We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them. “Was life then one long adventure?”

“Were all young women beautiful and lovely in those days, and did every feast end by G?sta Berling carrying off one of them?”

Then the old people shook their worthy heads, and began to tell of the whirring of the spinning-wheel and the clatter of the loom, of work in the kitchen, of the thud of the flail and the path of the axe through the forest; but it was not long before they harked back to the old theme. Then sledges drove up to the door, horses speeded away through the dark woods with the joyous young people; then the dance whirled and the violin-strings snapped. Adventure’s wild chase roared about L?fven’s long lake with thunder and crash. Far away could its noise be heard. The forest tottered and fell, all the powers of destruction were let loose; fire flamed out, floods laid waste the land, wild beasts roamed starving about the farmyards. Under the light-footed horses’ hoofs all quiet happiness was trampled to dust. Wherever the hunt rushed by, men’s hearts flamed up in madness, and the women in pale terror had to flee from their homes.

[139]

And we young ones sat wondering, silent, troubled, but blissful. “What people!” we thought. “We shall never see their like.”

“Did the people of those days never think of what they were doing?” we asked.

“Of course they thought, children,” answered the old people.

“But not as we think,” we insisted.

But the old people did not understand what we meant.

But we thought of the strange spirit of self-consciousness which had already taken possession of us. We thought of him, with his eyes of ice and his long, bent fingers,—he who sits there in the soul’s darkest corner and picks to pieces our being, just as old women pick to pieces bits of silk and wool.

Bit by bit had the long, hard, crooked fingers picked, until our whole self lay there like a pile of rags, and our best impulses, our most original thoughts, everything which we had done and said, had been examined, investigated, picked to pieces, and the icy eyes had looked on, and the toothless mouth had laughed in derision and whispered,—

“See, it is rags, only rags.”

There was also one of the people of that time who had opened her soul to the spirit with the icy eyes. In one of them he sat, watching the causes of all actions, sneering at both evil and good, understanding everything, condemning nothing, examining, seeking out, picking to pieces, paralyzing the emotions of the heart and the power of the mind by sneering unceasingly.

The beautiful Marianne bore the spirit of introspection within her. She felt his icy eyes and sneers[140] follow every step, every word. Her life had become a drama where she was the only spectator. She had ceased to be a human being, she did not suffer, she was not glad, nor did she love; she carried out the beautiful Marianne Sinclair’s r?le, and self-consciousness sat with staring, icy eyes and busy, picking fingers, and watched her performance.

She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and sneering, one half sat and watched what the other half was doing; and the strange spirit who picked to pieces her being never had a word of feeling or sympathy.

But where had he been, the pale watcher of the source of deeds, that night, when she had learned to know the fulness of life? Where was he when she, the sensible Marianne, kissed G?sta Berling before a hundred pairs of eyes, and when in a gust of passion she threw herself down in the snow-drift to die? Then the icy eyes were blinded, then the sneer was weakened, for passion had raged through her soul. The roar of adventure’s wild hunt had thundered in her ears. She had been a whole person during that one terrible night.

Oh, you god of self-mockery, when Marianne with infinite difficulty succeeded in lifting her stiffened arms and putting them about G?sta’s neck, you too, like old Beerencreutz, had to turn away your eyes from the earth and look at the stars.

That night you had no power. You were dead while she sang her love-song, dead while she hurried down to Sj? after the major, dead when she saw the flames redden the sky over the tops of the trees.

For they had come, the mighty storm-birds, the griffins of demoniac passions. With wings of fire and[141] claws of steel they had come swooping down over you, you icy-eyed spirit; they had struck their claws into your neck and flung you far into the unknown. You have been dead and crushed.

But now they had rushed on,—they whose course no sage can predict, no observer can follow; and out of the depths of the unknown had the strange spirit of self-consciousness again raised itself and had once again taken possession of Marianne’s soul.

