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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mogens and Other Stories, by Jens Peter Jacobsen
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+Title: Mogens and Other Stories
+
+Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
+
+Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6765]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 24, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, MOGENS AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was supplied by Eric Eldred.
+
+
+
+
+
+MOGENS AND OTHER STORIES
+(1882)
+
+By JENS PETER JACOBSEN
+(1847-1885)
+
+Translated from the Danish By ANNA GRABOW
+(1921)
+
+Reprint of the 1921 ed.,
+which was issued as v. 2. of The Sea gull library.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+MOGENS
+
+THE PLAGUE AT BERGAMO
+
+THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES
+
+MRS. FONSS
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+In the decade from 1870 to 1880 a new spirit was stirring in the
+intellectual and literary world of Denmark. George Brandes was
+delivering his lectures on the _Main Currents of Nineteenth Century
+Literature_; from Norway came the deeply probing questionings of the
+granitic Ibsen; from across the North Sea from England echoes of the
+evolutionary theory and Darwinism. It was a time of controversy and
+bitterness, of a conflict joined between the old and the new, both
+going to extremes, in which nearly every one had a share. How many of
+the works of that period are already out-worn, and how old-fashioned
+the theories that were then so violently defended and attacked! Too
+much logic, too much contention for its own sake, one might say, and
+too little art.
+
+This was the period when Jens Peter Jacobsen began to write, but he
+stood aside from the conflict, content to be merely artist, a creator
+of beauty and a seeker after truth, eager to bring into the realm of
+literature "the eternal laws of nature, its glories, its riddles, its
+miracles," as he once put it. That is why his work has retained its
+living colors until to-day, without the least trace of fading.
+
+There is in his work something of the passion for form and style that
+one finds in Flaubert and Pater, but where they are often hard,
+percussive, like a piano, he is soft and strong and intimate like a
+violin on which he plays his reading of life. Such analogies, however,
+have little significance, except that they indicate a unique and
+powerful artistic personality.
+
+Jacobsen is more than a mere stylist. The art of writers who are too
+consciously that is a sort of decorative representation of life, a
+formal composition, not a plastic composition. One element
+particularly characteristic of Jacobsen is his accuracy of observation
+and minuteness of detail welded with a deep and intimate understanding
+of the human heart. His characters are not studied tissue by tissue as
+under a scientist's microscope, rather they are built up living cell
+by living cell out of the author's experience and imagination. He
+shows how they are conditioned and modified by their physical being,
+their inheritance and environment, Through each of his senses he lets
+impressions from without pour into him. He harmonizes them with a
+passionate desire for beauty into marvelously plastic figures and
+moods. A style which grows thus organically from within is style out
+of richness; the other is style out of poverty.
+
+In a letter he once stated his belief that every book to be of real
+value must embody the struggle of one or more persons against all
+those things which try to keep one from existing in one's own way.
+That is the fundamental ethos which runs through all of Jacobsen's
+work. It is in Marie Grubbe, Niels Lyhne, Mogens, and the infinitely
+tender Mrs. Fonss.
+
+They are types of the kind he has described in the following passage:
+"Know ye not that there is here in this world a secret confraternity,
+which one might call the Company of Melancholiacs? That people there
+are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and
+disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter
+blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning
+which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are
+fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their
+eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their
+perceptions. The gladness and joy of life, they drink with the roots
+of their heart, the while the others merely grasp them with coarse
+hands."
+
+He himself was one of these, and in this passage his own art and
+personality is described better than could be done in thousands of
+words of commentary.
+
+Jens Peter Jacobsen was born in the little town of Thisted in Jutland,
+on April 7, 1847. In 1868 he matriculated at the University of
+Copenhagen, where he displayed a remarkable talent for science,
+winning the gold medal of the university with a dissertation on
+Seaweeds. He definitely chose science as a career, and was among the
+first in Scandinavia to recognize the importance of Darwin. He
+translated the Origin of Species and Descent of Man into Danish. In
+1872 while collecting plants he contracted tuberculosis, and as a
+consequence, was compelled to give up his scientific career. This was
+not as great a sacrifice, as it may seem, for he had long been
+undecided whether to choose science or literature as his life work.
+
+The remainder of his short life--he died April 30, 1885--was one of
+passionate devotion to literature and a constant struggle with ill
+health. The greater part of this period was spent in his native town
+of Thisted, but an advance royalty from his publisher enabled him to
+visit the South of Europe. His journey was interrupted at Florence by
+a severe hemorrhage.
+
+He lived simply, unobtrusively, bravely. His method of work was slow
+and laborious. He shunned the literary circles of the capital with
+their countless intrusions and interruptions, because he knew that the
+time allotted him to do his work was short. "When life has sentenced
+you to suffer," he has written in Niels Lyhne, "the sentence is neither
+a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are
+tortured, and there is no marvelous rescue at the last moment," and in
+this book there is also a corollary, "It is on the healthy in you you
+must live, it is the healthy that becomes great." The realization of
+the former has given, perhaps, a subdued tone to his canvasses; the
+recognition of the other has kept out of them weakness or self-pity.
+
+Under the encouragement of George Brandes his novel Marie Grubbe was
+begun in 1873, and published in 1876. His other novel Niels Lyhne
+appeared in 1880. Excluding his early scientific works, these two
+books together with a collection of short stories, Mogens and Other
+Tales, published in 1882, and a posthumous volume of poems, constitute
+Jacobsen's literary testament. The present volume contains Mogens, the
+story with which he made his literary debut, and other characteristic
+stories.
+
+The physical measure of Jacobsen's accomplishment was not great, but
+it was an important milestone in northern literature. It is hardly an
+exaggeration to say that in so far as Scandinavia is concerned he
+created a new method of literary approach and a new artistic prose.
+There is scarcely a writer in these countries, since 1880, with any
+pretension toward literary expression who has not directly or
+indirectly come under Jacobsen's influence.
+
+O. F. THEIS.
+
+
+
+MOGENS
+
+
+
+MOGENS
+
+
+SUMMER it was; in the middle of the day; in a corner of the enclosure.
+Immediately in front of it stood an old oaktree, of whose trunk one
+might say, that it agonized in despair because of the lack of harmony
+between its fresh yellowish foliage and its black and gnarled
+branches; they resembled most of all grossly misdrawn old gothic
+arabesques. Behind the oak was a luxuriant thicket of hazel with dark
+sheenless leaves, which were so dense, that neither trunk nor branches
+could be seen. Above the hazel rose two straight, joyous maple-trees
+with gayly indented leaves, red stems and long dangling clusters of
+green fruit. Behind the maples came the forest--a green evenly rounded
+slope, where birds went out and in as elves in a grasshill.
+
+All this you could see if you came wandering along the path through
+the fields beyond the fence. If, however, you were lying in the shadow
+of the oak with your back against the trunk and looking the other
+way--and there was a some one, who did that--then you would see first
+your own legs, then a little spot of short, vigorous grass, next a
+large cluster of dark nettles, then the hedge of thorn with the big,
+white convolvulus, the stile, a little of the ryefield outside,
+finally the councilor's flagpole on the hill, and then the sky.
+
+It was stifling hot, the air was quivering with heat, and then it was
+very quiet; the leaves were hanging from the trees as if asleep.
+Nothing moved except the lady-birds and the nettles and a few withered
+leaves that lay on the grass and rolled themselves up with sudden
+little jerks as if they were shrinking from the sunbeams.
+
+And then the man underneath the oak; he lay there gasping for air and
+with a melancholy look stared helplessly towards the sky. He tried to
+hum a tune, but gave it up; whistled, then gave that up too; turned
+round, turned round again and let his eyes rest upon an old mole-hill,
+that had become quite gray in the drought. Suddenly a small dark spot
+appeared upon the light-gray mold, another, three, four, many, still
+more, the entire mole-hill suddenly was quite dark-gray. The air was
+filled with nothing but long, dark streaks, the leaves nodded and
+swayed and there rose a murmur which turned into a hissing--rain was
+pouring down. Everything gleamed, sparkled, spluttered. Leaves,
+branches, trunks, everything shone with moisture; every little drop
+that fell on earth, on grass, on the fence, on whatever it was, broke
+and scattered in a thousand delicate pearls. Little drops hung for a
+while and became big drops, trickled down elsewhere, joined with other
+drops, formed small rivulets, disappeared into tiny furrows, ran into
+big holes and out of small ones, sailed away laden with dust, chips of
+wood and ragged bits of foliage, caused them to run aground, set them
+afloat, whirled them round and again caused them to ground. Leaves,
+which had been separated since they were in the bud, were reunited by
+the flood; moss, that had almost vanished in the dryness, expanded and
+became soft, crinkly, green and juicy; and gray lichens which nearly
+had turned to snuff, spread their delicate ends, puffed up like
+brocade and with a sheen like that of silk. The convolvuluses let
+their white crowns be filled to the brim, drank healths to each other,
+and emptied the water over the heads of the nettles. The fat black
+wood-snails crawled forward on their stomachs with a will, and looked
+approvingly towards the sky. And the man? The man was standing
+bareheaded in the midst of the downpour, letting the drops revel in
+his hair and brows, eyes, nose, mouth; he snapped his fingers at the
+rain, lifted a foot now and again as if he were about to dance, shook
+his head sometimes, when there was too much water in the hair, and
+sang at the top of his voice without knowing what he was singing, so
+pre-occupied was he with the rain:
+
+ Had I, oh had I a grandson, trala,
+ And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold,
+ Then very likely had I had a daughter, trala,
+ And house and home and meadows untold.
+
+ Had I, oh had I a daughter dear, trala,
+ And house and home and meadows untold,
+ Then very like had I had a sweetheart, trala.
+ And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold.
+
+There he stood and sang in the rain, but yonder between the dark
+hazelbushes the head of a little girl was peeping out. A long end of
+her shawl of red silk had become entangled in a branch which projected
+a little beyond the others, and from time to time a small hand went
+forward and tugged at the end, but this had no other result, further
+than to produce a little shower of rain from the branch and its
+neighbors. The rest of the shawl lay close round the little girl's
+head and hid half of the brow; it shaded the eyes, then turned
+abruptly and became lost among the leaves, but reappeared in a big
+rosette of folds underneath the girl's chin. The face of the little
+girl looked very astonished, she was just about to laugh; the smile
+already hovered in the eyes. Suddenly he, who stood there singing in
+the midst of the downpour, took a few steps to the side, saw the red
+shawl, the face, the big brown eyes, the astonished little open mouth;
+instantly his position became awkward, in surprise he looked down
+himself; but in the same moment a small cry was heard, the projecting
+branch swayed violently, the red end of the shawl disappeared in a
+flash, the girl's face disappeared, and there was a rustling and
+rustling further and further away behind the hazelbushes. Then he ran.
+He did not know why, he did not think at all. The gay mood, which the
+rainstorm had called forth, welled up in him again, and he ran after
+the face of the little girl. It did not enter his head that it was a
+person he pursued. To him it was only the face of a little girl. He
+ran, it rustled to the right, it rustled to the left, it rustled in
+front, it rustled behind, he rustled, she rustled, and all these
+sounds and the running itself excited him, and he cried: "Where are
+you? Say cuckoo!" Nobody answered. When he heard his own voice, he
+felt just a little uneasy, but he continued running; then a thought
+came to him, only a single one, and he murmured as he kept on running:
+"What am I going to say to her? What am I going to say to her?" He was
+approaching a big bush, there she had hid herself, he could just see a
+corner of her skirt. "What am I going to say to her? What am I going
+to say to her?" he kept on murmuring while he ran. He was quite near
+the bush, then turned abruptly, ran on still murmuring the same, came
+out upon the open road, ran a distance, stopped abruptly and burst out
+laughing, walked smiling quietly a few paces, then burst out laughing
+loudly again, and did not cease laughing all the way along the hedge.
+
+It was on a beautiful autumn day; the fall of the foliage was going on
+apace and the path which led to the lake was quite covered with the
+citron-yellow leaves from the elms and maples; here and there were
+spots of a darker foliage. It was very pleasant, very clean to walk on
+this tigerskin-carpet, and to watch the leaves fall down like snow; the
+birch looked even lighter and more graceful with its branches almost
+bare and the roan-tree was wonderful with its heavy scarlet cluster of
+berries. And the sky was so blue, so blue, and the wood seemed so much
+bigger, one could look so far between the trunks. And then of course
+one could not help thinking that soon all this would be of the past.
+Wood, field, sky, open air, and everything soon would have to give way
+to the time of the lamps, the carpets, and the hyacinths. For this
+reason the councilor from Cape Trafalgar and his daughter were walking
+down to the lake, while their carriage stopped at the bailiff's.
+
+The councilor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite
+special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The
+councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial;
+gardens were nothing but nature spoiled; but gardens laid out in
+elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in
+nature, providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but
+natural. Nature was that which was unrestrained, that which was
+unspoiled. But with the fall of man civilization had come upon
+mankind; now civilization had become a necessity; but it would have
+been better, if it had not been thus. The state of nature was
+something quite different, quite different. The councilor himself
+would have had no objection to maintaining himself by going about in a
+coat of lamb-skin and shooting hares and snipes and golden plovers and
+grouse and haunches of venison and wild boars. No, the state of nature
+really was like a gem, a perfect gem.
+
+The councilor and his daughter walked down to the lake. For some time
+already it had glimmered between the trees, but now when they turned
+the corner where the big poplar stood, it lay quite open before them.
+There it lay with large spaces of water clear as a mirror, with jagged
+tongues of gray-blue rippled water, with streaks that were smooth and
+streaks that were rippled, and the sunlight rested on the smooth
+places and quivered in the ripples. It captured one's eye and drew it
+across its surface, carried it along the shores, past slowly rounded
+curves, past abruptly broken lines, and made it swing around the green
+tongues of land; then it let go of one's glance and disappeared in
+large bays, but it carried along the thought--Oh, to sail! Would it be
+possible to hire boats here?
+
+No, there were none, said a little fellow, who lived in the white
+country-house near by, and stood at the shore skipping stones over the
+surface of the water. Were there really no boats at all?
+
+Yes, of course, there were some; there was the miller's, but it could
+not be had; the miller would not permit it. Niels, the miller's son,
+had nearly gotten a spanking when he had let it out the other day. It
+was useless to think about it; but then there was the gentleman, who
+lived with Nicolai, the forest-warden. He had a fine boat, one which
+was black at the top and red at the bottom, and he lent it to each and
+every one.
+
+The councilor and his daughter went up to Nicolai's, the
+forest-warden. At a short distance from the house they met a little
+girl. She was Nicolai's, and they told her to run in and ask if they
+might see the gentleman. She ran as if her life depended on it, ran
+with both arms and legs, until she reached the door; there she placed
+one leg on the high doorstep, fastened her garter, and then rushed
+into the house. She reappeared immediately afterwards with two doors
+ajar behind her and called long before she reached the threshold, that
+the gentleman would be there in a moment; then she sat down on the
+doorstep, leaned against the wall, and peered at the strangers from
+underneath one of her arms.
+
+The gentleman came, and proved to be a tall strongly-built man of some
+twenty years. The councilor's daughter was a little startled, when she
+recognized in him the man, who had sung during the rainstorm. But he
+looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been
+reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes,
+from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.
+
+The councilor's daughter dropped him an exuberant courtesy and said
+"Cuckoo," and laughed.
+
+"Cuckoo?" asked the councilor. Why, it was the little girl's face! The
+man went quite crimson, and tried to say something when the councilor
+came with a question about the boat. Yes, it was at his service. But
+who was going to do the rowing? Why, he of course, said the girl, and
+paid no attention to what her father said about it; it was immaterial
+whether it was a bother to the gentleman, for sometimes he himself did
+not mind at all troubling other people. Then they went down to the
+boat, and on the way explained things to the councilor. They stepped
+into the boat, and were already a good ways out, before the girl had
+settled herself comfortably and found time to talk.
+
+"I suppose it was something very learned you were reading," she said,
+"when I came and called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?"
