Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen (parable of the sower read online txt) 📕
He was a large-boned, long-limbed man with a stoop in his broad shoulders. His hair was rough as a crow's nest, grayish and tangled, but his face was of a deep yet clear pink, seemingly out of keeping with his coarse, rugged features and bushy eyebrows.
Erik Grubbe invited him to a seat and asked about his haymaking. The conversation dwelt on the chief labors of the farm at that season and died away in a sigh over the poor harvest of last year. Meanwhile the pastor was casting sidelong glances at the mug and finally said: "Your honor is always temperate--keeping to the natural drinks. No doubt they are the healthiest. New milk is a blessed gift of heaven, good both for a weak stomach and a sore chest."
"Indeed the gifts of God are all good, whether they come from the udder or the tap. But you must taste a keg of genuine mum that we brought home from Viborg the other day. She's both good and German, though I can't see that the customs have put their mark on her."
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not seen each other for several days when Sti came into the drawing
room of the magnificent apartment they had rented from Isabel Gilles,
the landlady of La Croix de Per. Marie was sitting there in tears. Sti
shook his head drearily and took a chair at the other end of the room.
It was hard to see her weep and to know that every word of comfort
from his lips, every sympathetic sigh or compassionate look merely
added bitterness to her grief and made her tears flow faster.
He went up to her.
“Marie,” he said in a low, husky voice, “let us have one more talk and
then part.”
“What is the good of that?”
“Nay, Marie, there are yet happy days awaiting you; even now they are
coming thick and fast.”
“Ay, days of mourning and nights of weeping in an endless, unbreakable
chain.”
“Marie, Marie, have a care what you say, for I understand the meaning
of your words as you never think to have me, and they wound me
cruelly.”
“I reck but little of wounds that are stung with words for daggers. It
was never in my mind to spare you them.”
“Then drive the weapon home, and do not pity me—not for one instant.
Tell me that my love has besmirched you and humbled you in the dust!
Tell me that you would give years of your life to tear from your heart
every memory of me! And make a dog of me and call me cur. Call me by
every shameful name you know, and I will answer to every one and say
you are right; for I know you are right, you are, though it’s torture
to say so! Hear me, Marie, hear me and believe if you can: though I
know you loathe yourself because you have been mine and sicken in your
soul when you think of it and frown with disgust and remorse, yet do I
love you still—I do indeed. I love you with all my might and soul,
Marie.”
“Fie, shame on you, Sti Hogh! Shame on you! You know not what you are
saying. And yet—God forgive me—but ‘tis true, fearful as it seems!
Oh, Sti, Sti, why are you such a varlet soul? Why are you such a
miserable, cringing worm that doesn’t bite when it’s trodden underfoot?
If you knew how great and proud and strong I believed you—you who are
so weak! It was your sounding phrases that lied to me of a power you
never owned; they spoke loud of everything your soul never was and
never could be. Sti, Sti, was it right that I should find weakness
instead of strength, abject doubt instead of brave faith, and
pride—Sti, where was your pride?”
“Justice and right are but little mercy, but I deserve naught else,
for I have been no better than a counterfeiter with you, Marie. I
never believed in your love; no, even in the hour when you first vowed
it to me, there was no faith in my soul. Oh! how I wanted to believe
but could not! I could not down the fear that lifted its dark head
from the ground, staring at me with cold eyes, blowing away my rich,
proud dreams with the breath from its bitterly smiling mouth. I could
not believe in your love, and yet I grasped the treasure of it with
both hands and with all my soul. I rejoiced in it with a timid,
anxious happiness as a thief might feel joy in his golden booty,
though he knew the rightful owner would step in the next moment and
tear the precious thing from his hands. For I know the man will come
who will be worthy of you, or whom you will think worthy, and he will
not doubt, not tremble and entreat. He will mould you like pure gold
in his hands and set his foot on your will, and you will obey him,
humbly and gladly. Not that he will love you more than I, for that no
one could, but that he will have more faith in himself and less sense
of your priceless worth, Marie.”
“Why, this is a regular fortune-teller’s tale you’re giving me, Sti
Hogh. You are ever the seer: your thoughts roam far afield. You are
like children with a new toy; instead of playing with it, they must
needs pull it to pieces and find out how it was made and so spoil it.
You never have time to hold and enjoy because you are ever reaching
and seeking. You cut the timber of life all up into thought-shavings.”
“Farewell, Marie.”
“Farewell, Sti Hogh—as well as may be.”
“Thanks—thanks—it must be so. Yet I would ask of you one thing.”
“Well?”
“When you depart from here, let none know the way you go lest I should
hear it, for if I do, I cannot answer for myself that I shall have
strength to keep from following you.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“God bless you, Marie, now and forever.”
With that he left her.
In a fair November gloaming the bronze-brown light of the sun is
slowly receding from the windows still gleaming singly in high gables;
an instant it rests on the slender twin spires of the church, is
caught up there by cross and golden wreath, then freed in luminous air
and fades while the moon lifts a shining disc over the distant,
long-flowing lines of the rounded hills.
