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282
KRONBORG.
Chap. XVIII.
the favourite device of the King, “T. I. W. B., Treu
ist Wiltbratt.” The same Wildbratt, whose
portrait is above, was the favourite of King Frederic, and
bit everybody save his royal master. Over the other
door appears the device of his queen—good Queen
Sophia of Mecklenburg—“ Meine Hoffhung zu Gott
allein” (My hope is in God alone). Within the dungeon
of the corner tower, that of the restoration—adjoining the
wine-cellars of Christian IV., where a jolly fat tun carved
in stone above the entrance leaves no doubt of its
identity—was situated the torture-chamber in days gone
by: none of your papistical virgins, who enticed you to
their arms, and, larded like a fricandeau, then stuck you
brimfull of penknives, but good wholesome Protestant
thumbscrews, boots, and wooden horses, and scavengers’
daughters, such as Queen Bess, of glorious memory, and
our earlier Tudor sovereigns, to say nothing of later
Stuarts, loved to employ on their rebellious subjects who
refused to convict their masters, rightfully or wrongfully,
and bring them to the block—and very persuasive
implements they were, I doubt not. In the centre of the court
once stood a fountain, tossing the water high in the
air; iudging from the old engravings, it must have
been very ornamental. Some thirty or forty iron hooks,
fastened into the wall, remain, once the larder of King
Frederic, hung, when game abounded, with deer, hare,
and capercailzie—like Bolton Abbey in the olden time
—a pretty scene, only too near the torture-chamber.
After the peace of 1659, when Skaane was Ipst to
Denmark for ever, the windows of Kronborg Castle, which
commanded a view of the Swedish coast, were walled up,
to exclude a sight which caused so many heartburnings.
Let us now turn to a few events connected with
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