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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south, and he became her third husband.
About a month later, on an April evening, there was a crowd gathered
outside of Ribe cathedral. The Church Council was in session, and it
was customary, while that lasted, to light the tapers in church three
times a week at eight o’clock in the evening. The gentry and persons
of quality in town, as well as the respectable citizens, would
assemble and walk up and down in the nave while a skilful musician
would play for them on the organ. The poorer people had to be content
to listen from the outside.
Among the latter were Marie Grubbe and Soren.
Their clothing was coarse and ragged, and they looked as if they had
not had enough to eat every day; and no wonder, for it was not a
profitable trade they plied. In an inn between Aarhus and Randers,
Soren had met a poor, sick German who for twenty marks had sold him a
small, badly battered hurdy-gurdy, a motley fool’s suit, and an old
checked rug. With these he and Marie gained their livelihood, going
from market to market; she would turn the hurdy-gurdy, and he would
stand on the checked rug, dressed in the motley clothes lifting and
doing tricks with some huge iron weights and long iron bars which they
borrowed of the tradesmen.
It was the market that had brought them to Ribe.
They were standing near the door where a faint, faded strip of light
shone on their pale faces and the dark mass of heads behind them.
People were coming singly or in pairs or small groups, talking and
laughing in well-bred manner to the very threshold of the church, but
there they suddenly became silent, gazed gravely straight before them,
and changed their gait.
Soren was seized with a desire to see more of the show, and whispered
to Marie that they ought to go in; there was no harm in trying;
nothing worse could happen to them than to be turned out. Marie
shuddered inwardly at the thought that she should be turned out from a
place where common artisans could freely go, and she held back Soren,
who was trying to draw her on; but suddenly she changed her mind,
pressed eagerly forward pulling Soren after her, and walked in without
the slightest trace of shrinking timidity or stealthy caution; indeed,
she seemed determined to be noticed and turned out. At first no one
stopped them, but just as she was about to step into the well-lit,
crowded nave, a church warden who was stationed there, caught sight of
them. After casting one horrified glance up through the church, he
advanced quickly upon them with lifted and outstretched hands as if
pushing them before him to the very threshold and over it. He stood
there for a moment, looking reproachfully at the crowd as if he blamed
it for what had occurred, then returned with measured tread, and took
up his post, shuddering.
The crowd met the ejected ones with a burst of jeering laughter and a
shower of mocking questions, which made Soren growl and look around
savagely, but Marie was content; she had bent to receive the blow
which the respectable part of society always has ready for such as he,
and the blow had fallen.
On the night before St. Oluf’s market, four men were sitting in one of
the poorest inns at Aarhus playing cards.
One of the players was Soren. His partner, a handsome man with
coal-black hair and a dark skin, was known as Jens Bottom and was a
juggler. The other two members of the party were joint owners of a
mangy bear. Both were unusually hideous: one had a horrible harelip
while the other was one-eyed, heavy jowled, and pock-marked, and was
known as Rasmus Squint, plainly because the skin around the injured
eye was drawn together in such a manner as to give him the appearance
of being always ready to peer through a keyhole or some such small
aperture.
The players were sitting at one end of the long table which ran under
the window and held a candle and an earless cruse. Opposite them was a
folding table fastened up against the wall with an iron hook. A bar
ran across the other end of the room, and a thin, long-wicked candle,
stuck into an old inverted funnel threw a sleepy light over the shelf
above, where some large square flasks of brandy and bitters, some
quart and pint measures, and half a dozen glasses had plenty of room
beside a basket full ot mustard seed and a large lantern with panes of
broken glass. In one corner outside of the bar sat Marie Grubbe,
knitting and drowsing, and in the other sat a man with body bent
forward and elbows resting on his knees. He seemed intent on pulling
his black felt hat as far down over his head as possible, and when
that was accomplished, he would clutch the wide brim, slowly work the
hat up from his head again, his eyes pinched together and the corners
of his mouth twitching, probably with the pain of pulling his hair,
then presently begin all over again.
“Then this is the last game to play,” said Jens Bottom, whose lead it
was.
Rasmus Squint pounded the table with his knuckles as a sign to his
partner Salmand to cover.
Salmand played two of trumps.
“A two!” cried Rasmus; “have you nothing but twos and threes in your
hand?”
“Lord,” growled Salmand, “there’s always been poor folks and a few
beggars.”
Soren trumped with a six.
“Oh, oh,” Rasmus moaned, “are you goin’ to let him have it for a six?
What the devil are you so stingy with your old cards for, Salmand?”
He played, and Soren won the trick.
“Kerstie Meek,” said Soren, playing four of hearts.
“And her half-crazy sister,” continued Rasmus, putting on four of
diamonds.
“Maybe an ace is good enough,” said Soren, covering with ace of
trumps.
“Play, man, play if you never played before!” cried Rasmus.
“That’s too costly,” whimpered Salmand, taking his turn.
“Then I’ll put on my seven and another seven,” said Jens.
Soren turned the trick.
“And then nine of trumps,” Jens went on, leading.
“Then I’ll have to bring on my yellow nag,” cried Salmand, playing
two of hearts.
“You’ll never stable it,” laughed Soren, covering with four of
spades.
“Forfeit!” roared Rasmus Squint, throwing down his cards. “Forfeit
with two of hearts, that’s a good day’s work! Nay, nay, ‘tis a good
thing we’re not goin’ to play anymore. Now let them kiss the cards
that have won.”
They began to count the tricks, and while they were busy with this, a
stout, opulently dressed man came in. He went at once to the folding
table, let it down, and took a seat nearest the wall. As he passed the
players, he touched his hat with his silver-knobbed cane, and said,
“Good even to the house!”
“Thanks,” they replied, and all four spat.
The newcomer took out a paper full of tobacco and a long clay pipe,
filled it, and pounded the table with his cane.
A barefoot girl brought him a brazier full of hot coals and a large
earthenware cruse with a pewter cover. He took out from his
vest-pocket a pair of small copper pincers, which he used to pick up
bits of coal and put them in his pipe, drew the cruse to him, leaned
back, and made himself as comfortable as the small space would allow.
“How much do you have to pay for a paper o’ tobacco like the one
you’ve got there, master?” asked Salmand, as he began to fill his
little pipe from a sealskin pouch held together with a red string.
“Sixpence,” said the man, adding as if to apologize for such
extravagance, “it’s very good for the lungs, as you might say.”
“How’s business?” Salmand went on, striking fire to light his pipe.
“Well enough, and thank you kindly for asking, well enough, but I’m
getting old, as you might say.”
“Well,” said Rasmus Squint, “but then you’ve no need to run after
customers since they’re all brought to you.”
“Ay,” laughed the man, “in respect of that it’s a good business and,
moreover, you don’t have to talk yourself hoarse persuading folks to
buy your wares; they have to take ‘em as they come; they can’t pick
and choose.”
“And they don’t want anything thrown in,” Rasmus went on, “and don’t
ask for more than what’s rightly comin’ to ‘em.”
“Master, do they scream much?” asked Soren in a half whisper.
“Well, they don’t often laugh.”
“Faugh, what an ugly business!”
“Then there’s no use my counting on one of you for help, I suppose.”
“Are you countin’ on us to help you?” asked Rasmus and rose angrily.
“I’m not counting on anything, but I’m looking for a young man to
help me and to take the business after me; that’s what I’m looking
for, as you might say.”
“And what wages might a man get for that?” asked Jens Bottom
earnestly.
“Fifteen dollars per annum in ready money, one-third of the clothing,
and one mark out of every dollar earned according to the fixed rate.”
“And what might that be?”
“The rate is this, that I get five dollars for whipping at the post,
seven dollars for whipping from town, four dollars for turning out of
the county, and the same for branding with hot iron.”
“And for the bigger work?”
“Alack, that does not come so often, but it’s eight dollars for
cutting off a man’s head, that is with an axe—with a sword it’s ten,
but that may not occur once in seven years. Hanging is fourteen
rix-dollars, ten for the job itself and four for taking the body down
from the gallows. Breaking on the wheel is seven dollars, that is for
a whole body, but I must find the stake and put it up too. And now is
there anything more? Ay, crushing arms and legs according to the new
German fashion and breaking on the wheel, that’s fourteen—that’s
fourteen, and for quartering and breaking on the wheel I get twelve,
and then there’s pinching with red-hot pincers—that’s two dollars
for every pinch—and that’s all; there’s nothing more except such
extras as may come up.”
“It can’t be very hard to learn, is it?”
“The business? Well, anyone can do it, but how—that’s another matter.
There’s a certain knack about it that one gets with practice just like
any other handicraft. There’s whipping at the post; that’s not so easy
if ‘tis to be done right—three flicks with each whip, quick and light
like waving a bit of cloth and yet biting the flesh with due
chastisement, as the rigor of the law and the betterment of the sinner
require.”
“I think I might do it,” said Jens, sighing as he spoke.
“Here’s the earnest-penny,” tempted the man at the folding-table,
putting a few bright silver coins out before him.
“Think well!” begged Soren.
“Think and starve, wait and freeze—that’s two pair of birds that are
well mated,” answered Jens, rising. “Farewell as an honest and true
guild-man,” he went on, giving Soren his hand.
“Farewell, guild-mate, and godspeed,” replied Soren.
He went round the table with the same farewell and got the same
answer. Then he shook hands with Marie and with the man in the corner,
who had to let go his hat for the
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