Chapter VII

Before Thee, Lord, I lie;
Give me my liberty
Before my course is run;
Thy Gracious Hands extend
And let my suffering end!
Yet not my will, but Thine, be done.

In this year, on July 25, his royal Majesty was gracious enough to have a large window made again in my inner apartment; it had been walled up when I had been brought into this chamber. A stove was also placed there, the flue of which passed out into the square. The prison governor was not well satisfied at this, especially as he was obliged to be present during the work; this did not suit his laziness. My doors were open during the time; it was twelve days before the work was finished. He grumbled, and did not wish that the window should be made as low as it had been before I was imprisoned here; I persuaded the mason's journeyman to cut down the wall as low as it had before been, which the prison governor perceived from the palace square, and he came running up and scolded, and was thoroughly angry. But it was not to be changed, for the window-frame was already made. I asked him what it mattered to him if the window was a stone lower; it did not go lower than the iron grating, and it had formerly been so. He would have his will, so that the mason walled it up a stone higher while the prison governor was there, and removed it again afterwards, for the window-frame, which was ready, would not otherwise have fitted.

In the same year Karen, Nil's daughter, left me for the third and last time, and in her stead came a woman named Barbra, the widow of a bookbinder. She is a woman of a melancholy turn. Her conscience is aroused sometimes, so that she often enumerates her own misdeeds (but not so great as they have been, and as I have found out by enquiry). She had two children, and it seems from her own account that she was to some extent guilty of their death, for she says: 'Who can have any care for a child when one does not love its father?' She left her husband two years before he died, and repaired to Hamburg, supporting herself by spinning; she had before been in the service of a princess as a spinning-maid. Her father is alive, and was bookbinder to the King's Majesty; he has just now had a stroke of paralysis, and is lying very ill. She has no sympathy with her father, and wishes him dead (which would perhaps be the best thing for him); but it vexes me that she behaves so badly to her sister, who is the wife of a tailor, and I often tell her that in this she is committing a double sin; for the needy sister comes from time to time for something to eat. If she does not come exactly on the evening which she has agreed upon, she gets nothing, and the food is thrown away upstairs. When at some length I place her sin before her, she says, 'That meat is bad.' I ask her why she let it get bad, and did not give it in time to her sister. To this she answers that her sister is not worthy of it. I predict evil things which will happen to her in future, as they have done to others whom I enumerate to her. At this she throws back her head and is silent.

At this time her Majesty the Queen sent me some silkworms to beguile the time. When they had finished spinning, I sent them back to her Majesty in a box which I had covered with carnation-coloured satin, upon which I had embroidered a pattern with gold thread. Inside, the box was lined with white taffeta. In the lid I embroidered with black silk a humble request that her Majesty would loose my bonds, and would fetter me anew with the hand of favour. Her Majesty the virtuous Queen would have granted my request had it rested with her.

The prison governor became gradually more sensible and accommodating, drank less wine, and made no jokes. I had peace within my doors. The woman sat during the day outside in the other apartment, and lay there also in the night, so that I began not to fret so much over my hard fate. I passed the year with reading, writing, and composing.

For some time past, immediately after I had received the yearly pension, I had bought for myself not only historical works in various languages, but I had gathered and translated from them all the famous female personages, who were celebrated as true, chaste, sensible, valorous, virtuous, God-fearing, learned, and steadfast; and in anno 1675, on January 9, I amused myself with making some rhymes to M. Thomas Kingo, under the title, 'To the much-famed Poet M. Thomas Kingo, a Request from a Danish Woman in the name of all Danish Women.' The request was this, that he would exhibit in befitting honour the virtuous and praiseworthy Danish women. There are, indeed, virtuous women belonging to other nations, but I requested only his praise of the Danish. This never reached Kingo; but if my good friend to whom I entrust these papers still lives, it will fall probably into your hands, my beloved children.

