Pelle the Conqueror quotes

but today she had a great many people on board, and she was already an hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high pressure; but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a feeling of dull oppression.

Fog is the seaman’s worst enemy, and there were many unpleasant possibilities.

On the best supposition the ship had gone inshore too far north or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea hooting and heaving the lead, without daring to move.

Perhaps a warning to everyone that at that moment the ship had gone to the bottom?

The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the breadwinner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on the windows that look on to the sea⁠—there are so many ways.

But now it sounded again, and this time the sound come in little waves over the water, the same vibrating, subdued whistle that long-tailed ducks make when they rise; it seemed alive.

The pilot-boat glided slowly out of the fog, keeping to the middle of the fairway, and moving slowly inward hooting incessantly.

It towed by the sound an invisible world behind it, in which hundreds of voices murmured thickly amidst shouting and clanging, and tramping of feet⁠—a world that floated blindly in space close by.

Then a shadow began to form in the fog where no one had expected it, and the little steamer made its appearance—looking enormous in the first moment of surprise—in the middle of the harbor entrance.

If he came across some strange wonder or other, that he could not get into his little brain in any other way, he set himself astride on it.

This was a new world altogether, and Pelle was engaged in making it his own.

Not a shred of it would he leave. If he had had his playfellows from Tommelilla here, he would have explained it all to them. My word, how they would stare!

He stood the test, but not bravely; he howled loudly the whole time, while, with his eyes fixed immovably upon the Evil One and his hellhounds, he crept back for the sack and then dragged it after him at a quick run up the street.

No one is perhaps a hero until the danger is over.

But even then Pelle had no opportunity of shuddering at his own courage; for no sooner was he out of the reach of the black man, than his terror took a new form. What had become of his father?

Pelle clung close to him in fear. The unknown had suddenly become an evil monster in the imagination of both of them.

Down in the basement passage the strange, persistent sound was louder, and they both knew that it was that of a woman weeping.

Wherever a bad harvest or sickness or ill luck with his beasts hit a man hard enough to make him reel, the Köllers bought. Thus

Stone Farm grew, and acquired numerous buildings and much importance; it became as hard a neighbor as the sea is, when it eats up the farmer’s land, field by field, and nothing can be done to check it.

First one was eaten up and then another. Everyone knew that his turn would come sooner or later. No one goes to law with the sea; but all the ills and discomfort that brooded over the poor man’s life came from Stone Farm.

First one was eaten up and then another. Everyone knew that his turn would come sooner or later.

No one goes to law with the sea; but all the ills and discomfort that brooded over the poor man’s life came from Stone Farm.

The powers of darkness dwelt there, and frightened souls pointed to it always. “That’s well-manured land,” the people of the district would say, with a peculiar intonation that held a curse; but they ventured no further.

But you must remember that it’s for your sake he lets himself be put upon. If it wasn’t for you, he’d shoulder his pack and go—old though he is.

But you can grow on where your father rusts.

And now you must leave off crying!” And he dried the boy’s wet eyes with the quilt.

There was one subject about which, as a matter of course, there could be no question, nor any thought at all in that sense, because it was the very foundation of all existence—Father Lasse.

He was there, simply, he stood like a safe wall behind everything that one did.

He was the real Providence, the last great refuge in good and ill; he could do whatever he liked—Father Lasse was almighty.

He was there, simply, he stood like a safe wall behind everything that one did. He was the real Providence, the last great refuge in good and ill; he could do whatever he liked—

Father Lasse was almighty.

Then there was one natural centre in the world—Pelle himself. Everything grouped itself about him, everything existed for him—for him to play with, to shudder at, or to put on one side for a great future.

they were like the mouth of a machine, into which matter was incessantly rushing in small, whirling particles. And in the draught they raised, came others and again others; the entire universe was on its way toward him.

Pelle shaped and set aside twenty new things in the course of a second.

The earth grew out under him into a world that was rich in excitement and grotesque forms, discomfort and the most everyday things.

But the sun rode high in the heavens, and the nights were light. The darkness lay crouching under the earth and had no power.

And he possessed the child’s happy gift of forgetting instantly and completely.

But the sun rode high in the heavens, and the nights were light.

The darkness lay crouching under the earth and had no power.

And he possessed the child’s happy gift of forgetting instantly and completely.

And the bailiff had laughed that time when he promised them roast pork and stewed rhubarb every day. They hardly ever got anything but herring and porridge.

People talked with two tongues; Father Lasse was the only one who did not do it.

Pelle began to be observant of his own face. It was the face that spoke, and that was why it went badly with him when he tried to escape a thrashing by telling a white lie.

Pelle began to be observant of his own face.

It was the face that spoke, and that was why it went badly with him when he tried to escape a thrashing by telling a white lie.

And today’s misfortune had been the fault of his face; if you felt happy, you mustn’t show it.

“

Well, good spirits’ll soon be the only thing to be had without paying for.

”

The coffee came in, and Kalle poured brandy into the cups of all the elder people. “Now, grandmother, you must cheer up!” he said, touching her cup with his. “

Where the pot boils for twelve, it boils for the thirteenth as well.

Your health, grandmother, and may you still live many years to be a burden to us, as you call it!”

“

Say ‘poor thing’ to him who has no head, and pity him who has two,

” said Kalle gaily.

