The Golden Lion is one of the very few houses in the town that were not
destroyed in the great fire of 1726, which practically demolished the
cathedral, the Sognekirke, the Raadhuus, and so much else that was old
and interesting. It is a great red-brick house—that is, the front is of
brick, with corbie steps on the gables and a text over the door; but
the courtyard into which the omnibus drives is of black and white wood
and plaster. The sun was declining in the heavens when my cousin walked up to the
door, and the light smote full upon the imposing façade of the house. He was delighted with the old-fashioned aspect of the place, and
promised himself a thoroughly satisfactory and amusing stay in an inn
so typical of old Jutland. It was not business in the ordinary sense of the word that had brought
Mr Anderson to Viborg. He was engaged upon some researches into the
Church history of Denmark, and it had come to his knowledge that in the
Rigsarkiv of Viborg there were papers, saved from the fire, relating to
the last days of Roman Catholicism in the country. He proposed,
therefore, to spend a considerable time—perhaps as much as a fortnight
or three weeks—in examining and copying these, and he hoped that the
Golden Lion would be able to give him a room of sufficient size to
serve alike as a bedroom and a study. His wishes were explained to the
landlord, and, after a certain amount of thought, the latter suggested
that perhaps it might be the best way for the gentleman to look at one
or two of the larger rooms and pick one for himself. It seemed a good
idea. The top floor was soon rejected as entailing too much getting upstairs
after the day’s work; the second floor contained no room of exactly the
dimensions required; but on the first floor there was a choice of two
or three rooms which would, so far as size went, suit admirably. The landlord was strongly in favour of Number 17, but Mr Anderson
pointed out that its windows commanded only the blank wall of the next
house, and that it would be very dark in the afternoon. Either Number
12 or Number 14 would be better, for both of them looked on the street,
and the bright evening light and the pretty view would more than
compensate him for the additional amount of noise. Eventually Number 12 was selected. Like its neighbours, it had three
windows, all on one side of the room; it was fairly high and unusually
long. There was, of course, no fireplace, but the stove was handsome
and rather old—a cast-iron erection, on the side of which was a
representation of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and the inscription, “1
Bog Mose, Cap. 22,” above. Nothing else in the room was remarkable; the
only interesting picture was an old coloured print of the town, date
about 1820. Supper-time was approaching, but when Anderson, refreshed by the
ordinary ablutions, descended the staircase, there were still a few
minutes before the bell rang. He devoted them to examining the list of
his fellow-lodgers. As is usual in Denmark, their names were displayed
on a large blackboard, divided into columns and lines, the numbers of
the rooms being painted in at the beginning of each line. The list was
not exciting. There was an advocate, or Sagförer, a German, and some
bagmen from Copenhagen. The one and only point which suggested any food
for thought was the absence of any Number 13 from the tale of the
rooms, and even this was a thing which Anderson had already noticed
half a dozen times in his experience of Danish hotels. He could not
help wondering whether the objection to that particular number, common
as it is, was so widespread and so strong as to make it difficult to
let a room so ticketed, and he resolved to ask the landlord if he and
his colleagues in the profession had actually met with many clients who
refused to be accommodated in the thirteenth room. He had nothing to tell me (I am giving the story as I heard it from
him) about what passed at supper, and the evening, which was spent in
unpacking and arranging his clothes, books, and papers, was not more
eventful. Towards eleven o’clock he resolved to go to bed, but with
him, as with a good many other people nowadays, an almost necessary
preliminary to bed, if he meant to sleep, was the reading of a few
pages of print, and he now remembered that the particular book which he
had been reading in the train, and which alone would satisfy him at
that present moment, was in the pocket of his great-coat, then hanging
on a peg outside the dining-room. To run down and secure it was the work of a moment, and, as the
passages were by no means dark, it was not difficult for him to find
his way back to his own door. So, at least, he thought; but when he
arrived there, and turned the handle, the door entirely refused to
open, and he caught the sound of a hasty movement towards it from
within. He had tried the wrong door, of course. Was his own room to the
right or to the left? He glanced at the number: it was 13. His room
would be on the left; and so it was. And not before he had been in bed
for some minutes, had read his wonted three or four pages of his book,
blown out his light, and turned over to go to sleep, did it occur to
him that, whereas on the blackboard of the hotel there had been no
Number 13, there was undoubtedly a room numbered 13 in the hotel. He
felt rather sorry he had not chosen it for his own. Perhaps he might
have done the landlord a little service by occupying it, and given him
the chance of saying that a well-born English gentleman had lived in it
for three weeks and liked it very much. But probably it was used as a
servant’s room or something of the kind. After all, it was most likely
not so large or good a room as his own. And he looked drowsily about
the room, which was fairly perceptible in the half-light from the
street-lamp. It was a curious effect, he thought. Rooms usually look
larger in a dim light than a full one, but this seemed to have
contracted in length and grown proportionately higher. Well, well! sleep was more important than these vague ruminations—and to sleep he
went. On the day after his arrival Anderson attacked the Rigsarkiv of Viborg. He was, as one might expect in Denmark, kindly received, and access to
all that he wished to see was made as easy for him as possible. The
documents laid before him were far more numerous and interesting than
he had at all anticipated. Besides official papers, there was a large
bundle of correspondence relating to Bishop Jörgen Friis, the last
Roman Catholic who held the see, and in these there cropped up many
amusing and what are called “intimate” details of private life and
individual character. There was much talk of a house owned by the
Bishop, but not inhabited by him, in the town. Its tenant was
apparently somewhat of a scandal and a stumbling-block to the reforming
party. He was a disgrace, they wrote, to the city; he practised secret
and wicked arts, and had sold his soul to the enemy.