And they tottered off together.
The coming of Daniel and his sister to Frederiksborg had happened in this wise. After the meeting in the Bide-a-Wee Tavern, poor Hop-o’-my-Thumb had been seized with an insane passion for Marie. It was a pathetic, fantastic love, that hoped nothing, asked nothing, and craved nothing but barren dreams. No more at all. The bit of reality that he needed to give his dreams a faint color of life he found fully in occasional glimpses of her near by or flitting past in the distance. When Gyldenlöve departed, and Marie never went out, his longing grew apace, until it made him almost insane, and at last threw him on a sick-bed.
When he rose again, weak and wasted, Gyldenlöve had returned. Through one of Marie’s maids, who was in his pay, he learned that the relation between Marie and her husband was not the best, and this news fed his infatuation and gave it new growth, the rank unnatural growth of fantasy. Before he had recovered enough from his illness to stand steadily on his feet, Marie left for Frederiksborg. He must follow her; he could not wait. He made a pretence of consulting the wise woman in Lynge, in order to regain his strength, and urged his sister Magnille to accompany him and seek a cure for her weak eyes. Friends and neighbors found this natural, and off they drove, Daniel and Magnille, to Lynge. There he discovered Gyldenlöve’s affair with Karen Fiol, and there he confided all to Magnille, told her of his strange love, declared that for him light and the breath of life existed only where Marie Grubbe was, and begged her to go with him to the village of Frederiksborg that he might be near her who filled his mind so completely.
Magnille humored him. They took lodgings at Frederiksborg and had for days been shadowing Marie Grubbe on her lonely morning walks. Thus the meeting had come about.
[CHAPTER XI]
A FEW days later, Ulrik Frederik was spending the morning at Lynge. He was crawling on all fours in the little garden outside of the house where Karen Fiol lived. One hand was holding a rose wreath, while with the other he was trying to coax or drag a little white lapdog from under the hazel bushes in the corner.
“Boncœur! Petit, petit Boncœur! Come, you little rogue, oh, come, you silly little fool! Oh, you brute, you—Boncœur, little dog,—you confounded obstinate creature!”
Karen was standing at the window laughing. The dog would not come, and Ulrik Frederik wheedled and swore.
“Amy des morceaux délicats,”
sang Karen, swinging a goblet full of wine: