Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VII
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what was dark and dreary in life. When Lucie had gone
to sleep in the evening, she would steal out of bed and find
a mystic ascetic pleasure in falling on her knees and praying,
till her bones ached and her feet were numb with cold.
Then came the time when the Swedes raised the siege,
and all Copenhagen divided its time between filling glasses
as host and draining them as guest. Marie’s nature, too,
rebounded from the strain, and a new life began for her, on
a certain day when Mistress Rigitze, followed by a
seamstress, came up to her room and piled the tables and chairs
high with the wealth of sacks, gowns, and pearl-embroidered
caps that Marie had inherited from her mother. It was
considered time that she should wear grown-up clothes
She was in raptures at being the centre of all the bustle
that broke in on her quiet chamber, all this ripping and
measuring, cutting and basting. How perfectly dear that
pounce-red satin,glowing richly where it fell in long, heavy
folds, or shining brightly where it fitted smoothly over her
form! How fascinating the eager parley about whether this
silk chamelot was too thick to show the lines of her figure
or that Turkish green too crude for her complexion! No
scruples, no dismal broodings could stand before this
joyous, bright reality. Ah, if she could but once sit at the festive
board—for she had begun to go to assemblies—wearing
this snow-white, crisp ruff, among other young maidens in
just as crisp ruffs, all the past would become as strange to
her as the dreams of yesternight, and if she could but once
tread the saraband and pavan in sweeping cloth of gold
and lace mitts and broidered linen, those spiritual excesses
would make her cheeks burn with shame.
It all came about: she was ashamed, and she did tread
the saraband and pavan; for she was sent twice a week,
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