[Etext producer's note: Chapter sub-headings in SECOND LONGER STAYABROAD are misnumbered in the original hard copy, skipping from VIIto IX. ]

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

BY

GEORGE BRANDES

AUTHOR OF "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, " ETC. 

[Illustration: DR. GEORGE BRANDES _From a Sketch by G. Rump_]

DISCOVERING THE WORLD

First Impressions--Going to Bed--My Name--Fresh Elements--School--TheKing--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--InimicalForces--The World Widens--The Theatre--Progress--Warlike Instincts--School Adventures--Polite Accomplishments--My Relations

BOYHOOD'S YEARS

Our House--Its Inmates--My Paternal Grandfather--My Maternal Grandfather--School and Home--Farum--My Instructors--A Foretaste of Life--Contemptfor the Masters--My Mother--The Mystery of Life--My First Glimpse ofBeauty--The Head Master--Religion--My Standing in School--Self-esteem--An Instinct for Literature--Private Reading--Heine's _Buch derLieder_--A Broken Friendship

TRANSITIONAL YEARS

School Boy Fancies--Religion--Early Friends--_Daemonic Theory_--AWest Indian Friend--My Acquaintance Widens--Politics--The ReactionaryParty--The David Family--A Student Society--An Excursion to Slesvig--Temperament--The Law--Hegel--Spinoza--Love for Humanity--A ReligiousCrisis--Doubt--Personal Immortality--Renunciation

ADOLESCENCE

Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University PrizeCompetition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of ScandinavianStudents--The Paludan-Müllers--Björnstjerne Björnson--MagdaleneThoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The PoliticalSituation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--_Admissus cum laudepraecipua_--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A WalkingTour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David--Stockholm

FIRST LONG SOJOURN ABROAD

My Wish to See Paris--_Dualism in our Modern Philosophy_--AJourney--Impressions of Paris--Lessons in French--Mademoiselle Mathilde--Taine

EARLY MANHOOD

Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--MyFirst Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of ModernCoercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Tripto Germany--Johanne Louise Heiberg--Magdalene Thoresen--Rudolph Bergh--The Sisters Spang--A Foreign Element--The Woman Subject--Orla Lehmann--M. Goldschmidt--Public Opposition--A Letter from Björnstjerne Björnson--Hard Work

SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD

Hamburg--My Second Fatherland--Ernest Hello--_Le Docteur Noir_--Taine--Renan--Marcelin--Gleyre--Taine's Friendship--Renan at Home--Philarète Chasles' Reminiscences--_Le Théâtre Français_--Coquelin--Bernhardt--Beginnings of _Main Currents_--The Tuileries--JohnStuart Mill--London--Philosophical Studies--London and Paris Compared--Antonio Gallenga and His Wife--Don Juan Prim--Napoleon III--LondonTheatres--Gladstone and Disraeli in Debate--Paris on the Eve of War--First Reverses--Flight from Paris--Geneva, Switzerland--Italy--PasqualeVillari--Vinnie Ream's Friendship--Roman Fever--Henrik Ibsen'sInfluence--Scandinavians in Rome

FILOMENA

Italian Landladies--The Carnival--The Moccoli Feast--Filomena's Views

SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD _Continued_

Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with GiuseppeSaredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--GeorgesNoufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael'sLoggias--A Radiant Spring

RECOLLECTIONS OF

MY CHILDHOOD

AND YOUTH

DISCOVERING THE WORLD

First Impressions--Going to Bed--My Name--Fresh Elements--School--TheKing--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--InimicalForces--The World Widens--The Theatre--Progress--Warlike Instincts--School Adventures--Polite Accomplishments--My Relations. 

I. 

He was little and looked at the world from below. All that happened, went on over his head. Everyone looked down to him. 

But the big people possessed the enviable power of lifting him to theirown height or above it. It might so happen that suddenly, withoutpreamble, as he lay on the floor, rummaging and playing about andthinking of nothing at all, his father or a visitor would exclaim:"Would you like to see the fowls of Kjöge?" And with the same he wouldfeel two large hands placed over his ears and the arms belonging to themwould shoot straight up into the air. That was delightful. Still, therewas some disappointment mingled with it. "Can you see Kjöge now?" was aquestion he could make nothing of. What could Kjöge be? But at the otherquestion: "Do you see the fowls?" he vainly tried to see something orother. By degrees he understood that it was only a phrase, and thatthere was nothing to look for. 

