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or two at a time, not seeing or even talking to her, spending most of his time with his favorite, Gustav Armfelt. Predictably, eleven years went by without Sophia Magdalena showing any signs of pregnancy. Upon my scolding Gustavus about the indifference with which he treated his spouse, the crown prince turned on me in an unusually hostile and petulant manner and replied that his aversion to her was based on “the boredom that follows her wherever she goes.” But his situation grew increasingly problematical in 1777, when he became king: Gustavus then began to worry about the continuation of Sweden’s royal lineage. Meanwhile, his wife had grown increasingly shy and distant because of her husband’s absences and the hostility incited by her scheming mother-in-law.
    What to do? Enter one Munck, the king’s first equerry, a young manof great physical power and tenacity, and of immense devotion to the king. Gustavus had a singular idea: he decided to engage Munck in the task of consummating his marriage and producing an heir. At first Munck demurred. According to one version of the episode, Munck helped the king to undress, led him to the queen’s bedchamber, and withdrew to a nearby room; but twenty minutes later he was rejoined by the king. The astonished Munck asked his master what had come to pass, and upon the king’s remaining silent and shamefaced, Munck wasted no more words. He picked him up as if he were a baby and carried him to the royal bedchamber, locked all its doors, and didn’t return to fetch the king until five in the morning. This comedy was repeated for six consecutive nights, until Munck realized that Gustavus was totally paralyzed by the notion of making love to a woman.
    It then became easier for Gustavus to persuade Munck that it was his, Munck’s, citizenly duty to cohabit with the queen in order to produce a royal heir. Munck accepted the assignment, and within a few months, eureka! Queen Sophia Magdalena finally displayed signs of pregnancy. A healthy male heir, Gustav Adolf, was born in 1778, another one, Karl Gustav, who would live less than a year, in 1782. Ignorant of the intrigue devised by the king and his amiable conspirator, the nation rejoiced at the birth of Crown Prince Gustav Adolf. Meanwhile the king also married off his own personal favorite, Gustav Armfelt, to a cousin of mine, a de la Gardie, assuaging the court’s concern pertaining to the sexual proclivities of Armfelt, who was actually an ardent womanizer.
    Oh, Gustavus, how difficult it was to tactfully, amiably resist your own advances to me! How fearful I was of losing your treasured friendship, the joys of your warmth and generosity, the charm of your enlightened conversation and wit! You were thirty, and I twenty-one, when this confrontation came to pass, and you were sensitive enough, even then, to realize the degree to which I adored women, and to remain my close friend.

    I RETURN TO THE ACTIVITIES of my own youth. In the spring of 1773, the year of Gustavus’s accession to the throne, I had been sent abroad with my tutor—I was eighteen—to begin my grand tour. I had first gone to Italy to be introduced to Maria Carolina, queen of Naples, sister of the then Dauphine Marie Antoinette. Naples had one of the most superb theaters in Europe, the San Carlo, with its six floors of loges and an excellent group of musicians whose singing delighted me. In this city I was also received by the British ambassador, Sir Alexander Hamilton (soon to be linked with the notorious Emma), a man of immense culture and a gifted archaeologist whose collection of Etruscan vases he would offer to the British Museum. I then voyaged on to Piedmont. Apart from the fine museum of Turin, which I visited assiduously and which owned a particularly fine collection of Bronzinos and Parmigianos, I found Piedmont’s atmosphere to be very coarse. I may be considered priggish for saying that the Piedmonteses’ conversation is shockingly lewd, and