The stable grooms succeed, however, in getting the horses harnessed; then they go and ask the major’s wife in what Gösta Berling shall be put, for, as every one knows, he came to Ekeby in the coal-sledge of the major’s wife.
“Put Don Juan in our best sledge,” she says, “and spread over it the bear-skin with the silver claws!” And when the grooms grumble, she continues: “There is not a horse in my stable which I would not give to be rid of that man, remember that!”
Well, now the vehicles are waked and the horses too, but the pensioners still sleep. It is now their time to be brought out in the winter night; but it is a more perilous deed to seize them in their beds than to lead out stiff-legged horses and shaky old carriages. They are bold, strong men, tried in a hundred adventures; they are ready to defend themselves till death; it is no easy thing to take them against their will from out their beds and down to the carriages which shall carry them away.
The major’s wife has them set fire to a hay-stack, which stands so near the house that the flames must shine in to where the pensioners are sleeping.
“The hay-stack is mine, all Ekeby is mine,” she says.
And when the stack is in flames, she cries: “Wake them now!”
But the pensioners sleep behind well-closed doors. The whole mass of people begin to cry out that terrible “Fire, fire!” but the pensioners sleep on.
The master-smith’s heavy sledge-hammer thunders against the door, but the pensioners sleep.
A hard snowball breaks the window-pane and flies into the room, rebounding against the bed-curtains, but the pensioners sleep.