Little at peace as she was with her husband when she had him with her, she was greatly grieved when he left her to go to the West Indies. He sent by return vessels all sorts of goods to sell, and she thus maintained herself comfortably.
It happened at last that the man died in the West Indies, and a person who brought her the news stated that he had been poisoned by the governor of the place named ——, at an entertainment, and this because he was on the point of returning home, and the governor was afraid that Holme might mention his evil conduct. These tidings unsettled her mind so, that she ran at night, in her mere night-dress, along the street, and squabbled with the watchmen. She went to the admiral at the Holm, and demanded justice upon the absent culprit, and accused him, though she could prove nothing.
Thus matters went on for a time, until at last she gained repose, and God ordained it that she came to me. My intercourse with her is as with a frail glass vessel, for she is weak in many respects. She often doubts of her salvation, and enumerates all her sins. She laments especially having so deeply offended her mother, and thus having drawn down a curse upon her. When this fear comes upon her, I console her with God’s word, and enter fully into the matter, showing her, from Holy Scripture, on what a repentant sinner must rely for the mercy of God. Occasionally she is troubled as to the interpretation of Holy Scripture, as all passages do not seem to her to agree, but to contradict each other. In this I help her so far as my understanding goes, so that sometimes she heartily thanks God that she is come to me, where she finds rest and consolation.
After she had been with me for a year or two, she learned that the governor, whom she suspected, had come to Copenhagen. She said to me, ‘I hear the rogue is come here; I request my dismissal.’ I asked her why. ‘Because,’ she replied, ‘I will kill him.’ I could scarcely keep from laughing; but I said, ‘Jesus forbid! If you have any such design, I shall not let you go.’ And as she is a person whose like I have never known before—for she could chide with hard words, and yet at the same time she was modest and well-behaved—I tried to make her tell me and show me how she designed to take the governor’s life. (She is a small woman, delicately formed.) Then she acted as if her enemy were seated on a stool, and she had a large knife under her apron. When he said to her, ‘Woman, what do you want?’ she would plunge the knife into him, and exclaim, ‘Rogue, thou hast deserved this.’ She would not move from the place, she would gladly die, if she could only take his life. I said, ‘Still it is such a disgrace to die by the hand of the executioner.’ ‘Oh, no!’ she replied, ‘it is not a disgrace to die for an honourable deed;’ and she had an idea that any one thus dying by the hand of the executioner passed away in a more Christian manner than such as died on a bed of sickness; and that it was no sin to kill a man who, like a rogue, had murdered another. I asked her if she did not think that he sinned who killed another. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘not when he has brought it upon himself.’ I said, ‘No one may be his own judge, either by the law of God or man; and what does the fifth commandment teach us?’[E63] She answered as before, that she would gladly die if she could only take the rogue’s life. (I must add that she said she could not do it on my account, for I would not let her out.) She made a sin of that which is no sin, and that which is sin she will not regard as such. She says it is a sin to kill a dog, a cat, or a bird; the innocent animals do no harm; in fact, it is a still greater sin to let the poor beasts hunger. I asked her once whether it was a sin to eat meat. ‘No,’ she answered; ‘it is only a sin to him who has killed the animal.’ She protested that if she were obliged to marry, and had to choose between a butcher and an executioner, she would prefer the latter. She told me of various quarrels she had had with those who had either killed animals or allowed them to hunger.
One story I will not leave unmentioned, as it is very pretty. She sold, she said, one day some pigs to a butcher. When the butcher’s boy was about to bind the pigs’ feet and carry them off hanging from a pole, she was sorry for the poor pigs, and said, ‘What, will you take their life? No, I will not suffer that!’ and she threw him back his money. I asked her if she did not know that pigs were killed, and for what reason she thought the butcher had bought them. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I knew that well. Had he let them go on their own legs, I should have cared nothing about it; but to bind the poor beasts in this way, and to hear them cry, I could not endure that.’ It would take too long to enumerate all the extravagant whims which she related of herself. But with all this she is not foolish, and I well believe she is true to any one she loves. She served me very well, and with great care.
The above-mentioned governor[E64] was killed by some prisoners on board the vessel, when he was returning to the West Indies. By a strange chance the vessel with the murderers came to Copenhagen. (They were sentenced to death for their crime.) Jonatha declared that the governor had had only too good a death, and that it was a sin that any one should lose his life on account of it. I practise speaking the English language with Jonatha. She has forgotten somewhat of her mother tongue, since she has not spoken it for many years; and as she always reads the English Bible, and does not at once understand all the words, I help her; for I not only can perceive the sense from the preceding and following words, but also because some words resemble the French, though with another accent. And we often talk together about the interpretation of Holy Scripture. She calls herself a Calvinist, but she does not hold the opinions of Calvinists. I never dispute with her over her opinions. She goes to the Lord’s Supper in the Queen’s church[E65]. Once, when she came back to me from there, she said she had had a conversation upon religion with a woman, who had told her to her face that she was no Calvinist. I asked her of what religion the woman imagined that she was. She replied: ‘God knows that. I begged her to mind her own business, and said, that I was a Christian; I thought of your grace’s words (but I did not say them), that all those who believe on Christ and live a Christian life, are Christians, whatever name they may give to their faith.’
In this year 1684 I saw the Queen Dowager fall from the chair in which she was drawn up to the royal apartment. The chair ran down the pulleys too quickly, so that she fell on her face and knocked her knee. During this year her weakness daily increased, but she thought herself stronger than she was. She appeared at table always much dressed, and between the meals she remained in her apartments.
I kept myself patient, and wrote the following:—
Contemplation on Memory and Courage, recorded to the honour of God by the suffering Christian woman in the sixty-third year of her life, and the almost completed twenty-first year of her captivity.
The vanished hours can ne’er come back again,
Still may the old their youthful joys retain;
The past may yet within our memory live,
And courage vigour to the old may give.
Yet why should I thus sport with Memory’s truth,
And harrow up the fairer soil of youth?
No fruit it brings, fallow and bare it lies,
And the dry furrow only pain supplies!
In my first youth, in honourable days
Upon such things small question did I raise.
Then years advanced with trouble in their train,
And spite of show my life was fraught with pain.
The holy marriage bond—my rank and fame,
Increased my foes and made my ill their aim.
Go! honour, riches, vanish from my mind!
Ye all forsook me and left nought behind.
’Twas ye have brought me here thro’ years to lie;
Thus can man’s envy human joy deny!
My God alone, He ne’er forsook me here,
My cross He lightened, and was ever near;
And when my heart was yielding to despair,
He spoke of peace and whispered He was there.
He gave me power and ever near me stood,
And all could see how truly God was good.