The Gamekeeper at Aunsbjerg

== THE GAMEKEEPER AT AUNSBJERG ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Skytten paa Aunsbjerg, 1839
 As a lad I had to stay, or rather I was imprisoned, on this estate oftener and longer than I wished. The owner, Counsellor Steen de Steensen, was my mother's uncle. He and his wife--née Schinkel--had no children; I was named for him, and he was a good-natured man. She, too, was really fond of me, but she was a "thoroughbred," as they say, and we know that people of this breed are not free from crotchets, which even the "permanent guillotine" has not been able to eradicate. She wanted to dominate, that was all.
"Where is your will, little Steen?" she would often say to me--but only when strangers were present. I was a doll, an automaton; and she had taught me to answer, "In grandmother's pocket."
The poor boy's usual consolation was, in her absence, to tease her favorite dog, Manille, which, between you and me, had a very fretful and irritable disposition. By the way, I had the satisfaction that it once got tangled up in the tether of an eagle, which was also imprisoned, but on a grassy spot in the garden, and there this king of birds murdered the favorite and ate him for breakfast. To be sure, the reigning queen commanded that a summary court martial be held, and the sentence, shooting, was instantly executed by the gamekeeper, Vilhelm.
This gamekeeper was _my_ favorite; and I was never happier than when I was allowed to visit him in his room, look at his guns, play with his dogs, and listen to his hunting stories. His name was really Guillaume, which means the same in French as Wilhelm in German, and he was a Frenchman. Now I know that I have a reputation for lying, and possibly someone may accuse me of a forgery, but I can authenticate what I say, and I like to be authentic. General Numsen, who at one time, within the memory of men now living, commanded a regiment of horse then stationed in Randers, had, before he entered the Russian service, been an officer in the French Army. There the trooper Guillaume had Been assigned to him as a servant, and inasmuch as they were both tired of the _Kehraus_ at Rosbach, which the Pompadour general--did not lead, for old Fritz did that--but in which he retreated down the Rhine, and inasmuch as both Numsen and his servant got their throats full of the powder that blew from the French perukes, they said good-bye to the petticoat government, and went to Denmark together.
Vilhelm was a stocky, square-built man with thick black hair and eyebrows and small brown eyes in a broad, rather pale, but nevertheless handsome face. Contrary to the usual French temperament, he was so serious that I cannot remember ever having known him to laugh. Even a smile was a rarity with him, and there was something in his smile that did not please me. Furthermore, he was taciturn and said no more than was absolutely necessary, except when he was minded to tell me stories, and then I thought his face took on a look quite different from its everyday expression.
The squire--as grandfather was usually called at home--made more of him than even of the manager of the estate, and often said that he was "honest as the day." Her ladyship did not like him much, and it seemed to me that she purposely avoided speaking to him; at least I was often charged with bringing him her commands, even if he was no farther away than from one door to another. He had almost as little to do with the other servants on the estate--with one exception. This was a young and, according to connoisseurs, very pretty housemaid by the name of Mette. One might have supposed it was because she resembled him in temperament and manner, but she was just his opposite. She was always cheerful and merry, and yet so proper in all her demeanor that the butler who could not do without--and very rarely did do without--a little lovemaking, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, called her a prude--but not so that either she or Vilhelm heard it.
The manager, the gardener, and the overseer all gave her similar fine names, but of course not in the presence of the master or mistress.
It often puzzled me and I could not understand what was the reason of it, but when Vilhelm and Mette were together, he looked more cheerful and she more serious than usual, and still less could I understand why, after a while, both looked serious, whether they were together or apart. And the longer this went on, the worse it became, and sometimes I noticed poor Mette crying when only I, small boy that I was, saw her. And when I asked why she cried, she said that her teeth ached. But of this more later. I shall now ask leave to narrate something that occurred about the time the housemaid's teeth began to ache.
The squire had sent the gamekeeper south--I don't remember where or why. On the way home, toward evening, he came riding to Them Inn about four miles west of Himmelbjerget. Wanting his horse to bait for a couple of hours, he entered the common room and found a seat between the bed and the big stove (fired from the kitchen) in order to snatch a nap in that warm corner.
Meanwhile several peasants drifted in; they sat down at the table, and each got a mug of ale and a pipe, but none of them noticed the gamekeeper.
