Karen, [Nils’] daughter, left me one evening in 1669, and a German named Cathrina ——[E45] came in her place. Karen took her departure with many tears. She had wept almost the whole day, and I promised to do my utmost that she should come to me when the other went away. Cathrina had been among soldiers from her youth up; she had married a lieutenant at the time the prison governor was a drummer, and had stood godmother to one of his sons. She had fallen into poverty after her husband’s death, and had sat and spun with the wife of the prison governor for her food. She was greatly given to drinking, and her hands trembled so that she could not hold the cup, but was obliged to support it against her person, and the soup-plate also. The prison governor told me before she came up that her hands occasionally trembled a little, but not always—that she had been ill a short time before, and that it would probably pass off. When I asked herself how it came on, she said she had had it for many years. I said, ‘You are not a woman fit to wait upon me; for if I should be ill, as I was a year or somewhat less ago, you could not properly attend to me.’ She fell at once down on her knees, wept bitterly, and prayed for God’s sake that she might remain; that she was a poor widow, and that she had promised the prison governor half the money she was to earn; she would pray heartily to God that I might not be ill, and that she would be true to me, aye, even die for me.
It seemed to me that this last was too much of an exaggeration for me to believe it (she kept her word, however, and did what I ordered her, and I was not ill during her time). She did not care to work. She generally laid down when she had eaten, and drew the coverlid over her eyes, saying ‘Now I can see nothing.’ When she perceived that I liked her to talk, she related whole comedies in her way, often acting them, and representing various personages. If she began to tell a story, and I said in the middle of her narrative, ‘This will have a sorrowful ending,’ she would say, ‘No, it ends pleasantly,’ and she would give her story a good ending. She would do the reverse, if I said the contrary. She would dance also before me, and that for four persons, speaking as she did so for each whom she was representing, and pinching together her mouth and fingers. She called comedians ‘Medicoants.’ Various things occurred during her time, which prevented me from looking at her and listening to her as much as she liked.[124]
It happened that Walter,[E46] who in consequence of Dina’s affair had been exiled from Denmark, came over from Sweden and remained incognito at Copenhagen. He was arrested and placed in the tower here, below on the ground floor. He was suspected of being engaged in some plot. At the same time a French cook and a Swedish baker were imprisoned with him, who were accused of having intended to poison the King and Queen. The Swede was placed in the Witch Cell, immediately after Walter’s arrest. Some days elapsed before I was allowed to know of Walter’s arrival, but I knew of it nevertheless. One day at noon, when Walter and the Frenchman were talking aloud (for they were always disputing with each other), I asked the prison governor who were his guests down below, who were talking French. He answered that he had some of various nations, and related who they were, but why they were imprisoned he knew not, especially in Walter’s case.
The two before-mentioned quarrelled together, so that Walter was placed in the Witch Cell with the Swede, and the [Frenchman] was conveyed to the Dark Church, where he was ill, and never even came to the peep-hole in the door, but lay just within. I dared not send him anything, on account of the accusation against him. Walter was imprisoned for a long time, and the Frenchman was liberated. When M. Bock came to me, to give me Christ’s body and blood, I told him before receiving the Lord’s Supper of Walter’s affair, which had been proved, but I mentioned to him that at the time I had been requested to leave Denmark through [Uldrich] Christian Gyldenlöve. Gyldenlöve had sworn to me that the king was at the time not thoroughly convinced of the matter, and I had complained that his Majesty had not taken pains to convince himself; and I requested the priest to ask the Stadtholder to manage that Walter should now be examined in Dina’s affair, and that he and I should be confronted together in the presence of some ministers; that this could be done without any great noise, for the gentlemen could come through the secret passage into the tower. The priest promised to arrange this;[125] he did so, and on the third day after Walter was placed in the Dark Church, so that I expected for a long time every day that we should be examined, but it was prevented by the person whose interest it was to prevent it.[E47]
Walter remained imprisoned,[126] and quarrelled almost daily with Chresten, calling him a thief and a robber. (Chresten had found some ducats which Walter had concealed under a stool; the foolish Walter allowed the Swede to see that he hid ducats and an ink-bottle between the girths under the stool, and he afterwards struck the Swede, who betrayed him.) Chresten slyly allowed Walter to take a little exercise in the hall of the tower, and in the meanwhile he searched the stool. It may well be imagined that at the everlasting scolding Chresten was annoyed, and he did not procure Walter particularly good food from the kitchen; so that sometimes he could not eat either of the two dishes ordered for him; and when Walter said one day, ‘If you would give me only one dish of which I could eat, it would be quite enough,’ Chresten arranged it so that Walter only received one dish, and often could not eat of that. (This was to Chresten’s own damage, for he was entitled to the food that was left; but he was ready to forego this, so long as he could annoy the others.)
Once Chresten came to him with a dish of rice-porridge, and began at once to quarrel with him, so that the other became angry (just as children do), and would eat nothing. Chresten carried the porridge away again directly, and laughed heartily. I said to Chresten, in the prison governor’s presence, ‘Though God has long delayed to punish Walter, his punishment is all the heavier now, for he could scarcely have fallen into more unmerciful hands than yours.’ He laughed heartily at this, and the prison governor did the same. And as there is a hole passing from the Dark Church into the outer room, those who are inside there can call upstairs, so that one can plainly hear what is said. So Walter one day called to the prison governor, and begged him to give him a piece of roast meat; the prison governor called to him, ‘Yes, we will roast a rat for you!’ I sent him a piece of roast meat through Chresten; when he took it, and heard that I had sent it to him, he wept.