During the whole of February Marianne lay ill at Ekeby. When she sought out the major at Sj? she had been infected with small-pox. The terrible illness had taken a great hold on her, who had been so chilled and exhausted. Death had come very near to her, but at the end of the month she had recovered. She was still very weak and much disfigured. She would never again be called the beautiful Marianne.

This, however, was as yet only known to Marianne and her nurse. The pensioners themselves did not know it. The sick-room where small-pox raged was not open to any one.

But when is the introspective power greater than during the long hours of convalescence? Then the fiend sits and stares and stares with his icy eyes, and picks and picks with his bony, hard fingers. And if one looks carefully, behind him sits a still paler creature, who stares and sneers, and behind him another and still another, sneering at one another and at the whole world.

And while Marianne lay and looked at herself with all these staring icy eyes, all natural feelings died within her.

She lay there and played she was ill; she lay there[142] and played she was unhappy, in love, longing for revenge.

She was it all, and still it was only a play. Everything became a play and unreality under those icy eyes, which watched her while they were watched by a pair behind them, which were watched by other pairs in infinite perspective.

All the energy of life had died within her. She had found strength for glowing hate and tender love for one single night, not more.

She did not even know if she loved G?sta Berling. She longed to see him to know if he could take her out of herself.

While under the dominion of her illness, she had had only one clear thought: she had worried lest her illness should be known. She did not wish to see her parents; she wished no reconciliation with her father, and she knew that he would repent if he should know how ill she was. Therefore she ordered that her parents and every one else should only know that the troublesome irritation of the eyes, which she always had when she visited her native country, forced her to sit in a darkened room. She forbade her nurse to say how ill she was; she forbade the pensioners to go after the doctor at Karlstad. She had of course small-pox, but only very lightly; in the medicine-chest at Ekeby there were remedies enough to save her life.

She never thought of death; she only lay and waited for health, to be able to go to the clergyman with G?sta and have the banns published.

But now the sickness and the fever were gone. She was once more cold and sensible. It seemed to her as if she alone was sensible in this world of fools.[143] She neither hated nor loved. She understood her father; she understood them all. He who understands does not hate.

She had heard that Melchior Sinclair meant to have an auction at Bj?rne and make way with all his wealth, that she might inherit nothing after him. People said that he would make the devastation as thorough as possible; first he would sell the furniture and utensils, then the cattle and implements, and then the house itself with all its lands, and would put the money in a bag and sink it to the bottom of the L?fven. Dissipation, confusion, and devastation should be her inheritance. Marianne smiled approvingly when she heard it: such was his character, and so he must act.

It seemed strange to her that she had sung that great hymn to love. She had dreamed of love in a cottage, as others have done. Now it seemed odd to her that she had ever had a dream.

She sighed for naturalness. She was tired of this continual play. She never had a strong emotion. She only grieved for her beauty, but she shuddered at the compassion of strangers.

Oh, one second of forgetfulness of herself! One gesture, one word, one act which was not calculated!

One day, when the rooms had been disinfected and she lay dressed on a sofa, she had G?sta Berling called. They answered her that he had gone to the auction at Bj?rne.

At Bj?rne there was in truth a big auction. It was an old, rich home. People had come long distances to be present at the sale.

Melchior Sinclair had flung all the property in the[144] house together in the great drawing-room. There lay thousands of articles, collected in piles, which reached from floor to ceiling.

He had himself gone about the house like an angel of destruction on the day of judgment, and dragged together what he wanted to sell. Everything in the kitchen,—the black pots, the wooden chairs, the pewter dishes, the copper kettles, all were left in peace, for among them there was nothing which recalled Marianne; but they were the only things which escaped his anger.

He burst into Marianne’s room, turning everything out. Her doll-house stood there, and her book-case, the little chair he had had made for her, her trinkets and clothes, her sofa and bed, everything must go.

