CHAPTER IX
THE AUCTION AT BJÖRNE
We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them. “Was life then one long adventure?”
“Were all young women beautiful and lovely in those days, and did every feast end by Gösta Berling carrying off one of them?”
Then the old people shook their worthy heads, and began to tell of the whirring of the spinning-wheel and the clatter of the loom, of work in the kitchen, of the thud of the flail and the path of the axe through the forest; but it was not long before they harked back to the old theme. Then sledges drove up to the door, horses speeded away through the dark woods with the joyous young people; then the dance whirled and the violin-strings snapped. Adventure’s wild chase roared about Löfven’s long lake with thunder and crash. Far away could its noise be heard. The forest tottered and fell, all the powers of destruction were let loose; fire flamed out, floods laid waste the land, wild beasts roamed starving about the farmyards. Under the light-footed horses’ hoofs all quiet happiness was trampled to dust. Wherever the hunt rushed by, men’s hearts flamed up in madness, and the women in pale terror had to flee from their homes.
And we young ones sat wondering, silent, troubled, but blissful. “What people!” we thought. “We shall never see their like.”
“Did the people of those days never think of what they were doing?” we asked.
“Of course they thought, children,” answered the old people.
“But not as we think,” we insisted.