Countess Dohna long ago had stopped caressing the blue flowers. Now she rises, and the bouquet falls to the floor.
“Anna, you are deceiving me. You say that the story is old, and that the man has been dead a long time. But I know that it is scarcely five years since Ebba Dohna died, and you say that you yourself were there through it all. You are not old. Tell me who the man is!”
“You wanted a love-story. Now you have had one which has cost you both tears and pain.”
“Nothing but romance and lies, the whole thing!”
“Maybe. I am not so happy, either.—But the ladies are awake, and the men are coming into the drawing-room. Let us join them!”
On the threshold she is stopped by Gösta Berling, who is looking for the young ladies.
“You must have patience with me,” he says, laughing. “I shall only torment you for ten minutes; but you must hear my verses.”
He tells them that in the night he had had a dream more vivid than ever before; he had dreamt that he had written verse. He, whom the world called “poet,” although he had always been undeserving of the title, had got up in the middle of the night, and, half asleep, half awake, had begun to write. It was a whole poem, which he had found the next morning on his writing-table. He could never have believed it of himself. Now the ladies should hear it.
“The moon rose, and with her came the sweetest hour of the day. From the clear, pale-blue, lofty vault She flooded the leafy veranda with her light. On the broad steps we were sitting, both old and young, Silent at first to let the emotions sing The heart’s old song in that tender hour.
“From the mignonette rose a sweet perfume, And from dark thickets shadows crept over the dewy grass. Oh, who can be safe from emotion When the night’s shadows play, when the mignonette sheds its heavy perfume?
“The last faded petal dropped from the rose, Although the offering was not sought by the wind. So—we thought—will we give up our life, Vanish into space like a sound, Like autumn’s yellowed leaf go without a moan. Death is the reward of life; may we meet it quietly, Just as a rose lets its last faded petal fall.
“On its fluttering wing a bat flew by us, Flew and was seen, wherever the moon shone; Then the question arose in our oppressed hearts,—