“Ah, yes,” said Lasse, as they stumbled along among the stones. “Kalle’s just like what he always was!

He laughs where others would cry.

”

the dust kept pouring out at the window, and the time passed imperceptibly. Generally now dinner or evening surprised him, and sometimes it seemed to him that the horses had only just been harnessed when someone came out to help him in with them.

He had arrived at the condition of torpor that is the only mercy that life vouchsafes to condemned prisoners and people who spend their lives beside a machine.

But there was a sleepiness about him even in his free time; he was not so lively and eager to know about everything; Father Lasse missed his innumerable questions and little devices.

Pelle turned crimson. “I thought they were making fun of me, but I didn’t dare say no,” he said in a low voice.

“No, one has to play the fool sometimes, whether one is it or not,” said the woman.

“What is birch-fat, then?” asked Pelle.

“Why, my gracious! You must have had it many a time, you little imp!

But it shows how often you have to put up with things you don’t know the name of.

”

People said you should speak the truth, but most thrashings could be avoided by making up a white lie, if it was a good one and you took care of your face.

If you told the truth, they thrashed you at once.

With regard to thrashing, the question had a subjective side as well as an objective one. He could beat Rud whenever he liked, but with bigger boys it was better to have right on his side, as, for instance, when his father was attacked.

Then God helped him. This was a case in which the boy put the omnipotence quite aside, and felt himself to be the old man’s protector.

Lasse and Pelle were walking through life hand in hand, and yet each was going his own way.

Lasse felt it to be so. “We’ve each got hold of an end,” he sometimes said to himself despondently, when the difference was all too marked. “He’s rising, the laddie!”

and always after that it walked behind him when they went out and came home, and it carried his overcoat on its back when it looked as if there would be rain.

Pelle’s years were few in number, but to his animals he was a grown man.

Formerly he had only been able to make them respect him sufficiently to obey him at close quarters;

If this could not be done in the very act, he controlled himself and endeavored upon the strength of his experience to bring about exactly the same situation once more, and then to be prepared.

The little fellow, unknown to himself, was always engaged in adding cubits unto his stature.

He had obtained good results. The driving out and home again no longer gave him any difficulty;

But hark! there was music again! far away in the distance, just such a sound of music as reaches the ear from so far off that one cannot distinguish the melody, or say what instruments are playing. Could it be the sun itself?

The song of light and life streamed through him, as though he were a fountain; and he would go about in a dreamy half-consciousness of melody and happiness.

When the rain poured down, he hung his coat over a briar and lay sheltered beneath it, carving or drawing with a lead button on paper—horses, and bulls lying down, but more often ships, ships that sailed across the sea upon their own soft melody, …

“No, we don’t deserve a thrashing, and don’t mean to submit to one either,” said the head man, going a step forward. “Let me tell you—”

“Hold your tongue, man!” cried the bailiff, going close up to him, and Karl Johan drew back.

“He must be in his room.”

“The deuce!” said Mons, peering disappointedly into his purse. “Not so much as the smell of a one-öre! There must be a leak!” He examined the seams, held it close up to his eyes, and at last put his ear to it.

“Upon my word, I seem to hear a two-krone talking to itself. It must be witchcraft!”

He sighed and put his purse into his pocket.

“It’s—” he looked carefully at the watch, and moved his lips as if calculating. “The deuce!” he exclaimed, bringing down his hand in amazement on the fence.

“Why, it’s exactly the same time as it was this time yesterday.”

The jest was an old one, but the women screamed with laughter; for Mons was the jester.

“Never mind about the time,” said the bailiff, coming up. “But try and get through your work.”

“No, time’s for tailors and shoemakers, not for honest people!” said Anders in an undertone.

The bailiff turned upon him as quick as a cat, and Anders’ arm darted up above his head bent as if to ward off a blow.

And how will it go with a farm in the long run, when the farmer spends all his time on the high roads because he can’t stay at home?

It’s a poor sort of affection that drives the man away from his home.

”

She could not do without him, but neither could she offer him anything good; she was like those beings who can live and breathe only in fire, and yet cry out when burnt.

She writhed in the flames, and yet she herself fed them.

Fair Maria was her own doing, and now she had brought this new relative into the house. Thus she herself made easy the path of his infidelity, and then shook the house above him with her complaining.

Fris and Ole busied themselves over the dead body, placed something under the head, and washed away the sand that had got rubbed into the skin of the face.

“He was my best boy,” said Fris, stroking the dead man’s head with a trembling hand.

“Look well at him, children, and never forget him again; he was my best boy.”

Ole was crying; he had suddenly grown pitiably old and decrepit. “I suppose I ought to get him home?” he said plaintively, trying to raise his son’s shoulders; but he had not the strength.

“Just let him lie!” said Fris. “He’s had a hard day, and he’s resting now.”

“Yes, he’s had a hard day,” said Ole, raising his son’s hand to his mouth to breathe upon it. “And look how he’s used the oar! The blood’s burst out at his fingertips!” Ole laughed through his tears. “He was a good lad.

The air hummed with merry voices and the strains of concertinas. They missed Gustav’s playing now—yes, and Bodil’s pretty face, that always shone so brightly on a day like this.

Pelle had the appetite of years of fasting for the great world, and devoured everything with his eyes.

