the reign of Gustavus the word republican was still synonymous with the word philosopher; so that in the year 1789 a courtier like Rosenstein could commend his nephew to the king by stating that the young man, although somewhat infected with republican views, had kept these so well within bounds that they "only served to increase his love for his _king,_ his fatherland, and honor." Later, as contrasted with the pitiful wreck on the throne, the word became invested with a more accurate significance. With eager suspense the people followed the defensive war of the French Republic; its victory was decisive for public opinion; the peaceful citizens of the small towns of Sweden spoke in the same tone as the extreme left of the French convention. No sooner had that misfortune occurred than the freedom of the press, established half a year earlier with so much false pathos, was abolished, and throughout Sweden the persecution of Jacobinism became rife; even the loyal Swedish Academy, because it voted against admitting to its membership the totally uncultured favorite of the regent, was treated as a Jacobin club, and closed. An act of baseness of the worst sort caused contempt to reach its climax. The conspiracy of Armfelt, the Swedish Alcibiades, was discovered, and the duke-regent endeavored to avail himself of this opportunity to make the fair young Mlle. Rudenskjöld, one of the ornaments of the court, cruelly atone for the obstinacy with which she had rejected the gallant propositions of the aged married libertine. Intercepted letters furnishing proofs that Armfelt had been her lover, she was arrested, and accused of being a participator in his crime; but when the duke, through his chancellor, judicially ordered her to be whipped on the public market-place for her immorality, the exasperated populace branded him with so deep a stigma that it could neither be effaced by time, nor covered with the white hairs of old age; not even the deportment of Bernadotte toward Charles XIII., with its wily assumption of simplicity, could bury it in oblivion.