In the same year, on May 11, I wrote in rhyme a controversial conversation between Sense and Reason; entitled, 'Controversial Thoughts by the Captive Widow, or the Dispute between Sense and Reason.'

Nothing else occurred this year within the doors of my prison which is worth recording, except one event--namely, when the outermost door of the anteroom was unlocked in the morning for the sake of sweeping away the dirt and bringing in fresh water, and the tower-warder occasionally let it stand open till meal-time and then closed it again, it happened that a fire broke out in the town and the bells were tolled. I and the woman ran up to the top of the tower to see where it was burning.

When I was on the stairs which led up to the clock-work, the prison governor came, and with him was a servant from the silver-chamber. He first perceived my dog, then he saw somewhat of the woman, and thought probably that I was there also; he was so wise as not to come up the stairs, but remained below at the lowest holes, from whence one can look out over the town, and left me time enough to get down again and shut my door. Gert was sorry, and came afterwards to the door and told me of his distress. I consoled him, and said there was nothing to fear. Before the prison governor opened the door at noon, he struck Gert with his stick, so that he cried, and the prison governor said with an oath, 'Thou shalt leave.' When the prison governor came in, I was the first to speak, and I said: 'It is not right in you to beat the poor devil; he could not help it. The executioner came up as he was going to lock my door, and that made him forget to do so.' He threatened Gert severely, and said, 'I should not have minded it so much had not that other servant been with me.'

The words at once occurred to me which he had said to me a long time before, namely that no woman could be silent, but that all men could be silent (when he had asserted this, I had thought, if this be so, then my adversaries might believe that I, had I known of anything which they had in view, should not have been able to keep silence). So I now answered him thus: 'Well, and what does that signify? It was a man; they can all keep silence; there is no harm done.' He could not help laughing, and said, 'Well, you are good enough.' I then talked to him, and assured him that I had no desire to leave the tower without the King's will, even though day and night all the tower doors were left open, and I also said that I could have got out long ago, if that had been my design. Gert continued in his service, and the prison governor never told Gert to shut me in in the morning.[142]

[142] In the margin is noted: 'At my desire the prison governor gave me a rat whose tail he had cut off; this I placed in a parrot's cage, and gave it food, so that it grew very tame. The woman grudged me this amusement; and as the cage hung in the outer apartment, and had a wire grating underneath, so that the dirt might fall out, she burned the rat with a candle from below. It was easy to perceive it, but she denied it.'

At this time I had bought myself a clavicordium, and as Barbra could sing well, I played psalms and she sang, so that the time was not long to us. She taught me to bind books, so far as I needed.[E56]

[E56] The MS. itself is bound in a very primitive manner, which renders it probable that Leonora has done it herself.

My father confessor, H. Emmeke, became a preacher at Kioge anno 1676. In the same year my pension was increased, and I received yearly 250 rix-dollars. It stands in the order that the 200 rix-dollars were to be used for the purchase of clothes and the remaining fifty to buy anything which might beguile the time.[E57] God bless and keep his gracious Majesty, and grant that he may live to enjoy many happy years.

[E57] It appears from the State accounts that ever since the year 1672 a sum of 250 dollars a year had been placed at her disposal. It would seem, therefore, that somehow or other a part of them had been unlawfully abstracted by someone during the first years.

Brant was at this time treasurer.

On December 17 in this same year Barbra left me, and married a bookbinder's apprentice; but she repented it afterwards. And as her husband died a year and a half after her marriage, and that suddenly, suspicion fell upon Barbra. She afterwards went to her brother's house and fell ill. Her conscience was awakened, and she sent for Totzloff and told almost in plain terms that she had poisoned her husband, and begged him to tell me so. I was not much astonished at it, for according to her own account she had before killed her own children; but I told Peder Totzloff that he was not to speak of it; if God willed that it should be made known, it would be so notwithstanding; the brother and the maid in the house knew it; he was not to go there again, even if she sent a message to him. She became quite insane, and lay in a miserable condition. The brother subsequently had her removed to the plague-house.

