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Page 17
"What would I have thought of a lady, a woman, who came straight
forward and handed out the billet, saying: 'Here I am'?" he asked
himself, at the moment when at last he had found the court-house
stairs and was ascending.
How it fared that day with the examinations is recorded in
criminal and police court documents; but a veil is thrown over it
in consideration of the fact, that a man only once in his life is
made Counsellor of Justice in the King's Court. The day following
it went better; although it is pretty sure that a horse thief went
free from further reproof, because the counsellor was busy rolling
that stone up the mountain: Where shall I seek her if she does not
write again? Will she write again? If she would do that, why did
she not write a little more at first?
A couple of weeks after the receipt of the letter, one evening
about seven o'clock, the counsellor sat at home, not as before by
his writing-table busy with acts, but on a corner of the sofa, with
drooping arms, deeply absorbed in a mixture of anxious doubts
and dreaming expectations. Hope built air-castles, and doubt
then puffed them over like card-houses. One of his fancies was,
that she summoned him--he would not even in thought use the expression:
gave him an interview--at a masquerade. It was consequently no
common masquerade, but a grand, elegant masked ball, to which
a true lady could repair. The clock was at eleven, the appointed
hour: he waited anxiously the pressing five minutes; then she came
and extended him the fine hand in the finest straw-colored glove--
"Letter to the Counsellor of Justice," said Jens, with strong
Funen accent, and short, soldierly pronunciation.
It is so uncommon that what one longs for comes just at the moment
of most earnest desire; but notwithstanding the letter was from
her, the Counsellor of Justice knew the superscription, would have
known it among a hundred thousand. The letter read thus:
"I ought to be open towards you; and, as we shall never meet, I
can be so."
Here the Counsellor of Justice stopped a moment and caught for
breath. A good many of our twenty-year-old beaux, who have never
been admitted to the bar, far less have been Court Counsellors,
would, under similar circumstances, have said to themselves: "She
writes that she will be open; that is to say, now she will fool
me: we will never meet; that is to say, now I shall soon see her."
But Counsellor Bagger believed every word as gospel, and his knees
trembled. He read further:
"I am ashamed of the few words I last wrote you; but my apology
is, that it is only two days since I learned that you are married.
I have been mistaken, but more in what may be imputed to me than
in what I have thought. My only comfort is, that I shall never be
known by you or anybody, and that I shall be forgotten, as I shall
forget."
"Never! But who can have spread the infamous slander! What
dreadful treachery of some wretch or gossiping wench, who knows
nothing about me! And how can she believe it! How in such a town
as Copenhagen can it be a matter of doubt for five minutes, if a
Superior Court Counsellor is married or not! Or maybe there is
some other Counsellor Bagger married,--a Chamber Counsellor or the
like? Or maybe she lives at a distance, in a quiet world, so that
the truth of it does not easily reach her? So there is no sunshine
more!
"If she should sometime meet me, and know that I was, am, and have
been unmarried, that meanwhile we have both become old and gray,--
can one think of anything more sad? It is enough to make the heart
cease beating! But suppose, too, that to-morrow she finds out that
she has been deceived: she has once written, 'I was mistaken,' and
cannot, as a true woman, write it again, unless she first heard
from me, and learned how I longed--and so I am cut off from her,
as if I lived in the moon. More, more! for I can meet her upon the
street and touch her arm without surmising it. It is
insupportable! Our time has mail, steamboats, railroads,
telegraphs: to me these do not exist; for of what use are they
altogether, when one knows not where to search."
A thought came suddenly, like a meteor in the dark: advertise.
What family in Copenhagen did not the Address Paper reach? He
would put in an advertisement,--but how? "Fritz Bagger is not
married."--No: that was too plain.--"F. B. is not married."--No:
that was not plain enough. As he could find no successful use for
his own name, it flashed into his mind to use hers,--geb--; and
although it was painful to him to publish this, to him, almost
sacred syllable for profane eyes to gaze upon, yet it comforted
him, that only one, she herself, would understand it. Yet he
hesitated. But one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs;
and although the heart's finest fibres ache at the thought of
sending a message to a fairy through the Address Paper, yet one
yields to this rather than lose the fairy.
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