Only one voice was raised, and to say yes.
"Then," said Gustav, "I don't want to be your King any more. If it
does not rain, you blame me; if the sun does not shine, you do the
same. It is always so. All of you want to be masters. After all my
trouble and labor for you, you would as lief see my head split with
an axe, though none of you dare lay hold of the handle. Give me back
what I have spent in your service and I will go away and never come
back." And go he did, to his castle, with half a dozen of his
nearest friends.
They sat and looked at one another when he was gone, and then
priests and nobles fell to arguing among themselves, all talking at
once. The plain people, the burghers and the peasants, listened
awhile, but when they got no farther, let them know that if they
couldn't settle it, they, the people, would, and in a way that would
give them little joy. The upshot of it all was that messengers were
sent to bring the King back. He made them go three times, and when
he came at last, it was as absolute master. In the ordering of the
kingdom that was made there, he became the head of the church as
well as of the state. Gustav's pen was as sharp as his tongue. When
Hans Brask, the oldest prelate in the land, who had stood stoutly by
the old regime, left the country and refused to come back, he wrote
to him: "As long as you might milk and shear your sheep, you staid
by them.
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