A few weeks earlier an accident had occurred in the neighborhood; a team of horses pulling a wood cart had run away and had overturned it, with the result that a girl who was driving, and was alone in the cart, had got her head crushed against a tree. This event was the subject of the talk in the inn. Two of the men had been along on the trip to the woods, but had been so far behind that they had not seen just what happened. A young peasant had been driving the cart right behind the girl, but he too said he did not know what had frightened the horses, and those farther back had not been able to see the two carts at the head. That the young man had not seen anything they could only explain by saying that he must have been asleep.
As they were talking this over, the very same young man came in, and sat down at the table. Immediately the others began to ask him to explain once more just what had taken place. After wetting his whistle with a glass of brandy and a draught of ale, he complied with their request. But evidently his story did not satisfy his listeners, for first one and then another interrupted him, to say that what he told now didn't jibe, in this or that particular, with the explanation he had given right away. At last he became angry, stiffened his back against the wall, and cried out to the one who had made this remark,
"What's the matter with you? You don't suppose that I'm to blame for Karen's death? That"--he banged the table with clenched fist--"that you'll have to prove, devil take me!"
The man so addressed was quite taken aback, and said no more; but one of the oldest men present tried to calm the angry fellow by assuring him that of course no one had said or thought any such thing. At that moment Vilhelm rushed out from his hiding-place, hit the table in front of the fellow a doomsday blow, and thundered, "You murdered her--I'll prove it." The horrified company jumped up from their seats, but the accused slipped down from the bench till only his face, pale as death, was visible above the table, and stammered with teeth chattering, "So I did--and I want to confess."
The gamekeeper had, of course, not been asleep, but had followed the conversation closely, and had made up his mind that the young man was the murderer. When he appeared so suddenly, like a ghost or an avenging angel, and shook the sin-burdened conscience, then the hardihood of the criminal was melted, his forced courage was crushed, his effrontery destroyed.
The man was bound and taken to the district judge, where he declared that the girl had been with child by him, that he was tired of her, and that her everlasting reproaches and threats to betray him--so as to prevent his intended marriage with another girl--had made him determine on her death. At a certain place in the woods, where a turn in the road hid his cart and hers from those that followed, he jumped down, hit her a deadly blow in the neck with the back of his woodman's axe, then lashed the horses with his whip; and the animals, feeling that no one was driving them, ran away at full speed.
The criminal suffered the punishment he had deserved, but Vilhelm was generally regarded as one who "knew more than his Our Father"--in other words, as something of a wizard.
It is not merely in order to characterize the leading person in this true story that I have described the murder and the scene of its discovery. Rather I have done so because I am inclined to believe that the latter had something to do with another death of which I shall presently tell. But now we must go back with the gamekeeper to Aunsbjerg.
A few days after he had returned home, the counsellor was sitting in the living room hearing me read my lesson, when his wife came storming in. She left the door wide open, but when she had reached the middle of the room, she stopped, threw out both her arms, and stood there as if nailed to the floor, with staring eyes and trembling lips.
"God help us, mamma," he said without getting up. "What's the matter?"
"Mette, Mette!" she cried.
"What about her, mamma?" he asked quietly.
"Mette is with child," she stammered in horror.
"Why, then, so help me"--that was his only form of swearing--"she must have had to do with a man."
"She must leave! Out of the house," she cried, "and that right away! And he, too!"
"Who is the _he,_ mamma?" he asked.
"The gamekeeper," she replied, "the gamekeeper, dear heart, that wicked creature!"
"Dear mamma," he answered, "I do believe, so help me, you're--I came near saying--Vilhelm is just as innocent as I am."
"That's what you say, dear heart," she went on, "because the wicked wretch has always stood so high in your favor. But he has owned it himself. I have long had a suspicion of the baggage, that all was not right with her. So I took her to task in the pantry, and when I pressed her, she confessed, but she would not on any account tell who was her paramour. But now listen, dear heart. As I was pressing her with all my might, the pantry door was opened, and who do you suppose appeared? Vilhelm, dear heart, and then he said--I didn't ask him, neither did the girl--then he said, 'If Mette is getting ready for a birthday party, I'll take the part of the father of the child!'--What do you say to that, dear heart?"
The counsellor rose with an impetuosity I had never seen in him, saying, "I believe, we must be in the dog days--mamma, call them both in."
