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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Do you hear what my son says?" cried the skipper to Elsje. "He says you have got something alive in your trunk." "Yes, yes," replied the cheerful maid-servant; "Arminian books are always alive, always full of motion and spirit." They arrived at Daatselaer's house, moving with difficulty through the crowd which, notwithstanding the boisterous weather, had been collected by the annual fair.
It was all equally unbearable to me, the friendly, sarcastic generosity of the world that spared me and acted as though forgiving me a sin, where I felt virtue beyond its comprehension; and the condemnation of Elsje, to which I was now most painfully sensitive, though it went out from this same unintelligent herd.
"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest. There was no answer. "My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant. "My poor master is dead." "Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of it. Yesterday she had a living husband. Now she has a dead one." But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry from the prisoner: "Open the chest!
Elsje knew very little, but she was quick to understand, and she listened to my explanations with such eager desire for learning, with such rapt attention, with such unlimited faith in my knowledge, that it made me feel confused and I begged her not to take me for an oracle for though I had indeed read much and seen a good deal of the world, yet I was by no means a scholar such as is demanded in our days.
"And we cannot be lawfully married either. Lucia will never give in to that." "That's nothing," said Elsje, "if only the world may know of it. The ceremony we can well dispense with. Now you shall see how well I shall grow, and how strong." My mother was still alive and was living in Italy. I wrote her a letter, earnest and upright, to inform her of what had happened.
It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable. As the weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat indisposed, it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
"Dear man, you have taught me much that is comforting and true," said Elsje; "but yet it sometimes seems as though you had made God very distant and inaccessible for me. This beautiful, wicked, awful sea a thinking, feeling being is already terrifying in its profound incomprehensiveness. And then, moreover the sun and the stars!"
Elsje insisted that the boatmen should place a doubly thick plank for sliding the box on board, as it seemed probable, she said, that the usual one would break in two, and then the valuable books borrowed of Professor Erpenius would be damaged or destroyed. The request caused much further grumbling, but was complied with at last and the chest deposited on the deck.
"I crossed the sea alone. The other gentleman is a Hungarian, and not a particular friend of mine either." "Oh, good!" said Elsje, leaving me in sweet doubts as to what she found good. We went into the upper room. I can remember a red table cover, cane chairs, a crocheted cover over a tea-set, horrible steel engravings on the walls.
"Look, look," thought I smilingly; "even the rivals among women yet ever conspire together." "I thought it might be a consolation. But I seem to be mistaken in that. I remained firm, though I told her that nothing would hold me back from Elsje." "Oh, if I am only worthy of it! If only I am worthy of it!" "That is fear of responsibility, Elsje. That we both have. But it is a weakness."
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