And then he went from room to room. He tore down everything he found unpleasant, and carried great loads down to the auction-room. He panted under the weight of sofas and marble slabs; but he went on. He had thrown open the sideboards and taken out the magnificent family silver. Away with it! Marianne had touched it. He filled his arms with snow-white damask and with shining linen sheets with hem-stitching as wide as one’s hand,—honest home-made work, the fruit of many years of labor,—and flung them down together on the piles. Away with them! Marianne was not worthy to own them. He stormed through the rooms with piles of china, not caring if he broke the plates by the dozen, and he seized the hand-painted cups on which the family arms were burned. Away with them! Let any one who will use them! He staggered under mountains of bedding from the attic: bolsters and pillows so soft that one sunk down[145] in them as in a wave. Away with them! Marianne had slept on them.

He cast fierce glances on the old, well-known furniture. Was there a chair where she had not sat, or a sofa which she had not used, or a picture which she had not looked at, a candlestick which had not lighted her, a mirror which had not reflected her features? Gloomily he shook his fist at this world of memories. He would have liked to have rushed on them with swinging club and to have crushed everything to small bits and splinters.

But it seemed to him a more famous revenge to sell them all at auction. They should go to strangers! Away to be soiled in the cottagers’ huts, to be in the care of indifferent strangers. Did he not know them, the dented pieces of auction furniture in the peasants’ houses, fallen into dishonor like his beautiful daughter? Away with them! May they stand with torn-out stuffing and worn-off gilding, with cracked legs and stained leaves, and long for their former home! Away with them to the ends of the earth, so that no eye can find them, no hand gather them together!

When the auction began, he had filled half the hall with an incredible confusion of piled-up articles.

Right across the room he had placed a long counter. Behind it stood the auctioneer and put up the things; there the clerks sat and kept the record, and there Melchior Sinclair had a keg of brandy standing. In the other half of the room, in the hall, and in the yard were the buyers. There were many people, and much noise and gayety. The bids followed close on one another, and the auction was lively. But by the keg of brandy, with all his possessions in endless confusion behind him, sat Melchior[146] Sinclair, half drunk and half mad. His hair stood up in rough tufts above his red face; his eyes were rolling, fierce, and bloodshot. He shouted and laughed, as if he had been in the best of moods; and every one who had made a good bid he called up to him and offered a dram.

Among those who saw him there was G?sta Berling, who had stolen in with the crowd of buyers, but who avoided coming under Melchior Sinclair’s eyes. He became thoughtful at the sight, and his heart stood still, as at a presentiment of a misfortune.

He wondered much where Marianne’s mother could be during all this. And he went out, against his will, but driven by fate, to find Madame Gustava Sinclair.

He had to go through many doors before he found her. Her husband had short patience and little fondness for wailing and women’s complaints. He had wearied of seeing her tears flow over the fate which had befallen her household treasures. He was furious that she could weep over table and bed linen, when, what was worse, his beautiful daughter was lost; and so he had hunted her, with clenched fists, before him, through the house, out into the kitchen, and all the way to the pantry.

She could not go any farther, and he had rejoiced at seeing her there, cowering behind the step-ladder, awaiting heavy blows, perhaps death. He let her stay there, but he locked the door and stuffed the key in his pocket. She could sit there as long as the auction lasted. She did not need to starve, and his ears had rest from her laments.

There she still sat, imprisoned in her own pantry, when G?sta came through the corridor between the[147] kitchen and the dining-room. He saw her face at a little window high up in the wall. She had climbed up on the step-ladder, and stood staring out of her prison.

“What are you doing up there?” asked G?sta.

“He has shut me in,” she whispered.

“Your husband?”

“Yes. I thought he was going to kill me. But listen, G?sta, take the key of the dining-room door, and go into the kitchen and unlock the pantry door with it, so that I can come out. That key fits here.”

G?sta obeyed, and in a couple of minutes the little woman stood in the kitchen, which was quite deserted.

