Marie Grubbe - Jens Peter Jacobsen (best english novels for beginners .txt) 📗

to me I must die with

anguish. I wept for this love through long nights; I prayed for it as

if it had been the dearly loved child of my heart that was dying by

inches. I cast about for aid and advice in my trouble and for physics

to cure your sick love, and whatever secret potions I had heard of,

such as love philtres, I mixed them betwixt hope and fear in your

morning draught and your supper wine. I laid out your breast-cloth

under three waxing moons and read the marriage psalm over it, and on

your bedstead I first painted with my own blood thirteen hearts in a

cross, but all to no avail, my lord, for your love was sick unto

death. Faith, that is the way you were loved.”

 

“No. Marie, my love is not dead; it is risen again. Hear me, dear

heart, hear me! for I have been stricken with blindness and with a mad

distemper, but now, Marie, I kneel at your feet, and look, I woo you

again with prayers and beseechings. Alack, my love has been like a

wilful child, but now it is grown to man’s estate. Pray give yourself

trustingly to its arms, and I swear to you by the cross and the honor

of a gentleman that it will never let you go again.”

 

“Peace, peace, what help is in that!”

 

“Pray, pray believe me, Marie!”

 

“By the living God, I believe you. There is no shred nor thread of

doubt in my soul. I believe you fully; I believe that your love is

great and strong, but mine you have strangled with your own hands. It

is a corpse, and however loudly your heart may call, you can never

wake it again.”

 

“Say not so, Marie, for those of your sex—I know there are among you

those who when they love a man, even though he spurn them with his

foot, come back ever and ever again, for their love is proof against

all wounds.”

 

“‘Tis so indeed, my lord, and I—I am such a woman, I would have you

know—but you are not the right kind of man.”

 

May God in his mercy keep you, my dearly beloved sister, and be to you

a good and generous giver of all those things which are requisite and

necessary as well for the body as for the soul that I wish you from my

heart.

 

To you, my dearly beloved sister, my one faithful friend from the time

of my childhood, will I now relate what fine fruits I have of my

elevation, which may it be cursed from the day it began; for it has,

God knows, brought me naught but trouble and tribulation in brimming

goblets.

 

Ay, it was an elevation for the worse, as you, my dearly beloved

sister, shall now hear and as is probably known to you in part. For it

cannot fail that you must have learned from your dear husband how,

even at the time of our dwelling in Sjaelland, there was a coolness

between me and my noble lord and spouse. Now here at Aggershus matters

have in no way mended, and he has used me so scurvily that it is past

all belief but is what I might have looked for in so dainty a junker.

Not that I care a rush about his filthy gallantries; it is all one to

me, and he may run amuck with the hangman’s wife if so be his

pleasure. All I ask is that he do not come too near me with his

tricks, but that is precisely what he is now doing, and in such manner

that one might fain wonder whether he were stricken with madness or

possessed of the devil. The beginning of it was on a day when he came

to me with fair words and fine promises and would have all be as

before between us, whereas I feel for him naught but loathing and

contempt and told him in plain words that I held myself far too good

for him. Then hell broke loose, for wenn’s de Duvel friert, as the

saying is, macht er sein Holle gluhn, and he made it hot for me by

dragging into the castle swarms of loose women and filthy jades and

entertaining them with food and drink in abundance, ay, with costly

sweetmeats and expensive stand-dishes as at any royal banquet. And for

this my flowered damask tablecloths, which I have gotten after our

blessed mother, and my silk bolsters with the fringes were to have

been laid out, but that did not come to pass inasmuch as I put them

all under lock and key, and he had to go borrowing in the town for

wherewithal to deck both board and bench.

 

My own dearly beloved sister, I will no longer fatigue you with tales

of this vile company, but is it not shameful that such trulls, who if

they were rightly served should have the lash laid on their back at

the public whipping-post, now are queening it in the halls of his

Majesty the King’s Viceroy? I say ‘tis so unheard of and so infamous

that if it were to come to the ears of his Majesty, as with all my

heart and soul I wish that it may come, he would talk to meinguten

Ulrik Friederlch in such terms as would give him but little joy to

hear. The finest of all his tricks I have yet told you nothing of, and

it is quite new, for it happened only the other day that I sent for a

tradesman to bring me some Brabantian silk lace that I thought to put

around the hem of a sack, but the man made answer that when I sent the

money he would bring the goods, for the Viceroy had forbidden him to

sell me anything on credit. The same word came from the milliner who

had been sent for so it would appear that he has stopped my credit in

the entire city, although I have brought to his estate thousands and

thousands of rix-dollars. No more today. May we commit all unto the

Lord, and may He give me ever good tidings of you.