+
+"Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the 'History of Sir
+Peter with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.'"
+
+"Who is that by?"
+
+"By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. 'Vigoleis
+with the Golden Wheel' isn't by anybody either, neither is 'Bryde,
+the Hunter.'"
+
+"I have never heard of those titles before."
+
+"Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no,
+that is quite likely, they aren't fine books at all; they are the sort
+you buy from old women at fairs."
+
+"That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?"
+
+"Always? I don't read many books in the course of a year, and the kind
+I really like the best are those that have Indians in them."
+
+"But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?"
+
+"Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at
+home, and Miss Holm--my mother's companion--read them aloud after
+lunch and in the evenings; but I can't say that I cared for them; I
+don't like verse."
+
+"Don't like verse? You said had, isn't your mother living any more?"
+
+"No, neither is my father."
+
+He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation
+halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little
+sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl
+broke the silence:
+
+"Do you like paintings?"
+
+"Altar-pieces? Oh, I don't know."
+
+"Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?"
+
+"Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well."
+
+"You are laughing at me?"
+
+"I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that"
+
+"But aren't you a student?"
+
+"Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing."
+
+"But you must be something. You must do something?"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why, because--everybody does something!"
+
+"Are you doing something?"
+
+"Oh well, but you are not a lady."
+
+"No, heaven be praised."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the
+face and asked:
+
+"What do you mean by that?--No, don't be angry with me; I will tell
+you something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it.
+You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father
+was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I
+daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because
+mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the
+things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now
+either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee
+lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into
+the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her
+on my arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in
+her black gowns with the many wide laces. . . ."
+
+He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little
+uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested,
+that they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.
+
+"Tell me," said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased
+a little. "Do you often go to town?"
+
+"I have never been there."
+
+"Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?"
+
+"I don't always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my
+mother's death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study
+arithmetic."
+
+"Mathematics?"
+
+"No, timber," he said laughingly, "but that is something you don't
+understand. I'll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and
+sail to Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account
+of the customs and clearance."
+
+"Would you really like that?"
+
+"Oh, it, is magnificent on the sea, there is such a feeling of being
+alive in sailing--here we are at the landing-stage!"
+
+He came alongside; the councilor and his daughter stepped ashore after
+having made him promise to come and see them at Cape Trafalgar. Then
+they returned to the bailiff's, while he again rowed out on the lake.
+At the poplar they could still hear the sounds of the oars.
+
+"Listen, Camilla," said the councilor, who had been out to lock the
+outer door, "tell me," he said, extinguishing his hand-lamp with the
+bit of his key, "was the rose they had at the Carlsens a Pompadour or
+Maintenon?"
+
+"Cendrillon," the daughter answered.
+
+"That's right, so it was,--well, I suppose we had better see that we
+get to bed now; good night, little girl, good night, and sleep well."
+
+When Camilla had entered her room, she pulled up the blind, leaned her
+brow against the cool pane, and hummed Elizabeth's song from "The
+Fairy-hill." At sunset a light breeze had begun to blow and a few tiny,
+white clouds, illumined by the moon, were driven towards Camilla. For
+a long while she stood regarding them; her eye followed them from a
+far distance, and she sang louder and louder as they drew nearer, kept
+silent a few seconds while they disappeared above her, then sought
+others, and followed them too. With a little sigh she pulled down the
+blind. She went to the dressing table, rested her elbows against her
+clasped hands and regarded her own picture in the mirror without
+really seeing it.
+
+She was thinking of a tall young man, who carried a very delicate,
+tiny, blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man,
+who steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a
+devastating gale. She heard a whole conversation over again. She
+blushed: Eugene Carlson might have thought that you were paying court
+to him! With a little jealous association of ideas she continued: No
+one would ever run after Clara in a wood in the rainstorm, she would
+never have invited a stranger--literally asked him--to sail with her.
+"Lady to her fingertips," Carlson had said of Clara; that really was a
+reprimand for you, you peasant-girl Camilla! Then she undressed with
+affected slowness, went to bed, took a small elegantly bound book from
+the bookshelf near by and opened the first page. She read through a
+short hand-written poem with a tired, bitter expression
+on her face, then let the book drop to the floor and burst into tears;
+afterwards she tenderly picked it up again, put it back in its place
+and blew out the candle; lay there for a little while gazing
+disconsolately at the moonlit blind, and finally went to sleep.
+
+A few days later the "rainman" started on his way to Cape Trafalgar. He
+met a peasant driving a load of rye straw, and received permission to
+ride with him. Then he lay down on his back in the straw and gazed at
+the cloudless sky. The first couple of miles he let his thoughts come
+and go as they listed, besides there wasn't much variety in them. Most
+of them would come and ask him how a human being possibly could be so
+wonderfully beautiful, and they marveled that it really could be an
+entertaining occupation for several days to recall the features of a
+face, its changes of expression and coloring, the small movements of a
+head and a pair of hands, and the varying inflections in a voice. But
+then the peasant pointed with his whip towards the slate-roof about a
+mile away and said that the councilor lived over there, and the good
+Mogens rose from the straw and stared anxiously towards the roof. He
+had a strange feeling of oppression and tried to make himself believe
+that nobody was at home, but tenaciously came back to the conception
+that there was a large party, and he could not free himself from that
+idea, even though he counted how many cows "Country-joy" had on the
+meadow and how many heaps of gravel he could see along the road. At
+last the peasant stopped near a small path leading down to the
+country-house, and Mogens slid down from the cart and began to brush
+away the bits of straw while the cart slowly creaked away over the
+gravel on the road.
+
+He approached the garden-gate step by step, saw a red shawl disappear
+behind the balcony windows, a small deserted white sewing-basket on
+the edge of the balcony, and the back of a still moving empty
+rocking-chair. He entered the garden, with his eyes fixed intently on
+the balcony, heard the councilor say good-day, turned his head toward
+the sound, and saw him standing there nodding, his arms full of empty
+flowerpots. They spoke of this and that, and the councilor began to
+explain, as one might put it, that the old specific distinction
+between the various kinds of trees had been abolished by grafting, and
+that for his part he did not like this at all. Then Camilla slowly
+approached wearing a brilliant glaring blue shawl. Her arms were
+entirely wrapped up in the shawl, and she greeted him with a slight
+inclination of the head and a faint welcome. The councilor left with
+his flower-pots, Camilla stood looking over her shoulders towards the
+balcony; Mogens looked at her. How had he been since the other day?
+Thank you, nothing especial had been the matter with him. Done much
+rowing? Why, yes, as usual, perhaps not quite as much. She turned her
+head towards him, looked coldly at him, inclined her head to one side
+and asked with half-closed eyes and a faint smile whether it was the
+beautiful Magelone who had engrossed his time. He did not know what
+she meant, but he imagined it was. Then they stood for a while and
+said nothing. Camilla took a few steps towards a corner, where a
+bench and a garden-chair stood. She sat down on the bench and asked
+him, after she was seated, looking at the chair, to be seated; he must
+be very tired after his long walk. He sat down in the chair.
+
+Did he believe anything would come of the projected royal alliance?
+Perhaps, he was completely indifferent? Of course, he had no interest
+in the royal house. Naturally he hated aristocracy? There were very
+few young men who did not believe that democracy was, heaven only knew
+what. Probably he was one of those who attributed not the slightest
+political importance to the family alliances of the royal house?
+Perhaps he was mistaken. It had been seen. . . . She stopped suddenly,
+surprised that Mogens who had at first been somewhat taken aback at
+all this information, now looked quite pleased. He wasn't to sit
+there, and laugh at her! She turned quite red.
+
+"Are you very much interested in politics?" she asked timidly.
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"But why do you let me sit here talking politics eternally?"
+
+"Oh, you say everything so charmingly, that it does not matter what
+you are talking about."
+
+"That really is no compliment."
+
+"It certainly is," he assured her eagerly, for it seemed to him she
+looked quite hurt.
+
+Camilla burst out laughing, jumped up, and ran to meet her father,
+took his arm, and walked back with him to the puzzled Mogens.
+
+When dinner was through and they had drunk their coffee up on the
+balcony, the councilor suggested a walk. So the three of them went
+along the small way across the main road, and along a narrow path with
+stubble of rye on both sides, across the stile, and into the woods.
+There was the oak and everything else; there even were still
+convolvuluses on the hedge. Camilla asked Mogens to fetch some for
+her. He tore them all off, and came back with both hands full.
+
+"Thank you, I don't want so many," she said, selected a few and let the
+rest fall to the ground. "Then I wish I had let them be," Mogens said
+earnestly.
+
+Camilla bent down and began to gather them up. She had expected him to
+help her and looked up at him in surprise, but he stood there quite
+calm and looked down at her. Now as she had begun, she had to go on,
+and gathered up they were; but she certainly did not talk to Mogens
+for a long while. She did not even look to the side where he was. But
+somehow or other they must have become reconciled, for when on their
+way back they reached the oak again, Camilla went underneath it and
+looked up into its crown. She tripped from one side to the other,
+gesticulated with her hands and sang, and Mogens had to stand near the
+hazelbushes to see what sort of a figure he had cut. Suddenly Camilla
+ran towards him, but Mogens lost his cue, and forgot both to shriek
+and to run away, and then Camilla laughingly declared that she was
+very dissatisfied with herself and that she would not have had the
+boldness to remain standing there, when such a horrible creature--and
+she pointed towards herself--came rushing towards her. But Mogens
+declared that he was very well satisfied with himself.
+
+When towards sunset he was going home the councilor and Camilla
+accompanied him a little way. And as they were going home she said to
+her father that perhaps they ought to invite that lonesome young man
+rather frequently during the month, while it was still possible to
+stay in the country. He knew no one here about, and the councilor said
+"yes," and smiled at being thought so guileless, but Camilla walked
+along and looked so gentle and serious, that one would not doubt but
+that she was the very personification of benevolence itself.
+
+The autumn weather remained so mild that the councilor stayed on at
+Cape Trafalgar for another whole month, and the effect of the
+benevolence was that Mogens came twice the first week and about every
+day the third.
+
+It was one of the last days of fair weather.
+
+It had rained early in the morning and had remained overclouded far
+down into the forenoon; but now the sun had come forth. Its rays were
+so strong and warm, that the garden-paths, the lawns and the branches
+of the trees were enveloped in a fine filmy mist. The councilor walked
+about cutting asters. Mogens and Camilla were in a corner of the
+garden to take down some late winter apples. He stood on a table with
+a basket on his arm, she stood on a chair holding out a big white
+apron by the corners.
+
+"Well, and what happened then?" she called impatiently to Mogens, who
+had interrupted the fairy-tale he was telling in order to reach an
+apple which hung high up.
+
+"Then," he continued, "the peasant began to run three times round
+himself and to sing: 'To Babylon, to Babylon, with an iron ring
+through my head.' Then he and his calf, his great-grandmother, and his
+black rooster flew away. They flew across oceans as broad as Arup
+Vejle, over mountains as high as the church at Jannerup, over
+Himmerland and through the Holstein lands even to the end of the
+world. There the kobold sat and ate breakfast; he had just finished
+when they came.
+
+"'You ought to be a little more god-fearing, little father,' said the
+peasant, 'otherwise it might happen that you might miss the kingdom of
+heaven.'"
+
+"Well, he would gladly be god-fearing."
+
+"'Then you must say grace after meals,' said the peasant. . . ."
+
+"No, I won't go on with the story," said Mogens impatiently.
+
+"Very well, then don't," said Camilla, and looked at him in surprise.
+
+"I might as well say it at once," continued Mogens, "I want to ask you
+something, but you mustn't laugh at me."
+
+Camilla jumped down from the chair.
+
+"Tell me--no, I want to tell you something myself--here is the table
+and there is the hedge, if you won't be my bride, I'll leap with the
+basket over the hedge and stay away. One!"
+
+Camilla glanced furtively at him, and noticed that the smile had
+vanished from his face.
+
+"Two!"
+
+He was quite pale with emotion.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, and let go the ends of her apron so that the
+apples rolled toward all corners of the world and then she ran. But
+she did not run away from Mogens.
+
+"Three," said she, when he reached her, but he kissed her nevertheless.
+
+The councilor was interrupted among his asters, but the
+district-judge's son was too irreproachable a blending of nature and
+civilization for the councilor to raise objections.
+
+* * *
+
+It was late winter; the large heavy cover of snow, the result of a
+whole week's uninterrupted blowing, was in the process of rapidly
+melting away. The air was full of sunlight and reflection from the
+white snow, which in large, shining drops dripped down past the
+windows. Within the room all forms and colors had awakened, all lines
+and contours had come to life. Whatever was flat extended, whatever
+was bent curved, whatever was inclined slid, and whatever was broken
+refracted the more. All kinds of green tones mingled on the
+flower-table, from the softest dark-green to the sharpest
+yellow-green. Reddish brown tones flooded in flames across the surface
+of the mahogany table, and gold gleamed and sparkled from the
+knick-knacks, from the frames and moldings, but on the carpet all the
+colors broke and mingled in a joyous, shimmering confusion.
+
+Camilla sat at the window and sewed, and she and the Graces on the
+mantle were quite enveloped in a reddish light from the red curtains
+Mogens walked slowly up and down the room, and passed every moment in
+and out of slanting beams of light of pale rainbow-colored dust.
+
+He was in talkative mood.
+
+"Yes," he said, "they are a curious kind of people, these with whom you
+associate. There isn't a thing between heaven and earth which they
+cannot dispose of in the turn of a hand. This is common, and that is
+noble; this is the most stupid thing that has been done since the
+creation of the world, and that is the wisest; this is so ugly, so
+ugly, and that is so beautiful it cannot be described. They agree so
+absolutely about all this, that it seems as if they had some sort of a
+table or something like that by which they figured things out, for
+they always get the same result, no matter what it may be. How alike
+they are to each other, these people! Every one of them knows the same
+things and talks about the same things, and all of them have the same
+words and the same opinions."
+
+"You don't mean to say," Camilla protested, "that Carlsen and Ronholt
+have the same opinions."
+
+"Yes, they are the finest of all, they belong to different parties!
+Their fundamental principles are as different as night and day. No,
+they are not. They are in such agreement that it is a perfect joy.
+Perhaps there may he some little point about which they don't agree;
+perhaps, it is merely a misunderstanding. But heaven help me, if it
+isn't pure comedy to listen to them. It is as if they had prearranged
+to do everything possible not to agree. They begin by talking in a
+loud voice, and immediately talk themselves into a passion. Then one
+of them in his passion says something which he doesn't mean, and then
+the other one says the direct opposite which he doesn't mean either,
+and then the one attacks that which the other doesn't mean, and the
+other that which the first one didn't mean, and the game is on."
+
+"But what have they done to you?"
+
+"They annoy me, these fellows. If you look into their faces it is just
+as if you had it under seal that nothing especial is ever going to
+happen in the world in the future." Camilla laid down her sewing, went
+over and took hold of the corners of his coat collar and looked
+roguishly and questioningly at him.
+
+"I cannot bear Carlsen," he said angrily, and tossed his head.
+
+"Well, and then."
+
+"And then you are very, very sweet," he murmured with a comic
+tenderness.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then," he burst out, "he looks at you and listens to you and talks
+to you in a way I don't like. He is to quit that, for you are mine and
+not his. Aren't you? You are not his, not his in any way. You are
+mine, you have bonded yourself to me as the doctor did to the devil;
+you are mine, body and soul, skin and bones, till all eternity."
