can be so."

Here the Counsellor of Justice stopped a moment and caught for
breath. A good many of our twenty-year-old beaux, who have never
been admitted to the bar, far less have been Court Counsellors,
would, under similar circumstances, have said to themselves: "She
writes that she will be open; that is to say, now she will fool
me: we will never meet; that is to say, now I shall soon see her."
But Counsellor Bagger believed every word as gospel, and his knees
trembled. He read further:

"I am ashamed of the few words I last wrote you; but my apology
is, that it is only two days since I learned that you are married.
I have been mistaken, but more in what may be imputed to me than
in what I have thought. My only comfort is, that I shall never be
known by you or anybody, and that I shall be forgotten, as I shall
forget."

"Never! But who can have spread the infamous slander! What
dreadful treachery of some wretch or gossiping wench, who knows
nothing about me! And how can she believe it! How in such a town
as Copenhagen can it be a matter of doubt for five minutes, if a
Superior Court Counsellor is married or not! Or maybe there is
some other Counsellor Bagger married,--a Chamber Counsellor or the
like? Or maybe she lives at a distance, in a quiet world, so that
the truth of it does not easily reach her? So there is no sunshine
more!

"If she should sometime meet me, and know that I was, am, and have
been unmarried, that meanwhile we have both become old and gray,--