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“Most gracious lord, you sadly misuse the privilege
which your high rank and yet more your pitiable condition
give you to berate a poor servant of the Church, who is but
doing his duty in seeking to turn your thoughts toward
that which is assuredly to you the one thing needful. Oh,
honored lord, it avails but little to kick against the pricks!
Has not the wasting disease that has struck your body
taught you that none can escape the chastisements of the
Lord God, and that the scourgings of heaven fall alike on
high and low?”
Ulrik Christian interrupted him, laughing: “Hell
consume me, but you talk like a witless school-boy! This
sickness that’s eating my marrow I’ve rightfully brought
on myself, and if you suppose that heaven or hell sends it,
I can tell you that a man gets it by drinking and wenching
and revelling at night. You may depend on ’t. And now
take your scholastic legs out of this chamber with all speed,
or else I’ll—”
Another attack seized him, and as he writhed and moaned
with the intense pain, his oaths and curses were so
blasphemous and so appalling in their inventiveness that the
scandalized pastor stood pale and aghast. He prayed God
for strength and power of persuasion, if mayhap he might
be vouchsafed the privilege of opening this hardened soul
to the truth and glorious consolation of religion. When
the patient was quiet again he began: “My lord, my lord,
with tears and weeping I beg and beseech you to cease
from such abominable cursing and swearing! Remember,
the axe is laid unto the root of the tree, and it shall be
hewn down and cast into the fire, if it continues to be
unfruitful and does not in the eleventh hour bring forth
flowers and good fruit! Cease your baleful resistance, and
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