+
+She nodded a little frightened, looked trustfully at him; her eyes
+filled with tears, then she pressed close to him and he put his arms
+around her, bent over her, and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+The same evening Mogens went to the station with the councilor who had
+received a sudden order in reference to an official tour which he was
+to make. On this account Camilla was to go to her aunt's the next
+morning and stay there until he returned,
+
+When Mogens had seen his future father-in-law off, he went home,
+thinking of the fact that he now would not see Camilla for several
+days. He turned into the street where she lived. It was long and
+narrow and little frequented. A cart rumbled away at the furthest end;
+in this direction, too, there was the sound of footsteps, which grew
+fainter and fainter. At the moment he heard nothing but the barking of
+a dog within the building behind him. He looked up at the house in
+which Camilla lived; as usual the ground-floor was dark. The
+white-washed panes received only a little restless life from the
+flickering gleam of the lantern of the house next door. On the second
+story the windows were open and from one of them a whole heap of
+planks protruded beyond the window-frame. Camilla's window was dark,
+dark also was everything above, except that in one of the attic
+windows there shimmered a white-golden gleam from the moon. Above the
+house the clouds were driving in a wild flight. In the houses on both
+sides the windows were lighted.
+
+The dark house made Mogens sad. It stood there so forlorn and
+disconsolate; the open windows rattled on their hinges; water ran
+monotonously droning down the rainpipe; now and then a little water
+fell with a hollow dull thud at some spot which he could not see; the
+wind swept heavily through the street. The dark, dark house! Tears
+came into Mogen's eyes, an oppressive weight lay on his chest, and he
+was seized by a strange dark sensation that he had to reproach himself
+for something concerning Camilla. Then he had to think of his mother,
+and he felt a great desire of laying his head on her lap and weeping
+his fill.
+
+For a long while he stood thus with his hand pressed against his
+breast until a wagon went through the street at a sharp pace; he
+followed it and went home. He had to stand for a long time and rattle
+the front door before it would open, then he ran humming up the
+stairs, and when he had entered the room he threw himself down on the
+sofa with one of Smollett's novels in his hand, and read and laughed
+till after midnight. At last it grew too cold in the room, he leaped
+up and went stamping up and down to drive away the chill. He stopped
+at the window. The sky in one corner was so bright, that the
+snow-covered roofs faded into it. In another corner several long-drawn
+clouds drifted by, and the atmosphere beneath them had a curious
+reddish tinge, a sheen that wavered unsteadily, a red smoking fog. He
+tore open the window, fire had broken out in the direction of the
+councilor's. Down the stairs, down the street as fast as he could;
+down a cross-street, through a side-street, and then straight ahead.
+As yet he could not see anything, but as he turned round the corner he
+saw the red glow of fire. About a score of people clattered singly
+down the street. As they ran past each other, they asked where the
+fire was. The answer was "The sugar-refinery." Mogens kept on running
+as quickly as before, but much easier at heart. Still a few streets,
+there were more and more people, and they were talking now of the
+soap-factory. It lay directly opposite the councilor's. Mogens ran on
+as if possessed. There was only a single slanting cross-street left.
+It was quite filled with people: well-dressed men, ragged old women
+who stood talking in a slow, whining tone, yelling apprentices,
+over-dressed girls who whispered to each other, corner-loafers who
+stood as if rooted to the spot and cracked jokes, surprised drunkards
+and drunkards who quarreled, helpless policemen, and carriages that
+would go neither forwards nor backwards. Mogens forced his way through
+the multitude. Now he was at the corner; the sparks were slowly
+falling down upon him. Up the street; there were showers of sparks,
+the window-panes on both sides were aglow, the factory was burning,
+the councilor's house was burning and the house next door also. There
+was nothing but smoke, fire and confusion, cries, curses, tiles that
+rattled down, blows of axes, wood that splintered, window-panes that
+jingled, jets of water that hissed, spluttered, and splashed, and amid
+all this the regular dull sob-like throb of the engines. Furniture,
+bedding, black helmets, ladders, shining buttons, illuminated faces,
+wheels, ropes, tarpaulin, strange instruments; Mogens rushed into
+their midst, over, under it all, forward to the house.
+
+The facade was brightly illuminated by the flames from the burning
+factory, smoke issued from between the tiles of the roof and rolled
+out of the open windows of the first story. Within the fire rumbled
+and crackled. There was a slow groaning sound, that turned into a
+rolling and crashing, and ended in a dull boom. Smoke, sparks, and
+flames issued in torment out of all the openings of the house. And
+then the flames began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and
+redoubled clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the
+first floor that fell. Mogens with both hands seized a large
+scaling-ladder which leaned against the part of the factory which was
+not yet in flames. For a moment he held it vertically, but then it
+slipped away from him and fell over toward the councilor's house where
+it broke in a window-frame on the second story. Mogens ran up the
+ladder, and in through the opening. At first he had to close his eyes
+on account of the pungent wood-smoke, and the heavy suffocating fumes
+which rose from the charred wood that the water had reached took his
+breath away. He was in the dining-room. The living-room was a huge
+glowing abyss; the flames from the lower part of the house, now and
+then, almost reached up to the ceiling; the few boards that had
+remained hanging when the floor fell burned in brilliant
+yellowish-white flames; shadows and the gleam of flames flooded over
+the walls; the wall-paper here and there curled up, caught fire, and
+flew in flaming tatters down into the abyss; eager yellow flames
+licked their way up on the loosened moldings and picture-frames.
+Mogens crept over the ruins and fragments of the fallen wall towards
+the edge of the abyss, from which cold and hot blasts of air
+alternately struck his face; on the other side so much of the wall had
+fallen, that he could look into Camilla's room, while the part that
+hid the councilor's office still stood. It grew hotter and hotter; the
+skin of his face became taut, and he noticed, that his hair was
+crinkling. Something heavy glided past his shoulder and remained lying
+on his back and pressed him down to the floor; it was the girder which
+slowly had slipped out of place. He could not move, breathing became
+more and more difficult, his temples throbbed violently; to his left a
+jet of water splashed against the wall of the dining-room, and the
+wish rose in him, that the cold, cold drops, which scattered in all
+directions might fall on him. Then he heard a moan on the other side
+of the abyss, and he saw something white stir on the floor in
+Camilla's room. It was she. She lay on her knees, and while her hips
+were swaying, held her hands pressed against each side of her head.
+She rose slowly, and came towards the edge of the abyss. She stood
+straight upright, her arms hung limply down, and the head went to and
+fro limply on the neck. Very, very slowly the upper part of her body
+fell forward, her long, beautiful hair swept the floor; a short
+violent flash of flame, and it was gone, the next moment she plunged
+down into the flames.
+
+Mogens uttered a moaning sound, short, deep and powerful, like the
+roar of a wild beast, and at the same time made a violent movement, as
+if to get away from the abyss. It was impossible on account of the
+girder. His hands groped over the fragments of wall, then they
+stiffened as it were in a mighty clasp over the debris, and he began
+to strike his forehead against the wreckage with a regular beat, and
+moaned: "Lord God, Lord God, Lord God."
+
+Thus he lay. In the course of a little while, he noticed that there
+was something standing beside him and touching him. It was a fireman
+who had thrown the girder aside, and was about to carry him out of the
+house. With a strong feeling of annoyance, Mogens noticed that he was
+lifted up and led away. The man carried him to the opening, and then
+Mogens had a clear perception that a wrong was being committed against
+him, and that the man who was carrying him had designs on his life. He
+tore himself out of his arms, seized a lathe that lay on the floor,
+struck the man over the head with it so that he staggered backward; he
+himself issued from the opening and ran erect down the ladder, holding
+the lathe above his head. Through the tumult, the smoke, the crowd of
+people, through empty streets, across desolate squares, out into the
+fields. Deep snow everywhere, at a little distance a black spot, it
+was a gravel-heap, that jutted out above the snow. He struck at it
+with the lathe, struck again and again, continued to strike at it; he
+wished to strike it dead, so that it might disappear; he wanted to run
+far away, and ran round about the heap and struck at it as if
+possessed. It would not, would not disappear; he hurled the lathe far
+away and flung himself upon the black heap to give it the finishing
+stroke. He got his hands full of small stones, it was gravel, it was a
+black heap of gravel. Why was he out here in the field burrowing in a
+black gravel-heap?--He smelled the smoke, the flames flashed round
+him, he saw Camilla sink down into them, he cried out aloud and rushed
+wildly across the field. He could not rid himself of the sight of the
+flames, he held his eyes shut: Flames, flames! He threw himself on the
+ground and pressed his face down into the snow: Flames! He leaped up,
+ran backward, ran forward, turned aside: Flames everywhere! He rushed
+further across the snow, past houses, past trees, past a terror-struck
+face, that stared out through a window-pane, round stacks of grain and
+through farm-yards, where dogs howled and tore at their chains. He ran
+round the front wing of a building and stood suddenly before a
+brightly, restlessly lighted window. The light did him good, the
+flames yielded to it; he went to the window and looked in. It was a
+brew-room, a girl stood at the hearth and stirred the kettle. The
+light which she held in her hand had a slightly reddish sheen on
+account of the dense fumes. Another girl was sitting down, plucking
+poultry, and a third was singeing it over a blazing straw-fire. When
+the flames grew weaker, new straw was put on, and they flared up
+again; then they again became weaker and still weaker; they went out.
+Mogens angrily broke a pane with his elbow, and slowly walked away.
+The girls inside screamed. Then he ran again for a long time with a
+low moaning. Scattered flashes of memory of happy days came to him,
+and when they had passed the darkness was twice as black. He could
+not bear to think of what had happened. It was impossible for it to
+have happened. He threw himself down on his knees and raised his hands
+toward heaven, the while he pleaded that that which had happened might
+be as though it had not occurred. For a long time he dragged himself
+along on his knees with his eyes steadfastly fixed on the sky, as if
+afraid it might slip away from him to escape his pleas, provided he
+did not keep it incessantly in his eye. Then pictures of his happy
+time came floating toward him, more and more in mist-like ranks. There
+were also pictures that rose in a sudden glamor round about him, and
+others flitted by so indefinite, so distant, that they were gone
+before he really knew what they were. He sat silently in the snow,
+overcome by light and color, by light and happiness, and the dark fear
+which he had had at first that something would come and extinguish all
+this had gone. It was very still round about him, a great peace was
+within him, the pictures had disappeared, but happiness was here. A
+deep silence! There was not a sound, but sounds were in the air. And
+there came laughter and song and low words came and light and
+footsteps and dull sobbing of the beats of the pumps. Moaning he ran
+away, ran long and far, came to the lake, followed the shore, until he
+stumbled over the root of a tree, and then he was so tired that he
+remained lying.
+
+With a soft clucking sound the water ran over the small stones;
+spasmodically there was a soft soughing among the barren limbs; now
+and then a crow cawed above the lake; and morning threw its sharp
+bluish gleam over forest and sea, over the snow, and over the pallid
+face.
+
+At sunrise he was found by the ranger from the neighboring forest, and
+carried up to the forester Nicolai; there he lay for weeks and
+days between life and death.
+
+* * *
+
+About the time when Mogens was being carried up to Nicolai's, a crowd
+collected around a carriage at the end of the street where the
+councilor lived. The driver could not understand why the policeman
+wanted to prevent him from carrying out his legitimate order, and on
+that account they had an argument. It was the carriage which was to
+take Camilla to her aunt's.
+
+* * *
+
+"No, since poor Camilla lost her life in that dreadful manner, we have
+not seen anything of him!"
+
+"Yes, it is curious, how much may lie hidden in a person. No one would
+have suspected anything, so quiet and shy, almost awkward. Isn't it
+so? You did not suspect anything?"
+
+"About the sickness! How can you ask such a question! Oh, you mean--I
+did not quite understand you--you mean it was in the blood, something
+hereditary?--Oh, yes, I remember there was something like that, they
+took his father to Aarhus. Wasn't it so, Mr. Carlsen?"
+
+"No! Yes, but it was to bury him, his first wife is buried there. No,
+what I was thinking of was the dreadful--yes, the dreadful life he has
+been leading the last two or two and a half years."
+
+"Why no, really! I know nothing about that."
+
+"Well, you see, of course, it is of the things one doesn't like to
+talk about. . . . You understand, of course, consideration for those
+nearest. The councilor's family. . . ."
+
+"Yes, there is a certain amount of justice in what you say--but on the
+other hand--tell me quite frankly, isn't there at present a false, a
+sanctimonious striving to veil, to cover up the weaknesses of our
+fellow-men? As for myself I don't understand much about that sort of
+thing, but don't you think that truth or public morals, I don't mean
+this morality, but--morals, conditions, whatever you will, suffer
+under it?"
+
+"Of course, and I am very glad to be able to agree so with you, and in
+this case . . . the fact simply is, that he has given himself to all
+sorts of excesses. He has lived in the most disreputable manner with
+the lowest dregs, people without honor, without conscience, without
+position, religion, or anything else, with loafers, mountebanks,
+drunkards, and--and to tell the truth with women of easy virtue."
+
+"And this after having been engaged to Camilla, good heavens, and
+after having been down with brain-fever for three months!"
+
+"Yes--and what tendencies doesn't this let us suspect, and who knows
+what his past may have been, what do you think?"
+
+"Yes, and heaven knows how things really were with him during the time
+of their engagement? There always was something suspicious about him.
+That is my opinion.
+
+"Pardon me, and you, too, Mr. Carlsen, pardon me, but you look at the
+whole affair in rather an abstract way, very abstractedly. By chance I
+have in my possession a very concrete report from a friend in Jutland,
+and can present the whole affair in all its details."
+
+"Mr. Ronholt, you don't mean to . . .?"
+
+"To give details? Yes, that is what I intend. Mr. Carlsen, with the
+lady's permission. Thank you! He certainly did not live as one should
+live after a brain-fever. He knocked about from fair to fair with a
+couple of boon-companions, and, it is said, was somewhat mixed up with
+troupes of mountebanks, and especially with the women of the company.
+Perhaps it would be wisest if I ran upstairs, and got my friend's
+letter. Permit me. I'll be back in a moment."
+
+"Don't you think, Mr. Carlsen, that Ronholt is in a particularly good
+humor to-day?"
+
+"Yes, but you must not forget that he exhausted all his spleen on an
+article in the morning paper. Imagine, to dare to maintain--why, that
+is pure rebellion, contempt of law, for him. . . ."
+
+"You found the letter?"
+
+"Yes, I did. May I begin? Let me see, oh yes: 'Our mutual friend whom
+we met last year at Monsted, and whom, as you say, you knew in
+Copenhagen, has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts.
+He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the
+melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety
+and silent hopelessness, he is affected--ruthless and brutal toward
+himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't
+seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink
+and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a
+fixed idea that he received a personal insult from destiny. His
+associates here were especially a horse-dealer, called "Mug-sexton,"
+because he does nothing but sing and drink all the time, and a
+disreputable, lanky, over-grown cross between a sailor and peddler,
+known and feared under the name of Peter "Rudderless," to say nothing
+of the fair Abelone. She, however, recently has had to give way to a
+brunette, belonging to a troupe of mountebanks, which for some time
+has favored us with performances of feats of strength and
+rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with sharp, yellow,
+prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by brutality,
+poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in shabby
+velvet and dirty red. There you have his crew. I don't understand our
+friend's passion. It is true that his fiancee met with a horrible
+death, but that does not explain the matter. I must still tell you how
+he left us. We had a fair a few miles from here. He, "Rudderless," the
+horse-dealer, and the woman sat in a drinking-tent, dissipating
+until far into the night. At three o'clock or thereabouts they were at
+last ready to leave. They got on the wagon, and so far everything went
+all right; but then our mutual friend turns off from the main road and
+drives with them over fields and heath, as fast as the horses can go.
+The wagon is flung from one side to the other. Finally things get too
+wild for the horse-dealer and he yells that he wants to get down.
+After he has gotten off our mutual friend whips up the horses again,
+arid drives straight at a large heather-covered hill. The woman
+becomes frightened and jumps off, and now up the hill they go and down
+on the other side at such a terrific pace that it is a miracle the
+wagon did not arrive at the bottom ahead of the horses. On the way up
+Peter had slipped from the wagon, and as thanks for the ride he threw
+his big clasp-knife at the head of the driver.'"
+
+"The poor fellow, but this business of the woman is nasty."
+
+"Disgusting, madam, decidedly disgusting. Do you really think, Mr.