In Barbra's place there came to me a woman named Sitzel, daughter of a certain Klemming; Maren Blocks had brought about her employment, as Sitzel owed her money. She is a dissolute woman, and Maren gave her out as a spinster; she had a white cap on her head when she came up. Sitzel's debt to Maren had arisen in this way: that Maren--since Sitzel could make buttons, and the button-makers had quarrelled with her--obtained for her a royal licence in order to free her from the opposition of the button-makers, under the pretext that she was sickly. When the door was locked in the evening, I requested to see the royal licence which Maren had obtained for her. And when I saw that she was styled in it the sickly woman, I asked her what her infirmity was. She replied that she had no infirmity. 'Why, then,' I asked, 'have you given yourself out as sickly?' She answered, 'That was Maren Block's doing, in order to get for me the royal licence.' 'In the licence,' I said, 'you are spoken of as a married woman, and not as a spinster; have you, then, been seduced?' She hung her head and said softly, 'Yes.'

I was not satisfied. I said, 'Maren Block has obtained the royal licence for you by lies, and has brought you to me by lies; what, then, can I expect from your service?' She begged my pardon, promised to serve me well, and never to act contrary to my wishes. She is a dangerous person; there is nothing good in her; bold and shameless, she is not even afraid of fighting a man. She struck two button-makers one day, who wanted to take away her work, till they were obliged to run away. With me she had no opportunity of thus displaying her evil passions, but still they were perceptible in various ways. One day I warded off a scuffle between her and Maren Blocks; for when Maren Blocks had got back the money which she had expended on the royal licence for Sitzel, she wanted to remove her from me, and to bring another into her place; but I sent word to Maren Blocks that she must not imagine she could send me another whom I must take. It was enough that she had done this time.[143]

[143] In the margin stood originally the following note, which has afterwards been struck out: 'In this year, 1676, the prison governor married for the third time; he married a woman who herself had had two husbands. Anno 1677, Aug. 9, died my sister Elisabeth Augusta.'

In the place of H. Emmeke Norbye, H. Johan Adolf Borneman became palace-preacher; a very learned and sensible man, who now became my father confessor, and performed the duties of his office for the first time on April 10, 1677.

On October 9, in the same year, my father confessor was Magister Hendrich Borneman, dean of the church of Our Lady (a learned and excellent man), his brother H. Johan Adolf Borneman having accompanied the King's Majesty on a journey.

I have, thank God, spent this year in repose: reading, writing, and composing various things.

Anno 1678 it was brought about for me that my father-confessor, H. Johan Adolf Borneman, should come to me every six weeks and preach a short sermon.

In this year, on Easter-Day, Agneta Sophia Budde was brought to the tower. Her prison was above my innermost apartment. She was accused of having designed to poison the Countess Skeel; and as she was a young person, and had a waiting-woman in her attendance who was also young, they clamoured to such an extent all day that I had no peace for them. I said nothing, however, about it, thinking she would probably be quiet when she knew that her life was at stake. But no! she was merry to the day on which she was executed![144]

[144] On a piece of paper which is fastened to the MS. by a pin is the following note referring to the same matter: 'On March 4, in the same year 1678, a woman named Lucia, who had been in the service of Lady Rigitze Grubbe, became my neighbour. She was accused by Agneta Sophia Budde, as the person who at the instigation of her mistress had persuaded her to poison Countess F. Birrete Skeel, and that Lucia had brought her the poison. There was evidence as to the person from whom Lucia had bought the poison. This woman was a steady faithful servant. She received everything that was imposed upon her with the greatest patience, and held out courageously in the Dark Cell. She had two men as companions, both of whom cried, moaned and wept. From the Countess Skeel (who had to supply her with food) meat was sent her which was full of maggots and mouldy bread. I took pity on her (not for the sake of her mistress, for she had rendered me little good service, and had rewarded me evil for the benefits of former times, but out of sympathy). And I sent her meat and drink and money that she might soften Gert, who was too hard to her. She was tortured, but would not confess any thing of what she was accused, and always defended her mistress. She remained a long time in prison.[E58]

