f his second wife and the children and stepchildren of his
first. To be the head of such a family must inevitably have presented
confusing problems to a man who had no children of his own. But with the
exception of his stepson, all the children appear to have loved him and
maintained their relation to him as long as he lived.

His second wife died in 1694, when she was seventy-six and he sixty years
old. During the later years of her life she had been a helpless invalid,
demanding a great deal of patience and care of her busy husband.
Contemporaries comment on the frequent sight of the famous bishop
good-humoredly carrying his wife about like a helpless child. Less than a
year after her death, Kingo entered into a new marriage, this time with
an attractive young lady of the nobility, Birgitte Balslev, his junior by
more than thirty years. This new marriage provoked a great deal of gossip
and many predictions of disaster on account of the great disparity in
years of the contracting parties. But the predictions proved wholly
unfounded, and the marriage singularly happy. Kingo and Birgitte, a
contemporary tells us, were "inseparable as heart and soul." She was an
accomplished and highly intelligent woman, and Kingo found in her,
perhaps for the first time in his life, a woman with whom he could share
fully the rich treasure of his own heart and mind. He is credited with
the remark that he had done what all ought to do: married an elderly
woman in his young days, whom he could care for when she grew old, and a
young woman in his later years, who could comfort him in his old age.

But Kingo did not show the effect of his years. He was still as energetic
and vigorous as ever in the prosecution of his manifold duties. For a
number of years after his marriage, he even continued his strenuous
visits to all parts of his see, now always accompanied by his wife. His
leisure hours were usually spent on a beautiful estate a few miles from
Odense, which belonged to his wife. At this favored retreat and in the
company of friends, he still could relax and become the liveliest of them
all.

The years, however, would not be denied. At the turn of the century, he
suffered a first attack of the illness, a bladder complaint, that later
laid him in his grave. He made light of it and refused to ease his
strenuous activity. But the attack returned with increasing frequency
and, on a visit to Copenhagen in the fall of 1702, he was compelled to