+Ronholt, that this description puts the man in a better light?"
+
+"No, but in a surer one; you know in the darkness things often seem
+larger than they are."
+
+"Can you think of anything worse?"
+
+"If not, then this is the worst, but you know one should never think
+the worst of people."
+
+"Then you really mean, that the whole affair is not so bad, that there
+is something bold in it, something in a sense eminently plebeian,
+which pleases your liking for democracy."
+
+"Don't you see, that in respect to his environment his conduct is
+quite aristocratic?"
+
+"Aristocratic? No, that is lather paradoxical. If he is not a
+democrat, then I really don't know what he is."
+
+"Well, there are still other designations."
+
+* * *
+
+White alders, bluish lilac, red hawthorn, and radiant laburnum were in
+flower and gave forth their fragrance in front of the house. The
+windows were open and the blinds were drawn. Mogens leaned in over
+the sill and the blinds lay on his back. It was grateful to the eye
+after all the summer-sun on forest and water and in the air to look
+into the subdued, soft, quiet light of a room. A tall woman of opulent
+figure stood within, the back toward the window, and was putting
+flowers in a large vase. The waist of her pink morning-gown was
+gathered high up below, the bosom by a shining black leather-belt; on
+the floor behind her lay a snow-white dressing-jacket; her abundant,
+very blond hair was hanging in a bright-red net.
+
+"You look rather pale after the celebration last night," was the first
+thing Mogens said.
+
+"Good-morning," she replied and held out without turning around her
+hand with the flowers in it towards him. Mogens took one of the
+flowers. Laura turned the head half towards him, opened her hand
+slightly and let the flowers fall to the floor in little lots. Then
+she again busied herself with the vase.
+
+"Ill?" asked Mogens.
+
+"Tired."
+
+"I won't eat breakfast with you to-day."
+
+"No?"
+
+"We can't have dinner together either."
+
+"You are going fishing?"
+
+"No--Good-by!"
+
+"When are you coming back?"
+
+"I am not coming back."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she asked arranging her gown; she went to
+the window, and there sat down on the chair.
+
+"I am tired of you. That's all."
+
+"Now you are spiteful, what's the matter with you? What have I done to
+you?"
+
+"Nothing, but since we are neither married nor madly in love with each
+other, I don't see anything very strange in the fact, that I am going
+my own way."
+
+"Are you jealous?" she asked very softly.
+
+"Of one like you! I haven't lost my senses!"
+
+"But what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"It means that I am tired of your beauty, that I know your voice and
+your gestures by heart, and that neither your whims nor your stupidity
+nor your craftiness can any longer entertain me. Can you tell me then
+why I should stay?"
+
+Laura wept. "Mogens, Mogens, how can you have the heart to do this?
+Oh, what shall I, shall I, shall I, shall I do! Stay only today, only
+to-day, Mogens. You dare not go away from me!"
+
+"Those are lies, Laura, you don't even believe it yourself. It is not
+because you think such a terrible lot of me, that you are distressed
+now. You are only a little bit alarmed because of the change, you are
+frightened because of the slight disarrangement of your daily habits.
+I am thoroughly familiar with that, you are not the first one I have
+gotten tired of."
+
+"Oh, stay with me only to-day, I won't torment you to stay a single
+hour longer.
+
+"You really are dogs, you women! You haven't a trace of fine feelings
+in your body. If one gives you a kick, you come crawling back again."
+
+"Yes, yes, that's what we do, but stay only for to-day--won't
+you--stay!"
+
+"Stay, stay! No!"
+
+"You have never loved me, Mogens!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes, you did; you loved me the day when there was such a violent
+wind, oh, that beautiful day down at the sea-shore, when we sat in the
+shelter of the boat."
+
+"Stupid girl!"
+
+"If I only were a respectable girl with fine parents, and not such a
+one as I am, then you would stay with me; then you would not have the
+heart to be so hard--and I, who love you so!"
+
+"Oh, don't bother about that."
+
+"No, I am like the dust beneath your feet, you care no more for me.
+Not one kind word, only hard words; contempt, that is good enough for
+me."
+
+"The others are neither better nor worse than you. Good-by, Laura!"
+
+He held out his hand to her, but she kept hers on her back and wailed:
+"No, no, not good-by! not good-by!"
+
+Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it
+fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the
+window-sill beneath it and begged: "Come to me! come and give me your
+hand."
+
+"No."
+
+When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:
+
+"Good-by, Mogens!"
+
+He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on:
+"And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does
+not!"
+
+* * *
+
+The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass
+swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a
+little, the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by
+thousands of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged
+restlessly at their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to
+nod, and on the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and
+fro. Towards the land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the
+young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and
+fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings
+swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the
+window-panes became covered with moisture.
+
+There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of
+the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the
+green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the
+dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were
+drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all
+of life, empty behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those
+who were happy were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to
+see; everything was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a
+huge, rotting lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was
+each and everything; but that which was called love, it was the
+hollowest of all hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering
+lust, smoldering lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know
+this? Why had he not been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all
+these gilded lies? Why was he compelled to see while the others
+remained blind? He had a right to blindness, he had believed in
+everything in which it was possible to believe.
+
+Down in the village the lights were being lit.
+
+Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my
+childhood's belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if
+they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts
+and the heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why
+do I know something different? And I do know something different,
+cutting, bitter, true . . .
+
+He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He
+went down into the village, along the way past the garden of the
+manor-house; he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a
+grass-plot in the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell
+sharply on the quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark
+side, sometimes their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and
+stared at the tree; it looked as if the leaves were running in a fine
+rain down the limbs. He believed, that he was hearing the sound which
+the foliage produced. Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became
+audible quite near by:
+
+ "Flower in dew! Flower in dew!
+ Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.
+ Does in them lie the same strange air
+ The same wonderful elfin air,
+ As in mine own?
+ Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing
+ Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying,
+ Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing:
+ In longing,
+ In longing,
+ I live."
+
+Then silence fell again. Mogens diew a long breath and listened
+intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he
+clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed
+his head in his arms and wept.
+
+The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with
+a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with
+everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the
+clouds drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the
+garden of the manor abutted on it. Up there it looked rather barren,
+the grass had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence
+stood a wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves
+had wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills;
+a few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others
+wooden crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax
+wreaths, the greater number had nothing at all. Mogens wandered about
+hunting for a sheltered place, but the wind seemed to blow on all
+sides of the church. He threw himself down near the embankment, drew a
+book out of his pocket; but he did not get on with his reading; every
+time when a cloud went past the sun, it seemed to him as though it
+were growing chilly, and he thought of getting up, but then the light
+came again and he remained lying. A young girl came slowly along the
+way, a greyhound and a pointer ran playfully ahead of her. She stopped
+and it seemed as if she wanted to sit down, but when she saw Mogens
+she continued her walk diagonally across the cemetery out through the
+gate. Mogens rose and looked after her; she walked down on the main
+road, the dogs still played. Then he began reading the inscription on
+one of the graves; it quickly made him smile. Suddenly a shadow fell
+across the grave and remained lying there, Mogens looked sideways. A
+tanned, young man stood there, one hand in his game-bag, in the other
+he held his gun.
+
+"It isn't really half bad," he said, indicating the inscription.
+
+"No," said Mogens and straightened up from his bent position.
+
+"Tell me," continued the hunter, and looked to the side, as if seeking
+something, "you have been here for a couple of days, and I have been
+going about wondering about you, but up to the present didn't come
+near you. You go and drift about so alone, why haven't you looked in
+on us? And what in the world do you do to kill the time? For you
+haven't any business in the neighborhood, have you?"
+
+"No, I am staying here for pleasure."
+
+"There isn't much of that here," the stranger exclaimed and laughed,
+"don't you shoot? Wouldn't you like to come with me? Meanwhile I have
+to go down to the inn and get some small shot, and while you are
+getting ready, I can go over, and call down the blacksmith. Well! Will
+you join?"
+
+"Yes, with pleasure."
+
+"Oh, by the way,--Thora! haven't you seen a girl?" he jumped up on the
+embankment.
+
+"Yes, there she is, she is my cousin, I can't introduce you to her,
+but come along, let us follow her; we made a wager, now you can he the
+judge. She was to be in the cemetery with the dogs and I was to pass
+with gun and game-bag, but was not to call or to whistle, and if the
+dogs nevertheless went with me she would lose; now we will see."
+
+After a little while they overtook the lady; the hunter looked
+straight ahead, but could not help smiling; Mogens bowed when they
+passed. The dogs looked in surprise after the hunter and growled a
+bit; then they looked up at the lady and barked, she wanted to pat
+them, but indifferently they walked away from her and barked after the
+hunter. Step by step they drew further and further away from her,
+squinted at her, and then suddenly darted off after the hunter. And
+when they reached him, they were quite out of control; they jumped up
+on him and rushed off in every direction and back again.
+
+"You lose," he called out to her; she nodded smilingly, turned round
+and went on.
+
+They hunted till late in the afternoon. Mogens and William got along
+famously and Mogens had to promise that he would come to the
+manor-house in the evening. This he did, and later he came almost
+every day, but in spite of all the cordial invitations he continued
+living at the inn.
+
+Now came a restless period for Mogens. At first Thora's proximity
+brought back to life all his sad and gloomy memories. Often he had
+suddenly to begin a conversation with one of the others or leave, so
+that his emotion might not completely master him. She was not at all
+like Camilla, and yet he heard and saw only Camilla. Thora was small,
+delicate, and slender, roused easily to laughter, easily to tears, and
+easily to enthusiasm. If for a longer time she spoke seriously with
+some one, it was not like a drawing near, but rather as if she
+disappeared within her own self. If some one explained something to
+her or developed an idea, her face, her whole figure expressed the
+most intimate trust and now and again, perhaps, also expectancy.
+William and his little sister did not treat her quite like a comrade,
+but yet not like a stranger either. The uncle and the aunt, the
+farm-hands, the maid-servants, and the peasants of the neighborhood
+all paid court to her, but very carefully, and almost timidly. In
+respect to her they were almost like a wanderer in the forest, who
+sees close beside him one of those tiny, graceful song-birds with very
+clear eyes and light, captivating movements. He is enraptured by this
+tiny, living creature, he would so much like to have it come closer
+and closer, but he does not care to move, scarcely to take breath,
+lest it may be frightened and fly away.
+
+As Mogens saw Thora more and more frequently, memories came more and
+more rarely, and he began to see her as she was. It was a time of
+peace and happiness when he was with her, full of silent longing and
+quiet sadness when he did not see her. Later he told her of Camilla
+and of his past life, and it was almost with surprise that he looked
+back upon himself. Sometimes it seemed inconceivable to him that it
+was he who had thought, felt, and done all the strange things of which
+he told.
+
+On an evening he and Thora stood on a height in the garden, and
+watched the sunset. William and his little sister were playing
+hide-and-seek around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate
+colors, hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them
+and looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked
+in comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up
+again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real
+thought, but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and
+disappeared; it was as if it had been the eye that thought it.
+
+"The elves in the green hill are happy now that the sun has gone
+down," said Thora.
+
+"Oh--are they?"
+
+"Don't you know that elves love darkness?"
+
+Mogens smiled.
+
+"You don't believe in elves, but you should. It is beautiful to
+believe in all that, in gnomes and elves. I believe in mermaids too,
+and elder-women, but goblins! What can one do with goblins and
+three-legged horses? Old Mary gets angry when I tell her this; for to
+believe what I believe, she says is not God-fearing. Such things have
+nothing to do with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel,
+too. What do you say?"
+
+"I, oh, I don't know--what do you really mean?"
+
+"You surely don't love nature?"
+
+"But, quite the contrary."
+
+"I don't mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is
+a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like
+a set scene, but nature every day, always."
+
+"Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of
+light, every shadow. There isn't a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so
+square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in
+love with it."
+
+"But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don't imagine
+that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the
+flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear
+lake, don't you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures
+living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows,
+that have their own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for
+instance, is there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you
+don't imagine, that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and
+sigh when the sun rises, but begin to dance and play with their
+beautiful treasure-troves, as soon as evening comes."
+
+"How wonderfully beautiful that is! And you see that?"
+
+"But you?"
+
+"Yes, I can't explain it, but there is something in the color, in the
+movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in
+them; in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain
+that make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in
+the showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I
+cannot understand this at all, when I am to explain it."
+
+"And that is enough for you?"
+
+"Oh, more than enough sometimes--much too much! And when shape and
+color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world
+lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can
+express all this in voice and song, then you feel so lonely, that you
+cannot come closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and
+burdensome."
+
+"No, no, you must not think of your fiancee in that way."
+
+"Oh, I am not thinking of her."
+
+William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into
+the house.
+
+* * *
+
+On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the
+garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not yet
+been. It was a rather long, but not very high hothouse. The sun
+sparkled and played over the glass-roof. They entered, the air was
+warm and moist, and had a peculiar heavy aromatic odor as of earth
+that has just been turned. The beautiful incised leaves and the heavy
+dewy grapes were resplendent and luminous under the sunlight. They
+spread out beneath the glass-cover in a great green field of
+blessedness. Thora stood there and happily looked upward; Mogens was
+restless and stared now and then unhappily at her, and then up into
+the foliage.
+
+"Listen," Thora said gayly, "I think, I am now beginning to understand
+what you said the other day on the hill about form and color."
+
+"And you understood nothing besides?" Mogens asked softly and
+seriously.
+
+"No," she whispered, looked quickly at him, dropped the glance, and
+grew red, "not then."
+
+"Not then," Mogens repeated softly and kneeled down before her, "but
+now, Thora?" She bent down toward him, gave him one of her hands, and
+covered her eyes with the other and wept. Mogens pressed the hand
+against his breast, as he rose; she lifted her head, and he kissed her
+on the forehead. She looked up at him with radiant, moist eyes, smiled
+and whispered: "Heaven be praised!"
+
+Mogens stayed another week. The arrangement was that the wedding was
+to take place in midsummer. Then he left, and winter came with dark
+days, long nights, and a snowstorm of letters.
+
+* * *
+
+All the windows of the manor-house were lighted, leaves and flowers
+were above every door, friends and acquaintances in a dense crowd
+stood on the large stone stairway, all looking out into the dusk.--
+Mogens had driven off with his bride.
+
+The carriage rumbled and rumbled. The closed windows rattled. Thora
+sat and looked out of one of them, at the ditch of the highway, at the
+smith's hill where primroses blossomed in spring, at Bertel Nielsen's
+huge elderberry bushes, at the mill and the miller's geese, and the
+hill of Dalum where not many years ago she and William slid down on
+sleighs, at the Dalum meadows, at the long, unnatural shadows of the
+horses that rushed over the gravel-heaps, over the turf-pits and
+rye-field. She sat there and wept very softly; from time to time when
+wiping the dew from the pane, she looked stealthily over towards
+Mogens. He sat bowed forward, his traveling-cloak was open, his hat
+lay and rocked on the front seat; his hands he held in front of his
+face. All the things he had to think of! It had almost robbed him of
+his courage. She had had to say good-by to all her relatives and
+friends and to an infinity of places, where memories lay ranged in
+strata, one above the other, right up to the sky, and all this so that
+she might go away with him. And was he the right sort of a man to
+place all one's trust in, he with his past of brutalities and
+debaucheries! It was not even certain that all this was merely his
+past. He had changed, it is true, and he found it difficult to
+understand what he himself had been. But one never can wholly escape
+from one's self, and what had been surely still was there. And now
+this innocent child had been given him to guard and protect. He had
+managed to get himself into the mire till over his head, and doubtless
+he would easily succeed in drawing her down into it too. No, no, it
+shall not be thus--no, she is to go on living her clear, bright girl's
+life in spite of him. And the carriage rattled and rattled. Darkness
+had set in, and here and there he saw through the thickly covered
+panes, lights in the houses and yards past which they drove. Thora
+slumbered. Toward morning they came to their new home, an estate that
+Mogens had bought. The horses steamed in the chill morning air; the
+sparrows twittered on the huge linden in the court, and the smoke rose
+slowly from the chimneys. Thora looked smiling and contented at all
+this after Mogens had helped her out of the carriage; but there was no
+other way about, she was sleepy and too tired to conceal it. Mogens
+took her to her room and then went into the garden, sat down on a
+bench, and imagined that he was watching the sunrise, but he nodded
+too violently to keep up the deception. About noon he and Thora met
+again, happy and refreshed. They had to look at things and express
+their surprise; they consulted and made decisions; they made the
+absurdest suggestions; and how Thora struggled to look wise and
+interested when the cows were introduced to her; and how difficult it
+was not to be all too unpractically enthusiastic over a small shaggy
+young dog; and how Mogens talked of drainage and the price of grain,
+while he stood there and in his heart wondered how Thora would look
+with red poppies in her hair! And in the evening, when they sat in
+their conservatory and the moon so clearly drew the outline of the
+windows on the floor, what a comedy they played, he on his part
+seriously representing to her that she should go to sleep, really go
+to sleep, since she must be tired, the while he continued to hold her
+hand in his; and she on her part, when she declared he was
+disagreeable and wanted to be rid of her, that he regretted having
+taken a wife. Then a reconciliation, of course, followed, and they
+laughed, and the hour grew late. Finally Thora went to her room, but
+Mogens remained sitting in the conservatory, miserable that she had
+gone. He drew black imaginings for himself, that she was dead and
+gone, and that he was sitting here all alone in the world and weeping
+over her, and then he really wept. At length he became angry at
+himself and stalked up and down the floor, and wanted to be sensible.
