had never seen before. One had a basket attached to each leg, and
in each basket was a boy of five years of age, and a woman fell
upon the rope and jumped up again. But during the time of the other
woman, I saw a man suspended by his chin and springing back upon
the rope.'
I could see the faces of the King and Queen: they were standing in
the long hall, and I wondered afterwards that they never turned their
eyes to the place where I stood. I did not let the woman perceive
that I saw them. During this woman's time I once had a desire to see
the people go to the castle-church and return from it. The bed was
again placed upright, and I sat for a long time on the top, until
everyone had come out of church. The woman did not venture to climb
up; she said that she had been afraid enough the last time, and was
glad when she had come down.
The first time I received the holy communion during this prison
governor's time, two brass candlesticks which did not match were
brought in, with tallow candles. This displeased the woman, though
she said nothing to me. But when at length she was compelled to take
the sacrament, after more than three years had elapsed since she had
been at the Lord's table, she begged Chresten, the tower-warder, to
go to her daughter (who was in the service of a carpenter in the
town), and to get the loan of a pair of beautiful brass candlesticks
and a couple of wax candles. If she could also procure for her a fine
linen cloth, she was to do her best; she would pay for it.
Whether the woman had before thought of the candlesticks and candles
which had been placed for me, or whether Chresten himself thought
that it would not be proper to provide better for her, I know not,
but shortly before the priest came, Chresten unlocked the outer door
of my prison and said, 'Karen, hand me out the candlestick you have,
and two candles.' Her behaviour is not to be described: she asked if
he had not spoken with her daughter, and much of the same kind (I did
not at the time know what she had desired of Chresten). He made no
reply to her question, but asked for the candlestick and candles. For
a long time she would not give them, but cursed and scolded. I was
still lying down, and I asked her if I should be her maid, and should
do it for her? whether she could withhold from him what he requested?
So she handed them to him through the hole of the inner door, with so
many execrations against him that it was terrible to listen to. He
laughed aloud, and went away. This made her still more angry. I did
my best to appease her, telling her that such conduct was a most
improper preparation, and holding before her the sinfulness of her
behaviour. She said she thought that the sin belonged to him who had
given cause for it. I asked her, at last, in what the Lord's Supper
consisted? whether it consisted in candlesticks and candles? I
rebuked her for looking to externals and not to the essential; and I
begged her to fall on her knees and pray heartily to God for
forgiveness of her sins, that He might not impute her folly to her.
She answered that she would do so, but she did not do it at once.
I imagine that the clergyman[99] was well informed by Chresten of all
that concerned her, as he put to her so many questions: where she was
born? whom she had served? and more of the same kind, and finally,
whether she had her certificate of confession, and how long it was
since she had received the Lord's Supper? After this he confessed her
in a strange manner; at first as one who had deserved to do public
penance for great sins, then as a criminal under sentence of death
who was preparing for her end; at last consoling her, and performing
his office. When all was over and she came in to me, I wished her
joy. 'Joy, indeed' (she answered); 'there is not much good in it!
This does me more harm than good! If I could only get out, I would
indeed go straight to the sacrament; I reckon this as nothing!' I
interrupted her quickly, and said: 'Reflect upon what you are saying!
blaspheme not God--I will not hear that! You know well what God's
Word says of those who receive Christ's body and blood unworthily and
have trodden under foot his body?' 'Under foot?' said she. 'Yes,
under foot!' I said, and I made a whole sermon upon it. She listened
decently; but when I was silent, she said: 'He looked upon me as a
malefactor, and as one under sentence of death. I have never murdered
anyone (I thought, we know not what);[100] why should I die? God
Almighty grant'----and with this she was silent. I preached to her
again, and said that she had deserved eternal death on account of her
sins, and especially because she had so long kept aloof from the
Lord's table. 'This confession,' she said, 'I have to thank Chresten
for; Balcke was also probably concerned in it.' And she began to
curse them both. I threatened her with a second confession, if she
did not restrain such words. I told her I could not justify myself
before God to keep silence to it, and I said, 'If you speak in this
way to Chresten, you may be sure he will inform against you.' This
kept her somewhat in check, and she did not go out upon the stairs
that noon.[101]
[99] In the margin is added: 'This was the priest who attended to
the prisoners, and as he confessed her in the anteroom, I heard
every word said by him, but not her replies.'
[100] In the margin is added: 'Her child.'
[101] In the margin is added: 'She was in every respect a malicious
woman, and grudged a little meat to any prisoner. A poor sacristan
was my neighbour in the Dark Church, and I gave her a piece of meat
for him. She would not take it to him, which she could easily have
done without anyone seeing. When I saw the meat afterwards, I found
fault with her. Then she said, "Why should I give it to him? He has
never given me anything. I get nothing for it." I said, "You give
nothing of your own away." This sacristan was imprisoned because he
had taken back his own horse, the man to whom he had sold it not
having paid him. He sang all day long, and on Sunday he went
through the service like a clergyman, with the responses, &c.'
