“I have again liberated Niels Sture,” he mutters; “I have had placards put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture!  I have sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue for me in marriage!  He has had reparation enough made to him; but never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I have made him suffer.  They will all betray me—­kill me!”

And King Erik commands that all Sture’s kindred shall be made prisoners.

King Erik sits in his royal palace:  the sun shines, but not into the King’s heart.  Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair promises—­and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in Upsala Palace.

King Erik’s gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace, between fear and distrust.  He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture’s sister.  Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father’s consent, and obtains it; but in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he cries in his insanity: 

“But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!”

At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik’s brother, John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.  And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture’s prison.

“Art thou there, traitor to thy country!” he shouted, and thrust the dagger into Shire’s arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying: 

“Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour.”

Erik laughed aloud.

“Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!”

And the King’s halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture’s eye, and thus gave him his death.  Sture’s blood cleaves to Upsala Palace—­to King Erik always and everlastingly.  No church masses can absolve his soul from that base crime.

Let us now go to the church.

A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted chamber, where kings’ crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of the dead, are deposited in wooden closets.  Here, in the corner, hangs Niels Sture’s blood-covered clothes and knight’s hat, on the outside of which a small silk glove is fastened.  It was his betrothed one’s dainty glove—­that which he, knight-like, always bore.

O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in thy true light.

We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the dead, and wander in the church’s aisles.  The cold marble tombs, with shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.