“You should have let one of the maids open the door with the dining-room key,” said G?sta.

“Do you think I want to teach them that trick? Then I should never have any peace in the pantry. And, besides, I took this chance to put the upper shelves in order. They needed it, indeed. I cannot understand how I could have let so much rubbish collect there.”

“You have so much to attend to,” said G?sta.

“Yes, that you may believe. If I were not everywhere, neither the loom nor the spinning-wheel would be going right. And if—”

Here she stopped and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“God help me, how I do talk!” she said; “they say that I won’t have anything more to look after. He is selling everything we have.”

“Yes, it is a wretched business,” said G?sta.

“You know that big mirror in the drawing-room, G?sta. It was such a beauty, for the glass was whole[148] in it, without a flaw, and there was no blemish at all on the gilding. I got it from my mother, and now he wants to sell it.”

“He is mad.”

“You may well say so. He is not much better. He won’t stop until we shall have to go and beg on the highway, we as well as the major’s wife.”

“It will never be so bad as that,” answered G?sta.

“Yes, G?sta. When the major’s wife went away from Ekeby, she foretold misfortune for us, and now it is coming. She would never have allowed him to sell Bj?rne. And think, his own china, the old Canton cups from his own home, are to be sold. The major’s wife would never have let it happen.”

“But what is the matter with him?” asked G?sta.

“Oh, it is only because Marianne has not come back again. He has waited and waited. He has gone up and down the avenue the whole day and waited for her. He is longing himself mad, but I do not dare to say anything.”

“Marianne believes that he is angry with her.”

“She does not believe that. She knows him well enough; but she is proud and will not take the first step. They are stiff and hard, both of them, and I have to stand between them.”

“You must know that Marianne is going to marry me?”

“Alas, G?sta, she will never do that. She says that only to make him angry. She is too spoiled to marry a poor man, and too proud, too. Go home and tell her that if she does not come home soon, all her inheritance will have gone to destruction. Oh, he will throw everything away, I know, without getting anything for it.”

[149]

G?sta was really angry with her. There she sat on a big kitchen table, and had no thought for anything but her mirrors and her china.

“You ought to be ashamed!” he burst out. “You throw your daughter out into a snow-drift, and then you think that it is only temper that she does not come back. And you think that she is no better than to forsake him whom she cares for, lest she should lose her inheritance.”

“Dear G?sta, don’t be angry, you too. I don’t know what I am saying. I tried my best to open the door for Marianne, but he took me and dragged me away. They all say here that I don’t understand anything. I shall not grudge you Marianne, G?sta, if you can make her happy. It is not so easy to make a woman happy, G?sta.”

G?sta looked at her. How could he too have raised his voice in anger against such a person as she,—terrified and cowed, but with such a good heart!

“You do not ask how Marianne is,” he said gently.

She burst into tears.

“Will you not be angry with me if I ask you?” she said. “I have longed to ask you the whole time. Think that I know no more of her than that she is living. Not one greeting have I had from her the whole time, not once when I sent clothes to her, and so I thought that you and she did not want to have me know anything about her.”

G?sta could bear it no longer. He was wild, he was out of his head,—sometimes God had to send his wolves after him to force him to obedience,—but this old woman’s tears, this old woman’s laments were harder for him to bear than the howling of the wolves. He let her know the truth.

[150]

“Marianne has been ill the whole time,” he said. “She has had small-pox. She was to get up to-day and lie on the sofa. I have not seen her since the first night.”

Madame Gustava leaped with one bound to the ground. She left G?sta standing there, and rushed away without another word to her husband.

The people in the auction-room saw her come up to him and eagerly whisper something in his ear. They saw how his face grew still more flushed, and his hand, which rested on the cock, turned it round so that the brandy streamed over the floor.

It seemed to all as if Madame Gustava had come with such important news that the auction must end immediately. The auctioneer’s hammer no longer fell, the clerks’ pens stopped, there were no new bids.

