Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

Their clothing was coarse and ragged, and they looked as if they had not had enough to eat every day; and no wonder, for it was not a profitable trade they plied. In an inn between Aarhus and Randers, Sören had met a poor sick German, who for twenty marks had sold him a small, badly battered hurdy-gurdy, a motley fool’s suit, and an old checked rug. With these he and Marie gained their livelihood, going from market to market; she would turn the hurdy-gurdy, and he would stand on the checked rug, dressed in the motley clothes, lifting and doing tricks with some huge iron weights and long iron bars, which they borrowed of the tradesmen.

It was the market that had brought them to Ribe.

They were standing near the door, where a faint, faded strip of light shone on their pale faces and the dark mass of heads behind them. People were coming singly or in pairs or small groups, talking and laughing in well-bred manner to the very threshold of the church, but there they suddenly became silent, gazed gravely straight before them, and changed their gait.

Sören was seized with a desire to see more of the show, and whispered to Marie that they ought to go in; there was no harm in trying, nothing worse could happen to them than to be turned out. Marie shuddered inwardly at the thought that she should be turned out from a place where common artisans could freely go, and she held back Sören, who was trying to draw her on; but suddenly she changed her mind, pressed eagerly forward, pulling Sören after her, and walked in without the slightest trace of shrinking timidity or stealthy caution; indeed, she seemed determined to be noticed and turned out. At first no one stopped them, but just as she was about to step into the well-lit, crowded nave, a church warden, who was stationed there, caught sight of them. After casting one horrified glance up through the church, he advanced quickly upon them with lifted and outstretched hands, as if pushing them before him to the very threshold, and over it. He stood there for a moment, looking reproachfully at the crowd, as if he blamed it for what had occurred, then returned with measured tread, and took up his post, shuddering.

The crowd met the ejected ones with a burst of jeering laughter and a shower of mocking questions, which made Sören growl and look around savagely, but Marie was content; she had bent to receive the blow which the respectable part of society always has ready for such as he, and the blow had fallen.

On the night before St. Oluf’s market, four men were sitting in one of the poorest inns at Aarhus, playing cards.

One of the players was Sören. His partner, a handsome man with coal-black hair and a dark skin, was known as Jens Bottom, and was a juggler. The other two members of the party were joint owners of a mangy bear. Both were unusually hideous: one had a horrible harelip, while the other was one-eyed, heavy jowled, and pock-marked, and was known as Rasmus Squint, plainly because the skin around the injured eye was drawn together in such a manner as to give him the appearance of being always ready to peer through a key-hole or some such small aperture.

The players were sitting at one end of the long table which ran under the window and held a candle and an earless cruse. Opposite them was a folding-table, fastened up against the wall with an iron hook. A bar ran across the other end of the room, and a thin, long-wicked candle, stuck into an old inverted funnel, threw a sleepy light over the shelf above, where some large, square flasks of brandy and bitters, some quart and pint measures, and half-a-dozen glasses had plenty of room beside a basket full of mustard seed and a large lantern with panes of broken glass. In one corner outside of the bar sat Marie Grubbe, knitting and drowsing, and in the other sat a man with body bent forward and elbows resting on his knees. He seemed intent on pulling his black felt hat as far down over his head as possible, and when that was accomplished, he would clutch the wide brim, slowly work the hat up from his head again, his eyes pinched together and the corners of his mouth twitching, probably with the pain of pulling his hair, then presently begin all over again.

“Then this is the last game to play,” said Jens Bottom, whose lead it was.

Rasmus Squint pounded the table with his knuckles as a sign to his partner, Salmand, to cover.