The words at once occurred to me which he had said to me a long time before, namely that no woman could be silent, but that all men could be silent (when he had asserted this, I had thought, if this be so, then my adversaries might believe that I, had I known of anything which they had in view, should not have been able to keep silence). So I now answered him thus: ‘Well, and what does that signify? It was a man; they can all keep silence; there is no harm done.’ He could not help laughing, and said, ‘Well, you are good enough.’ I then talked to him, and assured him that I had no desire to leave the tower without the King’s will, even though day and night all the tower doors were left open, and I also said that I could have got out long ago, if that had been my design. Gert continued in his service, and the prison governor never told Gert to shut me in in the morning.[142]
At this time I had bought myself a clavicordium, and as Barbra could sing well, I played psalms and she sang, so that the time was not long to us. She taught me to bind books, so far as I needed.[E56]
My father confessor, H. Emmeke, became a preacher at Kiöge anno 1676. In the same year my pension was increased, and I received yearly 250 rix-dollars. It stands in the order that the 200 rix-dollars were to be used for the purchase of clothes and the remaining fifty to buy anything which might beguile the time.[E57] God bless and keep his gracious Majesty, and grant that he may live to enjoy many happy years.
Brant was at this time treasurer.
On December 17 in this same year Barbra left me, and married a bookbinder’s apprentice; but she repented it afterwards. And as her husband died a year and a half after her marriage, and that suddenly, [suspicion] fell upon Barbra. She afterwards went to her brother’s house and fell ill. Her conscience was awakened, and she sent for Tötzlöff and told almost in plain terms that she had poisoned her husband, and begged him to tell me so. I was not much astonished at it, for according to her own account she had before killed her own children; but I told Peder Tötzlöff that he was not to speak of it; if God willed that it should be made known, it would be so notwithstanding; the brother and the maid in the house knew it; he was not to go there again, even if she sent a message to him. She became quite insane, and lay in a miserable condition. The brother subsequently had her removed to the plague-house.
In Barbra’s place there came to me a woman named Sitzel, daughter of a certain Klemming; Maren Blocks had brought about her employment, as Sitzel owed her money. She is a dissolute woman, and Maren gave her out as a spinster; she had a white cap on her head when she came up. Sitzel’s debt to Maren had arisen in this way: that Maren—since Sitzel could make buttons, and the button-makers had quarrelled with her—obtained for her a royal licence in order to free her from the opposition of the button-makers, under the pretext that she was sickly. When the door was locked in the evening, I requested to see the royal licence which Maren had obtained for her. And when I saw that she was styled in it the sickly woman, I asked her what her infirmity was. She replied that she had no infirmity. ‘Why, then,’ I asked, ‘have you given yourself out as sickly?’ She answered, ‘That was Maren Block’s doing, in order to get for me the royal licence.’ ‘In the licence,’ I said, ‘you are spoken of as a married woman, and not as a spinster; have you, then, been seduced?’ She hung her head and said softly, ‘Yes.’
I was not satisfied. I said, ‘Maren Block has obtained the royal licence for you by lies, and has brought you to me by lies; what, then, can I expect from your service?’ She begged my pardon, promised to serve me well, and never to act contrary to my wishes. She is a dangerous person; there is nothing good in her; bold and shameless, she is not even afraid of fighting a man. She struck two button-makers one day, who wanted to take away her work, till they were obliged to run away. With me she had no opportunity of thus displaying her evil passions, but still they were perceptible in various ways. One day I warded off a scuffle between her and Maren Blocks; for when Maren Blocks had got back the money which she had expended on the royal licence for Sitzel, she wanted to remove her from me, and to bring another into her place; but I sent word to Maren Blocks that she must not imagine she could send me another whom I must take. It was enough that she had done this time.[143]
In the place of H. Emmeke Norbye, H. Johan Adolf Borneman became palace-preacher; a very learned and sensible man, who now became my father confessor, and performed the duties of his office for the first time on April 10, 1677.
On October 9, in the same year, my father confessor was Magister Hendrich Borneman, dean of the church of Our Lady (a learned and excellent man), his brother H. Johan Adolf Borneman having accompanied the King’s Majesty on a journey.
I have, thank God, spent this year in repose: reading, writing, and composing various things.