CHAPTER IX

THE States-General that convened in Copenhagen in the late autumn brought to town many of the nobility, all anxious to guard their ancient rights against encroachment, but none the less eager for a little frolic after the busy summer. Nor were they averse to flaunting their wealth and magnificence in the faces of the townspeople, who had grown somewhat loud-voiced since the war, and to reminding them that the line between gentlemen of the realm and the unfree mob was still firm and immutable, in spite of the privileges conferred by royalty, in spite of citizen valor and the glamor of victory, in spite of the teeming ducats in the strong boxes of the hucksters.

The streets were bright with throngs of noblemen and their ladies, bedizened lackeys, and richly caparisoned horses in silver-mounted harness. There was feasting and open house in the homes of the nobility. Far into the night the violin sounded from well-lit halls, telling the sleepy citizens that the best blood of the realm was warming to a stately dance over parquet floors, while the wine sparkled in ancestral goblets.

All these festivities passed Marie Grubbe by; none invited her. Because of their ties to the royal family, some of the Grubbes were suspected of siding with the King against the Estate, and moreover the good old nobility cordially hated that rather numerous upper aristocracy formed by the natural children of the kings and their relatives. Marie was therefore slighted for a twofold reason, and as the court lived in retirement during the session of the States-General, it offered her no compensation.

It seemed hard at first, but soon it woke the latent - 110 - defiance of her nature and made her draw closer to Ulrik Frederik. She loved him more tenderly for the very reason that she felt herself being wronged for his sake. So when the two were quietly married on the sixteenth of December, sixteen hundred and sixty, there was the best reason to believe that she would live happily with the Master of the King’s Hunt, which was the title and office Ulrik Frederik had won as his share of the favors distributed by triumphant royalty.

This private ceremony was not in accordance with the original plan, for it had long been the intention of the King to celebrate their wedding in the castle, as Christian the Fourth had done that of Hans Ulrik and Mistress Rigitze, but at the eleventh hour he had scruples and decided, in consideration of Ulrik Frederik’s former marriage and divorce, to refrain from public display.

So now they are married and settled, and time passes, and time flies, and all is well—and time slackened its speed, and time crawled; for it is true, alas! that when Leander and Leonora have lived together for half a year, the glory is often departed from Leander’s love, though Leonora usually loves him much more tenderly than in the days of their betrothal. She is like the small children, who find the old story new, no matter how often it is told with the very same words, the same surprises, and the self-same “Snip, snap, snout, my tale’s out,” while Leander is more exacting and grows weary as soon as his feeling no longer makes him new to himself. When he ceases to be intoxicated, he suddenly becomes more than sober. The flush and glamor of his ecstasy, which for a while gave him the assurance of a demigod, suddenly departs; he hesitates, he thinks, and begins - 111 - to doubt. He looks back at the chequered course of his passion, heaves a sigh, and yawns. He is beset with longing, like one who has come home after a lengthy sojourn in foreign parts, and sees the altogether too familiar though long-forgotten spots before him; as he looks at them, he wonders idly whether he has really been gone from this well-known part of the world so long.

In such a mood, Ulrik Frederik sat at home one rainy day in September. He had called in his dogs and had frolicked with them for a while, had tried to read, and had played a game of backgammon with Marie. The rain was pouring. It was impossible to go walking or riding, and so he had sought his armory, as he called it, thinking he would polish and take stock of his treasures—this was just the day for it! It occurred to him that he had inherited a chest of weapons from Ulrik Christian; he had ordered it brought down from the attic, and sat lifting out one piece after another.

There were splendid rapiers of bluish steel inlaid with gold, or silvery bright with dull engraving. There were hunting-knives, some heavy and one-edged, some long and flexible like tongues of flame, some three-edged and sharp as needles. There were toledo blades, many toledos, light as reeds and flexible as willows, with hilts of silver and jasper agate, or of chased gold or gold and carbuncles. One had nothing but a hilt of etched steel, and for a sword-knot a little silk ribbon embroidered in roses and vines with red glass beads and green floss. It must be either a bracelet, a cheap bracelet, or—Ulrik Frederik thought—more likely a garter, and the rapier was stuck through it.

It comes from Spain, said Ulrik Frederik to himself, for the late owner had served in the Spanish army for nine - 112 - years. Alack-a-day! He too was to have entered foreign service with Carl Gustaf; but then came the war, and now he supposed he would never have a chance to get out and try his strength, and yet he was but three and twenty. To live forever here at this tiresome little court,—doubly tiresome since the nobility stayed at home,—to hunt a little, look to his estate once in a while, some time in the future by the grace of the King to be made Privy Councillor of the Realm and be knighted, keep on the right side of Prince Christian and retain his office, now and then be sent on a tedious embassy to Holland, grow old, get the rheumatism, die, and be buried in Vor Frue Church,—such was the brilliant career that stretched before him. And now they were fighting down in Spain! There was glory to be won, a life to be lived—that was where the rapier and the sword-knot came from. No, he must speak to the King. It was still raining, and it was a long way to Frederiksborg, but there was no help for it. He could not wait; the matter must be settled.

