Melchior Sinclair had flung all the property in the house together in the great drawing-room. There lay thousands of articles, collected in piles, which reached from floor to ceiling.
He had himself gone about the house like an angel of destruction on the day of judgment, and dragged together what he wanted to sell. Everything in the kitchen,—the black pots, the wooden chairs, the pewter dishes, the copper kettles, all were left in peace, for among them there was nothing which recalled Marianne; but they were the only things which escaped his anger.
He burst into Marianne’s room, turning everything out. Her doll-house stood there, and her book-case, the little chair he had had made for her, her trinkets and clothes, her sofa and bed, everything must go.
And then he went from room to room. He tore down everything he found unpleasant, and carried great loads down to the auction-room. He panted under the weight of sofas and marble slabs; but he went on. He had thrown open the sideboards and taken out the magnificent family silver. Away with it! Marianne had touched it. He filled his arms with snow-white damask and with shining linen sheets with hem-stitching as wide as one’s hand,—honest home-made work, the fruit of many years of labor,—and flung them down together on the piles. Away with them! Marianne was not worthy to own them. He stormed through the rooms with piles of china, not caring if he broke the plates by the dozen, and he seized the hand-painted cups on which the family arms were burned. Away with them! Let any one who will use them! He staggered under mountains of bedding from the attic: bolsters and pillows so soft that one sunk down in them as in a wave. Away with them! Marianne had slept on them.
He cast fierce glances on the old, well-known furniture. Was there a chair where she had not sat, or a sofa which she had not used, or a picture which she had not looked at, a candlestick which had not lighted her, a mirror which had not reflected her features? Gloomily he shook his fist at this world of memories. He would have liked to have rushed on them with swinging club and to have crushed everything to small bits and splinters.
But it seemed to him a more famous revenge to sell them all at auction. They should go to strangers! Away to be soiled in the cottagers’ huts, to be in the care of indifferent strangers. Did he not know them, the dented pieces of auction furniture in the peasants’ houses, fallen into dishonor like his beautiful daughter? Away with them! May they stand with torn-out stuffing and worn-off gilding, with cracked legs and stained leaves, and long for their former home! Away with them to the ends of the earth, so that no eye can find them, no hand gather them together!
When the auction began, he had filled half the hall with an incredible confusion of piled-up articles.
Right across the room he had placed a long counter. Behind it stood the auctioneer and put up the things; there the clerks sat and kept the record, and there Melchior Sinclair had a keg of brandy standing. In the other half of the room, in the hall, and in the yard were the buyers. There were many people, and much noise and gayety. The bids followed close on one another, and the auction was lively. But by the keg of brandy, with all his possessions in endless confusion behind him, sat Melchior Sinclair, half drunk and half mad. His hair stood up in rough tufts above his red face; his eyes were rolling, fierce, and bloodshot. He shouted and laughed, as if he had been in the best of moods; and every one who had made a good bid he called up to him and offered a dram.
Among those who saw him there was Gösta Berling, who had stolen in with the crowd of buyers, but who avoided coming under Melchior Sinclair’s eyes. He became thoughtful at the sight, and his heart stood still, as at a presentiment of a misfortune.
He wondered much where Marianne’s mother could be during all this. And he went out, against his will, but driven by fate, to find Madame Gustava Sinclair.