“Cross me fore and cross me aft! Penitence, forgiveness of sins, and life eternal!” jeered Ulrik Christian and sat up in bed. “Do you suppose, you sour-faced baldpate, do you suppose, because my bones are rotting out of my body in stumps and slivers, that gives me more stomach for your parson-palaver?”
“Most gracious lord, you sadly misuse the privilege which your high rank and yet more your pitiable condition give you to berate a poor servant of the Church, who is but doing his duty in seeking to turn your thoughts toward that which is assuredly to you the one thing needful. Oh, honored lord, it avails but little to kick against the pricks! Has not the wasting disease that has struck your body taught you that none can escape the chastisements of the Lord God, and that the scourgings of heaven fall alike on high and low?”
Ulrik Christian interrupted him, laughing: “Hell consume me, but you talk like a witless school-boy! This sickness that’s eating my marrow I’ve rightfully brought on myself, and if you suppose that heaven or hell sends it, I can tell you that a man gets it by drinking and wenching and revelling at night. You may depend on’t. And now take your scholastic legs out of this chamber with all speed, or else I’ll—”
Another attack seized him, and as he writhed and moaned with the intense pain, his oaths and curses were so blasphemous and so appalling in their inventiveness that the scandalized pastor stood pale and aghast. He prayed God for strength and power of persuasion, if mayhap he might be vouchsafed the privilege of opening this hardened soul to the truth and glorious consolation of religion. When the patient was quiet again he began: “My lord, my lord, with tears and weeping I beg and beseech you to cease from such abominable cursing and swearing! Remember, the axe is laid unto the root of the tree, and it shall be hewn down and cast into the fire, if it continues to be unfruitful and does not in the eleventh hour bring forth flowers and good fruit! Cease your baleful resistance, and throw yourself with penitent prayers at the feet of our Saviour—”
When the pastor began his speech, Ulrik Christian sat up at the headboard of the bed. He pointed threateningly to the door and cried again and again: “Begone, parson! Begone, march! I can’t abide you any longer!”
“Oh, my dear lord,” continued the clergyman, “if mayhap you are hardening yourself because you misdoubt the possibility of finding grace, since the mountain of your sins is overwhelming, then hear with rejoicing that the fountain of God’s grace is inexhaustible—”
“Mad dog of a parson, will you go!” hissed Ulrik Christian between clenched teeth; “one—two!”
“And if your sins were red as blood, ay, as Tyrian purple—”
“Right about face!”