It was his first experience of empty phrases, and it made an impression. 

It was just as great fun, though, when the big people said to him:"Would you like to be a fat lamb? Let us play at fat lamb. " He would beflung over the man's shoulder, like a slaughtered lamb, and hang there, or jump up and ride with his legs round the man's hips, then climbvaliantly several steps higher, get his legs round his shoulders, andbehold! be up on the giddy height! Then the man would take him round thewaist, swing him over, and after a mighty somersault in the air, hewould land unscathed on his feet upon the floor. It was a composite kindof treat, of three successive stages: first came the lofty andcomfortable seat, then the more interesting moment, with a feeling, nevertheless, of being on the verge of a fall, and then finally thejump, during which everything was upside down to him. 

But, too, he could take up attitudes down on the floor that added to hisimportance, as it were, and obliged the grown-up people to look at him. When they said: "Can you stand like the Emperor Napoleon?" he would drawhimself up, bring one foot a little forward, and cross his arms like thelittle figure on the bureau. 

He knew well enough just how he had to look, for when his stout, broad-shouldered Swedish uncle, with the big beard and large hands, havingasked his parents about the little fellow's accomplishments, placedhimself in position with his arms crossed and asked: "Who am I like?" hereplied: "You are like Napoleon's lackey. " To his surprise, but no smalldelight, this reply elicited a loud exclamation of pleasure from hismother, usually so superior and so strict, and was rewarded by her, whoseldom caressed, with a kiss. 

II. 

The trying moment of the day was when he had to go to bed. His parentswere extraordinarily prejudiced about bedtime, just when he was enjoyinghimself most. When visitors had arrived and conversation was wellstarted--none the less interesting to him because he understoodscarcely half of what was said--it was: "Now, to bed!"

But there were happy moments after he was in bed, too. When Mother camein and said prayers with him, and he lay there safely fenced in by thetall trellis-work, each bar of which, with its little outward bend inthe middle, his fingers knew so well, it was impossible to fall outthrough them. It was very pleasant, the little bed with its railing, andhe slept in it as he has never slept since. 

It was nice, too, to lie on his back in bed and watch his parentsgetting ready to go to the theatre, Father in a shining white shirt andwith his curly hair beautifully parted on one side Mother with a crêpeshawl over her silk dress, and light gloves that smelled inviting as shecame up to say goodnight and good-bye. 

III. 

I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small. That was theimpression I made on everyone. Nearly thirty years afterwards anobservant person remarked to me: "The peculiarity about your face is itsintense paleness. " Consequently I looked darker than I was; my brownhair was called black. 

Pale and thin, with thick brown hair, difficult hair. That was what thehairdresser said--Mr. [Footnote: Danish _Herre_. ] Alibert, whocalled Father Erré: "Good-morning, Erré, " "Good-bye, Erré. " And all hisassistants, though as Danish as they could be, tried to say the same. Difficult hair! "There is a little round place on his crown where thehair will stand up, if he does not wear it rather long, " said Mr. Alibert. 

I was forever hearing that I was pale and small, pale in particular. Strangers would look at me and say: "He is rather pale. " Others remarkedin joke: "He looks rather green in the face. " And so soon as they begantalking about me the word "thin" would be uttered. 

I liked my name. My mother and my aunts said it in such a kindly way. And the name was noteworthy because it was so difficult to pronounce. Noboy or girl smaller than I could pronounce it properly; they all said_Gayrok_. 

I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry. Mymother was alone and had no help. When the midwife came I had arrivedalready. I was so feeble that the first few years great care had to betaken of me to keep me alive. I was well made enough, but not strong, and this was the source of many vexations to me during those years whena boy's one desire and one ambition is to be strong. 

I was not clumsy, very agile if anything; I learnt to be a good highjumper, to climb and run well, was no contemptible wrestler, and bydegrees became an expert fighter. But I was not muscularly strong, andnever could be compared with those who were so. 

