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Chap. X2ÄI. QUEEN MADALENA. 335
enormous ! ” “ Let the piles be driven ; the expense,
forsooth, at Baireuth! ” (Madalena! Madalena! you
forget the only two pair of silk stockings you brought
over with you from Germany; don’t talk to us of the
splendours of Baireuth.) So piles without number were
driven in, and the walls of Hirschholm rose from the
morass below. Study the Danish Vitruvius, and you
will see it was a glorious palace, and decorated with all
that wealth and taste could supply: pictures, gems of
art, within; gardens, woods, and lakes without; all
contrived to make life a paradise. We hear once how,
during the absence of King Christian VII. on his travels
in Germany and elsewhere, the three queens* passed
their time “very comfortably together ” in good
fellowship at Hirschholm. Then Madalena had built
Sophien-berg, by the sea-side, on the banks of the sparkling
Sound, and a hermitage in the deer-park,—as much
a hermitage as the Monument on Fish Street Hill;
goes and dines there in summer occasionally, and at
the change of courses the table disappears below,
carrying away the ladies’ fans and kerchiefs, the
saltcellars, &c., and then another appears, all fresh
decorated with the succeeding course^
But Madalena has her troubles—troubles of her own
making too: she is stern and repulsive with King
Christian—bores him for money, for places, and what
not, for her German followers—German, all German,
even the doctors: in all we imitate the court of
Saxony, except in its morals. And though Christian
occupied himself with the reformation of his people,
he did not set them an example. There came over
* Madalena, Juliana, and Caroline Matilda.
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