When Marie questioned him, he explained that he had left Copenhagen on account of the plague, and meant to stay until it was over. He ate only three times a day, and he could not stand salt meat or fresh bread. As for the rest, he was a master of arts, at present fellow at Borch’s Collegium, and his name was Holberg, Ludvig Holberg.
Master Holberg was a very quiet man of remarkably youthful appearance. At first glance, he appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years old, but upon closer examination, his mouth, his hands, and the inflection of his voice showed that he must be a good deal older. He kept to himself, spoke but little, and that little—so it seemed—with reluctance. Not that he avoided other people, but he simply wanted them to leave him in peace and not draw him into conversation. When the ferry came and went with passengers, or when the fishermen brought in their catch, he liked to watch the busy life from a distance and to listen to the discussions. He seemed to enjoy the sight of people at work, whether it was ploughing or stacking or launching the boats, and whenever any one put forth an effort that showed more than common strength, he would smile with pleasure and lift his shoulders in quiet delight. When he had been at the Burdock House for a month, he began to approach Marie Grubbe, or rather he allowed her to approach him, and they would often sit talking, in the warm summer evenings, for an hour or two at a time, in the common room, where they could look out through the open door, over the bright surface of the water, to the blue, hazy outlines of Möen.
One evening, after their friendship had been well established, Marie told him her story, and ended with a sigh, because they had taken Sören away from her.
“I must own,” said Holberg, “that I am utterly unable to comprehend how you could prefer an ordinary groom and country oaf to such a polished gentleman as his Excellency the Viceroy, who is praised by everybody as a past master in all the graces of fashion, nay as the model of everything that is elegant and pleasing.”
“Even though he had been as full of it as the book they call the Alamodische Sittenbuch, it would not have mattered a rush, since I had once for all conceived such an aversion and loathing for him that I could scarce bear to have him come into my presence; and you know how impossible it is to overcome such an aversion, so that if one had the virtue and principles of an angel, yet this natural aversion would be stronger. On the other hand, my poor present husband woke in me such instant and unlooked-for inclination that I could ascribe it to nothing but a natural attraction, which it would be vain to resist.”
“Ha! That were surely well reasoned! Then we have but to pack all morality into a strong chest and send it to Hekkenfell, and live on according to the desires of our hearts, for then there is no lewdness to be named but we can dress it up as a natural and irresistible attraction, and in the same manner there is not one of all the virtues but we can easily escape from the exercise of it; for one may have an aversion for sobriety, one for honesty, one for modesty, and such a natural aversion, he would say, is quite irresistible, so one who feels it is quite innocent. But you have altogether too clear an understanding, goodwife, not to know that all this is naught but wicked conceits and bedlam talk.”
Marie made no answer.
“But do you not believe in God, goodwife,” Master Holberg went on, “and in the life everlasting?”
“Ay, God be praised, I do. I believe in our Lord.”
“But eternal punishment and eternal reward, goodwife?”