IV. 

The world, meanwhile, was so new, and still such an unknown country. About that time I was making the discovery of fresh elements. 

I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thingoften satisfied one's feeling of honour. 

"Are you afraid of the water?" asked my brisk uncle from Fünen one day. I did not know exactly what there was to be afraid of, but answeredunhesitatingly: "No. " I was five years old; it was Summer, consequentlyrainy and windy. 

I undressed in the bathing establishment; the old sailor fastened a corkbelt round my waist. It was odiously wet, as another boy had just takenit off, and it made me shiver. Uncle took hold of me round the waist, tossed me out into the water, and taught me to take care of myself. Afterwards I learnt to swim properly with the help of a long polefastened to the cork belt and held by the bathing-man, but myfamiliarity with the salt element dated from the day I was flung outinto it like a little parcel. Without by any means distinguishing myselfin swimming, any more than in any other athletic exercise, I became avery fair swimmer, and developed a fondness for the water and forbathing which has made me very loth, all my life, to miss my bath asingle day. 

There was another element that I became acquainted with about the sametime, and which was far more terrifying than the water. I had never seenit uncontrolled: fire. 

One evening, when I was asleep in the nursery, I was awaked by my motherand her brother, my French uncle. The latter said loudly: "We must takethe children out of bed. "

I had never been awaked in the night before. I opened my eyes and wasthrilled by a terror, the memory of which has never been effaced. Theroom was brightly illuminated without any candle having been lighted, and when I turned my head I saw a huge blaze shoot up outside thewindow. Flames crackled and sparks flew. It was a world of fire. It wasa neighbouring school that was burning. Uncle Jacob put his hand undermy "night gown, " a long article of clothing with a narrow cotton beltround the waist, and said laughing: "Do you have palpitations of theheart when you are afraid?" I had never heard of palpitations of theheart before. I felt about with my hand and for the first time found myheart, which really was beating furiously. Small though I was, I askedthe date and was told that it was the 25th of November; the fright I hadhad was so great that I never forgot this date, which became for me theobject of a superstitious dread, and when it drew near the followingyear, I was convinced that it would bring me fresh misfortune. This wasin so far the case that next year, at exactly the same time, I fell illand was obliged to spend some months in bed. 

V. 

I was too delicate to be sent to school at five years old, like otherboys. My doctor uncle said it was not to be thought of. Since, however, I could not grow up altogether in ignorance, it was decided that Ishould have a tutor of my own. 

So a tutor was engaged who quickly won my unreserved affection and mademe very happy. The tutor came every morning and taught me all I had tolearn. He was a tutor whom one could ask about anything under the sunand he would always know. First, there was the ABC. That was mastered ina few lessons. I could read before I knew how to spell. Then camewriting and arithmetic and still more things. I was soon so far advancedthat the tutor could read _Frithiof's Saga_ aloud to me in Swedishand be tolerably well understood; and, indeed, he could even take ashort German extract, and explain that I must say _ich_ and not_ish_, as seemed so natural. 

Mr. Voltelen was a poor student, and I quite understood from theconversation of my elders what a pleasure and advantage it was to him toget a cup of coffee extra and fine white bread and fresh butter with itevery day. On the stroke of half-past ten the maid brought it in on atray. Lessons were stopped, and the tutor ate and drank with a relishthat I had never seen anyone show over eating and drinking before. Thevery way in which he took his sugar--more sugar than Father or Mothertook--and dissolved it in the coffee before he poured in the cream, showed what a treat the cup of coffee was to him. 

Mr. Voltelen had a delicate chest, and sometimes the grown-up peoplesaid they were afraid he could not live. There was a report that a richbenefactor, named Nobel, had offered to send him to Italy, that he mightrecover in the warmer climate of the South. It was generous of Mr. Nobel, and Mr. Voltelen was thinking of starting. Then he caught anothercomplaint. He had beautiful, brown, curly hair. One day he stayed away;he had a bad head, he had contracted a disease in his hair from a dirtycomb at a bathing establishment. And when he came again I hardlyrecognised him. He wore a little dark wig. He had lost every hair on hishead, even his eyebrows had disappeared. His face was of a chalkypallor, and he coughed badly too. 