“Look there, father! Just look!” Nothing escaped him. It made the others cheerful to look at him—he was so rosy and pretty. He wore a newly-washed blue blouse under his waistcoat, which showed at the neck and wrists and did duty as collar and cuffs;

On a horse on Madvig’s roundabout sat Gustav with his arm round Bodil’s waist. “Hey, old man!” he cried, as they whizzed past, and flapped Lasse on the ear with his cap, which had the white side out.

They were as radiant as the day and the sun, those two.

Pelle wanted to have a turn on a roundabout. “Then blest if I won’t have something too, that’ll make things go round!” said Lasse, and went in and had a “cuckoo”—coffee with brandy in it.

“It sounds like someone in the last agonies!” said Lasse, and hastily drew on his trousers with trembling, clumsy hands. “She surely hasn’t laid hands upon herself?” He lighted the lantern and went out into the stable, Pelle following naked.

Then suddenly the cries ceased, as abruptly as if the sound had been cut off with an axe, and the silence that followed said dumbly that it was forever.

The farm sank into the darkness of night like an extinguished world. “Our mistress is dead!” said Lasse, shivering and moving his fingers over his lips. “May God receive her kindly!” They crept fearfully into bed.

But the grave’s giving warning; I notice it in my eyelids.” The old woman had a little difficulty in breathing, but kept on talking.

“You’re talking far too much, mother!” said Maria.

“Yes, you ought to be resting and sleeping,” said Lasse. “Hadn’t we better say goodbye to you?”

said the grandmother. “She’s good enough—from what I know. I hope you’ll suit one another like Anders and me. It was a happy time—the days when we went about and each did our best, and the nights when the wind blew.

It was good then to be two to keep one another warm.

”

That wasn’t right of you, but I won’t find fault with you, considering all the disgrace I’ve brought upon you. But suppose you get into trouble for playing truant, even if you don’t deserve it?

Misfortunes go hand in hand, and evils multiply like lice in a fur coat.

We must think what we’re about, we two; we mustn’t let things go all to pieces!”

“Now remember not to wear your stockings too long before you mend them!” said Lasse, putting mending wool on one side. “

He who mends his things in time, is spared half the work and all the disgrace.

”

Every spot down there shone so familiarly toward him; the hardships he had suffered were forgotten, or only showed up the comforts in stronger relief.

Pelle’s childhood had been happy by virtue of everything; it had been a song mingled with weeping. Weeping falls into tones as well as joy, and heard from a distance it becomes a song.

And as Pelle gazed down upon his childhood’s world, they were only pleasant memories that gleamed toward him through the bright air. Nothing else existed, or ever had done so.

Far below stood two tall black chimneys against the sea as background, and still farther south lay the Town! Away from it ran the paths of the sea to Sweden and Copenhagen! This was the world—the great wide world itself!

Pelle became ravenously hungry at the sight of the great world, and the first thing he did was to sit down upon the ridge of the hill with a view both backward and forward, and eat all the food Karna had given him for the whole day.

So his stomach would have nothing more to trouble about!

but no one answered. For half an hour Pelle searched among timbers and warehouses, and at last he slipped away home and to bed. But he dreamed, that night, that he caught them all, and they elected him as their leader for all future time.

The town did not meet him with open arms, into which he could fall, with his childlike confidence, and be carried up the ladder.

Here, apparently, one did not talk about the heroic deeds which elsewhere gave a man foothold; here such things merely aroused scornful laughter. He tried it again and again, always with something new, but the answer was always the same—“Farmer!”

it was Howling Peter, who was cook’s boy on a vessel. Everything flowed into the town!

But Father Lasse⁠—he was not here!

There was something about the town that made it hard to go to bed and hard to get up.

In the town there was no sunrise shining over the earth and waking everybody.

The open face of morning could not be seen indoors. And the dying day poured no evening weariness into one’s limbs, driving them to repose; life seemed here to flow in the reverse direction, for here people grew lively at night!

“Oh, you limb of Satan!”

This was the only endearment that life had vouchsafed Pelle, and he sunned himself in it.

Pelle could not understand the master, nor did he understand his sighs and groans. The master never went out, save as an exception, when he was feeling well;

And then, “Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs will carry you! Say we’ll send for them early tomorrow morning and finish them properly! But run as though the devil were at your heels!”

Pelle ran, and when he returned, just as he was slipping into his leather apron, he had to go out again.

“Pelle, run out and borrow a few brass nails—then we needn’t buy any today. Go to Klausen—no, go to Blom, rather; you’ve been to Klausen already this morning.”

of a pumpkin that weighed fifty pounds; of the fattest man in the world; of fatalities due to the careless handling of firearms, or of snakes in Martinique.

The dazzling wonder of the whole world passed like a pageant, filling the dark workshop; the political news was ignored.

If the master happened to be in one of his desperate humors, he would read the most damnable nonsense: of how the Atlantic Ocean had caught fire, so that the people were living on boiled codfish;

there was a dull thump and then two clacking sounds; and then came the thump again, like the tread of a huge padded foot, and once more the clack-clack. This was old Bjerregrav, swinging toward the workshop on his crutches;

Bjerregrav, who moved more slowly than anybody, and got forward more quickly.

