t; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
sun-dial it shows the time--the time that is gone. The other two balls
are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
space below is used as a cow-stall.

The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
eye.

Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
stones.

We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
came--he thought she came--in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.

We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.

In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
Queen, Catherine Lejonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the