[E58] The acts of this famous trial are still in existence. Originally the quarrel arose out of the fact that the Countess Parsberg (born Skeel) had obtained a higher rank than Lady Grubbe, and was further envenomed by some dispute about a window in the house of the latter which looked down on the courtyard of the Countess's house. Regitze Grubbe (widow of Hans Ulrik Gyldenlove, natural son of Christian IV. and half-brother of Ulrik Christian Gyldenlove, as well as of Leonora Christina), persuaded another noble lady, Agnete Budde, through a servant, to poison Countess Parsberg. Miss Budde was beheaded, the girl Lucie was exiled, and Lady Grubbe relegated for life to the island of Bornholm.

In the same year, on the morning of July 9, the tower-warder Gert was killed by a thief who was under sentence of death, and to whom he had allowed too great liberty. I will mention this incident somewhat more in detail, as I had advised Gert not to give this prisoner so much liberty; but to his own misfortune he paid no attention to my advice. This thief had broken by night into the house of a clergyman, and had stolen a boiling-copper, which he had carried on his head to Copenhagen; he was seized with it at the gate in the morning, and was placed here in the tower. He was condemned to be hanged (he had committed various other thefts). The priest allowed the execution to be delayed; he did not wish to have him hanged. Then it was said he was to go to the Holm; but he remained long in prison. At first, and until the time that his going to the Holm was talked of, he was my neighbour in the Dark Church; he behaved quite as a God-fearing man, read (apparently) with devotion, and prayed to God for forgiveness of his sins with most profound sighs. The rogue knew that I could hear him, and I sent him occasionally something to eat. Gert took pity on him, and allowed him to go by day about the basement story of the tower, and shut him up at night again.

Afterwards he allowed him also at night to remain below. And as I had seen the thief once or twice when my door stood open, and he went past, it seemed to me that he had a murderous countenance; and for this reason, when I heard that the thief was not placed of an evening in the Dark Church, I said to Gert that he ventured too far, in letting him remain below at night; that there was roguery lurking in him; that he would certainly some day escape, and then, on his account, Gert would get into trouble. Gert was not of opinion that the thief wished to run away; he had no longer any fear of being hanged; he had been so delighted that he was to go to the Holm, there was no danger in it. I thought 'That is a delight which does not reach further than the lips,' and I begged him that he would lock him up at night. No; Gert feared nothing; he even went farther, and allowed the thief to go up the tower instead of himself, and attend to the clock-work.

Three days before the murder took place, I spoke with Gert, when he unlocked my door in the morning, of the danger to which he exposed himself by the liberty he allowed the thief, but Gert did not fear it. Meanwhile my dog placed himself exactly in front of Gert, and howled in his face. When we were at dinner, the dog ran down and howled three times at the tower-warder's door. Never before had I heard the dog howl.

On July 19 (as I have said), when Gert's unfortunate morning had arrived, the thief came down from the clock-work, and said that he could not manage it alone, as the cords were entangled. The rogue had an iron rod ready above, in order to effect his project. Gert went upstairs, but was carried down. The thief ran down after Gert was dead, opened his box, took out the money, and went out of the tower.

It was a Friday, and the bells were to be rung for service. Those whose duty it was to ring them knocked at the tower door, but no one opened. Totzloff came with the principal key and opened, and spoke to me and wondered that Gert was not there at that time of the day. I said: 'All is not right; this morning between four and five I was rather unwell, and I heard three people going upstairs and after a time two coming down again.' Totzloff locked my door and went down. Just then one of the ringers came down, and informed them that Gert was lying upstairs dead. When the dead man was examined, he had more than one wound, but all at the back of the head. He was a very bold man, courageous, and strong; one man could not be supposed to have done this to him.

