Source:
Christina of Sweden, pages 44 to 45, by Ada Harrison, 1929
The biography:
2
CHRISTINA UNCROWNED: I
'MY OBJECTS', wrote Christina from Brussels, 'are to eat well, sleep well, study a little, talk, laugh, witness French, Italian and Spanish comedies.' The new life had begun. Pausing in Belgium on her way to Rome, Christina was at work bending to herself every joy within arm's length and extracting the juice from it. She had travelled in trousers, that appanage of liberty dear to female adventurers, and from the moment of her arrival explored her emancipation to the full. 'Christina enjoyed the first hours of her freedom with transport', wrote Lacombe. Her pleasures, as she detailed them, were quiet ones, but it was never her knack to accomplish anything quietly. She saw to it always that her course was lined with gazers, and that her eccentricities were cried abroad. When, a few months after she had quitted her country, she wrote to Charles Gustavus an unsolicited promise that she would not disgrace Sweden, the Senate began to feel sincerely anxious, and sent her friend and courtier Count Tott after her. Tott had a threefold mission. He was, for Christina's sake, to go into the question of her pension, already becoming thorny, for the sake of Sweden to try to induce her to more reasonable behaviour, and to make a last attempt at dissuading her from Roman Catholicism. In all three he was unsuccessful. The question of her money affairs with Sweden was destined never to be settled as long as she lived; she was absolutely set on embracing the Roman Catholic faith; and her sojourn in Belgium was a species of carnival before religious Lent. She flung herself into her pleasures with redoubled energy.
Christina had eagerly looked forward to meeting Condé in Brussels. Condé had always been a hero to her, the modern counterpart of Scipio or the young Pompey, and she had written to him protesting her admiration. An accident of their circumstances, however, made the meeting a failure. The Prince was in exile and excessively touchy about his dignity. The queen, who had lately professed to hate formalities, was uncrowned, and had become, by a rapid change, very stiff about her dues. It was found impossible to arrange the give-and-take of precedent. Finally Condé introduced himself to the queen's assembly incognito. Later they met informally, but mutual disappointment was the result.
While Christina was in Belgium[,] both Oxenstiern and her mother died. Popular opinion considered that the abdication had hastened their ends. The queen, never prone to indulge in sentiment, went into retirement for three weeks, and then resumed her frivolous routine.
Above: Kristina.
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