The King liked his scheme. Contrary to his custom, he assented at once, much to the surprise of Ulrik Frederik, who during his whole ride had debated with himself all the reasons that made his plan difficult, unreasonable, impossible. But the King said Yes, he might leave before Christmas. By that time the preparations could be completed and an answer received from the King of Spain.

The reply came in the beginning of December, but Ulrik Frederik did not start until the middle of April; for there was much to be done. Money had to be raised, retainers equipped, letters written. Finally he departed.

Marie Grubbe was ill pleased with this trip to Spain. It is true, she saw the justice of Mistress Rigitze’s argument - 113 - that it was necessary for Ulrik Frederik to go abroad and win honor and glory, in order that the King might do something handsome for him; for although his Majesty had been made an absolute monarch, he was sensitive to what people said, and the noblemen had grown so captious and perverse that they would be sure to put the very worst construction on anything the King might do. Yet women have an inborn dread of all farewells, and in this case there was much to fear. Even if she could forget the chances of war and the long, dangerous journey, and tell herself that a king’s son would be well taken care of, yet she could not help her foreboding that their life together might suffer such a break by a separation of perhaps more than a year that it would never be the same again. Their love was yet so lightly rooted, and just as it had begun to grow, it was to be mercilessly exposed to ill winds and danger. Was it not almost like going out deliberately to lay it waste? And one thing she had learned in her brief married life: the kind of marriage she had thought so easy in the days of her betrothal, that in which man and wife go each their own way, could mean only misery with all darkness and no dawn. The wedge had entered their outward life; God forbid that it should pierce to their hearts! Yet it was surely tempting fate to open the door by such a parting.

Moreover, she was sadly jealous of all the light papistical feminine rabble in the land and dominions of Spain.

Frederik the Third, who, like many sovereigns of his time, was much interested in the art of transmuting baser metals into gold, had charged Ulrik Frederik when he came to Amsterdam to call on a renowned alchemist, the Italian Burrhi, and to drop a hint that if he should think of visiting - 114 - Denmark, the King and the wealthy Christian Skeel of Sostrup would make it worth his while.

When Ulrik Frederik arrived in Amsterdam, he therefore asked Ole Borch, who was studying there and knew Burrhi well, to conduct him to the alchemist. They found him a man in the fifties, below middle height, and with a tendency to fat, but erect and springy in his movements. His hair and his narrow moustache were black, his nose was hooked and rather thick, his face full and yellow in color; from the corners of his small, glittering black eyes innumerable furrows and lines spread out like a fan, giving him an expression at once sly and goodhumored. He wore a black velvet coat with wide collar and cuffs and crape-covered silver buttons, black knee-breeches and silk stockings, and shoes with large black rosettes. His taste for fine lace appeared in the edging on his cravat and shirt bosom and in the ruffles that hung in thick folds around his wrists and knees. His hands were small, white, and chubby, and were loaded with rings of such strange, clumsy shapes that he could not bring the tips of his fingers together. Large brilliants glittered even on his thumbs. As soon as they were seated, he remarked that he was troubled with cold hands and stuck them in a large fur muff, although it was summer.

The room into which he conducted Ulrik Frederik was large and spacious, with a vaulted ceiling and narrow Gothic windows set high in the walls. Chairs were ranged around a large centre table, their wooden seats covered with soft cushions of red silk, from which hung long, heavy tassels. The top of the table was inlaid with a silver plate on which the twelve signs of the zodiac, the planets, and some of the more important constellations were done in niello. Above it, a string of ostrich eggs hung from the ceiling. The floor - 115 - had been painted in a chequered design of red and gray, and near the door a triangle was formed by old horseshoes that had been fitted into the boards. A large coral tree stood under one window, and a cupboard of dark carved wood with brass mountings was placed under the other. A life-size doll representing a Moor was set in one corner, and along the walls lay blocks of tin and copper ore. The blackamoor held a dried palm leaf in his hand.

When they were seated and the first interchange of amenities was over, Ulrik Frederik—they were speaking in French—asked whether Burrhi would not with his learning and experience come to the aid of the searchers after wisdom in the land of Denmark.

Burrhi shook his head.

“’Tis known to me,” he replied, “that the secret art has many great and powerful votaries in Denmark, but I have imparted instruction to so many royal gentlemen and church dignitaries, and while I will not say that ingratitude or meagre appreciation have always been my appointed portion, yet have I encountered so much captiousness and lack of understanding, that I am unwilling to assume again the duties of a master to such distinguished scholars. I do not know what rule or method the King of Denmark employs in his investigations, and my remarks can therefore contain no disparagement of him, but I can assure you in confidence that I have known gentlemen of the highest nobility in the land, nay, anointed rulers and hereditary kings, who have been so ignorant of their historia naturalis and materia magica that the most lowborn quacksalver could not entertain such vulgar superstitions as they do. They even put their faith in that widely disseminated though shameful delusion that making gold is like concocting a - 116 - sleeping-potion or a healing-pillula, that if one has the correct ingredients, ’tis but to mix them together, set them over the fire, and lo! the gold is there. Such lies are circulated by catch-pennies and ignoramuses—whom may the devil take! Cannot the fools understand that if ’twere so simple a process, the world would be swimming in gold? For although learned authors have held, and surely with reason, that only a certain part of matter can be clarified in the form of gold, yet even so we should be flooded. Nay, the art of the gold-maker is costly and exacting. It requires a fortunate hand, and there must be certain constellations and conjunctions in the ascendant, if the gold is to flow properly. ’Tis not every year that matter is equally gold-yielding. You have but to remember that it is no mere distillation nor sublimation, but a very re-creating of nature that is to take place. Nay, I will dare to say that a tremor passes over the abodes of the spirits of nature whenever a portion of the pure, bright metal is freed from the thousand-year-old embrace of materia vilis.”