The thief was seized the same evening, and confessed how it had happened: that, namely, a prisoner who was confined in the Witch Cell, a licentiate of the name of Moritius, had persuaded him to it. This same Moritius had great enmity against Gert. It is true that Gert took too much from him weekly for his food. But it is also true that this Moritius was a very godless fellow; the priest who confesses him gives him no good character. I believe, indeed, that Moritius was an accessory, but I believe also that another prisoner, who was confined in the basement of the tower, had a hand in the game. For who should have locked the tower-door again after the imprisoned thief, had not one of these done so? For when the key was looked for, it was found hidden above in the tower; this could not have been done by the thief after he was out of the tower. The thief, moreover, could not have unlocked Gert's box and taken his money without the knowledge of Moritius. The other prisoner must also have been aware of it. It seems to me that it was hushed up, in order that no more should die for this murder; for the matter was not only not investigated as was befitting, but the thief was confined down below in the tower. He was bound with iron fetters, but Moritius could speak with him everyday: and for this reason the thief departed from his earlier statement, and said that he alone had committed the murder. He was executed on August 8, and Moritius was taken to Borringholm, and kept as a prisoner there.[E55b]

[E55b] Griffenfeldt, who was then at the height of his power, was the son of a wine-merchant, by name Schumacher, but had risen by his talents alone to the highest dignities. He was ennobled under the name of Griffenfeldt, and was undoubtedly the ablest statesman Denmark ever possessed. Eventually he was thrust from his high position by an intrigue set on foot by German courtiers and backed by foreign influence. He was accused of treason and kept in prison from 1676 to 1698, the year before he died, to the great, perhaps irreparable damage, of his native country. The principal witness against him was a German doctor, Mauritius, a professional spy, who had served the Danish Government in this capacity. The year after the fall of Griffenfeld, he was himself arrested on a charge of perjury, forgery, and high treason, and placed in the Blue Tower; he was convicted and conducted to Bornholm, where he died. But Griffenfeldt, who had been convicted on his false testimony, was not liberated. Griffenfeldt's ability and patriotism cannot be doubted, but his personal character was not without blemish; and it is a fact that in his prosperity he disclaimed all connection with his earlier friends, and even his near relations.

In Gert's place a tower-warder of the name of Johan, a Norwegian, was appointed--a very simple man. The servants about court often made a fool of him. The imprisoned young woman and her attendant did so the first time after his arrival that the attendant had to perform some menial offices upstairs. The place to which she had to go was not far from the door of their prison. The tower-warder went down in the meanwhile, and left the door open. They ran about and played. When they heard him coming up the stairs, they hid themselves. He found the prison empty, and was grieved and lamented. The young woman giggled like a child, and thus he found her behind a door. Johan was glad, and told me the story afterwards. I asked why he had not remained with them. 'What,' he answered, 'was I to remain at their dirty work?' There was nothing to say in reply to such foolish talk.

I had repose within my doors, and amused myself with reading, writing and various handiwork, and began to make and embroider my shroud, for which I had bought calico, white taffeta, and thread.

On April 7 a young lad escaped from the tower, who had been confined on the lower story with iron fetters round his legs. This prisoner found opportunity to loosen his fetters, and knew, moreover, that the booby Johan was wont to keep the tower key under his pillow. He kept an iron pin in readiness to unlock the door of the room when the tower-warder was asleep; he opened it gently, took the key, locked in the booby again, and quitted the tower. The simple man was placed in confinement, but after the expiration of six weeks he was set at liberty.

In his place there came a man named Olle Mathison, who was from Skaane; he had his wife with him in the tower. Towards the end of this year, on December 25, I became ill of a fever, and D. Mynchen received orders to visit me and to take me under his care--an order which he executed with great attention. He is a very sensible man, mild and judicious in his treatment. Ten days after I recovered my usual health.

