Dear friends, if it should ever happen that you meet a pitiful wretch on your way, a little distressed creature, who lets his hat hang on his back and holds his shoes in his hand, so as not to have any protection from the heat of the sun and the stones of the road, one without defence, who of his own free will calls down destruction on his head,—well, pass him by in silent fear! It is a penitent, do you understand?—a penitent on his way to the holy sepulchre. The penitent must wear a coarse cloak and live on water and dry bread, even if he were a king. He must walk and not ride. He must beg. He must sleep among thistles. He must wear the hard gravestones with kneeling. He must swing the thorny scourge over his back. He can know no sweetness except in suffering, no tenderness except in grief. The young Countess Elizabeth was once one who wore the heavy cloak and trod the thorny paths. Her heart accused her of sin. It longed for pain as one wearied longs for a warm bath. Dire disaster she brought down on herself while she descended rejoicing into the night of suffering. Her husband, the young count with the old-man’s head, came home to Borg the morning after the night when the mill and smithy at Ekeby were destroyed by the spring flood. He had hardly arrived before Countess Märta had him summoned in to her and told him wonderful things. “Your wife was out last night, Henrik. She was gone many hours. She came home with a man. I heard how he said good-night to her. I know too who he is. I heard both when she went and when she came. She is deceiving you, Henrik. She is deceiving you, the hypocritical creature, who hangs knitted curtains in all the windows only to cause me discomfort. She has never loved you, my poor boy. Her father only wanted to have her well married. She took you to be provided for.” She managed her affair so well that Count Henrik became furious. He wished to get a divorce. He wished to send his wife home to her father. “No, my friend,” said Countess Märta, “in that way she would be quite given over to evil. She is spoiled and badly brought up. But let me take her in hand, let me lead her to the path of duty.” And the count called in his countess to tell her that she now was to obey his mother in everything. Many angry words the young man let the young woman hear. He stretched his hands to heaven and accused it of having let his name be dragged in the dirt by a shameless woman. He shook his clenched fist before her face and asked her what punishment she thought great enough for such a crime as hers. She was not at all afraid. She thought that she had done right. She said that she had already caught a serious cold, and that might be punishment enough. “Elizabeth.” says Countess Märta, “this is not a matter to joke about.” “We two,” answers the young woman, “have never been able to agree about the right time to joke and to be serious.”