“Look,” he says to the beholder, “can you see that it is I who am master?  As far as your eye can reach, there is nothing here but people who are torturing one another.  Groaning the conquered come and leave their gold.  They hate and threaten, but they obey.  And the desires of the victors grow wilder the more gold they can extort.  What are Denmark’s king and his soldiers but my servants, at least for this one day?  To-morrow they will go to church, or sit in peaceful mirth in their inns, or also perhaps be good fathers in their own homes, but to-day they serve me; to-day they are evil-doers and ravishers.”

The longer one listens to him, the better one understands what the picture is; nothing but an illustration of the old story of how people can torture one another.  There is not one redeeming feature, only cruel violence and defiant hate and hopeless suffering.

Those three beer vats were to be filled that Visby should not be plundered and burned.  Why do they not come, those Hanseaters, with glowing enthusiasm?  Why do the women not hasten with their jewels; the revellers with their cups, the priest with his relics, eager, burning with enthusiasm for the sacrifice?  “For thee, for thee, our beloved town!  It is needless to send soldiers for us when it concerns thee!  Oh, Visby, our mother, our honor!  Take back what thou hast given us!”

But the painter has not wished to see them so, and it was not so either.  No enthusiasm, only constraint, only suppressed defiance, only bewailings.  Gold is everything to them, women and men sigh over that gold which they have to give.

“Look at them!” says the power that stands on the steps of the throne.  “It goes to their very hearts to offer it.  May he who will feel sympathy for them!  They are mean, avaricious, arrogant.  They are no better than the covetous brigand whom I have sent against them.”

A woman has sunk down on the ground by the vats.  Does it cost her so much pain to give her gold?  Or is she perhaps the guilty one?  Is she the cause of the laments?  Is it she who has betrayed the town?  Yes, it is she who has been King Valdemar’s mistress.  It is Ung-Hanse’s daughter.

She knows well that she need give no gold.  Her father’s house will not be plundered, but she has collected what she possesses and brings it.  In the market-place she has been overcome by all the misery she has seen and has sunk down in infinite despair.

He had been active and merry, the young goldsmith’s apprentice who served the year before in her father’s house.  It had been glorious to stroll at his side through this same market-place, when the moon rose from behind the gables and illumined the beauties of Visby.  She had been proud of him, proud of her father, proud of her town.  And now she is lying there, broken with grief.  Innocent and yet guilty!  He who is sitting cold and cruel on the throne and who has brought all this devastation on