“My dear old mistress,” said Gösta, “so have I seen you once before. Now has Margareta Celsing come back to life. Now she will never again yield to the major’s wife at Ekeby.”
When the pensioners came in from the forge, they were met by the news of Margareta Celsing’s death.
“Did she hear the hammer?” they asked.
She had done so, and they could be satisfied.
They heard, too, that she had meant to give Ekeby to them; but that the will had never been drawn. That they considered a great honor, and rejoiced over it as long as they lived. But no one ever heard them lament over the riches they had lost.
It is also said that on that Christmas night Gösta Berling stood by his young wife’s side and made his last speech to the pensioners. He was grieved at their fate when they now must all leave Ekeby. The ailments of old age awaited them. The old and worn-out find a cold welcome.
And so he spoke to them. Once more he called them old gods and knights who had risen up to bring pleasure into the land of iron. But he lamented that the pleasure garden where the butterfly-winged pleasure roves is filled with destructive caterpillars, and that its fruits are withered.
Well he knew that pleasure was a good to the children of the earth, and it must exist. But, like a heavy riddle, the question always lay upon the world, how a man could be both gay and good. The easiest thing and yet the hardest, he called it. Hitherto they had not been able to solve the problem. Now he wanted to believe that they had learned it, that they had all learned it during that year of joy and sorrow, of happiness and despair.