Why did not God protect him from consumption? And how could God find itin His heart to give him the hair disease when he was so ill already?God was strange. He was Almighty, but He did not use His might to takecare of Mr. Voltelen, who was so good and so clever, and so poor that heneeded help more than anyone else. Mr. Nobel was kinder to Mr. Voltelenthan God was. God was strange, too, in other ways; He was presenteverywhere, and yet Mother was cross and angry if you asked whether Hewas in the new moderator lamp, which burnt in the drawing-room with amuch brighter light than the two wax candles used to give. God kneweverything, which was very uncomfortable, since it was impossible tohide the least thing from Him. Strangest of all was it when onereflected that, if one knew what God thought one was going to say, onecould say something else and His omniscience would be foiled. But ofcourse one did not know what He thought would come next. The worst ofall, though, was that He left Mr. Voltelen in the lurch so. 

VI. 

Some flashes of terrestrial majesty and magnificence shone on my modestexistence. Next after God came the King. As I was walking along thestreet one day with my father, he exclaimed: "There is the King!" Ilooked at the open carriage, but saw nothing noticeable there, so fixedmy attention upon the coachman, dressed in red, and the footman's plumedhat. "The King wasn't there!" "Yes, indeed he was--he was in thecarriage. " "Was that the King? He didn't look at all remarkable--he hadno crown on. " "The King is a handsome man, " said Father. "But he onlyputs on his state clothes when he drives to the Supreme Court. "

So we went one day to see the King drive to the Supreme Court. A crowdof people were standing waiting at the Naval Church. Then came theprocession. How splendid it was! There were runners in front of thehorses, with white silk stockings and regular flower-pots on theirheads; I had never seen anything like it; and there were postillionsriding on the horses in front of the carriage. I quite forgot to lookinside the carriage and barely caught a glimpse of the King. And thatglimpse made no impression upon me. That he was Christian VIII. I didnot know; he was only "the King. "

Then one day we heard that the King was dead, and that he was to lie instate twice. These lyings in state were called by forced, unnaturalnames, _Lit de Parade_ and _Castrum doloris_; I heard them sooften that I learnt them and did not forget them. On the _Lit deParade_ the body of the King himself lay outstretched; that was toosad for a little boy. But _Castrum doloris_ was sheer delight, andit really was splendid. First you picked your way for a long time alongnarrow corridors, then high up in the black-draped hall appeared thecoffin covered with black velvet, strewn with shining, twinkling stars. And a crowd of candles all round. It was the most magnificent sight Ihad ever beheld. 

VII. 

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoyingopen-air life, with plants and animals. The country was not so far fromtown then as it is now. My paternal grandfather had a country-house alittle way beyond the North gate, with fine trees and an orchard; it wasthe property of an old man who went about in high Wellington boots andhad a regular collection of wax apples and pears--such a marvellousimitation that the first time you saw them you couldn't help taking abite out of one. Driving out to the country-house in the Summer, thecarriage would begin to lumber and rumble as soon as you passed throughthe North gate, and when you came back you had to be careful to come inbefore the gate was closed. 

We lived in the country ourselves, for that matter, out in the westernsuburb, near the Black Horse (as later during the cholera Summer), oralong the old King's Road, where there were beautiful large gardens. Inone such a huge garden I stood one Summer day by my mother's side infront of a large oblong bed with many kinds of flowers. "This bed shallbe yours, " said Mother, and happy was I. I was to rake the paths roundit myself and tend and water the plants in it. I was particularlyinterested to notice that a fresh set of flowers came out for everyseason of the year. When the asters and dahlias sprang into bloom theSummer was over. Still the garden was not the real country. The realcountry was at Inger's, my dear old nurse's. She was called my nursebecause she had looked after me when I was small. But she had not fedme, my mother had done that. 

Inger lived in a house with fields round it near High Taastrup. Therewas no railway there then, and you drove out with a pair of horses. Itwas only later that the wonderful railway was laid as far as Roskilde. So it was an unparalleled event for the children, to go by train toValby and back. Their father took them. Many people thought that it wastoo dangerous. But the children cared little for the danger. And it wentoff all right and they returned alive. 

