VII.
Before Thee, Lord, I lie;
Give me my liberty
Before my course is run;
Thy Gracious Hands extend
And let my suffering end!
Yet not my will, but Thine, be done.
In this year, on July 25, his royal Majesty was gracious enough to have a large window made again in my inner apartment; it had been walled up when I had been brought into this chamber. A stove was also placed there, the flue of which passed out into the square. The prison governor was not well satisfied at this, especially as he was obliged to be present during the work; this did not suit his laziness. My doors were open during the time; it was twelve days before the work was finished. He grumbled, and did not wish that the window should be made as low as it had been before I was imprisoned here; I persuaded the mason’s journeyman to cut down the wall as low as it had before been, which the prison governor perceived from the palace square, and he came running up and scolded, and was thoroughly angry. But it was not to be changed, for the window-frame was already made. I asked him what it mattered to him if the window was a stone lower; it did not go lower than the iron grating, and it had formerly been so. He would have his will, so that the mason walled it up a stone higher while the prison governor was there, and removed it again afterwards, for the window-frame, which was ready, would not otherwise have fitted.
In the same year Karen, [Nils’] daughter, left me for the third and last time, and in her stead came a woman named Barbra, the widow of a bookbinder. She is a woman of a melancholy turn. Her conscience is aroused sometimes, so that she often enumerates her own misdeeds (but not so great as they have been, and as I have found out by enquiry). She had two children, and it seems from her own account that she was to some extent guilty of their death, for she says: ‘Who can have any care for a child when one does not love its father?’ She left her husband two years before he died, and repaired to Hamburg, supporting herself by spinning; she had before been in the service of a princess as a spinning-maid. Her father is alive, and was bookbinder to the King’s Majesty; he has just now had a stroke of paralysis, and is lying very ill. She has no sympathy with her father, and wishes him dead (which would perhaps be the best thing for him); but it vexes me that she behaves so badly to her sister, who is the wife of a tailor, and I often tell her that in this she is committing a double sin; for the needy sister comes from time to time for something to eat. If she does not come exactly on the evening which she has agreed upon, she gets nothing, and the food is thrown away upstairs. When at some length I place her sin before her, she says, ‘That meat is bad.’ I ask her why she let it get bad, and did not give it in time to her sister. To this she answers that her sister is not worthy of it. I predict evil things which will happen to her in future, as they have done to others whom I enumerate to her. At this she throws back her head and is silent.
At this time her Majesty the Queen sent me some silkworms to beguile the time. When they had finished spinning, I sent them back to her Majesty in a box which I had covered with carnation-coloured satin, upon which I had embroidered a pattern with gold thread. Inside, the box was lined with white taffeta. In the lid I embroidered with black silk a humble request that her Majesty would loose my bonds, and would fetter me anew with the hand of favour. Her Majesty the virtuous Queen would have granted my request had it rested with her.
The prison governor became gradually more sensible and accommodating, drank less wine, and made no jokes. I had peace within my doors. The woman sat during the day outside in the other apartment, and lay there also in the night, so that I began not to fret so much over my hard fate. I passed the year with reading, writing, and composing.
For some time past, immediately after I had received the yearly pension, I had bought for myself not only historical works in various languages, but I had gathered and translated from them all the famous female personages, who were celebrated as true, chaste, sensible, valorous, virtuous, God-fearing, learned, and steadfast; and in anno 1675, on January 9, I amused myself with making some rhymes to M. Thomas Kingo, under the title, ‘To the much-famed Poet M. Thomas Kingo, a Request from a Danish Woman in the name of all Danish Women.’ The request was this, that he would exhibit in befitting honour the virtuous and praiseworthy Danish women. There are, indeed, virtuous women belonging to other nations, but I requested only his praise of the Danish. This never reached Kingo; but if my good friend to whom I entrust these papers still lives, it will fall probably into your hands, my beloved children.
In the same year, on May 11, I wrote in rhyme a controversial conversation between Sense and Reason; entitled, ‘Controversial Thoughts by the Captive Widow, or the Dispute between Sense and Reason.’
Nothing else occurred this year within the doors of my prison which is worth recording, except one event—namely, when the outermost door of the anteroom was unlocked in the morning for the sake of sweeping away the dirt and bringing in fresh water, and the tower-warder occasionally let it stand open till meal-time and then closed it again, it happened that a fire broke out in the town and the bells were tolled. I and the woman ran up to the top of the tower to see where it was burning.
When I was on the stairs which led up to the clock-work, the prison governor came, and with him was a servant from the silver-chamber. He first perceived my dog, then he saw somewhat of the woman, and thought probably that I was there also; he was so wise as not to come up the stairs, but remained below at the lowest holes, from whence one can look out over the town, and left me time enough to get down again and shut my door. Gert was sorry, and came afterwards to the door and told me of his distress. I consoled him, and said there was nothing to fear. Before the prison governor opened the door at noon, he struck Gert with his stick, so that he cried, and the prison governor said with an oath, ‘Thou shalt leave.’ When the prison governor came in, I was the first to speak, and I said: ‘It is not right in you to beat the poor devil; he could not help it. The executioner came up as he was going to lock my door, and that made him forget to do so.’ He threatened Gert severely, and said, ‘I should not have minded it so much had not that other servant been with me.’