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

class="calibre1">their pockets.

 

“Amen!”

 

Every face turned to the preacher. During the litany prayer all

wondered whether the pastor had heard anything. He read the

supplication for the Royal House, the Councillors of the Realm, and

the common nobility, for all who were in authority or entrusted with

high office—and at that tears sprang to many eyes. As the prayer went

on, there was a sound of sobbing, but the words came from hundreds of

lips: “May God in His mercy deliver these our lands and kingdoms from

battle and murder, pestilence and sudden death, famine and drouth,

lightning and tempest, floods and fire, and may we for such fatherly

mercy praise and glorify His holy name!”

 

Before the hymn had ended, the church was empty, and only the voice of

the organ sang within it.

 

On the following day the people were again thronging the streets but

by this time they seemed to have gained some definite direction. The

Swedish fleet had that night anchored outside of Dragor. Yet the

populace was calmer than the day before, for it was generally known

that two of the Councillors of the Realm had gone to parley with the

enemy and were—so it was said—entrusted with powers sufficient to

ensure peace. But when the Councillors returned on Tuesday with the

news that they had been unable to make peace, there was a sudden and

violent reaction.

 

This was no longer an assemblage of staid citizens grown restless

under the stress of great and ominous tidings. No, it was a maelstrom

of uncouth creatures, the like of which had never been seen within the

ramparts of Copenhagen. Could they have come out of these quiet,

respectable houses bearing marks of sober everyday business? What

raving in long-sleeved sack and great-skirted coat! What bedlam noise

from grave lips and frenzied gestures of tight-dressed arms! None

would be alone; none would stay indoors; all wanted to stand in the

middle of the street with their despair, their tears, and wailing. See

that stately old man with bared head and bloodshot eyes! He is turning

his ashen face to the wall and beating the stones with clenched fists.

Listen to that fat tanner cursing the Councillors of the Realm and the

miserable war! Feel the blood in those fresh cheeks burning with

hatred of the enemy who brings the horrors of war, horrors that youth

has already lived through in imagination! How they roar with rage at

their own fancied impotence, and God in heaven, what prayers! What

senseless prayers!

 

Vehicles are stopping in the middle of the street. Servants are

setting down their burdens in sheds and doorways. Here and there

people come out of the houses dressed in their best attire flushed

with exertion, look about in surprise, then glance down at their

clothes, and dart into the crowd as though eager to divert attention

from their own finery. What have they in mind? And where do all these

rough, drunken men come from? They crowd; they reel and shriek; they

quarrel and tumble; they sit on doorsteps and are sick; they laugh

wildly, run after the women, and try to fight the men.

 

It was the first terror, the terror of instinct. By noon it was over.

Men had been called to the ramparts, had labored with holiday

strength, and had seen moats deepen and barricades rise under their

spades. Soldiers were passing. Artisans, students, and noblemen’s

servants were standing at watch, armed with all kinds of curious

weapons. Cannon had been mounted. The King had ridden past, and it was

announced that he would stay. Life began to look reasonable, and

people braced themselves for what was coming.

 

In the afternoon of the following day, the suburb outside of West Gate

was set on fire, and the smoke, drifting over the city brought out the

crowds again. At dusk, when the flames reddened the weatherbeaten

walls of Vor Frue Church tower and played on the golden balls topping

the spire of St. Peter’s, the news that the enemy was coming down

Valby Hill stole in like a timid sigh. Through avenues and alleys

sounded a frightened “The Swedes! The Swedes!” The call came in the

piercing voices of boys running through the streets. People rushed to

the doors, booths were closed, and the iron-mongers hastily gathered

in their wares. The good folk seemed to expect a huge army of the

enemy to pour in upon them that very moment.

 

The slopes of the ramparts and the adjoining streets were black with

people looking at the fire. Other crowds gathered farther away from

the centre of interest at the Secret Passage and the Fountain. Many

matters were discussed, the burning question being, Would the Swedes

attack that night or wait till morning?

 

Gert Pyper, the dyer from the Fountain, thought the Swedes would be

upon them as soon as they had rallied after the march. Why should they

wait?

 

The Icelandic trader, Erik Lauritzen of Dyers’ Row, thought it might

be a risky matter to enter a strange city in the dead of night, when

you couldn’t know what was land and what was water.

 

“Water!” said Gert Dyer. “Would to God we knew as much about our own

affairs as the Swede knows! Don’t trust to that! His spies are where

you’d least think. ‘T is well enough known to Burgomaster and Council,

for the aldermen have been round since early morning hunting spies in

every nook and corner. Fool him who can! No, the Swede’s

cunning—especially in such business. ‘Tis a natural gift. I found

that out myself—‘tis some half-score years since, but I’ve never

forgotten that mummery. You see, indigo she makes black, and she makes

light blue, and she makes medium blue, all according to the mordant.

