Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/276

 might not be able to maintain his position even before the sternest judge.

The bishop was a little broad-shouldered man, with slanting eyebrows and thick hair touched with grey. He had formerly been in the National Liberal Ministry, and one of the late king's most trusted advisers. He was by no means without dignity, nay, his broad beardless face had at times a stern, Old Testament gravity. But his dignity was mixed in a curious manner with a whimsical carelessness, a remnant of the wild student temper of '48, which had been fostered by Frederick IV. at his court. This jovial unconstraint drew down upon him Miss Ragnhild's deepest displeasure. She always had a great dislike to any kind of democratic familiarity, and she was not at all impressed by the fact that it was an actual bishop and a late minister who threw himself back in his chair as if he had been at home, buried his hands in his pockets to rattle his keys, waved his knife about and called her "my dear." She entirely shared her father's opinion with regard to the bishop's official behaviour. She considered it most unsuitable for a man in his position to dash about the high roads like a butcher; and that his unexpected visits to schools and churches were unworthy kinds of espionage which must lower the clergy in the eyes of the laity.

But what more than all roused the enmity of the Provst against him was his position in public and political life, where his behaviour plainly