BE was now

Marie, for she thought something had gone to pieces inside of her. Mistress Rigitze came, but could not get a word out of the child. She had thrown herself before a chair with face hidden in the cushions, and to all Mistress Rigitze's questions answered only that she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home,

velled up, and blown away. She remembered once at Tjele when she had seen the men stone to death a dog that had ventured within the high railing of the duck-park. The wretched animal swam back and forth, unable to get out, the blood running from many wounds, and she remembered how she had prayed

th ringing spurs and shining mail, with head bared and lance at rest, not with fear in witless eyes and whining prayers on trembling lips. Then there was no shining figure that she could dream of in worshippin

every vein, blissful in its own light and scent, growing and growing, leaf upon leaf and petal upon petal, in irresistible strength and fullness. But this was all past. Her life was barren and void again; she was poor and numb with cold. No doubt t

e. She never tired of contemplating the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem; she pictured it to herself down to the smallest detail, walked through every by-way, peeped in at every door. She was blinded by the rays of sardonyx and chrysolyte, chrysoprasus and jacinth; she rested in the shadow of the gates of pearl and saw her own face mirrored in th

ive voice, and in her spare moments she would recite whole pages from "The Chain of Prayerful

is brooding worked a transformation in her whole being. She shunned people and withdrew within herself. Even her appearance was changed, the face pale and thin, the eyes burning with a hard flame-and no wonder; for the terrible visions of the Apocalypse rode life-size through her dreams

ebounded from the strain, and a new life began for her, on a certain day when Mistress Rigitze, followed by a seamstress, came up to her room and piled the tables and chai

parley about whether this silk chamelot was too thick to show the lines of her figure or that Turkish green too crude for her complexion! No scruples, no dismal broodings could stand before this joyous, bright reality. Ah, if she could but once sit at the festive board-for she had begun to go to assemblies-wearing this sno

of quality, to dancing-school in Christen Skeel's great parlor, where an old Mecklenburger taught them steps and figures and a gracious carri

an exultant people, to feel the golden emblem of power and glory pressed firmly upon his curls, and see all bowing before him in smiling homage, so s

y as sweet music that dies, and glance up exultant as a fanfare. Wistful-ay, as the stars pale at daybreak with a veiled, tremulous light, so was her look when it was wistful. It could rest with such smiling intima

might be the desire of all; she might have suffered admiration coldly and quietly. Yet it was not so. Her beauty was so much older than herself - 89 - and she had so suddenly come into the knowledge of its power, that she had not learned to rest upon it a

been declared. In the morning she had attended the thanksgiving service

the trenches, climb the barricades, peep into the necks of the mines, and pluck at the gabions. This was the spot where such a one had been posted, and here so-and-so had fallen, and over there another had rushed forward and been surrounded. Everything was remarkable,

showed his little - 90 - betrothed where he had been standing on the night when he got a bullet-hole through his duffel great-coat, and where the turner's boy had had his head shot off. The smaller children cried, because they were not allowed to keep the rifle-ball they had found; for Erik Lauritzen, who was also t

vered world or an island suddenly shot up from the bottom of the sea, and there were many who, when they saw the country stretching out before them, field be

m to take the air under the green trees, after vespers on summer Sundays. While the enemy was encamped before the ramparts, the custom naturally fell into disuse, and the churchyard had been as empty on Sundays as on w

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the basket. Tiny children tripped with hands full of broken food for the beggar youngsters that hung on the wall. Lads thirsting for knowledge spelled their way through the lengthy epitaphs, while father listened full of admiration, and mother and the g

and listening to his piping voice. There came Corfits Trolle and the stiff Otto Krag. Mistress Ide Daa, famed for her lovely eyes, stood talking to old Axel Urup, who showed his huge teeth in an everlasting smile, while the shrunken

Ulrik Frederik would have passed them with a cold, formal greeting, - 92 - for ever since his separation from Sofie Urne he had nursed a spite against Mistress Rigitze, whom he suspected, as one of the Qu

e little brick summer-house, eating the simple

icers have so bewitched the maidens of Sj?lland with their pretty man

st of that minx, Mistress Dyre,

is she?" asked

es. The one who fled the country she's a daughter of Henning Dyre of West Neergaard, he who married Sidonie, the eld

rup, "strong love d

uck out with his left hand when he talke

is like Hercules in female dress, gentle and charming in appearance and seeming all weak-ness and mi

Dyre, which at least completed one of the labors of Hercules, inasmuch as it cleaned out ch

aking in a balmy pleasure-garden, for such is the virtue of love that it changes the soul of man, and that whi

poison to any one who swallows it, in the same manner love is a kind of poison and produces a baneful raging distemper in those who are

, "the candle may well talk reason to th

es, we may well believe that love is but a poison, else how can we explain that coldblooded persons

n't speak of such terrible godles

94

ding his eyes and ears? And if he's frightened o' the sudden, does not the blood seem to sink down into his feet and grow cold all in a trice? Is it for nothing, do you think, that grief is pale and joy red as a rose? And as for love, it comes only after the blood has ripened in the summers and winters of seventeen or eighteen years; then it begins to ferment like good grape-win

man may say, the blood-'tis a subtle

cts on the blood, both sun and moon and approach

and stretch her arms and legs and try to get out of bed as some one were calling her. And 'twas but her betrothed, who was in Holland, and was so - 95 - full of longing for her that he would do not

d again like a rosebud. Bless me, her first lying

gs. That morning at ma-ass he had seen a fair, fair maid-en, and she had looked quite kind-ly at him. All day long she was not in his thoughts, but at night when he entered his chamber, there was a rose at the head of the bed. He picked it up and smelled it, and in the same mo-ment the coun-ter-feit of the maiden stood before

on; for he was afraid that if he said anything about love, it might be taken for reminiscences of his relation with Sofie Urne. Nor was he in the mood for t

e were at Rosenborg. His valet being out, there was no light in the

med thoughts rise from the sombre stream like great dimly-lit bubbles that glide-glide onward and burst. Bits of the conversation that afternoon, the motley crowds in the churchyard, Marie Grubbe's smile, Mistress Rigitze, the Queen, the King's favor, the King's anger

t of new-mown hay, and the spicy fragrance of the flowering maple were wafted in. A mist-like rain spread a blue, tremulous dusk over the garden. The black boughs of the larch, the drooping leafy ve

97

light as thistledown, with a faint, monotonous sound like a whisper that

isible threads binding soul to soul, threads stronger than life, stronger than death; but in all that net not one tendril stretched out to him. Homeless, forsaken! Forsaken? Was that a sound of goblets and kisses out there? Was there a gleam of white shoulders and dark eyes? Was that a laugh ringing through the stillness?-What then? Better the slow-dripping bitterness of solitude th