“Yes, look at me! I am the mistress of Ekeby, and I am the most powerful in Värmland. If I wave one finger the governor comes, if I wave with two the bishop comes, and if I wave with three all the chapter and the aldermen and mine-owners in Värmland dance to my music in Karlstad’s market-place. A thousand devils! Boy, I tell you that I am only a dressed-up corpse. God knows how little life there is in me.” The beggar leaned forward on his chair and listened with strained attention. The old woman sat and rocked before the fire. She did not look at him while she talked. “Don’t you know,” she continued, “that if I were a living being, and saw you sitting there, wretched and deplorable with suicidal thoughts, don’t you believe that I should take them out of you in a second? I should have tears for you and prayers, which would turn you upside down, and I should save your soul; but now I am dead. “Have you heard that I once was the beautiful Margareta Celsing? That was not yesterday, but I can still sit and weep my old eyes red for her. Why shall Margareta Celsing be dead, and Margareta Samzelius live? Why shall the major’s wife at Ekeby live?—tell me that, Gösta Berling. “Do you know what Margareta Celsing was like? She was slender and delicate and modest and innocent, Gösta Berling. She was one over whose grave angels weep. “She knew nothing of evil, no one had ever given her pain, she was good to all. And she was beautiful, really beautiful. “There was a man, his name was Altringer. God knows how he happened to be travelling up there in Älfdal wildernesses, where her parents had their iron-works. Margareta Celsing saw him; he was a handsome man, and she loved him. “But he was poor, and they agreed to wait for one another five years, as it is in the legend. When three years had passed another suitor came. He was ugly and bad, but her parents believed that he was rich, and they forced Margareta Celsing, by fair means and foul, by blows and hard words, to take him for her husband. And that day, you see, Margareta Celsing died. “After that there was no Margareta Celsing, only Major Samzelius’s wife, and she was not good nor modest; she believed in much evil and never thought of the good. “You know well enough what happened afterwards. We lived at Sjö by the Lake Löfven, the major and I. But he was not rich, as people had said. I often had hard days. “Then Altringer came again, and now he was rich. He became master of Ekeby, which lies next to Sjö; he made himself master of six other estates by Lake Löfven. He was able, thrifty; he was a man of mark. “He helped us in our poverty; we drove in his carriages; he sent food to our kitchen, wine to our cellar. He filled my life with feasting and pleasure. The major went off to the wars, but what did we care for that? One day I was a guest at Ekeby, the next he came to Sjö. Oh, it was like a long dance of delight on Löfven’s shores.