Thus the time passed, I had always work to do, and I wrote also a good deal.[127] The priest was tired of administering the Lord’s Supper to me, and he let me wait thirteen and fourteen days; when he did come, he performed his office par manière d’acquit. I said nothing about it, but the woman, who is a German, also received the Lord’s Supper from him; she made much of it, especially once (the last time he confessed her); for then I waited four days for him before it suited him to come, and at last he came. It was Wednesday, about nine o’clock. He never greeted us, nor did he wish me joy to the act I intended to perform. This time he said, as he shook hands, ‘I have not much time to wait, I have a child to baptise.’ I knew well that this could not be true, but I answered ‘In God’s name!’ When he was to receive the woman’s confession, he would not sit down, but said ‘Now go on, I have no time,’ and scarcely gave her time to confess, absolved her quickly, and read the consecrating service at posthaste speed. When he was gone, the woman was very impatient, and said that she had received the holy communion in the field from a military chaplain, with the whole company (since they were ready to attack the enemy on the following day), but that the priest had not raced through God’s word as this one had done; she had gained nothing from it.
I comforted her as well as I could, read and sang to her, told her she should repent and be sorry for her sins, and labour to amend her ways, and not be distracted by the want of devotion in the priest; she could appropriate to herself Christ’s sufferings and merits for the forgiveness of her sins, for the priest had given her his body and blood in the bread and wine. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I shall, with God’s will, be a better Christian.’ I said ‘Will you keep what you have promised me?’ Her vow was, not to drink herself tipsy, as she had once done. I will not omit to mention this. She received, as I have before said, half a pint of French wine at each meal, and I half a measure of Rhine wine. She could drink both portions without being quite intoxicated, for at her meal she drank the French wine and lay down; and when she got up in the afternoon she drank my wine.[128] In the evening she kept my wine for breakfast, but once she had in her cup both my wine and her own, so that at noon she had two half-pints of wine; she sat there and drank it so quietly, and I paid no attention to her, being at the moment engaged in a speculation about a pattern which I wanted to knit; at length I looked at her because it was so long before she laid down; then she turned over all the vessels, one after another, and there was nothing in them. I accosted her and said, ‘How is it? have you drank all the wine?’ She could scarcely answer. She tried to stand up, and could not. ‘To bed, you drunken sow,’ said I. She tried to move, but could not; she was sick, and crept along by the wall to fetch a broom. When she had the broom, she could do nothing with it. I told her to crawl into bed and lie down; she crawled along and fell with her face on the bed, while her feet were on the ground. There she was sick again, and remained so lying, and slept. It is easy to imagine how I felt.
She slept in this way for a couple of hours, but still did not quite sleep off her intoxication; for when she wanted afterwards to clean herself and the room, she remained for a long time sitting on a low stool, the broom between her knees and her hair about her ears. She took off her bodice to wash it, and so she sat with her bosom uncovered, an ugly sight; she kept bemoaning herself, praying to God to help her, as she was nigh unto death. I was angry, but I could scarcely help laughing at this sad picture. When the moaning and lamenting were over, I said angrily, ‘Yes, may God help you, you drunkard; to the guards’ station you ought to go; I will not have such a drunkard about me; go and sleep it out, and don’t let me hear you talk of God when you are not sober, for then God is far from you and the d——l is near!’ (I laughed afterwards at myself.) She laid down again, and about four o’clock she was quite sober, made herself perfectly clean, and sat quietly weeping. Then she threw herself with great excitement at my feet, clung to them, howled and clamoured, and begged for God’s sake that I would forgive her this once, and that it should never happen again; said how she had kept the wine &c.; that if I would only keep her half a year, she would have enough to purchase her admission into the hospital at Lübeck.
I thought I would take good care that she did not get so much again at once, and also that perhaps if I had another in her place she might be worse in other things. Karen could not have come at this time, for her daughter was expecting her confinement, and I knew that she would then not be quiet. So I promised her to keep her for the time she mentioned. She kept her word moreover, and I so arranged [it] six weeks later that she received no more wine, and from this time the woman received no wine; my wine alone could not hurt her. She was quite intimate with Walter. She had known him formerly, and Chresten was of opinion that he had given her all his money before he was ill; for he said that Walter had no money any longer. What there was in it I know not. Honest she was not, for she stole from me first a brass knitting-pin, which I used at that time; it was formed like a bodkin, and the woman never imagined but that it was gold. As my room is not large, it could soon be searched, but I looked for three days and could not find the pin. I was well aware that she had it, for it is not so small as not to be seen, so I said afterwards, ‘This brass pin is of no great importance; I can get another for two pence.’ The next day she showed me the pin, in a large crevice on the floor between the stones. But when she afterwards, shortly before she left, found one of my gold earrings which I had lost, and which undoubtedly had been left on the pillow, for it was a snake ring, this was never returned, say what I would about it. She made a show of looking for it in the dirt outside; she knew I dared not say that I had missed it.