The book is still in my possession, and I sent word through Tötzlöff to the lady in waiting to request her to convey my most humble thanks to her Highness; and afterwards, when the Landgravine was about to start on her journey, to commend me to her Serene Highness’s favour.
In the same year, 1671, Karen, [Nils’] daughter, left me on account of ill health. For one night a woman was with me named Margrete, who was a serf from Holstein. She had run away from her master. She was a very awkward peasant woman, so towards evening on the following day she was sent away, and in her place there came a woman named Inger, a person of loose character. This woman gave herself out as the widow of a non-commissioned officer, and that she had long been in service at Hamburg, and nursed lying-in women. It happened with her, as is often the case, that one seeks to obtain a thing, and that to one’s own vexation. Chresten had spoken for this woman with the prison governor, and had praised her before me, but the prison governor took upon another recommendation the before-mentioned Margrete. So long as there was hope that the Landgravine might obtain my freedom, this woman was very amenable, but afterwards she began by degrees to show what was in her, and that it was not for nothing that she resembled Dina.
She caused me annoyance of various kinds, which I received with patience, thinking within myself that it was another trial imposed by God upon me, and Dina’s intrigues often came into my mind, and I thought, ‘Suppose she should devise some Dina plot?’ (She is capable of it, if she had only an instigator, as Dina had.) Among other annoyances, which may not be reckoned among the least, was this: I was one day not very well, having slept but little or not at all during the night, and I had lain down to sleep on the bed in the day; and she would give me no rest, but came softly past me in her socks, and in order to wake me teased a dog which I had,[137] so that he growled. I asked her why she grudged my sleeping? She answered, ‘I did not know that you were asleep.’ ‘Why, then,’ I said, ‘did you go by in your stockings?’ She replied, ‘If you saw that, then you were not asleep,’ and she laughed heartily by herself. (She sat always in front of my table with her back turned to me; whether it was because she had lost one eye that she sat in that position to the light, I know not.)
I did not care for any conversation with her, so I lay still; and when she thought I was asleep, she got up again and teased the dog. I said, ‘You tax my patience sorely; but if once my passion rises, you will certainly get something which will astonish you, you base accursed thing!’ ‘Base accursed thing,’ she repeated to herself with a slight laugh. I prayed to God that he would restrain me, so that I might not lay violent hands on this base creature. And as I had the other apartment (as I have before mentioned),[138] I went out and walked up and down between four and five o’clock. She washed and splashed outside, and spilled the water exactly where I was walking. I told her several times to leave her splashing, as she spilled the water in all directions on the floor, so that I made my clothes dirty, and often there was not a drop of water for my dog to drink, and the tower-warder had to fetch her water from the kitchen spring. This was of no avail. One day it occurred to her, just as the bell had sounded four, to go out and pour all the water on the floor, and then come back again. When I went to the door, I perceived what she had done. Without saying a word, I struck her first on one cheek and then on the other, so that the blood ran from her nose and mouth, and she fell against her bench, and knocked the skin from her shin-bone. She began to be abusive, and said she had never in her life had such a box on her ears. I said immediately, ‘Hold your tongue, or you will have another like it! I am now only a little angry, but if you make me really angry I shall strike you harder.’ She was silent for the time, but she caused me all the small annoyance she could.
I received it all with gentleness, fearing that I might lay violent hands on her. She scarcely knew what to devise to cause me vexation; she had a silver thimble on which a strange name was engraved; she had found it, she said, in a dust-heap in the street. I once asked her where she had found some handkerchiefs which she had of fine Dutch linen, with lace on them, which likewise were marked with another name; they were embroidered with blue silk, and there was a different name on each. She had bought them, she said, at an auction at Hamburg.[139] I thought that the damage she had received on one of her eyes might very likely have arisen from her having ‘found’ something of that kind,[E54] and as I soon after asked her by what accident she had injured her eye, she undoubtedly understood my question well, for she was angry and rather quiet, and said, ‘What injury? There is nothing the matter with my eye; I can, thank God, see with both.’ I let the matter rest there. Soon after this conversation she came down one day from upstairs, feeling in her pocket, though she said nothing until the afternoon, when the doors were locked, and then she looked through all her rubbish, saying ‘If I only knew where it could be?’ I asked what she was looking for. ‘My thimble,’ she said. ‘You will find it,’ I said; ‘only look thoroughly!’ And as she had begun to look for it in her pockets before she had required it, I thought she might have drawn it out of her pocket with some paper which she used, and which she had bought. I said this, but it could not be so.