In the beginning of the year 1680 Sitzel, Klemming's daughter, was persuaded by Maren Blocks to betroth herself to one of the King's body-guard. She left me on November 26. In her place I had a woman named Margrete. When I first saw her, she appeared to me somewhat suspicious, and it seemed to me that she was with child; however, I made no remark till the last day of the month of January. Then I put a question to her from which she could perceive my opinion. She answered me with lies, but I interrupted her at once; and she made use of a special trick, which it is not fit to mention here, in order to prove her false assertion; but her trick could not stand with me, and she was subsequently obliged to confess it. I asked her as to the father of the child (I imagined that it was the King's groom of the chamber, who had been placed in arrest in the prison governor's room, but I did not say so). She did not answer my question at the time, but said she was not so far advanced; that her size was owing rather to stoutness than to the child, as it was at a very early stage.

This woman, before she came to me, had been in the service of the prison governor's wife, and the prison governor had told me she was married. So it happened that I one day asked her of her life and doings; upon which she told me of her past history, where she had served, and that she had had two bastards, each by a different father; and pointing to herself, she added: 'A father shall also acknowledge this one, and that a brave father! You know him well!' I said, 'I have seen the King's groom of the chamber in the square, but I do not know him.' She laughed and answered (in her mother-tongue), 'No, by God, that is not he; it is the good prison governor.' I truly did not believe it. She protested it, and related some minute details to me.

I thought I had better get rid of her betimes, and I requested to speak with the prison governor's wife, who at once came to me. I told her my suspicion with regard to the woman, and on what I based my suspicion; but I made no remark as to what the woman had confessed and said to me. I begged the prison governor's wife to remove the woman from me as civilly as she could. She was surprised at my words, and doubted if there was truth in them. I said, 'Whether it be so or not, remove her; the sooner the better.' She promised that it should be done, but it was not. Margrete seemed not to care that it was known that she was with child; she told the tower-warder of it, and asked him one day, 'Ole, how was it with your wife when she had twins?' Ole answered: 'I know nothing about it. Ask Anne!' Margrete said that from certain symptoms she fancied she might have twins.

One day, when she was going to sew a cloth on the arms of my arm-chair, she said, 'That angel of God is now moving!' And as the wife of the prison governor did not adhere to her word, and Margrete's sister often came to the tower, I feared that the sister might secretly convey her something to remove the child (which was no doubt subsequently the case), so I said one day to Margrete: 'You say that the prison governor is your child's father, but you do not venture to say so to himself.' 'Yes!' she said with an oath, 'as if I would not venture! Do you imagine that I will not have something from him for the support of my child?' 'Then I will send for him,' I said, 'on purpose to hear what he will say.' (It was at that time a rare occurrence for the prison governor to come to me.) She begged me to do so; he could not deny, she said, that he was the father of her child. The prison governor came at my request. I began my speech in the woman's presence, and said that Margrete, according to her own statement, was with child; who the father was, he could enquire if he chose. He asked her whether she was with child? She answered, 'Yes, and you are the father of it.' 'O!' he said, and laughed, 'what nonsense!' She adhered to what she had said, protested that no other was the child's father, and related the circumstances of how it had occurred. The prison governor said, 'The woman is mad!' She gave free vent to her tongue, so that I ordered her to go out; then I spoke with the prison governor alone, and begged him speedily to look about for another woman for me, before it came to extremities with her. I supposed he would find means to stop her tongue. I told him the truth in a few words--that he had brought his paramour to wait on me. He answered, 'She lies, the malicious woman! I have ordered Totzloff already to look about for another. My wife has told me what you said to her the other day.' After this conversation the prison governor went away. Peder Totzloff told me that an English woman had desired to be with me, but could not come before Easter.

