What did the pensioners say when they saw Patron Julius come with a withered wreath round his hat, and the hay-cart full of girls?
“We might have known that the girls had carried him off,” they said; “otherwise we should have had him back here several hours earlier.” For the pensioners remembered that this was exactly the seventeenth time Patron Julius had tried to leave Ekeby, once for every departing year. Now Patron Julius had already forgotten both this attempt and all the others. His conscience slept once more its year-long sleep.
He was a doughty man, Patron Julius. He was light in the dance, gay at the card-table. Pen, pencil, and fiddle-bow lay equally well in his hand. He had an easily moved heart, fair words on his tongue, a throat full of songs. But what would have been the good of all that if he had not possessed a conscience, which made itself be felt only once a year, like the dragon-flies, which free themselves from the gloomy depths and take wings to live only a few hours in the light of day and in the glory of the sun?
CHAPTER XI
THE PLASTER SAINTS
Svartsjö church is white both outside and in: the walls are white, the pulpit, the seats, the galleries, the roof, the window-sashes, the altar-cloth,—everything is white. In Svartsjö church are no decorations, no pictures, no coats of arms. Over the altar stands only a wooden cross with a white linen cloth. But it was not always so. Once the roof was covered with paintings, and many colored images of stone and plaster stood in that house of God.
Once, many years ago, an artist in Svartsjö had stood and watched the summer sky and the path of the clouds across the sun. He had seen those white, shining clouds, which in the morning float low on the horizon, pile themselves up higher and higher and raise themselves to storm the heavens. They set up sails like ships. They raised standards like warriors. They encroached on the whole sky. They placed themselves before the sun, those growing monsters, and took on wonderful shapes. There was a devouring lion; it changed into a powdered lady. There was a giant with outstretched arms; he laid himself down as a dreaming sphinx. Some adorned their white nakedness with gold-bordered mantles; others spread rouge over snowy cheeks. There were plains. There were forests. There were walled castles with high towers. The white clouds were lords of the summer sky. They filled the whole blue arch. They reached up to the sun and hid it.
“Oh, how beautiful,” thought the gentle artist, “if the longing spirits could climb up on those towering mountains and be carried on those rocking ships ever higher and higher upwards!”
And all at once he understood that the white clouds were the vessels on which the souls of the blessed were carried.