, a strong, independent peasantry,--a combination
full of pitfalls for a weak ruler, but with equal promise of great
things under the master hand. His father had cowed the stubborn
nobles with the headsman's axe. Gustav Adolf drew them to him and
imbued them with his own spirit. He found them a contentious party
within the state; he left them its strongest props in the conduct of
public affairs. Nor was it always with persuasion he worked. His
reward for the unjust judge has been quoted. When the council failed
to send him supplies in Germany, pleading failure of crops as their
excuse, he wrote back: "You speak of the high prices of corn.
Probably they are high because those who have it want to profit by
the need of others." And he set a new chief over the finances. On
the other hand, he gave shape to the relations between king and
people. The Riksdag held its sessions, but the laws that ruled it
were so vague that it was no unusual thing for men who were not
members at all to attend and join in the debates. Gustav Adolf put
an abrupt end to "a state of things that exposed Sweden to the
contempt of the nations." As he ordered it, the initiative remained
with the crown; it was the right of the Riksdag to complain and
discuss; of the King to "choose the best" after hearing all sides.

As a young prince, Gustav Adolf fell deeply in love with Ebba Brahe,
the beautiful daughter of one of Sweden's most powerful noblemen.
The two had been play-mates and became lovers. But the old queen
frowned upon the match. He was the coming king, she was a subject,
and the queen managed, with the help of Oxenstjerna, who was
Gustav's best friend all through his life, to make him give up his
love. "Then I will never marry," he cried in a burst of tempestuous
grief. But when the queen had got Ebba Brahe safely married to one
of his father's famous generals, he wedded the lovely sister of the
Elector of Brandenburg. She adored her royal husband, but never took
kindly to Sweden, and the people did not like her. They clung to the
great king's early love, and to this day they linger before the
picture of the beautiful Ebba in the Stockholm castle when they come
from his grave in the Riddarholm church, while they pass the queen's
by with hardly a glance. It is recorded that Ebba made her husband a
good and dutiful wife. If her thoughts strayed at times to the old
days and what might have been, it is not strange. In one of those
moods she wrote on