Your Royal Majesty’s
Most humble and most devoted
true hereditary subject
ERIK GRUBBE.
Tjele, August 14, 1690.
The King desired a statement in the matter from the Honorable Palle Dyre, and this was to the effect that Marie did not conduct herself toward him as befitted an honest wife, wherefore he petitioned the King to have the marriage annulled without process of law. This was not granted, and the couple were divorced by a decree of the court, on March twenty-third, sixteen hundred and ninety-one. Erik Grubbe’s supplication that he might lock her up and disinherit her was also refused, and he had to content himself with keeping her a captive at Tjele, strictly guarded by peasants, while the trial lasted, and indeed it must be admitted that he was the last person who had any right to cast at her the stone of righteous retribution.
As soon as judgment had been pronounced, Marie left Tjele with a poor bundle of clothes in her hand. She met Sören on the heath to the south, and he became her third husband.
[CHAPTER XVII]
ABOUT a month later, on an April evening, there was a crowd gathered outside of Ribe cathedral. The Church Council was in session, and it was customary, while that lasted, to light the tapers in church three times a week, at eight o’clock in the evening. The gentry and persons of quality in town as well as the respectable citizens would assemble and walk up and down in the nave, while a skilful musician would play for them on the organ. The poorer people had to be content to listen from the outside.
Among the latter were Marie Grubbe and Sören.