IN January of sixteen hundred and sixty-four, Ulrik Frederik was appointed Viceroy of Norway, and in the beginning of April the same year, he departed for his post. Marie Grubbe went with him.

The relation between them had not improved, except in so far as the lack of mutual understanding and mutual love had, as it were, been accepted by both as an unalterable fact, and found expression in the extremely ceremonious manner they had adopted toward each other.

For a year or more after they had moved to Aggershus, things went on much in the same way, and Marie, for her part, desired no change. Not so Ulrik Frederik; for he had again become enamored of his wife.

On a winter afternoon, in the gloaming, Marie Grubbe sat alone in the little parlor known from olden time as the Nook. The day was cloudy and dark, with a raw, blustering wind. Heavy flakes of melting snow were plastered into the corners of the tiny window-panes, covering almost half the surface of the greenish glass. Gusts of wet, chilly wind went whirling down between the high walls, where they seemed to lose their senses and throw themselves blindly upon shutters and doors, rattling them fiercely, then flying skyward again with a hoarse, dog-like whimper. Powerful blasts came shrieking across the roofs opposite and hurled themselves against windows and walls, pounding like waves, then suddenly dying away. Now and again a squall would come roaring down the chimney. The flames ducked their frightened heads, and the white smoke, timidly curling toward the chimney like the comb of a breaker, would shrink back, ready to throw itself out into the room. Ah, - 159 - in the next instant it is whirled, thin and light and blue, up through the flue, with the flames calling after it, leaping and darting, and sending sputtering sparks by the handful right in its heels. Then the fire began to burn in good earnest. With grunts of pleasure it spread over glowing coals and embers, boiled and seethed with delight in the innermost marrow of the white birch wood, buzzed and purred like a tawny cat, and licked caressingly the noses of blackening knots and smouldering chunks of wood.

Warm and pleasant and luminous the breath of the fire streamed through the little room. Like a fluttering fan of light it played over the parquet floor and chased the peaceful dusk which hid in tremulous shadows to the right and the left behind twisted chair-legs, or shrank into corners, lay thin and long in the shelter of mouldings, or flattened itself under the large clothes-press.

Suddenly the chimney seemed to suck up the light and heat with a roar. Darkness spread boldly across the floor on every board and square, to the very fire, but the next moment the light leaped back again and sent the dusk flying to all sides, with the light pursuing it, up the walls and doors, above the brass latch. Safety nowhere! The dusk sat crouching against the wall, up under the ceiling, like a cat in a high branch, with the light scampering below, back and forth like a dog, leaping, running at the foot of the tree. Not even among the flagons and tumblers on the top of the press could the darkness be undisturbed, for red ruby-glasses, blue goblets, and green Rhenish wineglasses lit iridescent fires to help the light search them out.

The wind blew and the darkness fell outside, but within the fire glowed, the light played, and Marie Grubbe was singing. Now and again, she would murmur snatches of the - 160 - words as they came to her mind, then again hum the melody alone. Her lute was in her hand, but she was not playing it, only touching the strings sometimes and calling out a few clear, long-sounding notes. It was one of those pleasant little pensive songs that make the cushions softer and the room warmer; one of those gently flowing airs that seem to sing themselves in their indolent wistfulness, while they give the voice a delicious roundness and fullness of tone. Marie was sitting in the light from the fire, and its beams played around her, while she sang in careless enjoyment, as if caressing herself with her own voice.

The little door opened, and Ulrik Frederik bent his tall form to enter. Marie stopped singing instantly.

“Ah, madam!” exclaimed Ulrik Frederik in a tone of gentle remonstrance, making a gesture of appeal, as he came up to her. “Had I known that you would allow my presence to incommode you—”

“No, truly, I was but singing to keep my dreams awake.”

“Pleasant dreams?” he asked, bending over the firedogs before the grate and warming his hands on the bright copper balls.

“Dreams of youth,” replied Marie, passing her hand over the strings of the lute.

“Ay, that was ever the way of old age,” and he smiled at her.

Marie was silent a moment, then suddenly spoke: “One may be full young and yet have old dreams.”

“How sweet the odor of musk in here! But was my humble person along in these ancient dreams, madam?—if I may make so bold as to ask.”

“Ah, no!”

“And yet there was a time—”

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“Among all other times.”

“Ay, among all other times there was once a wondrously fair time when I was exceeding dear to you. Do you bring to mind a certain hour in the twilight, a sennight or so after our nuptials? ’Twas storming and snowing—”

“Even as now.”

“And you were sitting before the fire—”

“Even as now.”

“Ay, and I was lying at your feet, and your dear hands were playing with my hair.”

“Yes, then you loved me.”

“Oh, even as now! And you—you bent down over me and wept till the tears streamed down your face, and you kissed me and looked at me with such tender earnestness, it seemed you were saying a prayer for me in your heart, and then all of a sudden—do you remember?—you bit my neck.”

“Ah, merciful God, what love I did bear to you, my lord! When I heard the clanging of your spurs on the steps the blood pounded in my ears, and I trembled from head to foot, and my hands were cold as ice. Then when you came in and pressed me in your arms—”

“De grace, madam!”

“Why, it’s naught but dead memories of an amour that is long since extinguished.”

“Alas, extinguished, madam? Nay, it smoulders hotter than ever.”

“Ah, no, ’tis covered by the cold ashes of too many days.”

“But it shall rise again from the ashes as the bird Phenix, more glorious and fiery than before—pray, shall it not?”

“No, love is like a tender plant; when the night frost - 162 - touches its heart, it dies from the blossom down to the root.”

“No, love is like the herb named the rose of Jericho. In the dry months it withers and curls up, but when there is a soft and balmy night, with a heavy fall of dew, all its leaves will unfold again, greener and fresher than ever before.”

“It may be so. There are many kinds of love in the world.”

“Truly there are, and ours was such a love.”

“That yours was such you tell me now, but mine—never, never!”

“Then you have never loved.”

“Never loved? Now I shall tell you how I have loved. It was at Frederiksborg—”

“Oh, madam, you have no mercy!”

“No, no, that is not it at all. It was at Frederiksborg. Alas, you little know what I suffered there. I saw that your love was not as it had been. Oh, as a mother watches over her sick child and marks every little change, so I kept watch over your love with fear and trembling, and when I saw in your cold looks how it had paled, and felt in your kisses how feeble was its pulse, it seemed 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, - 163 - 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 - 164 - 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 Sj?lland, 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 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 Düvel friert, as the saying is, macht er sein H?lle glühn, 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.

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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 mein guten Ulrik Friederich 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 to-day. 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 H?gh’s, Magistrate of Laaland, my dea............