+There was a love, pure and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion;
+yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one.
+Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he
+hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine
+and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this
+ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had
+poisoned all his thoughts.
+
+He went to his room. He intended to read and took a book; he read, but
+had not the slightest notion what--could anything have happened to
+her! No, how could it? But nevertheless he was afraid, possibly there
+might have--no, he could no longer stand it. He stole softly to her
+door; no, everything was still and peaceful. When he listened intently
+it seemed as if he could hear her breathing--how his heart throbbed,
+it seemed, he could hear it too. He went back to his room and his
+book. He closed his eyes; how vividly he saw her; he heard her voice,
+she bent down toward him and whispered--how he loved her, loved her,
+loved her! It was like a song within him; it seemed as if his thoughts
+took on rhythmic form, and how clearly he could see everything of
+which he thought! Still and silent she lay and slept, her arm beneath
+the neck, her hair loosened, her eyes were closed, she breathed very
+softly--the air trembled within, it was red like the reflection of
+roses. Like a clumsy faun, imitating the dance of the nymphs, so the
+bed-cover with its awkward folds outlined her delicate form. No, no,
+he did not want to think of her, not in that way, for nothing in all
+the world, no; and now it all came back again, it could not be kept
+away, but he would keep it away, away! And it came and went, came and
+went, until sleep seized him, and the night passed.
+
+* * *
+
+When the sun had set on the evening of the next day, they walked about
+together in the garden. Arm in arm they walked very slowly and very
+silently up one path and down the other, out of the fragrance of
+mignonettes through that of roses into that of jasmine. A few moths
+fluttered past them; out in the grain-field a wild duck called,
+otherwise most of the sounds came from Thora's silk dress.
+
+"How silent we can be," exclaimed Thora.
+
+"And how we can walk!" Mogens continued, "we must have walked about
+four miles by now."
+
+Then they walked again for a while and were silent.
+
+"Of what are you thinking now?" she asked.
+
+"I am thinking of myself."
+
+"That's just what I am doing."
+
+"Are you also thinking of yourself?"
+
+"No, of yourself--of you, Mogens."
+
+He drew her closer. They were going up to the conservatory. The door
+was open; it was very light in there, and the table with the
+snowy-white cloth, the silver dish with the dark red strawberries, the
+shining silver pot and the chandelier gave quite a festive impression.
+
+"It is as in the fairy-tale, where Hansel and Gretel come to the
+cake-house out in the wood," Thora said.
+
+"Do you want to go in?"
+
+"Oh, you quite forget, that in there dwells a witch, who wants to put
+us unhappy little children into an oven and eat us. No, it is much
+better that we resist the sugar-panes and the pancake-roof, take each
+other by the hand, and go back into the dark, dark wood."
+
+They walked away from the conservatory. She leaned closely toward
+Mogens and continued: "It may also be the palace of the Grand Turk and
+you are the Arab from the desert who wants to carry me off, and the
+guard is pursuing us; the curved sabers flash, and we run and run, but
+they have taken your horse, and then they take us along and put us
+into a big bag, and we are in it together and are drowned in the
+sea.-- Let me see, or might it be . . .?"
+
+"Why might it not be, what it is?"
+
+"Well, it might be that, but it is not enough. ... If you knew how I
+love you, but I am so unhappy--I don't know what it is--there is such
+a great distance between us--no--"
+
+She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately and
+pressed her burning cheek against his:
+
+"I don't know how it is, but sometimes I almost wish that you beat
+me--I know it is childish, and that I am very happy, very happy, and
+yet I feel so unhappy!"
+
+She laid her head on his breast and wept, and then she began while her
+tears were still streaming, to sing, at first very gently, but then
+louder and louder:
+
+ "In longing
+  In longing! live!"
+
+"My own little wife!" and he lifted her up in his arms and carried her
+in.
+
+In the morning he stood beside her bed. The light came faintly and
+subdued through the drawn blinds. It softened all the lines in the
+room and made all the colors seem sated and peaceful. It seemed to
+Mogens as if the air rose and fell with her bosom in gentle
+rarifications. Her head rested a little sidewise on the pillow, her
+hair fell over her white brow, one of her cheeks was a brighter red
+than the other, now and then there was a faint quivering in the
+calmly-arched eyelids, and the lines of her mouth undulated
+imperceptibly between unconscious seriousness and slumbering smiles.
+Mogens stood for a long time and looked at her, happy and quiet. The
+last shadow of his past had disappeared. Then he stole away softly and
+sat down in the living-room and waited for her in silence. He had sat
+there for a while, when he felt her head on his shoulder and her cheek
+against his.
+
+* * *
+
+They went out together into the freshness of the morning. The sunlight
+was jubilant above the earth, the dew sparkled, flowers that had
+awakened early gleamed, a lark sang high up beneath the sky, swallows
+flew swiftly through the air. He and she walked across the green field
+toward the hill with the ripening rye; they followed the footpath
+which led over there. She went ahead, very slowly and looked back over
+her shoulder toward him, and they talked and laughed. The further they
+descended the hill, the more the grain intervened, soon they could no
+longer be seen.
+
+
+
+
+THE PLAGUE IN BERGAMO
+
+
+Old Bergamo lay on the summit of a low mountain, hedged in by walls and
+gates, and New Bergamo lay at the foot of the mountain, exposed to all
+winds.
+
+One day the plague broke out in the new town and spread at a terrific
+speed; a multitude of people died and the others fled across the
+plains to all four corners of the world. And the citizens in Old
+Bergamo set fire to the deserted town in order to purify the air, but
+it did no good. People began dying up there too, at first one a day,
+then five, then ten, then twenty, and when the plague had reached its
+height, a great many more.
+
+And they could not flee as those had done, who lived in the new town.
+
+There were some, who tried it, but they led the life of a hunted
+animal, hid in ditches and sewers, under hedges, and in the green
+fields; for the peasants, into whose homes in many places the first
+fugitives had brought the plague, stoned every stranger they came
+across, drove him from their lands, or struck him down like a mad dog
+without mercy or pity, in justifiable self-defense, as they believed.
+
+The people of Old Bergamo had to stay where they were, and day by day
+it grew hotter; and day by day the gruesome disease became more
+voracious and more grasping. Terror grew to madness. What there had
+been of order and good government was as if the earth had swallowed
+it, and what was worst in human nature came in its stead.
+
+At the very beginning when the plague broke out people worked together
+in harmony and concord. They took care that the corpses were duly and
+properly buried, and every day saw to it that big bonfires were
+lighted in squares and open places so that the healthful smoke might
+drift through the streets. Juniper and vinegar were distributed among
+the poor, and above all else, the people sought the churches early and
+late, alone and in processions. Every day they went with their prayers
+before God and every day when the sun was setting behind the
+mountains, all the churchbells called wailingly towards heaven from
+hundreds of swinging throats. Fasts were ordered and every day holy
+relics were set out on the altars.
+
+At last one day when they did not know what else to do, from the
+balcony of the town hall, amid the sound of trumpets and horns, they
+proclaimed the Holy Virgin, podesta or lordmayor of the town now and
+forever.
+
+But all this did not help; there was nothing that helped.
+
+And when the people felt this and the belief grew stronger that heaven
+either would not or could not help, they not only let their hands lie
+idly in the lap, saying, "Let there come what may." Nay, it seemed, as
+if sin had grown from a secret, stealthy disease into a wicked, open,
+raging plague, which hand in hand with the physical contagion sought
+to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so
+incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was
+filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and
+the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery
+than was here committed in broad daylight.
+
+"To-day we shall eat, for to-morrow we die!"--It was as if they had
+set these words to music, and played on manifold instruments a
+never-ending hellish concert. Yea, if all sins had not already been
+invented, they would have been invented here, for there was no road
+they would not have followed in their wickedness. The most unnatural
+vices flourished among them, and even such rare sins as necromancy,
+magic, and exorcism were familiar to them, for there were many who
+hoped to obtain from the powers of evil the protection which heaven
+had not vouchsafed them.
+
+Whatever had to do with mutual assistance or pity had vanished from
+their minds; each one had thoughts only for himself. He who was sick
+was looked upon as a common foe, and if it happened that any one was
+unfortunate enough to fall down on the street, exhausted by the first
+fever-paroxysm of the plague, there was no door that opened to him,
+but with lance-pricks and the casting of stones they forced him to
+drag himself out of the way of those who were still healthy.
+
+And day by day the plague increased, the summer's sun blazed down upon
+the town, not a drop of rain fell, not the faintest breeze stirred.
+From corpses that lay rotting in the houses and from corpses that were
+only half-buried in the earth, there was engendered a suffocating
+stench which mingled with the stagnant air of the streets and
+attracted swarms and clouds of ravens and crows until the walls and
+roofs were black with them. And round about the wall encircling the
+town sat strange, large, outlandish birds from far away with beaks
+eager for spoil and expectantly crooked claws; and they sat there and
+looked down with their tranquil greedy eyes as if only waiting for the
+unfortunate town to turn into one huge carrion-pit.
+
+It was just eleven weeks since the plague had broken out, when the
+watchman in the tower and other people who were standing in high
+places saw a strange procession wind from the plain into the streets
+of the new town between the smoke-blackened stone walls and the black
+ash-heaps of the wooden houses. A multitude of people! At least, six
+hundred or more, men and women, old and young, and they carried big
+black crosses between them and above their heads floated wide banners,
+red as fire and blood. They sing as they are moving onward and
+heartrending notes of despair rise up into the silent sultry air.
+
+Brown, gray, and black are their clothes, but all wear a red badge on
+their breast. A cross it proves to be, as they draw nearer. For all
+the time they are drawing nearer. They press upward along the steep
+road, flanked by walls, which leads up to the old town. It is a throng
+of white faces; they carry scourges in their hands. On their red
+banners a rain of fire is pictured. And the black crosses sway from
+one side to the other in the crowd.
+
+From the dense mass there rises a smell of sweat, of ashes, of the
+dust of the roadway, and of stale incense.
+
+They no longer sing, neither do they speak, nothing is audible but the
+tramping, herd-like sound of their naked feet.
+
+Face after face plunges into the darkness of the tower-gate, and
+emerges into the light on the other side with a dazed, tired
+expression and half-closed lids.
+
+Then the singing begins again: a miserere; they grasp their scourges
+more firmly and walk with a brisker step as if to a war-song.
+
+They look as if they came from a famished city, their cheeks are
+hollow, their bones stand out, their lips are bloodless, and they have
+dark rings beneath their eyes.
+
+The people of Bergamo have flocked together and watch them with
+amazement--and uneasiness. Red dissipated faces stand contrasted with
+these pale white ones; dull glances exhausted by debauchery are
+lowered before these piercing, flaming eyes; mocking blasphemers stand
+open-mouthed before these hymns.
+
+And there is blood on their scourges.
+
+A feeling of strange uneasiness filled the people at the sight of
+these strangers.
+
+But it did not take long, however, before they shook off this
+impression. Some of them recognized a half-crazy shoemaker from
+Brescia among those who bore crosses, and immediately the whole mob
+through him became a laughingstock. Anyhow, it was something new, a
+distraction amid the everyday, and when the strangers marched toward
+the cathedral, everybody followed behind as they would have followed a
+band of jugglers or a tame bear.
+
+But as they pushed their way forward they became embittered; they felt
+so matter-of-fact in comparison with the solemnity of these people.
+They understood very well, that those shoemakers and tailors had come
+here to convert them, to pray for them, and to utter the words which
+they did not wish to hear. There were two lean, gray-haired
+philosophers who had elaborated impiety into a system; they incited
+the people, and out of the malice of their hearts stirred their
+passions, so that with each step as they neared the church the
+attitude of the crowd became more threatening and their cries of anger
+wilder. It would not have taken much to have made them lay violent
+hands on those unknown flagellants. Not a hundred steps from the
+church entrance, the door of a tavern was thrown open, and a whole
+flock of carousers tumbled out, one on top of the other. They placed
+themselves at the head of the procession and led the way, singing and
+bellowing with grotesquely solemn gestures--all except one who turned
+handsprings right up the grass-grown stones of the church-steps.
+This, of course, caused laughter, and so all entered peacefully into
+the sanctuary.
+
+It seemed strange to be here again, to pass through this great cool
+space, in this atmosphere pungent with the smell of old drippings from
+wax candles--across the sunken flag-stones which their feet knew so
+well and over these stones whose worn-down designs and bright
+inscriptions had so often caused their thoughts to grow weary. And
+while their eyes half-curiously, half-unwillingly sought rest in the
+gently subdued light underneath the vaults or glided over the dim
+manifoldness of the gold-dust and smoke-stained colors, or lost
+themselves in the strange shadows of the altar, there rose in their
+hearts a longing which could not be suppressed.
+
+In the meantime those from the tavern continued their scandalous
+behavior upon the high altar. A huge, massive butcher among them, a
+young man, had taken off his white apron and tied it around his neck,
+so that it hung down his back like a surplice, and he celebrated mass
+with the wildest and maddest words, full of obscenity and blasphemy.
+An oldish little fellow with a fat belly, active and nimble in spite
+of his weight, with a face like a skinned pumpkin was the sacristan
+and responded with the most frivolous refrains. He kneeled down and
+genuflected and turned his back to the altar and rang the bell as
+though it were a jester's and swung the censer round like a wheel. The
+others lay drunk on the steps at full length, bellowing with laughter
+and hiccoughing with drunkenness.
+
+The whole church laughed and howled and mocked at the strangers. They
+called out to them to pay close attention so that they might know what
+the people thought of their God, here in Old Bergamo. For it was not
+so much their wish to insult God that made them rejoice in the tumult;
+but they felt satisfaction in knowing that each of their blasphemies
+was a sting in the hearts of these holy people.
+
+They stopped in the center of the nave and groaned with pain, their
+hearts boiling with hatred and vengeance. They lifted their eyes and
+hands to God, and prayed that His vengeance might fall because of the
+mock done to Him here in His own house. They would gladly go to
+destruction together with these fool-hardy, if only He would show His
+might. Joyously they would let themselves be crushed beneath His heel,
+if only He would triumph, that cries of terror, despair, and
+repentance, that were too late, might rise up toward Him from these
+impious lips.
