“Yes, indeed; his wife is the daughter of the landlord at Ulstrup, and I got there the night of the wedding. That was a jolly time, I assure you. They have two children, I believe.”
Karen dropped the teaspoons and went out. She heard nothing that was called after her from the inn. She went across the court to her room and began mechanically to make her bed. Her eyes stared into the darkness. She pressed her hands to her head, to her breast; she groaned. She could comprehend nothing—nothing! She heard the landlady’s complaining voice: “Karen, dear Karen!” it called. She ran out across the court, behind the inn, across the moor.
The winding strip of grass glimmered in the half-light as if it were a path, but it was no path. No one dared to follow it, for it led abruptly to the brink of the great pond. The hare quickened his steps. He heard a rustling. He gave long jumps as if he were mad to escape; not knowing what he feared, he fled over the plain. The fox stretched out his sharp nose and stared in surprise at the hare. He had heard nothing. According to the instincts of his kind he had crouched there in the hollow—he was conscious of no error. He could not understand the action of the hare. He stood long with outstretched head and slinking body. His bushy tail was hid by the heather bushes, and he began to wonder if foxes were getting duller or hares wiser. But when the west wind had run its long course it turned into a north wind, and then into an east wind, and then into the south wind, and at last came back over the sea as the west wind again, threw itself upon the dunes, and long, mysterious sighs moaned through the heather bushes.
But there were wanting in Kraruper Inn two wondering gray eyes, a little blue woolen gown that had grown too small, and the hostess complained more than ever. She could not understand it at all. No one could understand it, save the postilion Anders, and one other!
LOVE AND BREAD
BY JEAN AUGUST STRINDBERG
Strindberg, renovator of the literary language of Sweden, one of the most conspicuous, prolific, and versatile of the newer realists of that country, was born in 1849, at Stockholm. In spite of early struggles he obtained an education at Upsala, and eventually the post of Orientalist at the Royal Library.
It was his “Red Room,” written in 1879, that is supposed to have introduced naturalism into Swedish literature; at any rate, it helped the author to his first literary honors. It is a picture of Stockholm bohemianism, a satire on all artistic hypocrisy, as his later book, “The New Kingdom,” was a satire on social hypocrisy that raised a scandal which drove him abroad for a while.
Strindberg has formulated no philosophy, but he is thought to be an atheist, a misogynist, and has more than once proved himself an enemy to all tyranny of the majority. His books breathe violence, sarcasm, melancholy. And as such Strindberg appears in “Love and Bread.”