On the following day, towards noon, she again behaved as if she were looking for it upstairs; and when the door was closed she began to give loose to her tongue, and to make a long story about the thimble, where it could possibly be. ‘There was no one here, and no one came in except us two;’ and she gave me to understand that I had taken it; she took her large box which she had, and rummaged out everything that was in it, and said, ‘Now you can see that I have not got it.’ I said that I did not care about it, whether she had it or no, but that I saw that she accused me of stealing. She adhered to it, and said, ‘Who else could have taken it? There is no one else here, and I have let you see all that is mine, and it is not there.’ Then for the first time I saw that she wished that I should let her see in the same manner what I had in my cardbox, for she had never seen anything of the work which I had done before her time. I said, ‘I do not care at all what you do with your thimble, and I respect myself too much to quarrel with you or to mind your coarse and shameless accusation. I have, thank God, enough in my imprisonment to buy what I require, &c. But as you perhaps have stolen it, you now imagine that it has been stolen again from you, if it be true that you have lost it.’ To this she made no answer, so that I believe she had it herself, and only wanted by this invention to gain a sight of my things. As it was the Christmas month and very cold, and Chresten was lighting a fire in the stove before the evening meal, I said to him in her presence, ‘Chresten, you are fortunate if you are not, like me, accused of stealing, for you might have found her thimble upstairs without having had it proclaimed from the pulpit; it was before found by Inger, and not announced publicly.’
This was like a spark to tinder, and she went to work like a frantic being, using her shameless language. She had not stolen it, but it had been stolen from her; and she cursed and swore. Chresten ordered her to be silent. He desired her to remember who I was, and that she was in my service. She answered, ‘I will not be silent, not if I were standing before the King’s bailiff[!’] The more gently I spoke, the more angry was she; at length I said, ‘Will you agree with me in one wish?—that the person who last had the thimble in her possession may see no better with her left eye than she sees with her right.’ She answered with an oath that she could see with both eyes. I said, ‘Well, then, pray God with me that she may be blind in both eyes who last had it.’ She growled a little to herself and ran into the inner room, and said no more of her thimble, nor did I. God knows that I was heartily weary of this intercourse.
I prayed God for patience, and thought ‘This is only a trial of patience. God spares me from other sorrow which I might have in its stead.’ I could not avail myself of the occasion of her accusing me of theft to get rid of her, but I saw another opportunity not far off. The prison governor came one day to me with some thread which was offered for sale, rather coarse, but fit for making stockings and night-waistcoats. I bought two pounds of it, and he retained a pound, saying, ‘I suppose the woman can make me a pair of stockings with it?’ I answered in the affirmative (for she could do nothing else but knit). When he was gone, she said, ‘There will be a pair of stockings for me here also, for I shall get no other pay.’ I said, ‘That is surely enough.’ The stockings for the prison governor were finished. She sat one day half asleep, and made a false row round the stocking below the foot. I wanted her to undo it. ‘No,’ said she, ‘it can remain as it is; he won’t know but that it is the fashion in Hamburg.’[140]
When his stockings were finished, she began a pair for herself of the same thread, and sat and exulted that it was the prison governor’s thread. This, it seemed to me, furnished me with an opportunity of getting rid of her. And as the prison governor rarely came up, and she sent him down the stockings by Tötzlöff, I begged Tötzlöff to contrive that the prison governor should come up to me, and that he should seat himself on the woman’s bed and arrange her pillow as if he wanted to lean against it (underneath it lay her wool). This was done. The prison governor came up, took the knitting in his hand, and said to Inger, ‘Is this another pair of stockings for me?’ ‘No, Mr. Prison governor,’ she answered, ‘they are for me. You have got yours. I have already sent you them.’ ‘But,’ said he, ‘this is of my thread; it looks like my thread.’ She protested that it was not his thread. As he went down to fetch his stockings and the scales, she said to me, ‘That is not his thread; it is mine now,’ and laughed heartily. I thought, ‘Something more may come of this.’
The prison governor came with the scales and his stockings, compared one thread with the other, and the stockings weighed scarcely half a pound. He asked her whether she had acted rightly? She continued to assert that it was her thread; that she had bought it in Hamburg, and had brought it here. The prison governor grew angry, and said that she lied, and called her a bitch. She swore on the other hand that it was not his thread; that she would swear it by the Sacrament. The prison governor went away; such an oath horrified him. I was perfectly silent during this quarrel. When the prison governor had gone, I said to the woman, ‘God forbid! how could you say such words? Do you venture to swear a falsehood by the Sacrament, and to say it in my presence, when I know that it is the prison governor’s thread? What a godless creature you are!’ She answered, with a half ridiculous expression of face, ‘I said I would take the Sacrament upon it, but I am not going to do so.’ ‘Oh Dina!’ I thought, ‘you are not like her for nothing; God guard me from you!’ And I said, ‘Do you think that such light words are not a sin, and that God will not punish you for them?’ She assumed an air of authority, and said, ‘Is the thread of any consequence? I can pay for it; I have not stolen it from him; he gave it to me himself. I have only done what the tailors do; they do not steal; it is given to them. He did not weigh out the thread for me.’ I answered her no more than ‘You have taken it from him; I shall trouble myself no more about it;’ but I begged Tötzlöff to do all he could that I should be rid of her, and have another in her place of a good character.