+
+And they struck up a miserere. Every note of it sounded like a cry for
+the rain of fire that overwhelmed Sodom, for the strength which Samson
+possessed when he pulled down the columns in the house of the
+Philistines. They prayed with song and with words; they denuded their
+shoulders and prayed with their scourges. They lay kneeling row after
+row, stripped to their waist, and swung the sharp-pointed and knotted
+cords down on their bleeding backs. Wildly and madly they beat
+themselves so that the blood clung in drops on their hissing whips.
+Every blow was a sacrifice to God. Would that they might beat
+themselves in still another way, would that they might tear themselves
+into a thousand bloody shreds here before His eyes! This body with
+which they had sinned against His commandments had to be punished,
+tortured, annihilated, that He might see how hateful it was to them,
+that He might see how they became like unto dogs in order to please
+Him, lower than dogs before His will, the lowliest of vermin that ate
+the dust beneath the soles of His feet! Blow upon blow--until their
+arms dropped or until cramps turned them to knots. There they lay row
+on row with eyes gleaming with madness, with foam round their mouths,
+the blood trickling down their flesh.
+
+And those who watched this suddenly felt their hearts throb, noticed
+how hotness rose into their cheeks and how their breathing grew
+difficult. It seemed as if something cold was growing out beneath
+their scalps, and their knees grew weak. It seized hold of them; in
+their brains was a little spot of madness which understood this
+frenzy.
+
+To feel themselves the slaves of a harsh and powerful deity, to thrust
+themselves down before His feet; to be His, not in gentle piety, not
+in the inactivity of silent prayer, but madly, in a frenzy of
+self-humiliation, in blood, and wailing, beneath wet gleaming
+scourges--this they were capable of understanding. Even the butcher
+became silent, and the toothless philosophers lowered their gray heads
+before the eyes that roved about.
+
+And it became quite still within the church; only a slight wave-like
+motion swept through the mob.
+
+Then one from among the strangers, a young monk, rose up and spoke. He
+was pale as a sheet of linen, his black eyes glowed like coals, which
+are just going to die out, and the gloomy, pain-hardened lines around
+his mouth were as if carven in wood with a knife, and not like the
+folds in the face of a human being.
+
+He raised his thin, sickly hands toward heaven in prayer, and the
+sleeves of his robe slipped down over his lean, white arms.
+
+Then he spoke.
+
+Of hell he spoke, that it is infinite as heaven is infinite, of the
+lonely world of torments which each one of the condemned must endure
+and fill with his wails. Seas of sulphur were there, fields of
+scorpions, flames that wrap themselves round a person like a cloak,
+and silent flames that have hardened and plunged into the body like a
+spear twisted round in a wound.
+
+It was quite still; breathlessly they listened to his words, for he
+spoke as if he had seen it with his own eyes, and they asked
+themselves: is he one of the condemned, sent up to us from the caverns
+of hell to bear witness before us?
+
+Then he preached for a long time concerning the law and the power of
+the law, that its every title must be fulfilled, and that every
+transgression of which they were guilty would be counted against them
+by grain and ounce. "But Christ died for our sins, say ye, and we are
+no longer subject to the law. But I say unto you, hell will not be
+cheated of a single one of you, and not a single iron tooth of the
+torture wheel of hell shall pass beside your flesh. You build upon the
+cross of Golgotha, come, come! Come and look at it! I shall lead you
+straight to its foot. It was on a Friday, as you know, that they
+thrust Him out of one of their gates and laid the heavier end of a
+cross upon His shoulders. They made Him bear it to a barren and
+unfruitful hill without the city, and in crowds they followed Him,
+whirling up the dust with their many feet so that it seemed a red
+cloud was over the place. And they tore the garments from Him and
+bared His body, as the lords of the law have a malefactor exposed
+before the eyes of all, so that all may see the flesh that is to be
+committed to torture. And they flung Him on the cross and stretched
+Him out and they drove a nail of iron through each of His resistant
+hands and a nail through His crossed feet. With clubs they struck the
+nails till they were in to the heads. And they raised upright the
+cross in a hole in the ground, but it would not stand firm and
+straight, and they moved it from one side to the other, and drove
+wedges and posts all around, and those who did this pulled down the
+brims of their hats so that the blood from His hands might not drop
+into their eyes. And He on the cross looked down on the soldiers, who
+were casting lots for His unstitched garment and down on the whole
+turbulent mob, for whose sake He suffered, that they might be saved;
+and in all the multitude there was not one pitiful eye.
+
+"And those below looked up toward Him, who hung there suffering and
+weak; they looked at the tablet above His head, whereon was written
+'King of the Jews,' and they reviled Him and called out to Him: 'Thou
+that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save
+thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.' Then
+He, the only begotten Son of God was taken with anger, and saw that
+they were not worthy of salvation, these mobs that fill the earth. He
+tore free His feet over the heads of the nails, and He clenched His
+hands round the nails and tore them out, so that the arms of the cross
+bent like a bow. Then He leaped down upon the earth and snatched up
+His garment so that the dice rolled down the slope of Golgotha, and
+flung it round himself with the wrath of a king and ascended into
+heaven. And the cross stood empty, and the great work of redemption
+was never fulfilled. There is no mediator between God and us; there is
+no Jesus who died for us on the cross; there is no Jesus who died for
+us on the cross, there is no Jesus who died for us on the cross!"
+
+He was silent.
+
+As he uttered the last words he leaned forward over the multitude and
+with his lips and hands hurled the last words over their heads. A
+groan of agony went through the church, and in the corners they had
+begun to sob.
+
+Then the butcher pushed forward with raised, threatening hands, pale
+as a corpse, and shouted: "Monk, monk, you must nail Him on the cross
+again, you must!" and behind him there was a hoarse, hissing sound:
+"Yea, yea, crucify, crucify Him!" And from all mouths, threatening,
+beseeching, peremptory, rose a storm of cries up to the vaulted roof:
+"Crucify, crucify Him!"
+
+And clear and serene a single quivering voice: "Crucify Him!"
+
+But the monk looked down over this wave of outstretched hands, upon
+these distorted faces with the dark openings of screaming lips, where
+rows of teeth gleamed white like the teeth of enraged beasts of prey,
+and in a moment of ecstasy he spread out his arms toward heaven and
+laughed. Then he stepped down, and his people raised their banners
+with the rain of fire and their empty black crosses, and crowded their
+way out of the church and again passed singing across the square and
+again through the opening of the tower-gate.
+
+And those of Old Bergamo stared after them, as they went down the
+mountain. The steep road, lined by walls, was misty in the light of
+the sun setting beyond the plain, but on the red wall encircling the
+city the shadows of the great crosses which swayed from side to side
+in the crowd stood out black and sharply outlined.
+
+Further away sounded the singing; one or another of the banners still
+gleamed red out of the new town's smoke-blackened void; then they
+disappeared in the sun-lit plain.
+
+
+
+
+
+THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES
+
+
+There should have been roses
+
+Of the large, pale yellow ones.
+
+And they should hang in abundant clusters over the garden-wall,
+scattering their tender leaves carelessly down into the wagon-tracks
+on the road: a distinguished glimmer of all the exuberant wealth of
+flowers within.
+
+And they should have the delicate, fleeting fragrance of roses, which
+cannot be seized and is like that of unknown fruits of which the
+senses tell legends in their dreams.
+
+Or should they have been red, the roses?
+
+Perhaps.
+
+They might be of the small, round, hardy roses, and they would have to
+hang down in slender twining branches with smooth leaves, red and
+fresh, and like a salutation or a kiss thrown to the wanderer, who is
+walking, tired and dusty, in the middle of the road, glad that he now
+is only half a mile from Rome.
+
+Of what may he be thinking? What may be his life?
+
+And now the houses hide him, they hide everything on that side. They
+hide one another and the road and the city, but on the other side
+there is still a distant view. There the road swings in an indolent,
+slow curve down toward the river, down toward the mournful bridge. And
+behind this lies the immense Campagna. The gray and the green of such
+large plains. ... It is as if the weariness of many tedious miles rose
+out of them and settled with a heavy weight upon one, and made one
+feel lonely and forsaken, and filled one with desires and yearning. So
+it is much better that one should take one's ease here in a corner
+between high garden-walls, where the air lies tepid and soft and
+still--to sit on the sunny side, where a bench curves into a niche of
+the wall, to sit there end gaze upon the shimmering green acanthus in
+the roadside ditches, upon the silver-spotted thistles, and the
+pale-yellow autumn flowers.
+
+The roses should have been on the long gray wall opposite, a wall full
+of lizard holes and chinks with withered grass; and they should have
+peeped out at the very spot where the long, monotonous flatness is
+broken by a large, swelling basket of beautiful old wrought iron, a
+latticed extension, which forms a spacious balcony, reaching higher
+than the breast. It must have been refreshing to go up there when one
+was weary of the enclosed garden.
+
+And this they often were.
+
+They hated the magnificent old villa, which is said to be within, with
+its marble stair-cases and its tapestries of coarse weave; and the
+ancient trees with their proud large crowns, pines and laurels, ashes,
+cypresses, and oaks. During all the period of their growth they were
+hated with the hatred which restless hearts feel for that which is
+commonplace, trivial, uneventful, for that which stands still and
+therefore seems hostile.
+
+But from the balcony one could at least range outside with one's eyes,
+and that is why they stood there, one generation after the other, and
+all stared into the distance, each one with pro and each one with his
+con. Arms adorned with golden bracelets have lain on the edge of the
+iron railing and many a silk-covered knee has pressed against the
+black arabesques, the while colored ribbons waved from all its points
+as signals of love and rendezvous. Heavy, pregnant housewives have
+also stood here and sent impossible messages out into the distance.
+Large, opulent, deserted women, pale as hatred . . . could one but
+kill with a thought or open hell with a wish! . . . Women and men! It
+is always women and men, even these emaciated white virgin souls which
+press against the black latticework like a flock of lost doves and cry
+out, "Take us!" to imagined, noble birds of prey.
+
+One might imagine a _proverbe_ here.
+
+The scenery would be very suitable for a _proverbe_.
+
+The wall there, just as it is; only the road would have to be wider
+and expand into a circular space. In its center there would have to be
+an old, modest fountain of yellowish tuff and with a bowl of broken
+porphyry. As figure for the fountain a dolphin with a broken-off tail,
+and one of the nostrils stopped up. From the other the fine jet of
+water rises. On one side of the fountain a semicircular bench of tuff
+and terracotta.
+
+The loose, grayish white dust; the reddish, molded stone, the hewn,
+yellowish, porous tuff; the dark, polished porphyry, gleaming with
+moisture, and the living, tiny, silvery jet of water: material and
+colors harmonize rather well.
+
+The characters: two pages.
+
+Not of a definite, historical period, for the pages of reality in no
+way correspond with the pages of the ideal. The pages here, however,
+are pages such as dream in pictures and books. Accordingly it is
+merely the costume which has a historical effect.
+
+The actress who is to represent the youngest of the pages wears thin
+silk which clings closely and is pale-blue, and has heraldic lilies of
+the palest gold woven into it. This and as much lace as can possibly
+be employed are the most distinctive feature of the costume. It does
+not aim at any definite century, but seeks to emphasize the youthful
+voluptuousness of the figure, the magnificent blond hair, and the
+clear complexion.
+
+She is married, but it lasted only a year and a half, when she was
+divorced from her husband, and she is said to have acted in anything
+but a proper fashion towards him. And that may well be, but it is
+impossible to imagine anything more innocent in appearance than she.
+That is to say, it is not the gracious elemental innocence which has
+such attractive qualities; but it is rather the cultivated, mature
+innocence, in which no one can be mistaken, and which goes straight to
+the heart. It captivates one with all the power which something that
+has reached completion only can have.
+
+The second actress in the _proverbe_ is slender and melancholy. She is
+unmarried and has no past, absolutely none. There is no one who knows
+the least thing about her. Yet these finely delineated, almost lean
+limbs, and these amber-pale, regular features are vocal. The face is
+shaded by raven-black curls, and borne on a strong masculine neck. Its
+mocking smile, in which there is also hungry desire, allures. The eyes
+are unfathomable and their depths are as soft and luminous as the dark
+petals in the flower of the pansy.
+
+The costume is of pale-yellow, in the manner of a corselet with wide,
+up-and-down stripes, a stiff ruff and buttons of topaz. There is a
+narrow frilled stripe on the edge of the collar, and also on the
+close-fitting sleeves. The trunks are short, wide-slashed, and of a
+dead-green color with pale purple in the slashes. The hose is
+gray.--Those of the blue page, of course, are pure white.--Both wear
+barrets.
+
+Such is their appearance.
+
+And now the yellow one is standing up on the balcony, leaning over the
+edge, the while the blue is sitting on the bench down by the fountain,
+comfortably leaning back, with his ring-covered hands clasped around
+one knee. He stares dreamily out upon the Campagna.
+
+Now he speaks:
+
+"No, nothing exists in the world but women!--I don't understand it ...
+there must be a magic in the lines out of which they are created,
+merely when I see them pass: Isaura, Rosamond, and Donna Lisa, and the
+others. When I see how their garment clings around their figure and
+how it drapes as they walk, it is as if my heart drank the blood out
+of all my arteries, and left my head empty and without thoughts and my
+limbs trembling and without strength. It is as though my whole being
+were gathered into a single, tremulous, uneasy breath of desire. What
+is it? Why is it? It is as if happiness went invisibly past my door,
+and I had to snatch it and hold it close, and make it my own. It is so
+wonderful--and yet I cannot seize it, for I cannot see it."
+
+Then the other page speaks from his balcony:
+
+"And if now you sat at her feet, Lorenzo, and lost in her thoughts she
+had forgotten why she had called you, and you sat silent and waiting,
+and her lovely face were bent over you further from you in the clouds
+of its dreams than the star in the heavens, and yet so near you that
+every expression was surrendered to your admiration, every
+beauty-engendered line, every tint of the skin in its white stillness
+as well as in its soft rosy glow--would it not then be as if she who
+is sitting there belonged to another world than the one in which you
+kneel in adoration! Would it not be as if hers were another world, as
+if another world surrounded her, in which her festively garbed
+thoughts are going out to meet some goal which is unknown to you? Her
+love is far away from all that is yours, from your world, from
+everything. She dreams of far distances and her desires are of far
+distances. And it seems as if not the slightest space could be found
+for you in her thoughts, however ardently you might desire to
+sacrifice yourself for her, your life, your all, to the end that that
+might be between her and you which is hardly a faint glimmer of
+companionship, much less a belonging together."
+
+"Yes, you know that it is thus. But. . . ." Now a greenish-yellow
+lizard runs along the edge of the balcony. It stops and looks about
+The tail moves. . . .
+
+If one could only find a stone. . .
+
+Look out, my four-legged friend.
+
+No, you cannot hit them, they hear the stone long before it reaches
+them. Anyhow he got frightened.
+
+But the pages disappeared at the same moment.
+
+The blue one had been sitting there so prettily. And in her eyes lay
+a yearning which was genuine and unconscious and in her movements a
+nervousness that was full of presentiment. Around her mouth was a
+faint expression of pain, when she spoke, and even more when she
+listened to the soft, somewhat low voice of the yellow page, which
+spoke to her from the balcony in words that were provocative and at
+the same time caressing, that had a note of mockery and a note of
+sympathy.
+
+And doesn't it seem now as if both were still here!
+
+They are there, and have carried on the action of the _proverbe_,
+while they were gone. They have spoken of that vague young love which
+never finds peace but unceasingly flits through all the lands of
+foreboding and through all the heavens of hope; this love that is
+dying to satisfy itself in the powerful, fervent glow of a single
+great emotion! Of this they spoke; the younger one in bitter
+complaint, the elder one with regretful tenderness. Now the latter
+said--the yellow one to the blue--that he should not so impatiently
+demand the love of a woman to capture him and hold him bound.
+
+"For believe me," he said, "the love that you will find in the clasp of
+two white arms, with two eyes as your immediate heaven and the certain
+bliss of two lips--this love lies nigh unto the earth and unto the
+dust. It has exchanged the eternal freedom of dreams for a happiness
+which is measured by hours and which hourly grows older. For even if
+it always grows young again, yet each time it loses one of the rays
+which in a halo surround the eternal youth of dreams. No, you are
+happy."