She hurried out; he threw the book on the sofa, and walked up and down the room with his hands on his back. The sinners came, she with face red from weeping, he with his usual quiet and serious aspect. Her ladyship stood behind them with both fists planted in her sides. The counsellor met them with _his_ hands still on his back.
He hardly looked at the girl, but fixed his eyes on Vilhelm's unmoved face. "Man," he said after a pause, "I would not have believed such a thing of you--an old fellow--fifty if a day, I think--and that young child--"
"Mr. Counsellor," said the gamekeeper with undisturbed composure, "may I speak a few words to you in private, sir?"
The squire was silent for a few seconds, then he said, "Come," and went into an adjoining room. Vilhelm followed him; the door was closed.
No one could distinguish what they said to each other in there, for they spoke in low voices, and nothing was heard except an occasional, "So help me," from the squire.
While this secret negotiation went on--and I think it lasted half an hour--there was absolute silence in the living room.  Mamma threw herself down on the sofa and looked, sometimes at Mette, sometimes at the door of the other room. Mette stood as if carved in wood, the tears rolling down her face, which grew paler and paler. I sat on my own little stool, looking in my book and wondering about what was going to come out of all this, which was just as mysterious to me as hieroglyphics now are to the learned.
When the squire came out from the secret negotiations, followed by his servant, he lifted his handkerchief to his nose--and I thought to his eyes, too. But Vilhelm's face had brightened.
"Mamma dear," said the squire, speaking slowly and hesitatingly, "these two are to be married very soon--for I suppose you are willing to have him, Mette?" She curtsied, and bent her face still deeper. "And then we will not speak any more of the past, mamma! Vilhelm, there is a house right next to the blacksmith's up in Vium that's not leased--you can have that, and it won't hinder you from continuing your service with me."
The gamekeeper bowed, and said to his betrothed, "Thank the counsellor and her ladyship, Mette." The girl hurried over to the squire and curtsied sobbing, first to him and then to the mistress, after which she tottered out of the room. The gamekeeper followed her slowly, but when he had reached the door, the squire called after him in a lively voice, "Oh, Vilhelm, take a look in the alder-bog and see if the snipes should have come last night. It's the twenty-first today." Vilhelm nodded with a quiet smile, and went out.
Aunsbjerg lies in Lysgaard district and belongs to the parish of Sörslev. The church has a historical association. It was there--so the story goes--that the Jutland nobles gathered for the deliberations which ended in their renouncing allegiance to Christian II, and Magnus Munk was by lot assigned to the dangerous task of apprising His Majesty of the resolution. But the churchyard has to me another and more vital interest, though this too has to do with the dead. There is--I hope it is there yet--a fairly large mound set about with hewn stones and furnished on the south side with an iron-work gate or wicket.
Beneath it rest the earthly remains of my youngest brother and sister who died in infancy, of the squire and his lady, and several others of our kin. But the first two were yet unborn and the last two were very much alive when we attended the wedding of Guillaume Marteau and Mette Kjeldsdaughter in Sörslev church.
The newly married couple moved to Vium that same day. I remember, however, that Vilhelm, after escorting his wife to her new home, came back late at night, and I remember that this did not please my gracious grandmother, which puzzled me just as much as her anger when, a short time afterwards, he called his son by my name.
Soon everything went on as before, except that sometimes, when the weather was fine, I was allowed to go along on the hunt--that is, the kind of hunt in which the game is driven in by hounds or beaters to a hunter standing still in one place. I was now posted behind my grandfather, and always with the admonition not to stir. This order I obeyed in a much better spirit than I did when my "dear grandmother" set me down on my stool at home.
Just as Vilhelm, after his marriage, seemed to have risen still higher in the good graces of his master, so I rose in Vilhelm's favor because of my early-awakened love of the chase. But I must go on with my story, all the more as I am anxious to get that which is now coming over with.
It was a day in the autumn when the gamekeeper was ordered to ride out on the heath and shoot black cocks. He did not come back that evening; they thought he had stopped at Vium. But he didn't come the next day either. In the evening a messenger was sent up to his home--his wife had not seen him since the morning of the foregoing day, when on his way out he had passed by there and called at the house. Now grandfather began to worry and with good reason feared that an accident might have befallen him.
Two reliable men were sent out to search for him and inquire about him in the colonies. Toward noon on the following day they came back with the report that two days earlier he had stopped at Haverdale Inn, and the innkeeper said that he had gotten something to eat for his horse and dog and for himself, too, and that he had started in good time for Aunsbjerg. At that the squire himself mounted his horse and set out with the manager of the estate and a couple of under-gamekeepers. He was gloomy and anxious, and I already began to weep for Vilhelm.