If Master Andres happened to be in one of his bad humors, he would limp away, in order not to remain in the same room with a cripple; at other times he was glad to see Bjerregrav.

“No, no interest. For money to stand out and receive interest—I don’t like that. It has to suck the interest somewhere or other, and of course it’s from the poor.

Interest is blood-money, Andres⁠—and it’s a newfangled contrivance, too.

When I was young we knew nothing about getting interest on our money.”

But then it became so dreadfully cold that Pelle’s breeches seemed to stick to his body. “That’s the water,” he thought, and he looked round in alarm; the rock had become a little island, and he and it were floating on the ocean.

Pelle was a sturdy little realist, who had already had all manner of experiences. But now the fear had at last curdled his blood, and he accepted the supernatural without a protest.

The world had evidently perished, and he himself was drifting—drifting out into space, and space was terribly cold. Father Lasse, and the workshop, Manna and the young master’s shining eyes—here was an end of them all. He did not mourn them;

Recklessness was finally Pelle’s refuge too; when all the lights seemed to have gone out of the future it helped him to take up the fairytale of life anew, and lent a glamor to naked poverty.

Imagination entered even into starvation: are you or are you not going to die of it?

Pelle was poor enough for everything to be still before him, and he possessed the poor man’s alert imagination;

But the fairytale of credit was not yet exhausted—there was still a manner of drawing a draft upon fortune, which could be kept waiting, and on the future, which redeems all drafts.

Credit was a spark of poetry in the scramble of life; there were people going about who were poor as church mice, yet they played the lord.

Alfred was such a lucky fellow; he earned not a red cent, but was always dressed like a counter-jumper, and let himself want for nothing. If he took a fancy to anything he simply went in and got it on “tick”;

“Ought they to be made of gold?” The master’s eyes were twinkling, but he was earnestness personified.

“They ought to be made of eternity,” said Anker unwillingly, “and first it has got to be invented.”

For a long time he stood there, staring in front of him with his gray, empty eyes, without speaking a word. He did not move; only his temples went on working as though some worm was gnawing at them and seeking its way out.

Here in the town too the children can get on better; in the country poor children can’t learn anything that’ll help them to amount to something; they’ve got to work for their daily bread. It’s bad to be poor in the country!”

“It’s worse here in town,” said Pelle bitterly, “for here only those who dress finely amount to anything!”

“But there are all sorts of ways here by which a man can earn money, and if one way doesn’t answer, he can try another.

“but I never got anywhere where I couldn’t see the sea. Every parish in all Bornholm borders on the sea. But it has no power over the farmers and peasants—they belong to the land, don’t they?”

“The sea has power over all of us,” said Larsen.

“Some it refuses; they go to sea for years and years, but then in their old age they suffer from seasickness, and then they are warned. That is why Skipper Andersen came on shore. And others it attracts, from right away up in the country!

all clothes must be taken off in a long corridor, even to one’s shirt; a handful of men examine them, and then everything is put safely away. Thirty or forty naked men are admitted, one after another, to the great bare dormitory.

Paris⁠—the name is like a bubble bursting in one’s ear!

There Garibaldi has worked for two years, and he has been there a score of times on passing visits. Paris is the glory of the whole world massed together, and all the convenient contrivances of the world brought to a state of perfection.

“But he hasn’t even said goodbye!” The master shrugs his shoulders.

He was like a falling star!

But for Pelle and the others he signified more than that; they learned more in three days than in the whole course of their apprenticeship. And they saw brilliant prospects for the craft; it was no hole-and-corner business after all;

“Let her go!” said the old woman, as though from a great distance. “You have no power over her!

She was begotten in wrath.

”

Dreams took the outward way; yonder lay the sea, and all men’s thoughts were drawn to it; the thoughts of the young, who longed to go forth and seek adventure, and of the old, who lived on their memories.

It was the song in all men’s hearts, and the God in the inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of life’s surplus, the home of all that was inexplicable and mystical.

The sea had drunk the blood of thousands, but its color knew no change; the riddle of life brooded in its restless waters.

Jeppe stuck to it that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He kept on returning to it.

“They’ll be making human beings by machinery too, soon!” he exclaimed angrily.

“No,” said Baker Jörgen; “there, I believe, the old method will survive!”

Give me a mouthful!” Pelle passed him the bottle. “You should take one yourself—it sets a man up! Do you think I can’t see that you’ve suffered shipwreck, too?

The poor man goes aground so easily, he has so little water under the keel.

And who d’you think will help him to get off again if he’s betrayed his own best friend? Take a swallow, then—it wakes the devil in us and gives us courage to live.”

But they did not see God’s hand when that hand, in its loving-kindness, changed that mere hunger for bread into a hunger for happiness.

They were the poor, and the poor are God’s chosen people.

For that reason they must wander in the desert, and must blindly ask: “Where is the Promised Land?” But the gleam of which the faithful followed was not earthly happiness!

“Let them then!” she answered, with her gay laugh.

“If I’ve a good conscience it’s indifferent to me what others think.”

While she was talking she was working diligently at his linen, and she threw one article after another at his head. Then she ironed his suit. “Now you’re quite a swell again!”

“And have we allowed it ourselves?” muttered Ström.

“We are always uneasy if one of our own people wants to fly over our heads!”

