Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Penance
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of joy for deadened feelings. Countess Märta was
not conscious of doing evil. She believed herself
to be punishing a frivolous wife, so she lay awake
sometimes in the night contriving new tortures.
Woe to her! What sacrilege she committed! She was
turning work, the great healer, into a torment and
a curse.
One evening she went over all the house and
ordered the young Countess to light her way.
Elizabeth carried the candle without a candlestick.
“The candle is burnt out,” she said presently.
“When the candle is finished, the candlestick
burns,” Countess Märta replied, and she went on,
till the flame died out in the blistered hands.
But that was childishness. There is a sufFering
of the soul that outweighs all the pains of the body.
Countess Märta invited her guests, and made the
lady of the house serve them at table herself. That
was the penitent’s great festival day. Strangers would
see her in her disgrace. They would see she was no
longer worthy to sit at her husband’s table. Oh, with
what scorn their cold eyes would rest upon her!
But it was worse than that—a thousand times
worse. Not a glance met hers. All sat silent and
depressed around the table, men and women equally
cast down.
But she gathered up all this as burning coals
to heap upon her head. Was her sin then so awful?
Was it a sin to be near her?
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