To me it was a long day. Toward evening they returned, followed by two carts; on the first lay Vilhelm's lifeless body, on the second his dead horse, while his dog trailed along behind with drooping head and empty stomach. On the heath, where now the royal forest stands, there was at that time nothing but heather. The work of preparing the ground had begun, however, in the very year that the events just narrated took place. Even now the strip of heath first reclaimed for the cultivation of a forest, situated a couple of thousand feet from the ranger's house, is known as "the old plantation." In this strip, square pits had been dug, according to the rules of woodcraft, and the turf piled on the side. It was here that poor Vilhelm was found at last after long searching of the wide heath, which here is quite hilly. His pointer led the searchers to the spot.
After first trying to trace him in the colony and among the scattered heath-dwellers of Vium parish, and then in heathery valleys and turf pits, they suddenly heard the pitiful whine of a dog far in the distance. They rode in the direction of the sound, which was repeated at intervals; and when they came nearer, the counsellor exclaimed, "So help me, it's Vagtel!" Coming closer still, they caught sight of the white dog which now lifted its head and howled, now buried itself deep in the heather. They hastened to the spot--and there, among the pits in the newly laid-out plantation, they found hunter and horse, the man in front of the horse's head; and the dog by its side. It looked as though, through carelessness, the horse had stumbled, and the rider had been pitched over its head and had broken his neck. Both were beginning to putrify already. But the counsellor had his own opinion. He called on the officers of justice to make investigations, but nothing came of them. True, there was a hole in the chest of the horse, but that might have been made by a sharp stone; and moreover, the stench got worse and worse, and nobody could or would undertake a post-mortem examination of either.
The burial of the gamekeeper's body could no longer be postponed. I followed it to the grave where my dear father threw the first three spadefuls of earth on the coffin and pronounced the formula that consigns to corruption and transfiguration. But the grave was not filled up or the mound shaped till several days later, when the counsellor at last saw that all his efforts to find out anything were futile.
The horse was buried the same day in the home-field where it had been laid, and the dog--dear reader, whoever you are, do not take offense at the womanish weakness of an old and poor poet! And do not laugh at him, even if you think he is entering on his second childhood!--the dog Vagtel, my dearest playmate at serious Aunsbjerg, he who so many a time had shared my sandwiches with me, and more than once had found and brought back a lost handkerchief or glove, yes, I admit it freely, I wept over Vagtel, too. Was it because of Vilhelm? Possibly--I hardly know it myself. As long as the gamekeeper's body was unburied, the dog stuck close to it. He would have followed it to the grave, but was too feeble. When we closed the gate in order to keep him in, he dragged himself into the home-field and lay down by the grave of the horse. We set his favorite food before him--he turned his head away--he starved and grieved himself to death. He was buried near the horse. Grandfather, too, cried over him.
But there was one who wept even more than I--Vagtel was not alone in grieving himself to death over Vilhelm. Both while the grave was open and long after it had been covered with green turf, the widow would visit it every evening to mourn--weep she could not, for she had no more tears left. The grave was a little to the north of the church tower--I could go right to the spot now as unerringly as half a hundred years ago--there she sat leaning back against the wall, her hands folded in her lap, and stared in silent despair at the mound hiding the friend who had been torn from her in such a horrible manner. My father visited her every day, but his consolation found no hearing. "My only friend on earth!" was all she could say.
The child suffered from the mother's sorrow. It pined away, and three weeks after the father's death it was laid by his side. The loss of it seemed hardly to make any impression on the widow. She did not care about the little body, but gave it only an indifferent glance. Neighbor women had to dress it and prepare it for burial.
Hardly a month had passed before the mother was laid by her husband's other side.
* * *
Nine years had gone by, and I was in the upper class preparing for entrance examinations to the University, when in the dog days I visited my great-uncle at Liselund, a small place under Aunsbjerg which he had saved as a home for his old age, when he sold the rest of the estate.
I had to give a report of my progress in scholarship and answer many other questions which the inquisitive old gentleman amused himself by putting to me. Our talk drifted back to old times, and each reminiscence from my childhood brought others in its train. It was not strange, therefore, that I recalled the events with which the reader is now familiar. I mentioned them, and expressed a desire for any possible information on matters that seemed to me obscure and even sinister.
