ABOUT a month later, on an April evening, there was a crowd gathered outside of Ribe cathedral. The Church Council was in session, and it was customary, while that lasted, to light the tapers¹ in church three times a week, at eight o’clock in the evening. The gentry² and persons of quality in town as well as the respectable citizens would assemble and walk up and down in the nave³, while a skilful⁴ musician would play for them on the organ. The poorer people had to be content to listen from the outside.

Among the latter were Marie Grubbe and S?ren.

Their clothing was coarse and ragged⁵, and they looked as if they had not had enough to eat every day; and no wonder, for it was not a profitable trade they plied⁶. In an inn between Aarhus and Randers, S?ren had met a poor sick German, who for twenty marks had sold him a small, badly battered⁷ hurdy-gurdy, a motley fool’s suit, and an old checked rug. With these he and Marie gained their livelihood⁸, going from market to market; she would turn the hurdy-gurdy, and he would stand on the checked rug, dressed in the motley clothes, lifting and doing tricks with some huge iron weights and long iron bars, which they borrowed of the tradesmen.

It was the market that had brought them to Ribe.

They were standing⁹ near the door, where a faint, faded strip of light shone on their pale faces and the dark mass of heads behind them. People were coming singly or in pairs or small groups, talking and laughing in well-bred manner to the very threshold of the church, but there they suddenly became silent, gazed gravely straight before them, and changed their gait.

S?ren was seized with a desire to see more of the show, - 236 - and whispered to Marie that they ought to go in; there was no harm in trying, nothing worse could happen to them than to be turned out. Marie

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