+
+"No, you are happy," answered the blue one, "I would give a world, were
+I as you are."
+
+And the blue one rises, and begins to walk down the road to the
+Campagna, and the yellow one looks after him with a sad smile and says
+to himself: "No, he is happy!"
+
+But far down the road the blue one turns round once more toward the
+balcony, and raising his barret calls: "No, you are happy!"
+
+* * *
+
+There should have been roses.
+
+And now a breath of wind might come and shake a rain of rose-leaves
+from the laden branches, and whirl them after the departing page.
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. FONSS
+
+
+In the graceful pleasure-gardens behind the Pope's ancient palace in
+Avignon stands a bench from which one can overlook the Rhone, the
+flowery banks of the Durance, hills and fields, and a part of the
+town.
+
+One October afternoon two Danish ladies were seated on this bench,
+Mrs. Fonss, a widow, and her daughter Elinor.
+
+Although they had been here several days and were already familiar
+with the view before them, they nevertheless sat there and marveled
+that this was the way the Provence looked.
+
+And this really was the Provence! A clayey river with flakes of muddy
+sand, and endless shores of stone-gray gravel; pale-brown fields
+without a blade of grass, pale-brown slopes, pale-brown hills and
+dust-colored roads, and here and there near the white houses, groups
+of black trees, absolutely black bushes and trees. Over all this hung
+a whitish sky, quivering with light, which made everything still
+paler, still dryer and more wearily light; never a glimmer of
+luxuriant, satiated hues, nothing but hungry, sun-parched colors; not
+a sound in the air, not a scythe passing through the grass, not a
+wagon rattling over the roads; and the town stretching out on both
+sides was also as if built of silence with all the streets still as at
+noon time, with all the houses deaf and dumb, every shutter closed,
+every blind drawn, each and every one; houses that could neither see
+nor hear.
+
+Mrs. Fonss viewed this lifeless monotony with a resigned smile, but it
+made Elinor visibly nervous; not actively nervous as in the case of
+annoyance, but mournful and weary, as one often becomes after many
+days of rain, when all one's gloomy thoughts seem to pour down upon
+one with the rain; or as at the idiotically consoling tick-tack of a
+clock, when one sits and grows incurably tired of one's self; or at
+watching the flowers of the wall-paper, when the same chain of
+worn-out dreams clanks about against one's will in the brain and the
+links are joined and come apart and in a stifling endlessness are
+united again. It actually had a physical effect upon her, this
+landscape, almost causing her to faint. To-day everything seemed to
+have conspired with the memories of a hope which was dead and of
+sweet and lively dreams which had become disagreeable and nauseous;
+dreams which caused her to redden when she thought of them and which
+yet she could not forget. And what had all that to do with the region
+here? The blow had fallen upon her far from here amid the surroundings
+of bar home, by the edge of a sound with changing waters, under pale
+green beech-trees. Yet it hovered on the lips of every pale brown
+hill, and every green-shuttered house stood there and held silence
+concerning it.
+
+It was the old sorrow for young hearts which had touched her. She had
+loved a man and believed in his love for her, and suddenly he had
+chosen some one else. Why? For what reason? What had she done to him?
+Had she changed? Was she no longer the same? And all the eternal
+questions over again. She had not said a word about it to her mother,
+but her mother had understood every bit of it, and had been very
+concerned about her. She could have screamed at this thoughtfulness
+which knew and yet should not have known; her mother understood this
+also, and for that reason they had gone traveling.
+
+The whole purpose of the journey was only that she might forget.
+
+Mrs. Fonss did not need to make her daughter feel uneasy by
+scrutinizing her face in order to know where her thoughts were. All
+she had to do was to watch the nervous little hand which lay beside
+her and with such futile despair stroked the bars of the bench; they
+changed their position every moment like a fever-patient tossing from
+side to side in his hot bed. When she did this and looked at the hand,
+she also knew how life-weary the young eyes were that stared out into
+the distance, how pain quivered through every feature of the delicate
+face, how pale it was beneath its suffering, and how the blue veins
+showed at the temples beneath the soft skin.
+
+She was very sorry for her little girl, and would have loved to have
+had her lean against her breast, and to whisper down to her all the
+words of comfort she could think of, but she had the conviction that
+there were sorrows which could only die away in secret and which must
+not be expressed in loud words, not even between a mother and
+daughter. Otherwise some day under new circumstances, when everything
+is building for joy and happiness, these words may become an obstacle,
+something that weighs heavily and takes away freedom. The person who
+has spoken hears their whisper in the soul of the other, imagines them
+turned over and judged in the thoughts of the other.
+
+Then, too, she was afraid of doing injury to her daughter if she made
+confidences too easy. She did not wish to have Elinor blush before
+her; she did want, however much of a relief it might be, to help her
+over the humiliation, which lies in opening the inmost recesses of
+one's soul to the gaze of another. On the contrary the more difficult
+it became for both, the more she was pleased, that the aristocracy of
+soul which she herself possessed was repeated in her young daughter in
+a certain healthy inflexibility.
+
+Once upon a time--it was a time many, many years ago, when she herself
+had been an eighteen-year old girl, she had loved with all her soul,
+with every sense in her body, every living hope, every thought. It was
+not to be, could not be. He had had nothing to offer except his
+loyalty which would have involved the test of an endlessly long
+engagement, and there were circumstances in her home which could not
+wait. So she had taken the one whom they had given her, the one who
+was master over these circumstances. They were married, then came
+children: Tage, the son, who was with her in Avignon, and the
+daughter, who sat beside her, Everything had turned out so much better
+than she could have hoped for, both easier and more friendly. Eight
+years it lasted, then the husband died, and she mourned him with a
+sincere heart. She had learned to love his fine, thin-blooded nature
+which with a tense, egotistic, almost morbid love loved whatever
+belonged to it by ties of relationship or family, and cared nought for
+anything in all the great world outside, except for what they thought,
+what their opinion was--nothing else. After her husband's death she
+had lived chiefly for her children, but she had not devoted herself
+exclusively to them; she had taken part in social life, as was natural
+for so young and well-to-do a widow; and now her son was twenty-one
+years old and she lacked not many days of forty. But she was still
+beautiful. There was not a gray thread in her heavy dark-blonde hair,
+not a wrinkle round her large, courageous eyes, and her figure was
+slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine lines of her
+features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored complexion
+which the years had given her; the smile of her widely sweeping lips
+was very sweet; an almost enigmatical youth in the dewy luminosity of
+her brown eyes softened and mellowed everything again. And yet she
+also had the round fullness of cheek, the strong-willed chin of a
+mature woman.
+
+"That surely is Tage coming," said Mrs. Fonss to her daughter when she
+heard laughter and some Danish exclamations on the other side of the
+thick hedge of hornbeam.
+
+Elinor pulled herself together.
+
+And it was Tage, Tage and Kastager, a wholesale merchant from
+Copenhagen, with his sister and daughter; Mrs. Kastager lay ill at
+home in the hotel.
+
+Mrs. Fonss and Elinor made room for the two ladies; the men tried for
+a moment to converse standing, but were lured by the low wall of stone
+which surrounded the spot. They sat there and said only what was
+absolutely necessary, for the newcomers were tired from a little
+railway excursion they had taken into the Provence with its blooming
+roses.
+
+"Hello!" cried Tage, striking his light trousers with the flat of his
+hand. "look!"
+
+They looked.
+
+Out in the brown landscape appeared a cloud of dust, over it a mantle
+of dust, and between the two they caught sight of a horse. "That's the
+Englishman, I told you about, who came the other day," said Tage,
+turning toward his mother.
+
+"Did you ever see any one ride like that?" he asked, turning toward
+Kastager, "he reminds me of a gaucho."
+
+"Mazeppa?" said Kastager, questioningly.
+
+The horseman disappeared.
+
+Then they all rose, and set out for the hotel.
+
+They had met the Kastagers in Belfort, and since they were pursuing
+the same itinerary through southern France and along the Riviera, they
+for the time being traveled together. Here in Avignon both families
+had made a halt; Kastager because his wife had developed a varicose
+vein, the Fonss' because Elinor obviously needed a rest.
+
+Tage was delighted at this living together. Day by day he fell more
+and more incurably in love with the pretty Ida Kastager. Mrs. Fonss
+did not especially like this. Though Tage was very self-reliant and
+mature for his age, there was no reason for a hasty engagement--and
+there was Mr. Kastager! Ida was a splendid little girl, Mrs. Kastager
+was a very well-bred woman of excellent family, and Kastager himself
+was capable, rich, and honest, but there was a hint of the absurd
+about him. A smile came upon people's lips and a twinkle into their
+eyes when any one mentioned Mr. Kastager.
+
+The reason for this was that he was full of fire and given to
+extraordinary enthusiasms; he was frankly ingenuous, boisterous, and
+communicative, and nowadays it requires a great deal of tact to be
+lavish with enthusiasm. But Mrs. Fonss could not bear the thought
+that Tage's father-in-law should be mentioned with a twinkle in the
+eye and a smile round the mouth, and for that reason she exhibited a
+certain coldness toward the family to the great sorrow of the enamored
+Tage.
+
+* * *
+
+On the morning of the following day Tage and his mother had gone to
+look at the little museum of the town. They found the gate open, but
+the doors to the collection locked; ringing the bell proved fruitless.
+The gateway, however, gave admission to the not specially large court
+which was surrounded by a freshly whitewashed arcade whose short squat
+columns had black iron bars between them.
+
+They walked about and looked at the objects placed along the wall:
+Roman sepulchral monuments, pieces of sarcophagi, a headless draped
+figure, the dorsal vertebra of a whale, and a series of architectural
+details.
+
+On all the objects of interest there were fresh traces of the masons'
+brushes.
+
+By now they had come back to their starting point.
+
+Tage ran up the stairs to see if there might not be people somewhere
+in the house, and Mrs. Fonss in the meantime walked up and down the
+arcade.
+
+As she was on the turn toward the gate a tall man with a bearded,
+tanned face, appeared at the end of the passage directly in front of
+her. He had a guide-book in his hand; he listened for something, and
+then looked forward, straight at her.
+
+The Englishman of yesterday immediately came to her mind.
+
+"Pardon me?" he began interrogatively, and bowed.
+
+"I am a stranger," Mrs. Fonss replied, "nobody seems to be at home, but
+my son has just run upstairs to see whether. . . ."
+
+These words were exchanged in French.
+
+At this moment Tage arrived. "I have been everywhere," he said, "even
+in the living quarters, but didn't find as much as a cat."
+
+"I hear," said the Englishman, this time in Danish, "that I have the
+pleasure of being with fellow-countrymen."
+
+He bowed again and retreated a couple of steps, as if to indicate that
+he had merely said this to let them know that he understood what they
+were saying. Suddenly he stepped closer than before with an intent,
+eager expression on his face, and said to Mrs. Fonss, "is it possible
+that you and I are old acquaintances?"
+
+"Are you Emil Thorbrogger?" exclaimed Mrs. Fonss, and held out her
+hand.
+
+He seized it. "Yes, I am he," he said gayly, "and you are she?"
+
+His eyes almost filled with tears as he looked at her.
+
+Mrs Fonss introduced Tage as her son.
+
+Tage had never in his life heard mention of Thorbrogger, but that was
+not his thoughts; he thought only of the fact that this gaucho turned
+out to be a Dane; when a pause set in, and some one had to say
+something he could not help exclaiming, "and I who said yesterday that
+you reminded me of a gaucho!"
+
+"Well," replied Thorbrogger, "that wasn't far from the truth; for
+twenty-one years I have lived in the plains of La Plata, and in those
+years certainly spent more time on horse-back than on foot."
+
+And now he had come back to Europe!
+
+Yes, he had sold his land and his sheep and had come back to have a
+look around in the old world where he belonged, but to his shame he
+had to confess that he often found it very much of a bore to travel
+about merely for pleasure.
+
+Perhaps, he was homesick for the prairies?
+
+No, he had never had any special feeling for places and countries; he
+thought it was only his daily work which he missed.
+
+In that way they went on talking for a while. At last the custodian
+appeared, hot and out of breath, with heads of lettuce under his arms
+and a bunch of scarlet tomatoes in his hand, and they were admitted
+into the small, stuffy collection of paintings, where they gained only
+the vaguest impression of the yellow thunder-clouds and black waters
+of old Vernet, but on the contrary told each other with considerable
+detail of their lives and the happenings during all the years since
+they had parted.
+
+For it was he whom she had loved, at the time when she married
+another. In the days which now followed they were much together, and
+the others thinking that such old friends must have much to say to
+each other left them often alone. In those days both soon noticed that
+however much they might have changed during the course of the years,
+their hearts had forgotten nothing.
+
+Perhaps it was he who first became aware of this, for all the
+uncertainty of youth, its sentimentality and its elegiac mood came
+upon him simultaneously, and he suffered under it. It seemed out of
+place to the mature man, that he should so suddenly be robbed of his
+peace of life and the self-possession which he had acquired during the
+course of time, and he wanted his love to bear a different stamp,
+wished it to be graver, more subdued.
+
+She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a
+fountain of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open
+again and begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in
+crying, and these tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if
+she had become more precious, and everything had become more precious
+to her--in short it was a feeling of youth after all.
+
+* * *
+
+On an evening of one of these days Mrs. Fonss sat alone at home,
+Elinor had gone to bed early, and Tage had gone to the theater with
+the Kastagers. She had been sitting in the dull hotel-room and had
+dreamed in the half light of a couple of candles. At length her dreams
+had come to a stop after their incessant coming and going; she had
+grown tired, but with that mild and smiling weariness which wraps
+itself round us, when happy thoughts are falling asleep in our mind.
+
+She could not go on sitting here, staring in front of her, the whole
+evening long without so much as a book. It was still over an hour
+before the theater let out. So she began to walk up and down the room,
+stood in front of the mirror, and arranged her hair.
+
+She would go down into the reading-room, and look over the illustrated
+papers. At this time of the evening it was always empty there.
+
+She threw a large black lace shawl over her head and went down.
+
+The room was empty.
+
+The small room, overfull with furniture, was brilliantly illuminated
+by half a dozen large gas-flames; it was hot and the air was almost
+painfully dry.
+
+She drew the shawl down around the shoulders.
+
+The white papers there on the table, the portfolios with their large
+gilt letters, the empty plush chairs, the regular squares of the
+carpet and the even folds of the rep curtains--all this looked dull
+under the strong light.
+
+She was still dreaming, and dreaming she stood, and listened to the
+long-drawn singing of the gas-flames.
+
+The heat was such as almost to make one dizzy.
+
+To support herself she slowly reached out for a large, heavy bronze
+vase which stood on a bracket fixed in the wall, and grasped the
+flower-decorated edge.
+
+It was comfortable to stand thus, and the bronze was gratefully cool
+to the touch of her hand. But as she stood thus, there came another
+feeling also. She began to feel a contentment in her limbs, in her
+body, because of the plastically beautiful position which she had
+assumed. She was conscious of how becoming it was to her, of the
+beauty which was hers at the moment, and even of the physical
+sensation of harmony. All this gathered in a feeling of triumph, and
+streamed through her like a strange festive exultation.
+
+She felt herself so strong at this hour, and life lay before her like
+a great, radiant day; no longer like a day declining toward the calm,
+melancholy hours of dusk. It seemed to her like an open, wide-awake
+space of time, with hot pulses throbbing every second, with joyous
+light, with energy and swiftness and an infinity without and within.
+And she was thrilled with the fullness of life, and longed for it with
+the feverish eagerness with which a traveler sets out on a journey.
+
+For a long time she stood thus, wrapped in her thoughts, forgetting
+everything around her. Then suddenly as if she heard the silence in
+the room and the long-drawn singing of the gas-flames, she let her
+hand drop from the vase and sat down by the table and began to turn
+over the leaves of a portfolio.
