She
was the descendant of an old and noble family which had preserved its
dignity, and she consequently was the wealthiest landowner in the
country. This, and this alone, gives her a right to a place in history.
If we study her life, we find no reason to suppose that patriotic
considerations ever affected her conduct. The motive power of her
actions was on a far lower plane, and seems to have consisted mainly in
an amazingly strong instinct for adding to her wealth and her status. We
find her, for instance, on one occasion seizing the estates of a
neighbor, and holding them till she was actually forced to resign them.
When she gave her daughters in marriage to Danish noblemen, it was to
secure direct advantage from alliance with the most high-born sons-in-
law procurable. When she took a convent under her protection, she
contrived to extort a rent which well repaid her. Even for a good action
she exacted a return, and when she offered harbor to the persecuted
Chancellor, she had the adroitness to be well rewarded by a large sum in
rose-nobles and Hungarian gulden.
All this could not fail to be highly exasperating to Ibsen, who had set
out to be a realist, and was convicted by the spiteful hand of history
of having been an idealist of the rose-water class.
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