After that time she was not so merry by far with the man. She often
complained to me that she was weak, and had strained herself lifting
the new basin which Balcke had given her; she could not long hold
out, she said, and she had asked the prison governor to let her go
away, but that he had answered that she was to die in the tower. I
said, 'The prison governor cannot yet rightly understand you; ask
Chresten to speak for you.' This she did, but came back with the same
answer. One day she said: 'I see well, dear lady, that you would be
as gladly free of me as I should be to go. What have I for all my
money? I cannot enjoy it, and I cannot be of service to you.' I said:
'Money can do much. Give some money to the prison-governor, and then
he will speak for you. Request one of the charwomen to carry the
basin instead of you, and this you could pay with very little.' She
did the latter for some weeks; at length one day she said to me, 'I
have had a silver cup made for the prison governor. (Her daughter
came to her on the stairs as often as she desired, and she had
permission to remain downstairs the whole afternoon, under pretext of
speaking with her daughter. Whether she gave him presents for this, I
know not, but I was well contented to be alone. She was, however,
once afraid that I should tell the priest of it.) The fact was, the
prison-governor did not dare to speak for her with the King. She
asked my advice on the matter. I said, 'Remain in bed when the
dinner is going on, and I will go out and speak with the
prison-governor.' This was done. At first he raised some
difficulties, and said, 'The Queen will say that there is some trick
at the bottom of it.' I said they could visit and examine the woman
when she came out; that we had not been such intimate friends; that I
knew the woman had been sent to wait on me; when she could do so no
longer, but lay in bed, I had no attendance from her, and still less
was I inclined to wait on her; she did her work for money, and there
were women enough who would accept the employment.
Three days afterwards, when the King came from Fridrichsborg, the
prison-governor came in and said that the woman could go down in the
evening; that he had another whom Chresten had recommended, and who
was said to be a well-behaved woman (which she is).
Karen the daughter of Ole therefore went down, and Karen the daughter
of Nels came up in her place. And I can truly say that it was one of
the happiest days during my severe imprisonment; for I was freed of a
faithless, godless, lying[102] and ill-behaved woman, and I received
in her stead a Christian, true, and thoroughly good (perhaps too
good) woman. When the first took her departure, she said, 'Farewell,
lady! we are now both pleased.' I answered, 'That is perhaps one of
the truest words you have ever spoken in your life.' She made no
reply, but ran as fast as she could, so that no weakness nor illness
were perceptible in her. She lived scarcely a year afterwards,
suffering severe pain for six weeks in her bed, before she died; the
nature of her malady I know not.
[102] In the margin is added: 'She had begged Chresten, for more
than half a year before she left, to tell the prison-governor that
her life hung on a thread; that I had a ball of clay in my
handkerchief, and that I had threatened to break her head to pieces
with it (I had said one day that a person with a ball of that kind
could kill another). She invented several similar lies, as I
subsequently heard.'
On the day after this Karen's arrival, she sat thoroughly depressed
all the afternoon. I asked her what was the matter. She said, 'Oh! I
have nothing to do, and I might not bring work with me! I weary to
death.' I enquired what work she could do. 'Spinning,' she answered,
'is my work principally; I can also do plain needlework and can knit
a little.' I had nothing to help her in this way; but I drew out some
ends of silk, which I had kept from what I cut off, and which are too
short to work with, and other tufts of silk from night-jackets and
stockings; I had made a flax-comb of small pins,[103] fastened to a
piece of wood; with this I combed the silk and made it available for
darning caps; and I said to her, 'There is something for you to do;
comb that for me!' She was so heartily pleased that it was quite a
delight to me. I found from her account of this and that which had
occurred in her life, that she had a good heart, and that she had
often been deceived owing to her credulity. She had also known me in
my prosperity; she had been in the service of a counsellor's lady who
had been present at my wedding, and she could well remember the
display of fireworks and other festivities; she wept as she spoke of
it, and showed great sympathy with me. She was a peasant's daughter
from Jutland, but had married the quarter-master of a regiment. By
degrees I felt an affection for her, and begged her to speak to
Christian and to enquire how the Doctor was; I told her that
Christian could occasionally perform small services for us, and could
buy one thing or another for us; for he had a lad, in fact sometimes
two, who executed commissions for him, but that I had never trusted
the other woman, so that he had never bought anything for me;
besides, the other woman had not cared to spin; but that Christian
should now procure us what we wanted in return for our candles. And
as she did not care to drink wine (for at each meal the woman
received at that time half-a-pint of French wine), I said: 'Give
Chresten your wine as I give wine to Christian, then Chresten can let
it stay with the cellar-clerk and can take it weekly, which will give
him a profit on it, and then he will see nothing even if he remarks
anything.'
