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excellent ancients as Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, King Pontus, and Örvar-Oddur,* who were twelve ells high and could have lived to be three hundred years old if they hadn’t run into any trouble, and that if he had such a book he would send it immediately and for free to the king and his counts, to prove to them that there had indeed once been real men in Iceland. On the other hand, he reckoned, it was hardly due to impenitence that the Icelanders were now fallen into misery, because when had Gunnar of Hlíðarendi ever done penance? Never. He said that his mother had never grown tired of singing the penitential hymns of Reverend Halldór from Presthólar, but she had very little to show for it. On the contrary, he said, lack of fishing tackle had done far more harm to the Icelanders than lack of penitence, and his own misfortune had originated when he let himself be tempted by a piece of cord. But no one should think, least of all his dear lord bishop, that he was ungrateful to Christ, or that he would ever squander Christ’s property; quite the opposite, he said—he thought that this landowner and heavenly farmer had always been lenient and forgiving toward his poor tenant, and that they’d always gotten along quite well.
    As the householder was talking the others came in to receive the blessing of the bishop of Skálholt. The nodous aunt with exposed fingerbones and the ulcerous sister whose face had been eaten away would not be still until they had pushed themselves up into the visitors’ faces, eye to eye with the finery of the world. Few disfigured folk are as quick as lepers to use any opportunity they can to display their sores, especially to those in authority, often doing so with a certain provocative pride that can disarm even the most valiant man and make the most handsome ludicrous in his own eyes: Look, this is what the Lord in his mercy has granted me, this is my deserved reward from the Lord, say these images of men, and at the same time they ask: Where’s your reward, how has the Lord honored you? Or even: The Lord has stricken me with these sores for your sake.
    The half-wit had always been jealous of the two lepers and took it badly that they were closer to the action now that such a great event was taking place, so he teased and harassed them as much as he could by kicking, pinching, and spitting at them, forcing Jón Hreggviðsson to yell at him several times to clear off. Reverend Þorsteinn’s dog put its tail between its legs and ran out. The bishop’s wife tried to smile cordially at the two lepers who lifted their black faces toward her, but the damsel Snæfríður turned herself with a cry away from this sight, raised her hands involuntarily to the shoulders of Arnæus, who stood at her side, curled herself suddenly and tremblingly up to his breast, tore herself away from him again and tried to regain her composure, and then said in a restrained, somewhat melancholy voice:
    “My friend, why have you brought me into this dreadful house?”
    The remainder of the occupants, the mother, the daughter, and the wife, had now arrived to receive the bishop’s blessing. The old mother kneeled before the bishop and kissed his ring according to ancient custom, and His Excellency helped her to her feet. The dark, frightened eyes of the girl, convex and shining, were the house’s finest ornament. The wife stood behind in the doorway, sharp-nosed and shrill-voiced, ready to disappear if something should happen.
    “It would seem, as I have told my lord many times, that there is no great treasure to be found here,” said Reverend Þorsteinn. “Even the mercy of the Lord is entirely more distant from this house than from the others in the parish.”
    There was only one man in this stately company who was not affected by anything sinister, whose aristocratic tranquillity could not be displaced, and to whom nothing came by surprise, neither here nor elsewhere. Nothing in the countenance of Arnas Arnæus