“Would you make me raving mad? Then hear me! Now I know that thou lovest me, no power on earth can part us! Does nothing tell thee that ’tis folly to speak of what thou wouldst or what I would?—when my blood is drunk with thee and I am bereft of all power over myself! I am possessed with thee, and if thou turnest away thy heart from me in this very hour, thou shouldst yet be mine, in spite of thee, in spite of me! I love thee with a love like hatred—I think nothing of thy happiness. Thy weal or woe is nothing to me—only that I be in thy joy, I be in thy sorrow, that I—”
He caught her to him violently and pressed her against his breast.
Slowly she lifted her face and looked long at him with eyes full of tears. Then she smiled. “Have it as thou wilt, Ulrik Frederik,” and she kissed him passionately.
Three weeks later their betrothal was celebrated with much pomp. The King had readily given his consent, feeling that it was time to make an end of Ulrik Frederik’s rather too convivial bachelorhood.
[CHAPTER V]
AFTER the main sallies against the enemy on the second of September and the twentieth of October, the town rang with the fame of Ulrik Christian Gyldenlöve. Colonel Satan, the people called him. His name was on every lip. Every child in Copenhagen knew his sorrel, Bellarina, with the white socks, and when he rode past—a slim, tall figure in the wide-skirted blue uniform of the guard with its enormous white collar and cuffs, red scarf, and broad sword-belt—the maidens of the city peeped admiringly after him, proud when their pretty faces won them a bow or a bold glance from the audacious soldier. Even the sober fathers of families and their matrons in beruffled caps, who well knew how naughty he was and had heard the tales of all his peccadillos, would nod to each other with pleasure in meeting him, and would fall to discussing the difficult question of what would have happened to the city if it had not been for Gyldenlöve.
The soldiers and men on the ramparts idolized him, and no wonder, for he had the same power of winning the common people that distinguished his father, King Christian the Fourth. Nor was this the only point of resemblance. He had inherited his father’s hot-headedness and intemperance, but also much of his ability, his gift of thinking quickly and taking in a situation at a glance. He was extremely blunt. Several years at European courts had not made him a courtier, nor even passably well mannered. In daily intercourse, he was taciturn to the point of rudeness, and in the service, he never opened his mouth without cursing and swearing like a common sailor.
With all this, he was a genuine soldier. In spite of his youth—for he was but eight-and-twenty—he conducted the defence of the city, and led the dangerous but important sallies, with such masterful insight and such mature perfection of plan that the cause could hardly have been in better hands with any one else among the men who surrounded Frederik the Third.
No wonder, therefore, that his name outshone all others, and that the poetasters, in their versified accounts of the fighting, addressed him as “thou vict’ry-crowned Gyldenlöv’, thou Denmark’s saviour brave!” or greeted him: “Hail, hail, thou Northern Mars, thou Danish David bold!” and wished that his life might be as a cornucopia, yea, even as a horn of plenty, full and running over with praise and glory, with health, fortune, and happiness. No wonder that many a quiet family vespers ended with the prayer that God would preserve Mr. Ulrik Christian, and some pious souls added a petition that his foot might be led from the slippery highways of sin, and his heart be turned from all that was evil, to seek the shining diadem of virtue and truth, and that he, who had in such full measure won the honor of this world, might also participate in the only true and everlasting glory.
Marie Grubbe’s thoughts were much engrossed by this kinsman of her aunt. As it happened, she had never met him either at Mistress Rigitze’s or in society, and all she had seen of him was a glimpse in the dusk when Lucie had pointed him out in the street.