[103] In the margin is added: 'The pins I had obtained some time
ago from the first woman. She had procured them with some needles,
and, thinking to hide them from me, she carried them in her bosom
in a paper and forgot them. In the evening when she dropped her
petticoat to go to bed, the paper fell on the floor. I knew from
the sound what it was. One Saturday, when she went upstairs with
the night-stool, I took the pins out of her box, and she never
ventured to ask for them; she saw me using them afterwards, and
said nothing about them.'
This was done, and Christian got us two hand-distaffs. Mine was but
small, but hers was a proper size. I spun a little and twisted it
into thread, which is still in my possession. Christian procured her
as much flax as she desired, and brought her up a whole wreath in his
trousers. She spun a good deal on the hand-distaff, and I arranged my
loom on a stool, which I placed on the table, fastening one beam with
ribbon and cord which I had made myself, so that when the key was put
into the staircase-door, I could in one pull loosen my loom and
unfasten the other beam which was fastened to myself, and put all
away before the inner door was opened. I made myself also a wooden
skewer (I had before used a warp), so that I could weave alone; I had
also obtained a real weaver's comb; so we were very industrious,
each at her own work.
The prison governor was full of foolish jokes, and played tricks such
as boys enjoy; he tried to jest with the woman, but she would not
join him. Almost every day he was drunk at dinner-time when he came
up. Afterwards he came rarely of an evening, but sent a servant
instead, who would lie and sleep on the wall in the window. He wanted
to jest with me also, and opened his mouth, telling me to throw
something in and see if I could hit his mouth. I laughed and said,
'How foolish you are!' and begged him to come nearer, and I would see
if I could hit him. 'No, no,' said he; 'I am not such a fool; I
daresay you would box my ears.' One day he came up with a peculiar
kind of squirt, round in form like a ball, and he placed a small tube
in it, so small as scarcely to be seen; it was quite pretty. When
pressed in any part, the water squirted out quite high and to a
distance. He was saucy, and squirted me. When he saw that I was
angry, he came to me with the squirt, ran away and sat down with his
mouth as wide open as possible and begged me to squirt into it if I
could. I would not begin playing with him, for I knew his coarseness
well from his stories, and I gave him back the squirt. When Karen was
bringing in the meat, the prison governor had the squirt between his
legs, and was seated on a low stool, from which he could squirt into
the woman's face; he was some distance from her, and the ball was not
larger than a large plum. She knew nothing of the squirt (she is
somewhat hasty in her words), and she exclaimed, 'May God send you a
misfortune, Mr. governor! Are you insulting me?' The prison governor
laughed like an insane man, so pleased was he at this.
By degrees he became less wild; he rarely came up sober, and he would
lie on the woman's bed and sleep while I dined, so that Chresten and
the woman had to help him off the bed when they had woke him. The
keys of the prisons lay by his side, and the principal key close by
(did he not take good care of his prisoners?).[104] He was not afraid
that I should murder him. One evening he was intoxicated, and behaved
as such; and began, after his fashion, to try and caress me,
endeavouring to feel my knee and seized the edge of my petticoat. I
thrust him away with my foot, and said nothing more than: 'When you
are intoxicated, remain away from me, and do not come in, I tell
you.' He said nothing, got up and went away; but he did not come in
afterwards when he was tipsy, but remained outside in the anteroom,
lying down in the window, where there was a broad stone bench against
the wall; there he lay and slept for some time after my doors were
locked, then the coachman and Chresten came and dragged him down.
Occasionally he came in when he was not drunk, and he gave me at my
request some old cards, which I sewed together and made into a box.
Christian covered it with thin sticks of fir, which I afterwards
stitched over, and I even secretly contrived to paint it. I have it
in my possession. The prison governor saw it afterwards, but he never
asked where the covering had come from.[105] In this box (if I may
call it so) I keep all my work and implements, and it stands by day
on my bed.
[104] In the margin is noted: 'I said one day to the woman, "Were
it not for the Queen, who would make the King angry with me, I
would retaliate upon the prison governor for having decoyed Doctor
Sperling. I would take the keys when he was sleeping, and wait for
Chresten to come with the cups, and then I would go up the King's
stairs and take the keys to the King, just as the lacquey did with
the old prison-governor. But I should gain nothing from this King,
and perhaps should be still more strictly confined."'
[105] In the margin is noted: 'At first, when this Karen did not
know the prison governor, she did not venture so boldly to the
prisoners in the Dark Church to give them anything, for she said,
"The prison governor stares at me so." I said, "It is with him as
with little children; they look staring at a thing, and do not know
what it is." It is the case with him, he does not trouble himself
about anything.'
