Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

“Oaths gouge no eye without fist follows after.”

“Faith, you may believe me or not, but God knows I ofttimes feel that great still sadness that comes we know not whence. Pastor Jens was wont to say it was a longing for our home in the kingdom of heaven, which is the true fatherland of every Christian soul, but I think it is not that. We long and sorrow and know no living hope to comfort us—ah, how bitterly have I wept! It comes over one with such a strange heaviness and sickens one’s heart, and one feels so tired of one’s own thoughts and wishes one had never been born. But it is not the briefness of these earthly joys that has weighed on my thoughts or caused me grief. No, never! It was something quite different—but ’tis quite impossible to give that grief a name. Sometimes I have thought it was really a grief over some hidden flaw in my own nature, some inward hurt that made me unlike other people—lesser and poorer. Ah, no, it passes everything how hard it is to find words—in just the right sense. Look you, this life—this earth—seems to me so splendid and wonderful, I should be proud and happy beyond words just to have some part in it. Whether for joy or grief matters not, but that I might sorrow or rejoice in honest truth, not in play like mummeries or shrovetide sports. I would feel life grasping me with such hard hands that I was lifted up or cast down until there was no room in my mind for aught else but that which lifted me up or cast me down. I would melt in my grief or burn together with my joy! Ah, you can never understand it! If I were like one of the generals of the Roman empire who were carried through the streets in triumphal chariots, I myself would be the victory and the triumph. I would be the pride and jubilant shouts of the people and the blasts of the trumpets and the honor and the glory—all, all in one shrill note. That is what I would be. Never would I be like one who merely sits there in his miserable ambition and cold vanity and thinks, as the chariot rolls on, how he shines in the eyes of the crowd and how helplessly the waves of envy lick his feet, while he feels with pleasure the purple wrapping his shoulders softly and the laurel wreath cooling his brow. Do you understand me, Sti Högh? That is what I mean by life, that is what I have thirsted after, but I have felt in my own heart that such life could never be mine, and it was borne in on me that, in some strange manner, I was myself at fault, that I had sinned against myself and led myself astray. I know not how it is, but it has seemed to me that this was whence my bitter sorrow welled, that I had touched a string which must not sound, and its tone had sundered something within me that could never be healed. Therefore I could never force open the portals of life, but had to stand without, unbidden and unsought, like a poor maimed bondwoman.”

“You!” exclaimed Sti Högh in astonishment; then, his face changing quickly, he went on in another voice: “Ah, now I see it all!” He shook his head at her. “By my troth, how easily a man may befuddle himself in these matters! Our thoughts are so rarely turned to the road where every stile and path is familiar, but more often they run amuck wherever we catch sight of anything that bears a likeness to a trail, and we’re ready to swear it’s the King’s highway. Am I not right, ma chère? Have we not both, each for herself or himself, in seeking a source of our melancholy, caught the first thought we met and made it into the one and only reason? Would not any one, judging from our discourse, suppose that I went about sore afflicted and weighed down by the corruption of the world and the passing nature of all earthly things, while you, my dear kinswoman, looked on yourself as a silly old crone, on whom the door had been shut, and the lights put out, and all hope extinguished! But no matter for that! When we get to that chapter, we are easily made heady by our own words, and ride hard on any thought that we can bit and bridle.”

In the walk below the others were heard approaching, and, joining them, they returned to the castle.

At half-past the hour of eight in the evening of September twenty-sixth, the booming of cannon and the shrill trumpet notes of a festive march announced that both their Majesties, accompanied by his Highness Prince Johan, the Elector of Saxony, and his royal mother, and followed by the most distinguished men and women of the realm, were proceeding from the castle, down through the park, to witness the ballet which was soon to begin.

A row of flambeaux cast a fiery sheen over the red wall, made the yew and box glow like bronze, and lent all faces the ruddy glow of vigorous health.

See, scarlet-clothed halberdiers are standing in double rows, holding flower-wreathed tapers high against the dark sky. Cunningly wrought lanterns and candles in sconces and candelabra send their rays low along the ground and high among the yellowing leaves, forcing the darkness back, and opening a shining path for the resplendent train.

The light glitters on gold and gilded tissue, beams brightly on silver and steel, glides in shimmering stripes down silks and sweeping satins. Softly as a reddish dew, it is breathed over dusky velvet, and flashing white, it falls like stars among rubies and diamonds. Reds make a brave show with the yellows; clear sky-blue closes over brown; streaks of lustrous sea-green cut their way through white and violet-blue; coral sinks between black and lavender; golden brown and rose, steel-gray and purple are whirled about, light and dark, tint upon tint, in eddying pools of color.

They are gone. Down the walk, tall plumes nod white, white in the dim air....

The ballet or masquerade to be presented is called Die Waldlust. The scene is a forest. Crown Prince Christian, impersonating a hunter, voices his delight in the free life of the merry greenwood. Ladies, walking about under leafy crowns, sing softly of the fragrant violets. Children play at hide and seek and pick berries in pretty little baskets. Jovial citizens praise the fresh air and the clear grape, while two silly old crones are pursuing a handsome young rustic with amorous gestures.