Four days afterwards Margrete began to complain that she felt ill, and said to me in the forenoon, 'I think it will probably go badly with me; I feel so ill.' I thought at once of what I had feared, namely of what the constant visits of her sister indicated, and I sent immediately to Peder Totzloff, and when he came to me I told him of my suspicion respecting Margrete, and begged him to do his utmost to procure me the English woman that very day. Meanwhile Margrete went up stairs, and remained there about an hour and a quarter, and came down looking like a corpse, and said, 'Now it will be all right with me.' What I thought I would not say (for I knew that if I had enquired the cause of her bad appearance she would have at once acknowledged it all, and I did not want to know it), so I said, 'If you keep yourself quiet, all will be well. Another woman is coming this evening.' This did not please her; she thought she could now well remain. I paid no regard to this nor to anything else she said, but adhered to it--that another woman was coming. This was arranged, and in the evening of March 15 Margrete left, and in her place came an English woman, named Jonatha, who had been married to a Dane named Jens Pedersen Holme.

When Margrete was gone, I was blamed by the wife of the prison governor, who said that I had persuaded Margrete to affirm that her husband was the father of Margrete's child.

Although it did not concern me, I will nevertheless mention the deceitful manner in which the good people subsequently brought about this Margrete's marriage. They informed a bookbinder's apprentice that she had been married, and they showed both him and the priest, who was to give them the nuptial benediction, her sister's marriage certificate.[145]

[145] In the margin is added: 'Ole the tower-warder was cudgelled on his back by the prison governor when Margrete was gone, and he was charged with having said what Margrete had informed him respecting her size.'

In the same year, on the morning of Christmas Day, God loosened D. Otto Sperling's heavy bonds, after he had been imprisoned in the Blue Tower seventeen years, eight months, twenty-four days, at the age of eighty years minus six days. He had long been ill, but never confined to his bed. Doctor Muenchen twice visited him with his medicaments. He would not allow the tower-warder at any time to make his bed, and was quite angry if Ole offered to do so, and implied that the doctor was weak. He allowed no one either to be present when he laid down. How he came on the floor on Christmas night is not known; he lay there, knocking on the ground. The tower-warder could not hear his knocking, for he slept far from the doctor's room; but a prisoner who slept on the ground floor heard it, and knocked at the tower-warder's door and told him that the doctor had been knocking for some time. When Ole came in, he found the doctor lying on the floor, half dressed, with a clean shirt on. He was still alive, groaned a good deal, but did not speak. Ole called a prisoner to help him, and they lifted him on the bed and locked the door again. In the morning he was found dead, as I have said.

A.D. 1682, in the month of April, I was sick and confined to my bed from a peculiar malady which had long troubled me--a stony matter had coagulated and had settled low down in my intestines. Doctor Muenchen used all available means to counteract this weakness; but he could not believe that it was of the nature I thought and informed him; for I was perfectly aware it was a stone which had settled in the duct of the intestines. He was of opinion, if it were so, that the medicaments which he used would remove it.[146] At this time the doctor was obliged to travel with his Majesty to Holstein. I used the remedies according to Doctor Muenchen's directions, but things remained just as before. It was not till the following morning that the remedies produced their effect; and then, besides other matter, a large stone was evacuated, and I struck a piece out of it with a hammer in order to see what it was inside; I found it to be composed of a substance like rays, having the appearance of being gilded in some places and in others silvered. It is almost half a finger in length and full three fingers thick, and it is still in my possession. When Doctor Muenchen returned, I sent him word how it was with me. He was at the time with the governess of the royal children, F. Sitzele Grubbe. Doctor Muenchen desired Totzloff to request me to let him see the stone. I sent him word that if he would come to me, he should see it. I would not send it to him, for I well knew that I should never get it again.

[146] In the margin is added: 'Other natural matter was evacuated, but the stone stuck fast in the duct, and seemed to be round, for I could not gain hold of it with an instrument I had procured for the purpose.'

A.D. 1682, June 11, I wrote the following spiritual song.

It can be sung to the melody, 'Siunge wii af Hiaertens-Grund.'[E59]

[E59] This tune is still in use in Denmark; it is known in the Latin church as 'in natali Domini.'