“Forgive my question,” said Ulrik Frederik, “but do not these occult arts imperil the soul of him who practises them?”

“Indeed no,” said Burrhi; “how can you harbor such a thought? What magician was greater than Solomon, whose seal, the great as well as the small, has been wondrously preserved to us unto this day? And who imparted to Moses the power of conjuring? Was it not Sabaoth, the spirit of the storm, the terrible one?” He pressed the stone in one of his rings to his lips. “’Tis true,” he continued, “that we know great names of darkness and awful words, yea, fearful mystic signs, which if they be used for evil, as many witches and warlocks and vulgar soothsayers use - 117 - them, instantly bind the soul of him who names them in the fetters of Gehenna, but we call upon them only to free the sacred primordial element from its admixture of and pollution by dust and earthly ashes; for that is the true nature of gold, it is the original matter that was in the beginning and gave light, before the sun and the moon had been set in their appointed places in the vault of heaven.”

They talked thus at length about alchemy and other occult arts, until Ulrik Frederik asked whether Burrhi had been able to cast his horoscope by the aid of the paper he had sent him through Ole Borch a few days earlier.

“In its larger aspects,” replied Burrhi, “I might prognosticate your fate, but when the nativity is not cast in the very hour a child is born, we fail to get all the more subtle phenomena, and the result is but little to be depended upon. Yet some things I know. Had you been of citizen birth and in the position of a humble physician, then I should have had but joyful tidings for you. As it is, your path through the world is not so clear. Indeed, the custom is in many ways to be deplored by which the son of an artisan becomes an artisan, the merchant’s son a merchant, the farmer’s son a farmer, and so on throughout all classes. The misfortune of many men is due to nothing else but their following another career than that which the stars in the ascendant at the time of their birth would indicate. Thus if a man born under the sign of the ram in the first section becomes a soldier, success will never attend him, but wounds, slow advancement, and early death will be his assured portion, whereas, if he had chosen a handicraft, such as working in stone or wrought metals, his course would have run smooth. One who is born under the sign of the fishes, if in the first section, should till the soil, or if he be a man of fortune, - 118 - should acquire a landed estate, while he who is born in the latter part should follow the sea, whether it be as the skipper of a smack or as an admiral. The sign of the bull in the first part is for warriors, in the second part for lawyers. The twins, which were in the ascendant at the time of your birth, are, as I have said before, for physicians in the first part and for merchants in the second. But now let me see your palm.”

Ulrik Frederik held out his hand, and Burrhi went to the triangle of horseshoes, touching them with his shoes as a tight-rope dancer rubs his soles over the waxed board before venturing out on the line. Then he looked at the palm.

“Ay,” said he, “the honor-line is long and unbroken; it goes as far as it may go without reaching a crown. The luck-line is somewhat blurred for a time, but farther on it grows more distinct. There is the life-line; it seems but poor, I grieve to say. Take great care until you have passed the age of seven and twenty, for at that time your life is threatened in some sinister and secret fashion, but after that the line becomes clear and strong and reaches to a good old age. There is but one offshoot—ah, no, there is a smaller one hard by. You will have issue of two beds, but few in each.”

He dropped the hand.

“Hark,” he said gravely, “there is danger before you, but where it lurks is hidden from me. Yet it is in no wise the open danger of war. If it should be a fall or other accident of travel, I would have you take these triangular malachites, they are of a particular nature. See, I myself carry one of them in this ring; they guard against falling from horse or coach. Take them with you and carry them - 119 - ever on your breast, or if you have them set in a ring, cut away the gold behind them, for the stone must touch if it is to protect you. And here is a jasper. Do you see the design like a tree? It is very rare and most precious and good against stabbing in the dark and liquid poisons. Once more I pray you, my dear young gentleman, that you have a care, especially where women are concerned. Nothing definite is revealed to me, but there are signs of danger gleaming in the hand of a woman, yet I know nothing for a certainty, and it were well to guard also against false friends and traitorous servants, against cold waters and long nights.”

Ulrik Frederik accepted the gifts graciously, and did not neglect, the following day, to send the alchemist a costly necklace, as a token of his gratitude for his wise counsel and protecting stones. After that he proceeded directly to Spain without further interruption.