Christian's power increased. He waited not only outside at dinner,
but he even locked my door in the face of the tower-warder. He came
with the perfuming-pan into my room when the woman took away the
night-stool; in fact, he subsequently became so audacious that he did
everything he chose, and had full command over the prisoners below.
Chresten availed himself also of the slack surveillance of the prison
governor, and stayed sometimes the whole night out in the town, often
coming in tipsy to supper. One evening Chresten was intoxicated, and
had broken some panes of glass below with his hand, so that his
fingers were bloody; he dashed my wine-cup on the ground, so that it
cracked and was bent; and as the cup was quite bloody outside when he
came in to me, and some blood seemed to have got into the wine, I
spoke somewhat seriously with the prison governor about it. He said
nothing but 'The man is mad,' took the cup and went himself down into
the cellar, and had the cup washed and other wine put in it. How they
afterwards made it up I know not. The indentations on the cup have
been beaten out, but the crack on the edge is still there; this suits
the cellar-clerk well, for now scarcely half a pint goes into the
cup. Christian held his own manfully against the prison governor,
when he had a quarrel with some of the prisoners below; and Chresten
complained of this to the prison governor, who came in and wanted to
place Christian in the Witch Cell; but he thrust the prison governor
away, and said that he had nothing to do with him, and that he had
not put him into the prison; and then harangued him in such a style
that the Governor thanked God when he went away. Christian then
called after him from the window, and said, 'I know secret tricks of
yours, but you know none of mine.' (One I knew of, of which he was
aware, and that not a small one. There was a corporal who had stabbed
a soldier, and was sought for with the beating of drums: the prison
governor concealed him for several weeks in the tower.) On the
following morning Christian repented, and he feared that he might be
locked up, and came to my door before it had been opened[106] (it
often happened that the anteroom was unlocked before the food was
brought up, and always in the winter mornings, when a fire was made
in the stove outside), and he begged me to speak for him with the
prison governor, which I did; so that things remained as they were,
and Christian was as bold as before.
[106] In the margin is added: 'The hinges of my outer door are so
far from the wall that they are open more than a hand's breadth, so
that I have got in large things between them; and above they are
still more open, and when I put my arm through the peep-hole of the
inner door and stretch it out, I can reach to the top of the outer
one, though the woman cannot.'
The woman and I lived in good harmony together. Occasionally there
were small disputes between Christian and her, but at that time they
were of no importance. I quieted his anger with wine and candles.
This woman had a son, who died just after she had come to me, and a
daughter who is still alive; at that time she was in the service of a
tailor, but she is now married to a merchant. The daughter received
permission occasionally to come and speak with her mother on the
stairs. This annoyed Christian, as he thought that through her all
sorts of things were obtained; and he threatened often that he would
say what he thought, though he did not know it, and this frequently
troubled the woman (she easily weeps and easily laughs). I could soon
comfort her. We spent our time very well. I taught her to read,
beginning with A B C, for she did not know a single letter. I kept to
fixed hours for teaching her. She was at the time sixty years of age.
And when she could spell a little,[107] she turned the book one day
over and over, and began to rub her eyes and exclaimed, 'Oh God, how
strange it is! I do not know (and she swore by God) a single letter.'
I was standing behind her, and could scarcely keep from laughing. She
rubbed her eyes again, and (as she is rather hasty with her words)
she pointed quickly to an O, and said, 'Is not that an O?' 'Yes,' I
said, and I laughed when she turned to me. She then for the first
time perceived that she was holding the book upside down; she threw
herself on the bed and laughed till I thought she would burst.
[107] In the margin: 'She has a curious manner of spelling. She
cannot spell a word of three syllables; for when she has to add the
two syllables to the third, she has forgotten the first. If I urge
her, however, she can read the word correctly when she has spelt
the first syllable. She spells words of two syllables and reads
those of four.'
One day when she was to read, and did not like to lay aside her
distaff, it did not go smoothly, and she gave it up, and said, 'Am I
not foolish to wish to learn to read in my old age? What good does it
do me? I have spent much money on my son to have him taught to read,
and see, is he not dead?' I knew how much she was able to do, and I
let her go on speaking. She threw the book on her bed, sat down to
her work, and said, 'What do I need to learn to read in a book? I
can, thank God, read my morning and evening prayer.' (I thought to
myself, 'badly enough.' She knew very little of her catechism.) I
said (gently): 'That is true, Karen. It is not necessary for you to
learn to read a book, as you can read very nicely by heart.' I had
scarcely said this than she jumped up, took her book again, and began
to spell. I neither advised her nor dissuaded her, but treated her
like a good simple child.[108]
[108] In the margin: 'Once she asked me whether she could not get a
book in which there was neither _q_ nor _x_, for she could not
remember these letters. I answered, "Yes, if you will yourself have
such a book printed."'