“I don’t understand why all the poor folk don’t make a stand together against the others,” said Bergendal. “We suffer the same wrongs.

“I just want my wages,” rejoined Pelle. What more he wanted, he himself did not know. And then he went home and put his room in order.

It was like a pigsty; he could not understand how he could have endured such untidiness.

In the meantime he thought listlessly of some way of escape. It had been very convenient to belong to the dregs of society, and to know that he could not sink any deeper; but perhaps there were still other possibilities.

the morning sun fell on the slack sails, and made them glow; every boat was laboring heavily forward with the aid of its tiller. He had slept like a stone, from the moment of lying down until now.

Sleep lay like a gulf between yesterday and today.

Whistling a tune to himself, he packed his belongings and set out upon his way, a little bundle under his arm. He took the direction of the church, in order to see the time. It was still not much past five.

Kalle stood squeezed among the hindmost chairs, and there he had to stay until everybody had passed out. “

Yes, I was very anxious to take part in this great day,

” he said, “and I wanted to bring mother with me, but she thought her clothes weren’t respectable enough.” Kalle wore a new gray linsey-woolsey suit; he had grown smaller and more bent with the years.

The old people were sitting out of doors on their front steps, and were gossiping over the news of the day. The evening sun fell upon round spectacles, so that great fiery eyes seemed to be staring out of their wrinkled faces.

The profound peace of evening lay over the streets.

But in the narrow lanes there was the breathing of that eternal, dull unrest, as of a great beast that tosses and turns and cannot sleep.

The evening sun fell upon round spectacles, so that great fiery eyes seemed to be staring out of their wrinkled faces. The profound peace of evening lay over the streets.

But in the narrow lanes there was the breathing of that eternal, dull unrest, as of a great beast that tosses and turns and cannot sleep.

Now and again it blazed up into a shout, or the crying of a child, and then began anew—like heavy, labored breathing. Pelle knew it well, that ghostly breathing, which rises always from the lair of the poor man.

Now and again it blazed up into a shout, or the crying of a child, and then began anew—like heavy, labored breathing.

Pelle knew it well, that ghostly breathing, which rises always from the lair of the poor man.

The cares of poverty had shepherded the evil dreams home for the night. But he was leaving this world of poverty, where life was bleeding away unnoted in the silence; in his thoughts it was fading away like a mournful song;

From somewhere down in the cellars the sleepy tones of a cradlesong rose up through the shaft; it was only “Grete with the child,” who was singing her rag-doll asleep.

The real mothers did not sing.

“She’s always bawling away,” said Hanne; “those who’ve got real children haven’t got strength left to sing. But her brat doesn’t need any food; and that makes a lot of difference when one is poor.”

“Sure enough, this would happen, that you’d fall into the sea and be drowned. Hanne has always had the feeling that something has got to happen; and for that reason she can never hold on to what she’s got in her hands.”

“No, for I haven’t anything in them!” cried Hanne, showing her hands and laughing. “Can you hold what you haven’t got, Pelle?”

About four o’clock they came to the Schleswig Stone, where the Social-Democrats were holding a meeting. Pelle had never yet attended any big meeting at which he could hear agitators speaking, but had obtained his ideas of the new movements at second hand.

If the Court shoemaker hadn’t spoken the words that drove him to join the Union he would still have been standing apart from it all, like a heathen.

The act of subscribing the day before was like a baptism.

He felt quite different in the society of these men—he felt as he did not feel with others. And as the thousands of voices broke into song, a song of jubilation of the new times that were to come, a cold shudder went through him.

With Fortune there was no definite promise of tangible success for the individual, but only a general promise, which was maintained through hundreds of years of servitude with something of the long patience of eternity.

Pelle bore the whole endless wandering within himself: it lay deep in his heart, like a great and incomprehensible patience.

In his world, capacity was often great enough, but resignation was always greater. It was thoroughly accustomed to see everything go to ruin and yet to go on hoping.

Pelle bore the whole endless wandering within himself: it lay deep in his heart, like a great and incomprehensible patience.

In his world, capacity was often great enough, but resignation was always greater.

It was thoroughly accustomed to see everything go to ruin and yet to go on hoping.

Pelle bore the whole endless wandering within himself: it lay deep in his heart, like a great and incomprehensible patience. In his world, capacity was often great enough, but resignation was always greater.

It was thoroughly accustomed to see everything go to ruin and yet to go on hoping.

Often enough during the long march, hope had assumed tones like those of “David’s City with streets of gold,” or “Paradise,” or “The splendor of the Lord returns.” He himself had questioningly given ear;

“That I don’t know, and it’s all the same to me—only it must be something I don’t know all about.

Everything is so familiar if one is poor⁠—one knows every stitch of one’s clothes by heart; one can watch them wearing out.

If you’d only been a sailor, Pelle!”

But you let her be, Pelle. I could wish you could get her, but it wouldn’t be best for you, and it isn’t good for you to have her playing with you. And if you got her after all, it would be even worse.

A woman’s whims are poor capital for setting up house with.

”

In Pelle this incident awakened something quite novel.

Poverty he had known before, but now he saw the injustice that lay beneath it, and cried to heaven.

His hands would suddenly clench with anger as he sat so quietly in his room. Here was something one must hasten forward, without intermission, day and night, as long as one drew breath—Morten was right about that!

