O. T., A Danish Romance

“This might become a pretty little room,” said the Kammerjunker, “but we have enough, and therefore we let this, for curiosity’s sake, remain in its old state. The moon is worth its money!” and he pointed toward the vaulted ceiling, where the moon was represented as a white disk, in which the painter, with much naïveté, had introduced a man bearing a load of coals upon his back; in faithful representation of the popular belief regarding the black spot in the moon, which supposes this to be a man whom the Lord has sent up there because he stole his neighbor’s coal. “That great picture on the right, there,” pursued he, “is Mrs. Ellen Marsviin; I purchased it at an auction. One of the peasants put up for it; I asked him what he would do with this big piece of furniture—he could never get it in through his door. But do you know what a speculation he had? It was not such a bad one, after all. See! the rain runs so beautifully off the painted canvas, he would have a pair of breeches made out of it, to wear in rainy weather behind the plough; they would keep the rain off! I thought, however, I ought to prevent the portrait of the highly honorable Mrs. Ellen Marsviin being so profaned. I bought it: now she hangs there, and looks tolerably well pleased. The peasant got a knight instead—perhaps one of my own ancestors, who was now cut up into breeches. See, that is what one gets by being painted!”

“But the cupboard in the pillar there?” inquired Otto.

“There, certainly, were Bibles and Prayer-books kept. Now I have in it what I call sweetmeats for the Chancery-counselor Thomsen: old knives of sacrifice, coins and rings, which I have found in the horse-pond and up yonder in the cairns: not a quarter of a yard below the turf we found one pot upon another; round each a little inclosure of stones—a flat stone as covering, and underneath stood the pot, with burnt giants’ bones, and a little button or the blade of a knife. The best things are already gone away to Copenhagen, and should the Counselor come, he will, God help me! carry away the rest. That may be, then, willingly, for I cannot use the stuff, after all.”

After coffee, the guests wandered through the old garden: the clearing away of the mud was more closely observed, the dairy and pig-sty visited, the new threshing-machine inspected. But now the Russian bath should be also essayed; “it was heated!” But the end of the affair was, that only the Kammerjunker himself made use of it. The dinner-table was prepared, and then he returned. “But here something is wanting!” exclaimed he; left the room, and returned immediately with two large bouquets, which he stuck into an ale-glass which he placed upon the table. “Where Miss Sophie dines, the table must be ornamented with flowers: certainly we cannot lay garlands, as you do!” He seated himself at the end of the table, and wished, as he himself said, to represent the President Lars: they had had the “Wandsbecker Boten” half a year in the house, and it would certainly please Miss Sophie if they betrayed some acquaintance with books. This Lars and the flowers, here, meant quite as much as in the south a serenade under the windows of the fair one.

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1

Note: Literal translation of the real words of a showman.

2

Translator’s Note: Name of one of the heroes in Waldemar the Conqueror, a romance by Ingemann.

3

Note: This superstition of the people is mentioned in Thieles’s Danish traditions: “When a girl at midnight stretches between four sticks the membrane in which the foal lies when it is born, and then creeps naked through it, she will bear her child without pains; but all the boys she conceives will become were-wolves, and all the girls nightmares. You will know them in the daytime by their eyebrows grown together over the nose. In the night she creeps in through the key-hole, and places herself upon the sleeper’s bosom. The same superstition is also found in German Grimm speaks thus about it: If you say to the nightmare,—

Old hag, come to-morrow,And I from you will borrow,

it retreats directly, and comes the next morning in the shape of a man to borrow something.”