“Go to hell, hag!” screams another. “By rights we ought to hunt you from the door.”
“Fools,” cries the gentle old Uncle Eberhard to the pensioners. “Don’t you understand it was Sintram?”
“Of course we understand; of course we know it,” answers Julius; “but what of that? May it not be true, at any rate? Does not Sintram go on the devil’s errands? Don’t they understand one another?”
“Go yourself, Eberhard; go and help her!” they mock. “You don’t believe in hell. You can go!”
And Gösta Berling stands, without a word, motionless.
No, from the threatening, murmuring, struggling bachelors’ wing she will get no help.
Then once again she retreats to the door and raises her clasped hands to her eyes.
“‘May you be disowned, as I have been disowned,’” she cries to herself in her bitter sorrow. “‘May the highway be your home, the hay-stack your bed!’”
Then she lays one hand on the door latch, but the other she stretches on high.