I became
exceedingly fond of Stockholm, this most beautifully situated of the
Northern capitals, and saw, with reverence, the places associated with
the name of Bellman. I also accompanied my old friend to Ulriksdal,
where the Swedish Queen Dowager expected him in audience. More than an
hour before we reached the Castle he threw away his cigar.
"I am an old courtier," he remarked. He had always been intimately
associated with the Danish Royal family; for a long time the Crown
Prince used to go regularly to his flat in Queen's Crossway Street, to
be instructed by him in political economy. He was consequently used to
Court ceremonial.
Beautiful were those Summer days, lovely the light nights in Stockholm.
One recollection from these weeks is associated with a night when the
sky was overcast. I had wandered round the town, before retiring to
rest, and somewhere, in a large square, slipping my hand in my pocket,
and feeling it full of bits of paper, could not remember how they got
there, and threw them away. When I was nearly back at the hotel it
flashed upon me that it had been small Swedish notes--all the money that
I had changed for my stay in Stockholm--that I had been carrying loose
in my pocket and had so thoughtlessly thrown away. With a great deal of
trouble, I found the square again, but of course not a sign of the
riches that in unpardonable forgetfulness I had scattered to the winds.
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