Explore "The Emperor of Portugallia" by Selma Lagerlof on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The evening before Glory Goldie of Ruffluck left for Stockholm Jan discovered no end of things that had to be attended to all at once. He had no sooner got home from his work than he must betake himself to the forest to gather firewood, whereupon he set about fixing a broken board in the gate that had been hanging loose a whole year. When he had finished with that he dragged out his fishing tackle and began to overhaul it.
All this time he was thinking how strange it seemed not to feel any actual regret. Now he was the same as he had been seventeen years before; he felt neither glad nor sad. His heart had stopped like a watch that has received a hard blow when he had seen Glory Goldie on the mountaintop, opening her arms to the whole world.