The Story of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf (readnow txt) 📕

in her soul. The vigor of life and its strong emotions cry out for the happiness of living.

“Is there nothing,” she breaks out, “which can give life beauty, since you have taken from me God and immortality?”

“Work,” answers the old man.

But she looks out again, and a feeling of scorn for that poor wisdom creeps over her. The unfathomable rises before her; she feels the spirit dwelling in everything; she is sensible of the power which lies bound in seemingly dead material, but which can develop into a thousand forms of shifting life. Dizzily she seeks for a name for the presence of God’s spirit in nature.

“Oh, Eberhard,” she says, “what is work? Is it a god? Has it any meaning in itself? Name another!”

“I know no other,” answered the old man.

Then she finds the name which she is seeking⁠—a poor, often sullied name.

“Uncle Eberhard, why do you not speak of love?”

A smile glides over the empty mouth where the thousand wrinkles cross.

“Here,” says the philosopher, and strikes the heavy packet with his clenched hand, “here all the gods are slain, and I have not forgotten Eros. What is love but a longing of the flesh? In what does he stand higher than the other requirements of the body? Make hunger a god! Make fatigue a god! They are just as worthy. Let there be an end to such absurdities! Let the truth live!”

The young countess sinks her head. It is not so, all that is not true; but she cannot contest it.

“Your words have wounded my soul,” she says; “but still I do not believe you. The gods of revenge and violence you may be able to kill, no others.”

But the old man takes her hand, lays it on the book, and swears in the fanaticism of unbelief.

“When you have read this, you must believe.”

“May it never come before my eyes,” she says, “for if I believe that, I cannot live.”

And she goes sadly from the philosopher. But he sits for a long time and thinks, when she has gone.

Those old manuscripts, scribbled over with heathenish confessions, have not yet been tested before the world. Uncle Eberhard’s name has not yet reached the heights of fame.

His great work lies hidden in a chest in the lumber-room under the gallery stairs in the Svartsjö church; it shall first see the light of day at the end of the century.

But why has he done this? Was he afraid not to have proved his point? Did he fear persecutions? You little know Uncle Eberhard.

Understand it now; he has loved the truth, not his own glory. So he has sacrificed the latter, not the former, in order that a deeply loved child might die in the belief in that she has most cared for.

O Love, thou art indeed eternal!

XIX The Broom-Girl

No one knows the place in the lee of the mountain where the pines grow thickest and deep layers of moss cover the ground. How should anyone know it? No man’s foot has ever trodden it before; no man’s tongue has given it a name. No path leads to that hidden spot. It is the most solitary tract in the forest, and now thousands of people are looking for it.

What an endless procession of seekers! They would fill the Bro church⁠—not only Bro, but Löfviks and Svartsjö.

All who live near the road rush out and ask, “Has anything happened? Is the enemy upon us? Where are you going? Tell us where.”

“We are searching,” they answer. “We have been searching for two days. We shall go on today; but afterwards we can do no more. We are going to look through the Björne wood and the firclad heights west of Ekeby.”

It was from Nygård, a poor district far away among the eastern mountains, the procession had first started. The beautiful girl with the heavy, black hair and the red cheeks had disappeared a week before. The broom-girl, to whom Gösta Berling had wished to engage himself, had been lost in the great forests. No one had seen her for a week.

So the people started from Nygård to search through the wood. And everybody they met joined in the search.

Sometimes one of the newcomers asks⁠—

“You men from Nygård, how has it all happened? Why do you let that beautiful girl go alone in strange paths? The forest is deep, and God has taken away her reason.”

“No one disturbs her,” they answer; “she disturbs no one. She goes as safely as a child. Who is safer than one God himself must care for? She has always come back before.”

So have the searching crowd gone through the eastern woods, which shut in Nygård from the plain. Now on the third day it passes by the Bro church towards the woods west of Ekeby.

But wherever they go, a storm of wondering rages; constantly a man from the crowd has to stop to answer questions: “What do you want? What are you looking for?”

“We are looking for the blue-eyed, dark-haired girl. She has laid herself down to die in the forest. She has been gone a week.”

“Why has she laid herself down to die in the forest? Was she hungry? Was she unhappy?”

“She has not suffered want, but she had a misfortune last spring. She has seen that mad priest, Gösta Berling, and loved him for many years. She knew no better. God had taken away her wits.”

“Last spring the misfortune happened⁠—before that, he had never looked at her. Then he said to her that she should be his sweetheart. It was only in jest; he let her go again, but she could not be consoled. She kept coming to Ekeby. She went after him wherever he went. He wearied of her. When she was there last, they set their dogs on her. Since then no one has seen her.”

To the rescue, to the rescue! A human life is concerned! A human being has laid herself down to die in the wood! Perhaps she is