With lively satisfaction, the Danish ambassadors had beheld the little Swedish princess, whom they hoped would one day be Denmark's future queen; and even old Sir John, who did not expect to live to see the time, could not speak of the pretty kindly child without particular animation, as if he expected in her another Dagmar, who would bring peace and blessings to Denmark. This prudent statesman, as well as Drost Peter, placed all his hopes of better times for Denmark in the hopeful heir to its throne and his descendants. Old Sir John often sought to be useful to the young prince; and, with all his esteem for Drost Peter, he frequently shook his head when he saw how the young chivalrous drost desired to educate the prince's feelings of honour and justice to a degree that appeared to him dangerous. One day the old knight was present, with the queen's household, at Scanderborg, to witness the prince's exercises in arms, and observed how he sought to convert these sports and exercises into gay and costly imitations of the ordinary jousts and tournaments; the young king, as he was always called, dispensing royal gifts to the squires, and pronouncing sentence with excessive severity on every transgressor of the laws of chivalry, as applicable to the game. The old counsellor smiled, and seemed to participate in the pleasure evinced by the queen and Drost Peter on the occasion; but, when the game was ended, he called the drost to his private room. "I am old," he said, seriously, "but I do not think I am niggardly or avaricious, although I may set greater store by outward fortune than you approve of. It is right that the prince should be liberal and magnanimous; but do not therefore teach our future king to be a spendthrift, and to despise the wealth of his people and their possessions, like the dust on which he treads. Take care that he has not more regard for knightly pomp and splendour than for substantial power, true achievements, and real greatness." "God forbid!" said Drost Peter. "But, if the days of the great Waldemars are to be restored--" "Good, good. I know what you would say," interrupted the old knight: "therefore, if you would make a Waldemar Seier of Prince Erik, take care that his love of honour is not mere empty love of glitter, and his love of justice untimely obstinacy. He is a youth that, with God's help, much may be made of. You have a great charge, Drost Peter: consider it well. The swiftest falcon never makes an eagle. It is dangerous to attempt to create God's work anew; and he is a fool who tries to add a cubit to his own or another's stature." So saying, he warmly pressed the hand of his young friend, and left him. The drost found him, afterwards, as lively as usual; and it did not appear that he cared farther about giving his opinion in the matter. Sir John's warning, however, disposed the drost to very serious thoughts, and he could not deny that the sagacious old man was right in many of his views.