a month. She caroused with
male companions to the scandal of her people, and she swore like a
trooper when displeased.

Christina's philosophy of life appears to have been compounded of an
almost brutal licentiousness, a strong love of power, and a strange,
freakish longing for something new. Her political ambitions were
checked by the rising discontent of her people, who began to look down
upon her and to feel ashamed of her shame. Knowing herself as she did,
she did not care to marry.

Yet Sweden must have an heir. Therefore she chose out her cousin
Charles, declared that he was to be her successor, and finally caused
him to be proclaimed as such before the assembled estates of the realm.
She even had him crowned; and finally, in her twenty-eighth year, she
abdicated altogether and prepared to leave Sweden. When asked whither
she would go, she replied in a Latin quotation:

"The Fates will show the way."

In her act of abdication she reserved to herself the revenues of some
of the richest provinces in Sweden and absolute power over such of her
subjects as should accompany her. They were to be her subjects until
the end.

The Swedes remembered that Christina was the daughter of their greatest
king, and that, apart from personal scandals, she had ruled them well;
and so they let her go regretfully and accepted her cousin as their
king. Christina, on her side, went joyfully and in the spirit of a
grand adventuress. With a numerous suite she entered Germany, and then
stayed for a year at Brussels, where she renounced Lutheranism. After
this she traveled slowly into Italy, where she entered Borne on
horseback, and was received by the Pope, Alexander VII., who lodged her
in a magnificent palace, accepted her conversion, and baptized her,
giving her a new name, Alexandra.

In Rome she was a brilliant but erratic personage, living sumptuously,
even though her revenues from Sweden came in slowly, partly because the
Swedes disliked her change of religion. She was surrounded by men of
letters, with whom she amused herself, and she took to herself a lover,
the Marquis Monaldeschi. She thought that at last she had really found
her true affinity, while Monaldeschi believed that he could count on
the queen's fidelity.

He was in attendance upon her daily, and they were almost inseparable.
He swore allegiance to her and thereby made himself one of the subjects
over whom she had absolute power. For a time he was the master of