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GODFATHER'S PICTURE-BOOK 967
' Now we turn the page, even as fortune turns itself for these two.
' It is autumn ; the day is short, the night is long; it is grey and damp, the wind so cold, and rising in strength. It whistles in the leaves of the trees on the rampart, the leaves fly into Peter Oxe's .courtyard, which stands empty and forsaken by its owners. The wind sweeps out over Christianshaven, round Kai Lykke's mansion, now a common jail. He himself has been hunted from honour and home ; his scutcheon is broken, his effigy hanged on the highest gallows. Thus is he punished for his wanton thoughtless words about the honoured Queen of the land. Shrilly pipes the wind, and rushes over the open place where the mansion of the Lord High Steward has stood; only one stone of it is now left—" that I drove as a boulder down here on the floating ice," whoops the wind. " The stone stranded where Thieves' Island has since grown, under my curse, and so it came into the mansion of Lord Ulfeldt, where the lady sang to the sounding lute, read Greek and Latin, and bore herself proudly : now only the stone stands up here with its inscription :
1 " * TO THE ETERNAL SHAME AND DISGRACE OF THE TRAITOR CORFITZ ULFELDT.'
' " But where is she now, the stately lady ? Hoo-ee ! hoo-ee ! " pipes the wind with ear-splitting voice. In the Blue Tower, behind the palace, where the sea-water beats against the slimy walls, there she has already sat for many years. There is more smoke than warmth in the chamber ; the little window is high up under the ceiling. Christian the Fourth's petted child, the daintiest of maids and matrons, in what discomfort and misery she sits. Memory hangs curtains and tapestries on the smoke-blackened walls of her prison. She remembers the lovely time of her childhood, her father's soft and beaming features ; she remembers her splendid wedding ; the days of her pride, her hours of hardship in Holland, in England, and in Bornholm. |
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Naught seems too hard for wedded love to bear, And faithfulness is not a cause for shame. |
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