 

Ever your faithful sister,

 

MARIE GRUBBE.

 

At Aggershus Castle, 12 December 1665.

 

The Honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, Styge Hogh’s, Magistrate of

Laaland, my dearly beloved sister, graciously to hand.

 

God in his mercy keep you, my dearest sister, now and forever is my

wish from a true heart, and I pray for you that you may be of good

cheer and not let yourself be utterly cast down, for we have all our

allotted portion of sorrow, and we swim and bathe in naught but

misery.

 

Your letter, M. D. S., came to hand safe and unbroken in every way,

and thence I have learned with a heavy heart what shame and dishonor

your husband is heaping upon you, which it is a grievous wrong in his

Majesty’s Viceroy to behave as he behaves. Nevertheless, it behooves

you not to be hasty, my duck, for you have cause for patience in that

high position in which you have been placed, which it were not well to

wreck but which it is fitting you should preserve with all diligence.

Even though your husband consumes much wealth on his pleasures, yet is

it of his own he wastes, while my rogue of a husband has made away

with his and mine too. Truly it is a pity to see a man who should

guard what God hath entrusted to us instead scattering and squandering

it. If ‘t were but the will of God to part me from him by whatever

means it might be that would be the greatest boon to me, miserable

woman, for which I could never be sufficiently thankful; and we might

as well be parted, since we have not lived together for upward of a

year, for which may God be praised, and would that it might last! So

you see, M. D. S., that neither is my bed decked with silk. But you

must have faith that your husband will come to his senses in time and

cease to waste his goods on wanton hussies and filthy rabble, and

inasmuch as his office gives him a large income, you must not let your

heart be troubled with his wicked wastefulness nor by his unkindness.

God will help, I firmly trust. Farewell, my duck! I bid you a thousand

good-nights.

 

Your faithful sister while I live,

 

ANNE MARIE GRUBBE.

 

At Vang, 6 February 1666.

 

Madam Gyldenlove, my good friend and sister, written in all loving

kindness.

 

May God in his mercy keep you, my dearly beloved sister, and be to you

a good and generous giver of all those things which are requisite and

necessary as well for the body as for the soul that I wish you from my

heart.

 

My dearly beloved sister, the old saying that none is so mad but he

has a glimmer of sense between St. John and Paulinus no longer holds

good, for my mad lord and spouse is no more sensible than he was. In

truth, he is tenfold, nay athousandfold more frenzied than before, and

thatwhereof I wrote you was but as child’s play to what has now come

to pass, which is beyond all belief. Dearest sister, I would have you

know that he has been to Copenhagen, and thence—oh, fie, most horrid

shame andoutrage!—he has brought one of his old canaille women named

Karen, whom he forthwith lodged in the castle, and she is set over

everything and rules everything while I am let stand behind the door.

But, my dear sister, you must now do me the favor to inquire of our

dear father whether he will take my part, if so be it that I can make

my escape from here, as he surely must, for none can behold my unhappy

state without pitying me, and what I suffer is so past all endurance

that I think I should but be doing right in freeing myself from it. It

is no longer ago than the Day of the Assumption of Our Lady that I was

walking in our orchard, and when I came in again, the door of my

chamber was bolted from within. I asked the meaning of this and was

told that Karen had taken for her own that chamber and the one next to

it, and my bed was moved up into the western parlor, which is cold as

a church when the wind is in that quarter, full of draughts, and the

floor quite rough and has even great holes in it. But if I were to

relate at length all the insults that are heaped upon me here, it

would be as long as any Lenten sermon, and if it is to go on much

longer, my head is like to burst. May the Lord keep us and send me

good tidings of you. Ever your faithful sister,

 

MARIE GRUBBE.

 

The Honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, Sti Heigh’s, Magistrate of

Laaland, my dearly beloved sister, graciously to hand.

 

Ulrik Frederik, if the truth were told, was as tired of the state of

affairs at the castle as Marie Grubbe was. He had been used to

refining more on his dissipations. They were sorry boon companions,

these poor, common officers in Norway, and their soldiers’ courtesans

were not to be endured for long. Karen Fiol was the only one who was

not made up of coarseness and vulgarity, and even her he would rather

bid good-by today than tomorrow.

 

In his chagrin at being repulsed by Marie Grubbe, he