Jenny

Jenny
Sigrid Undset
THE BORZOI-GYLDENDAL BOOKS
THE fires of Gyldendal (Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag) is
the oldest and greatest publishing house in Scandinavia, and has been
responsible, since its inception in 1770, for giving to the world some of
the greatest Danish and Norwegian writers of three centuries. Among
them are such names as Isbsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Pontoppidan,
Brandes, Gjellerup, Hans Christian Andersen, and Knut Hamsun, the
Nobel Prize winner for 1920, whose works I am publishing in America.
It is therefore with particular satisfaction that I announce the
completion of arrangements whereby I shall bring out in this country
certain of the publications of this famous house. The books listed below
are the first of the Borzoi-Gyldendal books.
The Sworn Brothers
A Tale of the Early Days of Iceland. Translated from the Danish of
Gunnar Gunnarsson [Icelandic] by C. Field and W. Emmé.
Grim: the Story of a Pike
Translated from the Danish of Svend Fleuron by Jessie Muir and W.
Emmé. Illustrated in black and white by Dorothy P. Lathrop.
Jenny
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher, NEW YORK

JENNY
A NOVEL
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN OF SIGRID UNDSET
BY W. EMMÉ
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PART ONE

I
AS Helge Gram turned the corner into Via Condotti in the dusk a
military band came down the street playing "The Merry Widow" in
such a crazy, whirling time that it sounded like wild bugle calls. The
small, dark soldiers rushed past in the cold afternoon, more like a
Roman cohort intent on attacking barbarian hosts than peaceful men
returning to their barracks for supper. That was perhaps the cause of
their haste, Helge thought, smiling to himself, for as he stood there
watching them, his coat-collar turned up for the cold, a peculiar
atmosphere of history had pervaded him - but suddenly he found
himself humming the same tune, and continued his way in the direction
where he knew the Corso lay.

He stopped at the corner and looked. So that was the Corso - an endless
stream of carriages in a crowded street, and a surging throng of people
on a narrow pavement.
He stood still, watching the stream run past him, and smiled at the
thought that he could drift along this street every evening in the dusk
among the crowds, until it became as familiar to him as the best-known
thoroughfare of his own city - Christiania. He was suddenly seized with
the wish to walk and walk - now and all night maybe - through all the
streets of Rome, for he thought of the town as it had appeared to him a
while ago when he was looking down on it from Pincio, while the sun
was setting.
Clouds all over the western sky, close together like small pale grey
lambkins, and as the sun sank behind him it painted their linings a
glorious amber. Beneath the pale skies lay the city, and Helge
understood that this was the real Rome - not the Rome of his
imagination and his dreams, but Rome as she actually was.
Everything else he had seen on his journey had disappointed him, for it
was not what he had imagined at home when he had been longing to go
abroad and see it all. One sight at last was far beyond his dreams, and
that was Rome.
A plain of housetops lay beneath him in the valley, the roofs of houses
new and old, of houses high and low - it looked as if they had been
built anywhere and at any time, and of a size to suit the need of the
moment. In a few places only a space could be seen between the mass
of housetops, as of streets. All this world of reckless lines, crossing
each other in a thousand hard angles, was lying inert and quiet under
the pale skies, while the setting sun touched the borders of the clouds
with a tinge of light. It was dreaming under a thin veil of white mist,
which no busy pillar of smoke dared penetrate, for no factory chimney
could be seen, and no smoke came from a single one of the funny little
chimney pipes protruding from the houses. The round, old, rust-brown
tiles were covered by greyish moss, grass and small plants with yellow
blossoms grew in the gutters; along the border of the terraces the aloes
stood immovably still in their tubs, and creepers hung in dead cascades

from the cornices. Here and there the upper part of a high house rose
above its neighbour, its dark, hollow windows staring at one out of a
grey or reddish-yellow wall, or sleeping behind closed shutters.
Loggias stood out of