; Away went hat and wig; He never dreamt when he set out, Of running such a rig.”
Minus hat and wig, too, the poor envoy dashed up the Maelar highway, while Christina, laughing loudly, galloped after him in a mad race, followed by all her hunting-party.
The catastrophe was not far away. The black horse, like the ill-tempered “bronchos” of our western plains, “bucked” suddenly, and over his head like a flash went the discomfited Dutchman. In an instant, Greek learning and Dutch diplomacy lay sprawling in a Swedish roadway, from which Jous, the groom, speedily lifted the groaning would-be horseman.
Even in her zeal for study, really remarkable in so young a girl, Christina could not forego her misguided love of power and her tendency to practical joking, and one day she even made two grave philosophers, who were holding a profound discussion in her presence over some deep philosophic subject, suddenly cease their arguments to play with her at battledore and shuttlecock.