Toward supper time, however, the crowds turned homeward, and as moved by one impulse, sought the North Quarter, where the graveyard of St. Peter’s Church lay surrounded by spacious gardens; for it was an old-time custom to take the air under the green trees, after vespers on summer Sundays. While the enemy was encamped before the ramparts, the custom naturally fell into disuse, and the churchyard had been as empty on Sundays as on week days; but this day old habits were revived, and people streamed in through both entrances from Nörregade: nobles and citizens, high and low, all had remembered the full-crowned linden trees of St. Peter’s churchyard.
On the grassy mounds and the broad tombstones sat merry groups of townspeople, man and wife, children and neighbors, eating their supper, while in the outskirts of the party stood the ’prentice boy munching the delicious Sunday sandwich, as he waited for the basket. Tiny children tripped with hands full of broken food for the beggar youngsters that hung on the wall. Lads thirsting for knowledge spelled their way through the lengthy epitaphs, while father listened full of admiration, and mother and the girls scanned the dresses of the passers-by: for by this time the gentlefolk were walking up and down in the broad paths. They usually came a little later than the others, and either supped at home or in one of the eating-houses in the gardens round about.
Stately matrons and dainty maids, old councillors and young officers, stout noblemen and foreign ministers, passed in review. There went bustling, gray-haired Hans Nansen, shortening his steps to the pace of the wealthy Villem Fiuren and listening to his piping voice. There came Corfits Trolle and the stiff Otto Krag. Mistress Ide Daa, famed for her lovely eyes, stood talking to old Axel Urup, who showed his huge teeth in an everlasting smile, while the shrunken form of his lady, Mistress Sidsel Grubbe, tripped slowly by the side of Sister Rigitze and the impatient Marie. There were Gersdorf and Schack and Thuresen of the tow-colored mane and Peder Retz with Spanish dress and Spanish manners.
Ulrik Frederik was among the rest, walking with Niels Rosenkrands, the bold young lieutenant-colonel, whose French breeding showed in his lively gestures. When they met Mistress Rigitze and her companions, Ulrik Frederik would have passed them with a cold, formal greeting, for ever since his separation from Sofie Urne he had nursed a spite against Mistress Rigitze, whom he suspected, as one of the Queen’s warmest adherents, of having had a finger in the matter. But Rosenkrands stopped, and Axel Urup urged them so cordially to sup with the party in Johan Adolph’s garden that they could not well refuse.
A few minutes later they were all sitting in the little brick summer-house, eating the simple country dishes that the gardener set before them.
“Is it true, I wonder,” asked Mistress Ide Daa, “that the Swedish officers have so bewitched the maidens of Sjælland with their pretty manners that they have followed them in swarms out of land and kingdom?”
“Marry, it’s true enough at least of that minx, Mistress Dyre,” replied Mistress Sidsel Grubbe.
“Of what Dyres is she?” asked Mistress Rigitze.
“The Dyres of Skaaneland, you know, sister, those who have such light hair. They’re all intermarried with the Powitzes. The one who fled the country she’s a daughter of Henning Dyre of West Neergaard, he who married Sidonie, the eldest of the Ove Powitzes, and she went bag and baggage—took sheets, bolsters, plate, and ready money from her father.”