“He shall make them white as Lebanon’s—”
“Now by St. Satan and all his angels!” roared Ulrik Christian as he jumped out of bed, caught a rapier from the sword-rack, and made a furious lunge after the pastor, who, however, escaped into the adjoining room, slamming the door after him. In his rage, Ulrik Christian flung himself at the door, but sank exhausted to the floor, and had to be lifted into bed, though he still held the sword.
The forenoon passed in a drowsy calm. He suffered no pain, and the weakness that came over him seemed a pleasant relief. He lay staring at the points of light penetrating the curtain, and counted the black rings in the iron lattice. A pleased smile flitted over his face when he thought of his onslaught on the pastor, and he grew irritable only when Shoemaker’s Anne would coax him to close his eyes and try to sleep.
In the early afternoon a loud knock at the door announced the entrance of the pastor of Trinity Church, Dr. Jens Justesen. He was a tall, rather stout man, with coarse, strong features, short black hair, and large, deep-set eyes. Stepping briskly up to the bed, he said simply: “Good-day!”
As soon as Ulrik Christian became aware that another clergyman was standing before him, he began to shake with rage, and let loose a broadside of oaths and railing against the pastor, against Shoemaker’s Anne, who had not guarded his peace better, against God in heaven and all holy things.
“Silence, child of man!” thundered Pastor Jens. “Is this language meet for one who has even now one foot in the grave? ’Twere better you employed the flickering spark of life that still remains to you in making your peace with the Lord, instead of picking quarrels with men. You are like those criminals and disturbers of peace who, when their judgment is fallen and they can no longer escape the red-hot pincers and the axe, then in their miserable impotence curse and revile the Lord our God with filthy and wild words. They seek thereby courage to drag themselves out of that almost brutish despair, that craven fear and slavish remorse without hope, into which such fellows generally sink toward the last, and which they fear more than death and the tortures of death.”
Ulrik Christian listened quietly, until he had managed to get his sword out from under the coverlet. Then he cried: “Guard yourself, priest-belly!” and made a sudden lunge after Pastor Jens, who coolly turned the weapon aside with his broad prayer-book.
“Leave such tricks to pages!” he said contemptuously. “They’re scarce fitting for you or me. And now this woman”—turning to Shoemaker’s Anne—“had best leave us private.”
Anne quitted the room, and the pastor drew his chair up to the bed, while Ulrik Christian laid his sword on the coverlet.