We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished:  from the pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror.  It was in those times, which the many still call poetic—­the romantic middle ages—­that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and superstition.  Terror seizes us in Upsala’s palace:  we stand in the vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the Fourteenth sits with Saul’s dark despondency, with Cain’s wild looks.  Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page of history.

King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life.  His favourite, Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this belief.  He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it, yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal presents.  Yet because he was again accused by one single person of having checked the advance of the Swedish army at Baehues, Erik invited him to his palace at Svartsjoe, gave him an honourable place at his royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm, where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the streets:  “Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!”

There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him by force on the executioner’s most miserable hack; struck him in the face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle before him.  They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and swept the street after the traitor.  Niels Sture exclaimed that he had not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede.  But the procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping, and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.

King Erik sits in his royal palace:  he orders the torches and candles to be lighted, but they are of no avail—­his thoughts’ scorpions sting his soul.