Melchior Sinclair roused himself from his thoughts.

“Well,” he cried, “what is the matter?”

And the auction was in full swing once more.

G?sta still sat in the kitchen, and Madame Gustava came weeping out to him.

“It’s no use,” she said. “I thought he would stop when he heard that Marianne had been ill; but he is letting them go on. He would like to, but now he is ashamed.”

G?sta shrugged his shoulders and bade her farewell.

In the hall he met Sintram.

“This is a funny show,” exclaimed Sintram, and rubbed his hands. “You are a master, G?sta. Lord, what you have brought to pass!”

“It will be funnier in a little while,” whispered G?sta. “The Broby clergyman is here with a sledge full of money. They say that he wants to buy the[151] whole of Bj?rne and pay in cash. Then I would like to see Melchior Sinclair, Sintram.”

Sintram drew his head down between his shoulders and laughed internally a long time. And then he made his way into the auction-room and up to Melchior Sinclair.

“If you want a drink, Sintram, you must make a bid first.”

Sintram came close up to him.

“You are in luck to-day as always,” he said. “A fellow has come to the house with a sledge full of money. He is going to buy Bj?rne and everything both inside and out. He has told a lot of people to bid for him. He does not want to show himself yet for a while.”

“You might say who he is; then I suppose I must give you a drink for your pains.”

Sintram took the dram and moved a couple of steps backwards, before he answered,—

“They say it is the Broby clergyman, Melchior.”

Melchior Sinclair had many better friends than the Broby clergyman. It had been a life-long feud between them. There were legends of how he had lain in wait on dark nights on the roads where the minister should pass, and how he had given him many an honest drubbing, the old fawning oppressor of the peasants.

It was well for Sintram that he had drawn back a step or two, but he did not entirely escape the big man’s anger. He got a brandy glass between his eyes and the whole brandy keg on his feet. But then followed a scene which for a long time rejoiced his heart.

“Does the Broby clergyman want my house?”[152] roared Melchior Sinclair. “Do you stand there and bid on my things for the Broby clergyman? Oh, you ought to be ashamed! You ought to know better!”

He seized a candlestick, and an inkstand, and slung them into the crowd of people.

All the bitterness of his poor heart at last found expression. Roaring like a wild beast, he clenched his fist at those standing about, and slung at them whatever missile he could lay his hand on. Brandy glasses and bottles flew across the room. He did not know what he was doing in his rage.

“It’s the end of the auction,” he cried. “Out with you! Never while I live shall the Broby clergyman have Bj?rne. Out! I will teach you to bid for the Broby clergyman!”

He rushed on the auctioneer and the clerks. They hurried away. In the confusion they overturned the desk, and Sinclair with unspeakable fury burst into the crowd of peaceful people.

There was a flight and wildest confusion. A couple of hundred people were crowding towards the door, fleeing before a single man. And he stood, roaring his “Out with you!” He sent curses after them, and now and again he swept about him with a chair, which he brandished like a club.

He pursued them out into the hall, but no farther. When the last stranger had left the house, he went back into the drawing-room and bolted the door after him. Then he dragged together a mattress and a couple of pillows, laid himself down on them, went to sleep in the midst of all the havoc, and never woke till the next day.

When G?sta got home, he heard that Marianne wished to speak to him. That was just what he wanted.[153] He had been wondering how he could get a word with her.

When he came into the dim room where she lay, he had to stand a moment at the door. He could not see where she was.

“Stay where you are, G?sta,” Marianne said to him. “It may be dangerous to come near me.”

But G?sta had come up the stairs in two bounds, trembling with eagerness and longing. What did he care for the contagion? He wished to have the bliss of seeing her.

For she was so beautiful, his beloved! No one had such soft hair, such an open, radiant brow. Her whole face was a symphony of exquisite lines.

He thought of her eyebrows, sharply and clearly ............