Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

“God bless you all, gray though you be!” cried a tall, crabbed old fellow at the end of the table. “The world is getting uglier every day. We have but to look at ourselves”—his glance went round the table—“and think what dashing blades we once were. Well, no matter for that! But where in the name of everything drinkable—can any one say? huh? can you?—who can?—can any one tell me what’s become of the plump landladies with laughing mouths and bright eyes and dainty feet, and the landladies’ daughters with yellow, yellow hair and eyes so blue—what’s become of them? huh? Or is’t a lie that one could go to any tavern or wayside inn or ordinary and find them there? Oh, misery of miseries and wretchedness! Look at the hunchbacked jades the tavern people keep in these days—with pig’s eyes and broad in the beam! Look at the toothless, bald-pated hags that get the king’s license to scare the life out of hungry and thirsty folks with their sore eyes and grubby hands! Faugh, I’m as scared of an inn as of the devil himself, for I know full well the tapster is married to the living image of the plague from Lübeck, and when a man’s as old as I am, there’s something about memento mori that he’d rather forget than remember.”

Near the centre of the long table sat a man of strong build with a face rather full and yellow as wax, bushy eyebrows, and clear, searching eyes. He looked not exactly ill, but as if he had suffered great bodily pain, and when he smiled there was an expression about his mouth as though he were swallowing something bitter. He spoke in a soft, low, rather husky voice. “The brown Euphemia of the Burtenbacher stock was statelier than any queen I ever saw. She could wear the stiffest cloth of gold as if it were the easiest house-dress. Golden chains and precious stones hung round her neck and waist and rested on her bosom and hair as lightly as berries the children deck themselves with when they play in the forest. There was none like her. The other young maidens would look like reliquaries weighed down by necklaces of gold and clasps of gold and jewelled roses, but she was fair and fresh and festive and light as a banner that flies in the wind. There was none like her, nor is there now.”

“Ay, and a better one,” cried young Remigius, jumping up. He bent forward across the table, supporting himself with one hand, while the other swung a bright goblet, from which the golden grape brimmed over, wetting his fingers and wrist and falling in clear drops from his full white lace ruffles. His cheeks were flushed with wine, his eyes shone, and he spoke in an unsteady voice.

“Beauty! Are you blind, one and all, or have you never even seen the Lady from Denmark—not so much as seen Mistress Marie! Her hair is like the sunlight on a field when the grain is ripe. Her eyes are bluer than a steel blade, and her lips are like the bleeding grape. She walks like a star in the heavens, and she is straight as a sceptre and stately as a throne, and all, all charms and beauties of person are hers like rose upon rose in flowering splendor. But there is that about her loveliness which makes you feel, when you see her, as on a holy morn when they blow the trumpets from the tower of the cathedral. A stillness comes over you, for she is like the sacred Mother of Sorrows on the beauteous painting; there is the same noble grief in her clear eyes, and the same hopeless, patient smile around her lips.”

He was quite moved. Tears came to his eyes, and he tried to speak, but could not, and remained standing, struggling with his voice to utter the words. A man sitting near him laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and made him sit down. They drank together goblet after goblet, until all was well. The mirth of the old fellows rose high as before, and nothing was heard but laughter and song and revelry.

Marie Grubbe was at Nürnberg. After the parting from Sti Högh, she had roamed about from place to place for almost a year, and had finally settled there. She was very much changed since the night she danced in the ballet at Frederiksborg park. Not only had she entered upon her thirtieth year, but the affair with Sti Högh had made a strangely deep impression upon her. She had left Ulrik Frederik, urged on partly by accidental events, but chiefly because she had kept certain dreams of her early girlhood of the man a woman should pay homage to, one who should be to her like a god upon earth, from whose hands she could accept, lovingly and humbly, good and evil according to his pleasure. And now, in a moment of blindness, she had taken Sti for that god, him who was not even a man. These were her thoughts. Every weakness and every unmanly doubt in Sti she felt as a stain upon herself that could never be wiped out. She loathed herself for that short-lived love and called it base and shameful names. The lips that had kissed him, would that they might wither! The eyes that had smiled on him, would that they might be dimmed! The heart that had loved him, would that it might break! Every virtue of her soul—she had smirched it by this love; every feeling—she had desecrated it. She lost all faith in herself, all confidence in her own worth, and as for the future, it kindled no beacon of hope.

Her life was finished, her course ended. A quiet nook where she could lay down her head, never to lift it again, was the goal of all her desires.

Such was her state of mind when she came to Nürnberg. By chance, she met the golden Remigius, and his fervent though diffident adoration,—the idolatrous worship of fresh youth,—his exultant faith in her and his happiness in this faith,—were to her as the cool dew to a flower that has been trodden under foot. Though it cannot rise again, neither does it wither; it still spreads delicate, brightly tinted petals to the sun, and is still fair and fragrant in lingering freshness. So with her. There was balm in seeing herself pure and holy and unsullied in the thoughts of another person. It well-nigh made her whole again to know that she could rouse that clear-eyed trust, that fair hope and noble longing which enriched the soul of him in whom they awoke. There was comfort and healing in hinting of her sorrows in shadowy images and veiled words to one who, himself untried by grief, would enter into her suffering with a serene joy, grateful to share the trouble he guessed but did not understand and yet sympathized with. Ay, it was a comfort to pour out her grief where it met reverence and not pity, where it became a splendid queenly robe around her shoulders and a tear-sparkling diadem around her brow.

Thus Marie little by little grew reconciled to herself, but then it happened one day, when Remigius was out riding, that his horse shied, threw him from the saddle, and dragged him to death by the stirrups.