He wondered at himself when he ever thought about it at all; but he could not as yet tear himself away from the “Ark.”

Here, at the bottom of the ladder, he had found peace in his time of need.

He was too loyal to turn his back on those among whom he had been happy.

He threw back his head and laughed.

Pelle, who formerly used to feel insults so bitterly, had achieved a sense of the divinity of life.

That evening his round included the Rabarber ward. Pelle had made himself a list, according to which he went forth to search each ward of the city separately, in order to save himself unnecessary running about.

“You want to read about counts and barons!” said Morten. “You are all like that. You regard yourself as one of the rabble, if it comes to that! Yes, you do! Only you don’t know it!

That’s the slave-nature in you; the higher classes of society regard you as such and you involuntarily do the same.

Yes, you may pull faces, but it’s true, all the same! You don’t like to hear about your own kind, for you don’t believe they can amount to anything! No, you must have fine folks—always rich folks!

“Yes, it is as bad as all that!” cried Morten passionately. “And do you know why?

Because you don’t yet understand that humanity is holy, and that it’s all one where a man is found!

”

Happiness—pooh! He wanted to be a master, at all costs—for what can a journeyman earn! And more than once we had scraped a little together, and thought things would be easier now; but misfortune always fell on us and took it all away.

It’s always hovering like a great bird over the poor man’s home; and you must have a long stick if you want to drive it away!

It was always the same story whenever we managed to get on a little. A whole winter he was ill. We only kept alive by pawning all we’d got, stick by stick.

And Hanne goes about like a sleepwalker. Happiness!

Is there a soul in the ‘Ark’ that didn’t begin with a firm belief in something better?

One doesn’t move from one’s own choice into such a mixed louse’s nest, but one ends up there all the same. And is there anybody here who is really sure of his daily bread?

“Only try it; in any case, you can always damage him.

He attacks your livelihood in order to strike at your conscience, so you hit back at his purse⁠—that’s where his conscience is!

Even if it does no good, at least it makes him realize that you’re not a slave.”

Since that day she had been another creature.

Her love was like the spring that comes in a single night.

She could not be without him for a day; when she went out to make purchases, she came running over to the “Ark.” Her nature had thrown off its restraint; there was tension in her manner and her movements;

“I can’t really complain of you,” he said. “

Your trades-unionism I don’t like⁠—you would do better to leave it alone.

But with your work I am very well satisfied. I have always endeavored to render justice to all parties. But if you can knock Meyer’s feet from under him, we small employers will be very grateful to your Union, for he’s freezing us out.”

Out on the platform he stood still for a moment. He could see the light of the city glimmering in the deep, star-filled sky. The night was so solemnly beautiful. Below him the galleries were forsaken; they were creaking in the frost.

All the doors were closed to keep the cold out and the joy in.

“Down, down from the green fir-trees!”—it sounded from every corner. The light shone through the window and in all directions through the woodwork. Suddenly there was a dull booming sound on the stairs—it was the hearse-driver staggering home with a ham under either arm.

Pelle sat there considering them till his heart bled for them—that was his Christmas devotion.

Poor storm-beaten birds, what was this splendid experience which outweighed all their privations? Only a little light!

And they looked as though they could fall down before it and give up their lives! He knew the life’s story of each one of them better than they knew. But their faces were still eager and excited; and they themselves;

And then it’s to remind us, too, that we too ought to have a share in things; Christ was born especially to remind the poor of their rights! Yes, that is so!

For the Lord God isn’t one to give long-winded directions as to how one should go ahead; He sends the sun rolling round the earth every day, and each of us must look out for himself, and see how best he himself can get into the sunshine.

It’s just like the wife of a public-house keeper I remember at home, who used to tell travellers, ‘What would you like to eat? You can have ducks or pork chops or sweets—anything you’ve brought with you!’ ”

it was, after all, only an echo of his own self-confidence. But now it weighed upon him like a burden.

It was always those who were sinking who believed in his luck; and as they sank they flung their hopes upward toward him.

A grievous fashion was this in which his good fortune was prophesied! A terrible and grievous blessing it was that was spoken over him and his success in life by this man dedicated to death, even as he stepped upon the scaffold.

“

Yes, Pelle⁠—he can well talk. He is young and healthy and has the time before him.

”

But besides those who buy there is always a crowd of people still poorer; they have no money to buy with, but they stand there and stare as though it interested them greatly to see the others getting their bread cheap.

They stand there waiting for a miracle in the shape of a slice of bread.

One can see that in the way their eyes follow every movement, with the same desperate hope that you see in the eyes of the dogs when they stand round the butcher’s cart and implore Heaven that the butcher may drop a bit of meat.

And he buys the soldiers’ bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it.

The refuse-heap is the poor man’s larder⁠—that is, when the pigs have taken what they want.

The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks about forbidding it; but no one has compassion on the Copenhagen poor.”

“You can’t understand about that unless you’ve felt it in yourself,” replied Morten passionately. “

Revolution is the voice of God, which administers right and justice, and it cannot be disputed.

If the poor were to rise to see that justice was done it would be God’s judgment, and it would not be overthrown. The age has surely the right to redeem itself when it has fallen into arrears in respect of matters so important;

“It isn’t to be wondered at that they get weary,” Morten continued. “

Even God loses patience with those who always let themselves be trampled upon.