The old man looked at me, blinking with his red-rimmed eyes. "Hm!" he said, "I hardly know whether it is good for you to know such things--and yet--perhaps. In God's name! I will reveal to you what I know; and then you will have to use your own common sense and draw a lesson from this miserable affair."
He sat silent yet a while with his chin resting on his breast, took his snuffbox, tapped the side of it with his finger three times--which is the proper way if one wants to take snuff gracefully--but he didn't take any; he held the box on his knee, lifted his face, looked fixedly at his favorite gun, which was hanging on the wall opposite him, and said:
"That fowling piece--well, now I don't use it much--my eyes are not so good any more--that piece has belonged to Guillaume de Martonniére--_de Martonnière!_ Take note of that, my boy! I got it in exchange for another, which was really better, but didn't suit me so well, and into the bargain I gave him this powder horn that you see there, inlaid with silver--I bought it back at the auction after him. It is just nineteen years since he came from my brother-in-law at Hald to me. I have never had a better gamekeeper or a better man in my service." Here he wiped a tear from his eye, saying, "My eyes are running badly these days--it is a sign of bad weather coming. Fetch me the eye lotion, my boy; it's standing on the stove in there." I did so; he bathed his eyes, and went on, "You remember when he overwhelmed that murderer in Them Inn and by his fierce demeanor forced him to confess his crime?" I nodded. "But you probably don't know that that wretch was Mette's sweetheart--you remember, the girl Guillaume married--and that he was the father of her child?"
"No!" I exclaimed, horrified.
"Hm!" he went on. "Weren't you in the house on the day when Mette's condition was discovered by my poor, dear wife, and when he was closeted with me in the small room inside the parlor?"
"Yes."
"It was then he told me about himself and gave me a good clear account, which I shall now repeat to you. While the trial was in progress, Vilhelm had to go there several times in order to be confronted with the murderer. Shortly before sentence was to be pronounced, the judge admonished the criminal to confess anything else that he might have on his conscience.
Then for the first time he burst into tears, and was so overwhelmed with emotion that he could not speak. The judge told his secretary to dip his pen, but the sinner said, 'What I have to confess is something that only God in His mercy can punish me for, and it is of no use to write anything about it. And besides, I want to ask that I might be alone with the judge and this man';--it was Vilhelm--'otherwise I can't say a word.'--The judge granted his request. And then he revealed that his real sweetheart, whom he had meant to marry if the devil hadn't ensnared him, was Mette Kjeldsdaughter, who at that time was our housemaid. For he had worked here, under my tenant Hansen, and had become good friends with her. Then it happened on Whitsunday that they had a merrymaking in the horse pasture here, as they have every year, and then she allowed herself to be seduced by him. Alas, my dear boy, sin--mark it well!--sin is the ruin of human beings. No doubt they would have been married, for he was genuinely fond of her, and the parents of both were well-to-do. But then it happened at a wedding which he attended in his home district that he also wronged another girl, her whom he afterwards murdered in order to marry Mette. 'And now I beg and implore you,' he finally said to Vilhelm, 'you are the one who is sending me to gallow's hill, but that I can't complain of--I thank you for it--but I beg you for Jesus' sake that you will do whatever is in your power to comfort Mette and help her in her great trouble and misery, and don't let anybody know that she has been got with child by such a criminal as I--unless it should be the Aunsbjerg squire, if you think it might benefit her.'
"Of course I was greatly shocked to hear it," the old man went on, "and asked him just what he meant to do. He passed his hand over his forehead, and said, 'I have robbed the girl of her lover--although that I can never regret--but she is innocent of his crime, and I owe it to her to make up for it as well as I can. Besides'--and here his face took on a look more gloomy than I have ever seen on it before or since--'besides'--at this a shudder passed through him, and he walked quickly over to the window as if he needed a breath of air, then turned toward me, and said, 'Are you satisfied with my decision, Mr. Counsellor?'--I not only answered this question in the affirmative, but assured him that it increased my esteem for him. And so this brief and joyless marriage came to pass.
