Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

She must hate him, must be harboring secret thoughts of revenge; for an insult such as he had dealt her could not be forgotten. He connected this imagined lust for vengeance with the strange incident when she had lifted her hand against him and with Burrhi’s warning. So he avoided her more than ever, and wished more and more ardently that their ways might be parted.

But Marie was not thinking of revenge. She had forgotten both him and Karen Fiol. In that moment of unutterable disgust her love had been wiped out and left no traces, as a glittering bubble bursts and is no more. The glory of it is no more, and the iridescent colors it lent to every tiny picture mirrored in it are no more. They are gone, and the eye which was held by their splendor and beauty is free to look about and gaze far out over the world which was once reflected in the glassy bubble.

The number of guests in the castle increased day by day. The rehearsals of the ballet were under way, and the dancing-masters and play-actors, Pilloy and Kobbereau, had been summoned to give instruction as well as to act the more difficult or less grateful rôles.

Marie Grubbe was to take part in the ballet and rehearsed eagerly. Since that day at Slangerup, she had been more animated and sociable and, as it were, more awake. Her intercourse with those about her had always before been rather perfunctory. When nothing special called her attention or claimed her interest, she had a habit of slipping back into her own little world, from which she looked out at her surroundings with indifferent eyes; but now she entered into all that was going on, and if the others had not been so absorbed by the new and exciting events of those days, they would have been astonished at her changed manner. Her movements had a quiet assurance, her speech an almost hostile subtlety, and her eyes observed everything. As it was, no one noticed her except Ulrik Frederik, who would sometimes catch himself admiring her as if she were a stranger.

Among the guests who came in August was Sti Högh, the husband of Marie’s sister. One afternoon, not long after his arrival, she was standing with him on a hillock in the woods, from which they could look out over the village and the flat, sun-scorched land beyond. Slow, heavy clouds were forming in the sky, and from the earth rose a dry, bitter smell like a sigh of drooping, withering plants for the life-giving water. A faint wind, scarcely strong enough to move the windmill at the cross-road below, was soughing forlornly in the tree-tops like a timid wail of the forest burning under summer heat and sun-glow. As a beggar bares his pitiful wound, so the parched, yellow meadows spread their barren misery under the gaze of heaven.

The clouds gathered and lowered, and a few raindrops fell, one by one, heavy as blows on the leaves and straws, which would bend to one side, shake, and then be suddenly still again. The swallows flew low along the ground, and the blue smoke of the evening meal drooped like a veil over the black thatched roofs in the village near by.

A coach rumbled heavily over the road, and from the walks at the foot of the hill came the sound of low laughter and merry talk, rustling of fans and silk gowns, barking of tiny lapdogs, and snapping and crunching of dry twigs. The court was taking its afternoon promenade.

Marie and Sti Högh had left the others to climb the hill, and were standing quite breathless after their hurried ascent of the steep path.

Sti Högh was then a man in his early thirties, tall and lean, with reddish hair and a long, narrow face. He was pale and freckled, and his thin, yellow-white brows were arched high over bright, light gray eyes, which had a tired look as if they shunned the light, a look caused partly by the pink color that spread all over the lids, and partly by his habit of winking more slowly, or rather of keeping his eyes closed longer, than other people did. The forehead was high, the temples well rounded and smooth. The nose was thin, faintly arched, and rather long, the chin too long and too pointed, but the mouth was exquisite, the lips fresh in color and pure in line, the teeth small and white. Yet it was not its beauty that drew attention to this mouth; it was rather the strange, melancholy smile of the voluptuary, a smile made up of passionate desire and weary disdain, at once tender as sweet music and bloodthirsty as the low, satisfied growl in the throat of the beast of prey when its teeth tear the quivering flesh of its victim.

Such was Sti Högh—then.