Last night I dreamed I was one of the starving. I was going up the street, grieving at my condition, and I ran up against God. He was dressed like an old Cossack officer, and had a knout hanging round his neck.

One could recognize Madam Frandsen’s garret with its chimney-cowl, and farther back, in a deep recess, which ran far into the mass of the building, Pelle could distinguish Hanne’s window. Otherwise he could not place many of the little windows.

They stared like failing eyes.

Even the coal-dealer, who was the deputy landlord of the “Ark,” was imperfectly acquainted with all its holes and corners.

“Ach, how good it would be if we only had a brine-tub that we could go to!” said those who could still remember their life in the country. “

But the good God has taken the brine-tub and given us the pawnbroker instead!

” and then they began to pledge their possessions.

“What, is it no worse!” said the people, taken aback. But they felt just as cold and wretched as ever. What did the thermometer know of a hard winter?

Winter is the companion of hard times, and takes the same way whether it freezes or thaws⁠—and on this occasion it froze!

In the poor quarters of the city the streets were as though depopulated. A fall of snow would entice the dwellers therein out of their hiding-places;

“If only the children aren’t cold,” said Pelle, “we grownups can easily keep ourselves warm.”

“Well, as long as they haven’t icicles hanging from their noses they won’t come to any harm!” said Otto with a return of his old humor.

They moved restlessly about the room and spoke of the bad times and the increasing need. “Yes, it’s terrible that there isn’t enough for everybody,” said Otto’s wife.

“But the hard winter and the misery will come to an end and then things will be better again.”

“You mean we shall come to an end first?” said Otto, laughing despairingly.

“No, not we—this poverty, of course. Ach, you know well enough what I mean. But he’s always like that,” she said, turning to Pelle.

“Comrades!” he cried, in a powerful voice. “This is merely a change, as the fox said when they flayed his skin off.

They have deprived us of clothes and food and drink, and comfort at home, and now they want to find a way of depriving us of our skins too!

The question today is—forward or back? Perhaps this is the great time of trial, when we shall enter into possession of all we have desired! Hold together, comrades! Don’t scatter and don’t give way!

Yes, even now she gave the best to him. It was as though she was fulfilling some deep-rooted law of her nature, which was independent of their relations to one another. In this nothing could alter her habits.

She might have been compared to a great beautiful bitch that lies attentively marking the appetite of her young, although none can tell, from her deliberate quiet, that her own bowels are twisted with hunger.

If they left anything, she noticed it. “I have eaten,” she would say, so quietly that she succeeded as a rule in deceiving them. Yes, it made him feel desperate to think about it; the more he thought of it the more unendurable it was.

You have taken a great responsibility on yourself, Pelle. Look, how blindly they follow you—at the sight of your bare face, I’m tempted to say. For I’m not myself quite sure that you give enough of yourself.

There is blood on your hands⁠—but is any of it your own blood?

”

Now, in silence he turned again from the thousands to Father Lasse, and saw how great a world this tenderhearted old man had supported. He had always been old and worn-out so long as Pelle could remember.

Labor so soon robs the poor man of his youth and makes his age so long!

But this very frailty endowed him with a superhuman power—that of the father! He had borne his poverty greatly, without becoming wicked or self-seeking or narrow; his heart had always been full of the cheerfulness of sacrifice, and full of tenderness;

the sun shone right into his heart. There was a smiling greeting in it all—in the wind that threw itself into his very arms, in the fresh earth and in the running water in the ditches. Welcome back again, Pelle!

How wide and fair the world looks when you’ve spent years within four bare walls!

Down in the south the clouds were like the breast of a great bright bird, one of those that come a long way every year with summer in the beat of their strong wings;

How small his own idea of union had been when measured by this immense community of souls, and what a responsibility was connected with each one! He understood now how fatal it was to act recklessly, then break off and leave everything.

In reality you could never leave anything; the very smallest thing you shirked would be waiting for you as your fate at the next milestone.

And who, indeed, was able to overlook an action? You had to be lenient continually, and at last it would turn out that you had been lenient to yourself.

The deputy-landlord was a new man and could give him no information; so he went up into the house again, and asked from door to door but without any result.

Poor people do not generally live long in one place.

Pelle wandered about the streets at haphazard. He could think of no way of getting Ellen’s address, and gave it up disheartened; in his forlorn condition he had the impression that people avoided him, and it discouraged him.

He bitterly regrets his conduct, and would give much for a sign that the little insect is not angry with him, for no one can afford to offend another; the smallest creature is of vital importance to you.

In the loneliness of the prison cell you learn solidarity.

And one day when he is sitting reading, the spider, in its busy efforts to carry its thread past him, drops down and uses his shoulder as a temporary attachment. Never before has such confidence been shown him notwithstanding everything;

It was as though she fell away now that he was there and able once more to assume the responsibility; but she would not hear of giving up the washing.

“It’s never worth while to throw away the dirty water until you’ve got the clean!”

she said.

It was Ellen’s dream that they should still, by toiling early and late, be able to work themselves up into another stratum; but Pelle was angry when she worked on after the time for leaving off.

He would rather they were a little poor, if only they could afford to be human beings.

