She tells them she has seen the ghost of their brother and that he would like to have one last conversation with them. Madam Baek, who looked after the girls when they were children, and who now tends to the estate when the family is away for the season, makes her way one evening through the snow to the sister's winter estate. Slowly the family resigns themselves to quietly paying penance for his behavior, and his two sisters dote over his jilted fiance until she is finally betrothed and married to another man. Morten, the only brother, jilts his bride and runs away to become a pirate and live a life in the shadows of adventure and debauchery, alleged to have five wives in different ports around the world. Next in the collection is 'The Supper at Elsinore,' the story of three siblings struggling to hold onto their grasp of fate. At the last second, the wife's handmaiden, who has been dressed as a young boy and following the chain of events from afar runs up to the prince before they begin to take aim and quickly mentions that is was she in the bed that night and not her mistress, the old prince has a stroke and as he gasps, clutching his heart he says 'Always we fail because we are too small.Too small I have been, too small for the ways of God.' As he dies in one last impotent gesture his gun misfires, shooting skyward and he takes his last breath. When the prince's young wife fails to become pregnant (obviously not understanding the complication involved with the birds and the bees making little birds and bees) the prince challenges his now ex-friend to a duel.

It is ultimately the story of misunderstanding and as the pieces of the puzzle slowly are fit together and the characters are confronted with the extent of their mistake, the reader is finally able to glimpse the entire spectrum of the narrative.Īn old impotent prince is about to marry a young beautiful woman, afraid that she will run away with her cousin Mario and demand an annulment, he asks his friend Count Nino to take his place in the marital bed and impregnate his wife. Unbeknownst to the prince, his wife has asked her hand maiden to do the same, leaving her to occupy the marital bed while she runs to find Mario and have one final night to say her goodbyes.

'The Road Around Pisa' is the forth short story in the collection and like its name the story weaves around, each character passing the narrative batten to the next, creating a chain of events that is almost incomprehensible.

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen