The life and adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the singer of the German fatherland. Comp. from the German. With a preface by John Robert Seeley ...

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Lzfe of Arndt.

[A.D. I803-9.

fortable quarters. The blame, as is usually the case
when all goes wrong, was thrown on the king, the board
of war, and many others. One must not be too hard on
the inhabitants of Stockholm, for every one knew if he took
them into his house he was taking the pestilence into it.
At last they were brought under shelter, first to fill the
hospitals and then the churchyards. The chief hospital
was the opera-house, which was thus changed from a
house of mirth to a house of mourning. Hour by hour
the black dead-carts passed by, followed by the imprecations and curses of the people, which were all heaped
on the king. It died out at last, when there was nothing
left to prey upon, as the most raging fire dies in its own
ashes, but for three months the silent black processions
traversed the town, renewing daily the remembrance of
past and the foreboding of future evil.
The evil course things were taking, and sometimes a
dark feeling of what they were leading to, combined
with the displeasure or indifference manifest on the
countenances of many of those who surrounded him, the
remonstrances and warnings of some true and conscientious servants, all worked on the king's mind, and made
him grow more impatient in his self-willed obstinacy.
But he concealed his dissatisfaction and his foreboding of
his fate within himself; he shut his eyes that he might
not see the dark storm-clouds gathering round his head.
Sometimes again, even in this unhappy time, he grew
extraordinarily cheerful, so that people often thought he
must have had some good political news. But he had
heard nothing; it was only that he had been finding in
the study of distant lands and distant stars the solution