Scalding and making the dye vats ready—any ‘prentice can do that if

he’s handy—but the mordant—there’s the rub! That’s an art! Use too

much, and you burn your cloth or yarn so it rots. Use too little, and

the color will ne-ever be fast—no, not if it’s dyed with the most

precious logwood. Therefore the mordant is a closed geheimnis which

a man does not give away except it be to his son, but to the

journeymen—never! No—” “Ay, Master Gert,” said the trader, “ay, ay!”

“As I was saying,” Gert went on, “about half a score of years ago I

had a ‘prentice whose mother was a Swede. He’d set his mind on finding

out what mordant I used for cinnamon brown, but as I always mixed it

behind closed doors, ‘twas not so easy to smoke it. So what does he

do, the rascal? There’s so much vermin here round the Fountain it eats

our wool and our linen, and for that reason we always hang up the

stuff people give us to dye in canvas sacks under the loft-beams. So

what does he do, the devil’s gesindchen, but gets him one of the

‘prentices to hang him up in a sack. And I came in and weighed and

mixed and made ready and was half done when it happened so curiously

that the cramp got in one of his legs up there and he began to kick

and scream for me to help him down. Did I help him? Death and fire!

But ‘twas a scurvy trick he did me, yes, yes, yes! And so they are,

the Swedes; you can never trust ‘em over a doorstep.”

 

“Faith, they’re ugly folk, the Swedes,” spoke Erik Lauritzen.

“They’ve nothing to set their teeth in at home, so when they come to

foreign parts they can never get their bellyful. They’re like

poor-house children; they eat for today’s hunger and for tomorrow’s

and yesterday’s all in one. Thieves and cut-purses they are too—worse

than crows and corpse-plunderers—and so murderous. It’s not for

nothing people say, Quick with the knife like Lasse Swede!”

 

“And so lewd,” added the dyer. “It never fails, if you see the

hangman’s man whipping a woman from town, and you ask who’s the

hussy, but they tell you she’s a Swedish trull.”

 

“Ay, the blood of man is various, and the blood of beasts, too. The

Swede is to other people what the baboon is among the dumb brutes.

There’s such an unseemly passion and raging heat in the humors of his

body that the natural intelligence which God in His mercy hath given

all human creatures cannot hinder his evil lusts and sinful desires.”

 

The dyer nodded several times in affirmation of the theories advanced

by the trader. “Right you are, Erik Lauritzen, right you are. The

Swede is of a strange and peculiar nature different from other people.

I can always smell when an outlandish man comes into my booth whether

he’s a Swede or from some other country. There’s such a rank odor

about the Swedes—like goats or fish lye. I’ve often turned it over

in my mind, and I make no doubt ‘tis as you say; ‘tis the fumes of his

lustful and bestial humors. Ay, so it is.”

 

“Sure, it’s no witchcraft if Swedes and Turks smell different from

Christians!” spoke up an old woman who stood near them.

 

“You’re drivelling, Mette Mustard,” interrupted the dyer. “Don’t you

know that Swedes are Christian folks?”

 

“Call ‘em Christian if you like, Gert Dyer, but Finns and heathens and

troll men have never been Christians by my prayer book, and it’s true

as gold what happened in the time of King Christian—God rest his

soul!—when the Swedes were in Jutland. There was a whole regiment of

‘em marching one night at new moon, and at the stroke o’ midnight they

ran one from the other and howled like a pack of werewolves or some

such devilry, and they scoured like mad round in the woods and fens

and brought ill luck to men and beasts.”

 

“But they go to church on Sunday and have both pastor and clerk just

like us.”

 

“Ay, let a fool believe that! They go to church, the filthy gang, like

the witches fly to vespers when the Devil has St. John’s mass on

Hekkenfell. No, they’re bewitched, an’ nothing bites on ‘em, be it

powder or bullets. Half of ‘em can cast the evil eye too, else why d’

ye think the smallpox is always so bad wherever those hell hounds’ve

set their cursed feet? Answer me that, Gert Dyer, answer me that, if

ye can.”

 

The dyer was just about to reply when Erik Lauritzen, who for some

time had been looking about uneasily, spoke to him, “Hush, hush, Gert

Pyper! Who’s the man talking like a sermon yonder with the people

standing thick around him?”

 

They hurried to join the crowd, while Gert Dyer explained that it must

be a certain Jesper Kiim, who had preached in the Church of the Holy

Ghost but whose doctrine, so Gert had been told by learned men, was

hardly pure enough to promise much for his eternal welfare or clerical

preferment.

 

The speaker was a small man of about thirty with something of the

mastiff about him. He had long, smooth black hair, a thick little nose

on a broad face, lively brown eyes, and red lips. He was standing on a

doorstep, gesticulating forcefully and speaking with quick energy,

though in a somewhat thick and lisping voice.

 

“The twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” he

said, “from the fifty-first to the fifty-fourth verse reads as

follows: ‘And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out

his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high

priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up

again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall

perish with the