"Never as long as I live shall I forget the morning he was killed. Before he rode out he asked that he might speak with me. And he said very quietly and philosophically--as if he were talking about wind and weather--'Counsellor Steensen,' he said--he did not ordinarily add my name--'if today or another day something should happen to me, and I should not have a chance to speak with you again, I want to ask you, for the sake of the kindness you have always shown me, to comply with a request I have directed to you, and which you will find as the first thing in my pocket book. It lies in the middle drawer to the right in my escritoire, and here is the key.' This speech made me feel very uncomfortable--for surely, my boy, you don't doubt that there are such things as forebodings, and this one, as you know, was only too true! Well, I took the key, and explained to him the ground where I wanted him to shoot the black cocks that day. He rode away--"
Here the old man again had to resort to the eye lotion, and this time it seemed to require a longer time before it helped. At last he continued his story. "I had a suspicion from the first that he had met a violent death, and I also suspected who had perpetrated it, none other, in fact, than the brother of the first murderer. Not so much because Vilhelm had brought his brother to justice as because not long before he had caught the fellow poaching, and had taken his gun away from him. By the way, I forgot to tell you that the rascal had got himself a house out there in a spot very handy for that kind of traffic, and he came from a region, out there by Silkeborg, Them, and Mattrup, where people were in the habit of poaching--and still are, I dare say. What I supposed was this: Vilhelm, as he rode from Haverdale, skirting the old plantation, may have caught sight of the poacher, for it is a good place to lie in wait for the red deer when they come down to the water at Aaresvad, and he started after him, and when the scoundrel saw that he could not escape, he fired and hit the horse. But even if one had found the bullet in the half-rotten carcass, _whose_ bullet was it?"
* * *
I wept again after all these years for my dear Vilhelm, and when the old man saw it, he had to resort to the eye lotion again.
"But," he went on, "it was not till he had been laid out that I remembered the key he had given me, and opened his escritoire. Here--take my key, go into the bedroom there and open my writing-desk. In the bottom drawer in the center there is a folded paper tied up with a black silk string. Bring it here."
I fetched it.
"Take my spectacles--but, no--you can read it yourself, but aloud!"
I read, "If it should be the will of Providence that I should come to a sudden and untimely end, without having an opportunity, that is, to dispose of the things I have, I would ask Counsellor St. de Steensen to take charge of them as follows. My few books I will ask him to keep in memory of me. My clothes, my guns, and anything else that will bring money are to be sold and the proceeds given to my wife or, if she should be dead, to the little one, and if he too should be gone, to her next of kin. Finally, in a secret compartment there is a bundle of letters which the counsellor will please take into custody, and what is further to be done with them is stated in the package itself. To find the secret compartment it is only necessary to press with a sharp instrument such as an awl"--The rest was unreadable because of ink that had been spilled on it.
"The cat did that," said the old man. "It jumped up on the table as I was reading and overturned the inkwell. But you see down below that he has signed his name Guillaume de Martonniére. So he was a nobleman. But the compartment I have never been able to find, however much I tried."
"But you still have the escritoire?" I asked.
"Yes, indeed I have it, for I bought it at the auction I arranged after his death. I have never been able to make up my mind to chop it to pieces, all the more as there was no sign of any secret compartment, for all the drawers seem to be equally large and to extend way to the back. If he has possessed the documents he mentioned, they must have been in some other place."
* * *
So he ended, and so I must end. When he died, and his effects were sold, I was far away, and I don't know what became of the escritoire or whether it still exists. But if it does, and if anyone who reads these pages should know of it, he could do me, and possibly others, a service by letting me know. For I am convinced that the letters mentioned must be found in this piece of furniture, and that most likely they will give information about Guillaume de Martonniére's life and experiences before he came here and would reveal how this French nobleman came to end his days as a humble gamekeeper for a Jutland squire.
* * *
Dear and highly-honored readers! Do not be wroth with me because this little story, which is scarcely more than an incident, is so fragmentary, obscure, and sad. Is not all our knowledge down here fragmentary? Is not all our wisdom obscure? And the greater part of our experience--yes, let it stand here--sad? Many a time in the days of my boyhood I have stood in Vium churchyard where Mette had sat and looked at the graves of her husband and child. I have sat there when the sun went down in the northwest back of Lyshöj, and have listened to the sad song of the bittern over there in Bastrup parish. I sorrowed, too, but there was no bitterness in my sorrow still less of doubt or fear. There was something, there was much, that resembled joy, that _was_ joy. The animal does not sorrow, except perhaps in relation to human beings. Sorrow is the birthright of men.
Category:Blicher
Category:Published