Yellow, bluish, and purple, the fading tints of the sky are mirrored
in the bright, silently running river. Leaves of willow and maple and
elder and rose drop from golden crowns and flutter down to the water
in tremulous flight, rest on the glittering surface and glide along
under leaning walls and stone steps into the darkness beneath low,
massive bridges, around things black with moisture. They catch the glow
from the red coal fire in the lighted smithy, are whirled round in the
rust brown eddies by the grinder’s house, then drift away among rushes
and leaky boats, lost among sunken barrels and muddy, water-soaked
fences.
Blue twilight is spreading a transparent dusk over squares and open
markets. In the fountains the water gleams as through a delicate veil
as it runs from wet snake-snouts and drips from bearded dragon-mouths
among fantastic broken curves and slender, serrated vessels. It
murmurs gently and trickles coldly; it bubbles softly and drips
sharply, making rapidly widening rings on the dark surface of the
brimming basin. A breath of wind sighs through the square while round
about the dusky space a deeper darkness stares from shadowy portals,
black window panes, and dim alleys.
Now the moon is rising and throwing a silvery sheen over roofs and
pinnacles, dividing light and shadow into sharply etched planes. Every
carved beam, every flaunting sign, every baluster in the low railing
of the porches is etched on houses and walls. The stone lattice-work
over the church doors—St. George with his lance there at the corner,
the plant with its leaves here in the window—all stand out like black
figures. What a flood of light the moon pours through the wide street,
and how it glitters on the water in the river! There are no clouds in
the heavens, only a ring like a halo around the moon, and nothing else
except myriads of stars.
It was such a night as this at Nurnberg, and in the steep street
leading up to the castle in the house known as von Karndorf’s, a feast
was held that same evening. The guests were sitting around the table,
merry and full of food and drink. All but one were men who had left
youth behind, and this one was but eighteen years. He wore no periwig,
but his own hair was luxuriant enough, long, golden, and curly. His
face was fair as a girl’s, white and red, and his eyes were large,
blue, and serene. They called him the golden Remigius, golden not only
because of his hair but because of his great wealth. For all his
youth he was the richest nobleman in the Bavarian forest—for he
hailed from the Bavarian forest.
They were speaking of female loveliness, these gay gentlemen around
the groaning board, and they all agreed that when they were young, the
world was swarming with beauties beside whom those who laid claim to
the name in these days were as nothing at all.
“But who knew the pearl among them all?” asked a chubby, red-faced
man with tiny, sparkling eyes. “Who ever saw Dorothea von Falkenstein
of the Falkensteiners of Harzen? She was red as a rose and white as a
lamb. She could clasp her waist round with her two hands and have an
inch to spare, and she could walk on larks’ eggs without crushing them
so light of foot was she. But she was none of your scrawny chicks for
all that; she was as plump as a swan swimming in a lake and firm as a
roe deer running in the forest.”
They drank to her.
“God bless you all, gray though you be!” cried a tall, crabbed old
fellow at the end of the table. “The world is getting uglier every
day. We have but to look at ourselves”—his glance went round the
table—“and think what dashing blades we once were. Well, no matter
for that! But where in the name of everything drinkable—can anyone
say? huh? can you?—who can?—can anyone tell me what’s become of the
plump landladies with laughing mouths and bright eyes and dainty feet
and the landladies’ daughters with yellow, yellow hair and eyes so
blue—what’s become of them? huh? Or is ‘t a lie that one could go to
any tavern or wayside inn or ordinary and find them there? Oh, misery
of miseries and wretchedness! Look at the hunchbacked jades the tavern
people keep in these days—with pig’s eyes and broad in the beam! Look
at the toothless, baldpated hags that get the king’s license to scare
the life out of hungry and thirsty folks with their sore eyes and
grubby hands! Faugh, I’m as scared of an inn as of the devil himself,
for I know full well the tapster is married to the living image of the
plague from Lubeck, and when a man’s as old as I am, there’s something
about memento mori that he’d rather forget than remember.”
Near the centre of the long table sat a man of strong build with a
face rather full and yellow as wax, bushy eyebrows, and clear,
searching eyes. He looked not exactly ill, but as if he had suffered
great bodily pain, and when he smiled, there was an expression about
his mouth as though he were swallowing something bitter. He spoke in a
soft, low, rather husky voice. “The brown Euphemia of the Burtenbacher
stock was statelier than any queen I ever saw. She could wear the
stiffest cloth of gold as if it were the easiest house-dress. Golden
chains and precious stones hung round her neck and waist and rested on
her bosom and hair as lightly as berries the children deck themselves
with when they play in the forest. There was none like her. The other
young maidens would look like reliquaries weighed down by necklaces of
gold and clasps of gold and jewelled roses, but she was fair and fresh
and festive and light as a banner that flies in the wind. There was
none like her, nor is there now.
“Ay, and a better one,” cried young Remigius jumping up. He bent
forward across the table, supporting himself with one hand while the
other swung a bright goblet, from which the golden grape brimmed
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