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

has life for us, and what are we for life? One must die of the thirteen who celebrate Christmas eve in the smithy at Ekeby; but every year a new one comes to complete our number; a man, experienced in pleasure, one who can handle violin and card, must come and make our company complete. Old butterflies should know how to die while the summer sun is shining. A toast to the thirteenth!”

“But, Gösta, we are only twelve,” remonstrate the pensioners, and do not touch their glasses.

Gösta Berling, whom they called the poet, although he never wrote verses, continues with unaltered calmness: “Gentlemen and brothers! Have you forgotten who you are? You are they who hold pleasure by force in Värmland. You are they who set the fiddle-bows going, keep up the dance, make song and music resound through the land. You know how to keep your hearts from the love of gold, your hands from work. If you did not exist the dance would die, summer die, the roses die, card-playing die, song die, and in this whole blessed land there would be nothing but iron and owners of ironworks. Pleasure lives while you live. For six years have I celebrated Christmas eve in the Ekeby smithy, and never before has anyone refused to drink to the thirteenth?”

“But, Gösta,” cry they all, “when we are only twelve how can we drink to the thirteenth?”

“Are we only twelve?” he says. “Why must we die out from the earth? Shall we be but eleven next year, but ten the year after. Shall our name become a legend, our company destroyed? I call upon him, the thirteenth, for I have stood up to drink his toast. From the ocean’s depths, from the bowels of the earth, from heaven, from hell I call him who shall complete our number.”

Then it rattled in the chimney, then the furnace-door opened, then the thirteenth came.

He was hairy, with tail and cloven-hoof, with horns and a pointed beard, and at the sight of him the pensioners start up with a cry.

But in uncontrollable joy Gösta Berling cries, “The thirteenth has come⁠—a toast to the thirteenth!”

Yes, he has come, the old enemy of mankind, come to these foolhardy men who trouble the peace of the Holy Night. The friend of witches on their way to hell, who signs his bargains in blood on coal-black paper, he who danced with the countess at Ivarsnäs for seven days, and could not be exorcized by seven priests⁠—he has come.

In stormy haste thoughts fly through the heads of the old adventurers at the sight of him. They wonder for whose sake he is out this night.

Many of them were ready to hurry away in terror, but they soon saw that the horned one had not come to carry them down to his dark kingdom, but that the ring of the cups and their songs had attracted him. He wished to enjoy a little human pleasure in this holy night, and cast aside his burden during this glad time.

Oh, pensioners, pensioners, who of you now remembers it is the night before Christmas; that even now angels are singing for the shepherds in the fields? Children are lying anxious lest they sleep too soundly, that they may not wake in time for the beautiful morning worship. Soon it will be time to light the Christmas candles in the church at Bro, and far away in the forest homes the young man in the evening has prepared a resin torch to light his girl to church. In all the houses the mistress has placed dip-lights in the windows, ready to light as the people go by to church. The sexton takes up the Christmas psalm in his sleep, and the old minister lies and tries if he has enough voice left to sing: “Glory be to God on high, on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”

Oh, pensioners, better had it been for you if you had spent this peaceful night quietly in your beds than to trouble the company with the Prince of Darkness.

But they greet him with cries of welcome, as Gösta had done. A goblet filled with burning brandy is placed in his hand. They give him the place of honor at the table, and they look upon him with gladness, as if his ugly satyr face wore the delicate features of their youth’s first love.

Beerencreutz invites him to a game of cards, Master Julius sings his best songs for him, and Örneclou talks to him of lovely women, those beautiful creatures who make life sweet.

He enjoys everything, the devil, as with princely bearing he leans back on the old coach-box, and with clawed hand lifts the brimming goblet to his smiling mouth.

But Gösta Berling of course must make a speech in his honor.

“Your Grace,” he says, “we have long awaited you here at Ekeby, for you have little access, we suppose, to any other paradise. Here one can live without toiling or spinning, as your Grace perhaps knows. Here roasted ortolans fly into one’s mouth, and the bitter ale and the sweet brandy flow in brooks and rivulets. This is a good place, your Grace! We pensioners have waited for you, I tell you, for we have never been complete before. See, we are something finer than we seem; we are the mighty twelve of the poet, who are of all time. We were twelve when we steered the world, up there on Olympus’s cloud-veiled top, and twelve when we lived like birds in Ygdrasil’s green crown. Wherever there has been poetry there have we followed. Did we not sit twelve men strong about King Arthur’s Round Table, and were there not twelve paladins at Charlemagne’s court? One of us has been a Thor, a Jupiter; anyone can see that in us now. They can perceive the divine splendor under our rags, the lion’s mane under the ass’s head. Times are bad with us, but if we are there a smithy becomes Olympus