+
+She heard steps, passing by the door, heard them turn back, and saw
+Thorbrogger enter.
+
+They exchanged a few words but as she seemed occupied with the
+pictures, he also began to look at the magazines that lay in front of
+him. They, however, did not interest him very much for when a little
+later she looked up, she met his eyes which rested searchingly upon
+her.
+
+He looked as if he were just about to speak, and there was a nervous,
+decided expression round his mouth, which told her so definitely what
+his words would be that she reddened,
+
+Instinctively, as if she wished to hold back these words, she held out
+a picture across the table and pointed at some horsemen from the
+pampas, who were throwing lassoes over wild steers.
+
+He was just about to make some jesting remark about the draftsman's
+naive conception of the art of throwing a lasso. It was so enticingly
+easy to speak of this rather than of that which he had on his mind.
+Resolutely, however, he pushed the picture aside, leaned a little ways
+across the table and said,
+
+"I have thought a great deal about you since we met again; I have
+always thought a great deal about you, both long ago in Denmark and
+over where I was. And I have always loved you, and if it sometimes
+seems to me that it is only now that I really love you since we have
+met again, it is not true, however great my love may be, for I have
+always loved you, I have always loved you. And if it should happen now
+that you would become mine--you cannot imagine what that would mean to
+me, if you, who were taken from me for so many years, were to come
+back."
+
+He was silent for a moment, then he rose, and came closer to her.
+
+"Oh, do say a word! I am standing here talking blindly. I speak to you
+as to an interpreter, a stranger, who has to repeat what I am saying
+to the heart I am speaking to. . I don't know ... to stand here and
+weigh my words ... I don't know, how far or how near. I dare not put
+into words the adoration which fills me--or dare I?"
+
+He let himself sink down on a chair by her side.
+
+"Oh, if I might, if I didn't have to be afraid--is it true! Oh, God
+bless you, Paula."
+
+"There is nothing now that need keep us apart any longer," said she,
+with her hand in his, "whatever may happen I have the right to be
+happy once, to live fully in accordance with my being, my desire, and
+my dreams. I have never renounced. Even though happiness was not my
+share, I have never believed that life was nothing but grayness and
+duty. I knew that there are people who are happy."
+
+Silently he kissed her hand.
+
+"I know," she said sadly, "that those who will judge me least harshly
+will not envy me the happiness which I shall have in having your love,
+but they will also say that I should be satisfied."
+
+"But that would not be enough for me, and you have not the right to
+send me away."
+
+"No," she said, "no."
+
+A little later she went upstairs to Elinor.
+
+Elinor slept.
+
+Mrs. Fonss sat down by her bed and looked at her pale child whose
+features she could only dimly distinguish under the faint yellow glow
+of the night lamp.
+
+For Elinor's sake they would have to wait. In a few days they would
+separate from Thorbrogger, go to Nice, and stay there by themselves.
+During the winter she would live only that Elinor might regain her
+health. But to-morrow she would tell the children what had happened
+and what was to be expected. However they might receive the news it
+was impossible for her to live with them day in, day out, and yet be
+almost separated from them by a secret like this. And they would need
+time to get used to the idea, because it would mean a separation
+between them, whether greater or smaller would depend on the children
+themselves. The arrangement of their lives in so far as it concerned
+her and him was to be left entirely to them. She would demand nothing.
+It was for them to _give_.
+
+She heard Tage's step in the sitting-room and went to him.
+
+He was so radiant and at the same time so nervous that Mrs. Fonss knew
+something had happened, and she had an intuition of what it was.
+
+He sought for an opening to unburden his heart and sat and talked
+absent-mindedly of the theater. Not until his mother went over to him
+and put her hand on his forehead, forcing him to look at her, was he
+able to tell her that he had wooed Ida Kastager and gained her "yes."
+
+They talked about it for a long time, but throughout Mrs. Fonss felt a
+coldness in whatever she said, which she could not overcome. She was
+afraid of being too sympathetic with Tage on account of her own
+emotion. Besides, in the uncertain state of her mind she was
+distrustful of the idea that there might be even the faintest shadow
+of an association between her kindness of to-night and what she was to
+tell to-morrow. .
+
+Tage, however, did not notice any coolness.
+
+Mrs. Fonss did not sleep much that night; there were too many thoughts
+to keep her awake. She thought how strange it was that he and she
+should have met and that when they met they should love each other as
+in the old days.
+
+It was long ago, especially for her; she was no longer, could no
+longer, be young. And this would show; and he would be thoughtful with
+her, and grow used to the fact that it was a long time since she was
+eighteen years old. But she felt young, she was so in many respects,
+and yet all the while she was conscious of her years. She saw it very
+clearly, in a thousand movements, in expressions and gestures, in the
+way in which she would respond to a hint, in the fashion in which she
+would smile at an answer. Ten times a day she would betray her age,
+because she lacked the courage to be outwardly as young as she was
+within.
+
+And thoughts came and thoughts went, but through it all the same
+question always rose, as to what her children would say.
+
+On the forenoon of the following day she put the answer to the test.
+
+They were in the sitting-room.
+
+She said that she had something important to tell them, something that
+would mean a great change in their lives, something that would be
+unexpected news to them. She asked them to listen as calmly as they
+could, and not to let themselves be carried away by the first
+impression into thoughtlessness. They must know that what she was
+about to tell them was definitely decided, and that nothing they might
+say could make her alter her decision.
+
+"I am going to marry again," she said, and told them of how she had
+loved Thorbrogger, before she had known their father; how she had
+become separated from him, and how they had now met again.
+
+Elinor cried, but Tage had risen from his seat, utterly bewildered. He
+then went close to her, kneeled down before her, and seized her hand.
+Sobbing, half-stifled with emotion, he pressed it against his cheek
+with infinite tenderness, with an expression of helplessness in every
+line of his face.
+
+"Oh, but mother, dearest mother, what have we done to you, have we not
+always loved you, have we not always, both when we were with you and
+when we were away from from you, wanted you as the best thing we
+possessed in the world? We have never known father except through you;
+it was you who taught us to love him, and if Elinor and I are so close
+to each other, is it not because day after day you always pointed out
+to each of us what was best in the other? And has it not been thus
+with every other person to whom we became attached, do we not owe
+everything to you? We owe everything to you, and we worship you,
+mother, if you only knew. . . . Oh, you cannot imagine, how much we
+want your love, want you beyond all bounds and limits, but there again
+you have taught us to restrain our love, and we never dare to come as
+close to your heart as we should like. And now you say that you are
+going to leave us entirely, and put us to one side. But that is
+impossible. Only one who wanted to do us the greatest harm in the
+world could do anything as frightful as that, and you don't want to do
+us the greatest harm, you want only what is best for us--how can it
+then be possible? Say quickly that it is not true; say it is not true,
+Tage, it is not true, Elinor."
+
+"Tage, Tage, don't be so distressed, and don't make it so hard, both
+for yourself and us others."
+
+Tage rose.
+
+"Hard," he said, "hard, hard, oh were it nothing but that, but it is
+horrible--unnatural; it is enough to drive one insane, merely to think
+of it. Have you any idea of the things you make me think of? My mother
+loved by a strange man, my mother desired, held in the arms of another
+and holding him in hers. Nice thoughts for a son, worse than the worst
+insult--but it is impossible, must be impossible, must be! Are the
+prayers of a son to be as powerless as that! Elinor, don't sit there
+and cry, come and help me beg mother to have pity on us."
+
+Mrs. Fonss made a restraining gesture with her hand and said: "Let
+Elinor alone, she is probably tired enough, and besides I have told
+you that nothing can be changed."
+
+"I wish I were dead," said Elinor, "but, mother, everything that Tage
+has said is true, and it never can be right that at our age you should
+give us a step-father."
+
+"Step-father," cried Tage, "I hope that he does not for one moment
+dare. . . . You are mad. Where he enters, we go out. There isn't any
+power on earth that can force me into the slightest intimacy with that
+person. Mother must choose--he or we! If they go to Denmark after
+their marriage, then we are exiles; if they stay here, we leave."
+
+"And those are your intentions, Tage?" asked Mrs. Fonss.
+
+"I don't think you need doubt that; imagine the life. Ida and I are
+sitting out there on the terrace on a moonlit evening, and behind the
+laurel-bushes some one is whispering. Ida asks who is whispering, and
+I reply that it is my mother and her new husband.--No, no, I
+shouldn't have said that; but you see the effect of it already, the
+pain it causes me, and you may be sure that it won't help Elinor's
+health either."
+
+Mrs. Fonss let the children go while she remained sitting here.
+
+No, Tage was right, it had not been good for them. How far from her
+they had already gone in that short hour! How they looked at her, not
+like her children, but like their father's! How quick they were to
+desert her as soon as they saw that not every motion of her heart was
+theirs! But she was not only Tage's and Elinor's mother alone; she was
+also a human being on her own account, with a life of her own and
+hopes of her own, quite apart from them. But she was, perhaps, not
+quite as young as she had believed herself to be. This had come to her
+in the conversation with her children. Had she not sat there, timid,
+in spite of her words; had she not almost felt like one who was
+trespassing upon the rights of youth? Were not all the exorbitant
+demands of youth and all its naive tyranny in everything they had
+said?--It is for us to love, life belongs to us, and your life it is
+but to exist for us.
+
+She began to understand that there might be a satisfaction in being
+quite old; not that she wished it, but yet old age smiled faintly at
+her like a far-distant peace, coming after all the agitation of recent
+times, and now when the prospect of so much discord was so near. For
+she did not believe that her children would ever change their mind,
+and yet she had to discuss it with them over and over again before she
+gave up hope. The best thing would be for Thorbrogger to leave
+immediately. With his presence no longer here the children might be
+less irritable, and she could try to show them how eager she was to be
+as considerate as possible to them. In time the first bitterness would
+disappear, and everything . . . no, she did not believe, that
+everything would turn out well.
+
+They agreed that Thorbrogger should leave for Denmark to arrange their
+affairs. For the time being they would remain here. It seemed,
+however, that nothing was gained by this. The children avoided her.
+Tage spent all his time with Ida or her father, and Elinor stayed all
+the time with the invalid, Mrs. Kastager. And when they happened to be
+actually together, the old intimacy, the old feeling of comfort, was
+gone. Where were the thousand subjects for conversation, and, when
+finally they found one, where was the interest in it? They sat there
+keeping up a conversation like people who for a while have enjoyed
+each other's company, and now must part. All the thoughts of those who
+are about to leave are fixed on the journey's end, and those who
+remain think only of settling hack into the daily life and daily
+routine, as soon as the strangers have left.
+
+There was no longer any common interest in their life; all the feeling
+of belonging together had disappeared. They were able to talk about
+what they were going to do next week, next month, or even the month
+following, but it did not interest them as though it had to do with
+days out of their own lives. It was merely a time of waiting, which
+somehow or other had to be endured, for all three mentally asked
+themselves: And what then? They felt no solid foundation in their
+lives; there was no ground to build upon before this, which had
+separated them, was settled.
+
+Every day that passed the children forgot more and more what their
+mother had meant to them, in the fashion in which children who believe
+themselves wronged will forget a thousand benefactions for the sake of
+one injustice.
+
+Tage was the most sensitive of them, but also the one who was hurt
+most deeply, because he had loved most. He had wept through long
+nights because of his mother whom he could not retain in the way in
+which he wanted. There were times when the memory of her love almost
+deafened all other feelings in his heart. One day he even went to her
+and beseeched and implored her that she might belong to them, to them
+alone, and not to any other one, and the answer had been a "no." And
+this "no" had made him hard and cold. At first he had been afraid of
+this coldness, because it was accompanied by a frightful emptiness.
+
+The case with Elinor was different. In a strange way she had felt that
+it was an injustice toward her father, and she began to worship him
+like a fetish. Even though she but dimly remembered him, she recreated
+him for herself in most vivid fashion by becoming absorbed in
+everything she had ever heard about him. She asked Kastager about him
+and Tage, and every morning and night she kissed a medallion-portrait
+of his which belonged to her. She longed with a somewhat hysterical
+desire for some letters from him which she had left at home, and for
+things which had once belonged to him.
+
+In proportion as the father in this way rose in her estimation, the
+mother sank. The fact that she had fallen in love with a man harmed
+her less in her daughter's eyes; but she was no lenger the mother, the
+unfailing, the wisest, the supreme, most beautiful. She was a woman
+like other women; not quite, but just because not quite, it was
+possible to criticize and judge her and to find weaknesses and faults
+in her. Elinor was glad that she had not confided her unhappy love to
+her mother; but she did not know how much it was due to her mother
+that she had not done so.
+
+One day passed like another, and their life became more and more
+unendurable. All three felt that it was useless; instead of bringing
+them together, it only drove them further apart.
+
+Mrs. Kastager had now recovered. Though she had not played an active
+part in anything that had happened, she knew more about the situation
+than any one else, because everything had been told her. One day she
+had a long talk with Mrs. Fonss who was glad that there was some one
+who would quietly listen to her plans for the future. In this
+conversation Mrs. Kastager suggested that the children go with her to
+Nice, while they sent for Thorbrogger to come to Avignon, so that they
+might be married. Kastager could stay on as witness.
+
+Mrs. Fonss wavered a little while longer, for she had been unable to
+discover what her children's reaction would be. When they were told,
+they accepted it with proud silence, and when they were pressed for
+answer, they merely said that they would, of course, adjust themselves
+to whatever she decided to do.
+
+So things turned out as Mrs. Kastager had proposed. She said good-by
+to the children, and they left; Thorbrogger came, and they were
+married.
+
+Spain became their home; Thorbrogger chose it for the sake of
+sheep-farming.
+
+Neither of them wished to return to Denmark.
+
+And they lived happily in Spain.
+
+She wrote several times to her children, but in their first violent
+anger that she had left them, they returned the letters. Later they
+regretted it; they were unable, however, to admit this to their mother
+and to write to her; for that reason all communication between them
+ceased. But now and then in round about ways they heard about each
+other's lives.
+
+For five years Thorbrogger and his wife lived happily, but then she
+suddenly fell ill. It was a disease whose course ran swiftly and whose
+end was necessarily fatal. Her strength dwindled hourly, and one day
+when the grave was no longer far away she wrote to her children.
+
+"Dear children," she wrote, "I know that you will read this letter, for
+it will not reach you until after my death. Do not be afraid, there
+are no reproaches in these lines; would that I might make them bear
+enough love.
+
+"When people love, Tage and Elinor, little Elinor, the one who loves
+most must always humble himself, and therefore I come to you once
+more, as in my thoughts I shall come to you every hour as long as I am
+able. One who is about to die, dear children, is very poor; I am very
+poor, for all this beautiful world, which for so many years has been
+my abundant and kindly home, is to be taken from me. My chair will
+stand here empty, the door will close behind me, and never again will
+I set my foot here. Therefore I look at everything with the prayer in
+my eye that it shall hold me in kind memory. Therefore I come to you
+and beg that you will love me with all the love which once you had for
+me; for remember that not to be forgotten is the only part in the
+living world which from now on is to be mine; just to be remembered,
+nothing more.
+
+"I have never doubted your love; I knew very well that it was your
+great love, that caused your great anger; had you loved me less, you
+would have let me go more easily. And therefore I want to say to you,
+that should some day it happen that a man bowed down with sorrow come
+to your door to speak with you concerning me, to talk about me to
+relieve his sorrow, then remember that no one has loved me as he has,
+and that all the happiness which can radiate from a human heart has
+come from him to me. And soon in the last great hour he will hold my
+hand in his when the darkness comes, and his words will be the last I
+shall hear. . . .
+
+"Farewell, I say it here, but it is not the farewell which will be the
+last to you; it I will say as late as I dare, and all my love will be
+in it, and all the longings for so many, many years, and the memories
+of the time when you were small, and a thousand wishes and a thousand
+thanks. Farewell Tage, farewell Elinor, farewell until the last
+farewell.
+
+"YOUR MOTHER."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
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