Ellen did not understand it, but she saw that his mind was turned in another direction; he who had hitherto always fallen asleep over books would now become so absorbed in them that he did not hear the children playing round him.

“What are you looking for in those books?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pelle looked up absently. His thoughts were in far-off regions where she had never been. What was he looking for? He tried to tell her, but could not explain it.

“I’m looking for myself!” he said suddenly, striking boldly through everything.

Ellen gazed at him, wondering and disappointed.

His domestic circumstances were somewhat straitened; the instalments in repayment of the loan, and the debt on the furniture still swallowed all that they were able to scrape together, and Pelle had no prospect of getting better work.

But work is the bearer of faith, and he felt sure that a way would open out if only he kept on with it unweariedly.

He took Ellen’s unspoken mistrust of his projects quietly. He felt himself to be greater than she in this; she could not reach up to the level of his head!

We oughtn’t to have struggled against the Movement; it only drove it to extremes. Just see how well-behaved it’s become since we began to take off our hats to it!

You become what you’re treated as, let me tell you.

You wouldn’t have acted so harshly if we others had been a little kinder to you. Don’t you allow that? You’re exactly like everyone else: you want to have good food and nice clothes—be considered respectable people.

“Oh, yes. The mean thing is that the police pursue me financially. As soon as I’ve got work with any master, a policeman appears and advises him to discharge me. It’s their usual tactics!

They aim at the stomach, for that’s where they themselves have their heart.

”

Just think! There are millions of poor people daily occupied in making dainties for the rich man, and it never occurs to any of them to revenge themselves, they are so good-natured.

Capital literally sleeps with its head in our lap, and abuses us in its sleep; and yet we don’t cut its throat!

”

he no longer represented for her the everyday dullness, he was the fairy-story that might take her by surprise when the need was greatest. He felt he could hardly pay too dearly for this change.

Women were not made for adversity and solitude; they were flowers that only opened fully when happiness kissed them.

Ellen might shift the responsibility over onto his shoulders.

Out of a whole life of toil there had never been ten krones over for a ticket home; and the trains ran day after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality they whirled away from station to station.

Heaven knows how many thousand empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the years in which the old woman longed to see her home!

And if she had trudged to the railway-station and got into the train, remorseless hands would have removed her at the first station. What had she to do with Jutland? She longed to go there, it was true, but she had no money!

there was a long and difficult road before that. So they each arranged his own matters, and disposed of the doubtful future for small present advantages which were immediately swallowed up by the existing conditions.

The Movement had not reached to the bottom.

There was an accusation against himself in this fact; it had not been designed with sufficient breadth.

How many thousand children are there not standing behind her and Johanna! They call this the children’s century, and the children’s blood is crying out from the earth! They’re happy when they can steal away. Fancy if Johanna had lived on with her burden!

The shadows of childhood stretch over the whole of life.

”

They call this the children’s century, and the children’s blood is crying out from the earth! They’re happy when they can steal away. Fancy if Johanna had lived on with her burden! The shadows of childhood stretch over the whole of life.”

“Yes, and so does the sunshine of childhood!” exclaimed Pelle.

“That’s why we mustn’t fail the poor little ones. We shall need a race with warm hearts.”

That’s what I dreamed, but it’s a bitter lot to have the unfortunates appointed to be one’s beloved. My only love is irretrievably dead, and now I cannot write about anything that triumphs. What have I to do with that?”

“I think it’s Victor Hugo who says that the heart is the only bird that carries its cage,” said Pelle, “but your heart refuses to take it when there is most use for it.”

“Oh, no!” said Morten with a little more energy. “I shan’t desert you; but this has been a hard blow for me. If only I had a little more of your clear faith!

Pelle gave the alarm and leaped the hedge, and Ellen at the same moment came running out. “You might have suffocated little brother!” she said with consternation, taking the boy in her arms.

“I was only planting him,” said Anna, offended at having her work destroyed. “He wanted to be, and of course he’d come up again in the spring!”

The two children wanted a little brother, and had agreed that Boy Comfort should sacrifice himself.

Morten listened to him with an expression of weariness. “It’s much more than that,” he said, “for it’s the men themselves I doubt, Pelle. I feel cold and haven’t been able to find out why; but now I know. It’s because men have no heart.

Everything growing is dependent upon warmth, but the whole of our culture is built upon coldness, and that’s why it’s so cold here.

”

And then I want to see people who haven’t had a share in the blessings of mechanical culture, but upon whom the sun has shone to make up for it—sunshine-beings like little Johanna and her mother and grandmother, but who’ve been allowed to live.

Oh, how nice it’ll be to see for once poor people who aren’t cold!

”

If I were young, I would go out and set to work with my hands. I’ve missed more through never having worked with my body till I was hot and tired, than you have through not knowing the great classic writers.

I’m discovering my own poverty, Pelle; and I would willingly exchange everything for a place as grandfather by a cozy fireside.

”

Where did they come from? It was a complete mystery!

Did it not sound foolish that the poor man, after a century’s life in rags and discomfort, which ended in his entire effacement in collectivism, should now make his appearance with the strongest claim of all, and demand his soul back?

Pelle recognized the impatience of the young men in this commotion. It was not for nothing that Peter Dreyer was the moving spirit at the meetings of the unemployed.