Inger had a husband whose name was Peer. He was nice, but had not muchto say. Inger talked far more and looked after everything. They had ababy boy named Niels, but he was in the cradle and did not count. Everything at Inger and Peer's house was different from the town. Therewas a curious smell in the rooms, with their chests of drawers andbenches, not exactly disagreeable, but unforgettable. They had muchlarger dishes of curds and porridge than you saw in Copenhagen. They didnot put the porridge or the curds on plates. Inger and Peer and theirlittle visitor sat round the milk bowl or the porridge dish and puttheir spoons straight into it. But the guest had a spoon to himself. They did not drink out of separate glasses, but he had a glass tohimself. 

It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and milkwarm from the cow. Inger used to churn, and there was buttermilk todrink. It was great fun for a little Copenhagen boy to roll about in thehay and lie on the hay-waggons when they were driven home. And everytime I came home from a visit to Inger Mother would laugh at me themoment I opened my mouth, for, quite unconsciously, I talked just likeInger and the other peasants. 

VIII. 

In the wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by woodenbars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped firsticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arrangedheaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinateexpression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment ofbeing incarcerated there. 

Several times already his anxious mother has sent the housemaid to askwhether he will beg pardon yet, and he has only shaken his head. He ishungry; for he was brought up here immediately after school. But he willnot give in, for he is in the right. It is not his fault that the grown-up people cannot understand him. They do not know that what he issuffering now is nothing to what he has had to suffer. It is true thathe would not go with the nurse and his little brother into the King'sGardens. But what do Father and Mother know of the ignominy of hearingall day from the other schoolboys: "Oh! so you are fetched by thenurse!" or "Here comes your nurse to fetch you!" He is overwhelmed withshame at the thought of the other boys' scorn. She is not _his_nurse, she is his brother's. He could find his way home well enough, buthow can he explain to the other boys that his parents will not trust himwith the little one yet, and so send for them both at the same time! Nowthere shall be an end to it; he will not go to the King's Gardens withthe nurse again. 

It is the housemaid, once more, come to ask if he will not beg pardonnow. In vain. Everything has been tried with him, scolding, and even abox on the ear; but he has not been humbled. Now he stands here; he willnot give in. 

But this time his kind mother has not let the girl come empty-handed. His meal is passed through the bars and he eats it. It is so much theeasier to hold out. And some hours later he is brought down and put tobed without having apologised. 

Before I had so painfully become aware of the ignominy of going with themaid to the King's Gardens, I had been exceedingly fond of the place. What gardens they were for hide and seek, and puss in the corner! Whatsplendid alleys for playing Paradise, with Heaven and Hell! To saynothing of playing at horses! A long piece of tape was passed over andunder the shoulders of two playfellows, and you drove them with a tightrein and a whip in your hand. And if it were fun in the old days when Ionly had tape for reins, it was ever so much greater fun now that I hadhad a present from my father of splendid broad reins of striped wool, with bells, that you could hear from far enough when the pair cametearing down the wide avenues. 

I was fond of the gardens, which were large and at that time much largerthan they are now; and of the trees, which were many, at that time manymore than now. And every part of the park had its own attraction. TheHercules pavilion was mysterious; Hercules with the lion, instructiveand powerful. A pity that it had become such a disgrace to go there!

I had not known it before. One day, not so long ago, I had feltparticularly happy there. I had been able for a long time to readcorrectly in my reading-book and write on my slate. But one day Mr. Voltelen had said to me: "You ought to learn to read writing. " And fromthat moment forth my ambition was set upon reading _writing_, anidea which had never occurred to me before. When my tutor first showedme _writing_, it had looked to me much as cuneiform inscriptionsand hieroglyphics would do to ordinary grown-up people, but by degrees Imanaged to recognize the letters I was accustomed to in this theirfreer, more frivolous disguise, running into one another and with theirregularity broken up. In the first main avenue of the King's Gardens Ihad paced up and down, in my hand the thin exercise-book, folded over inthe middle, --the first book of writing I had ever seen, --and had alreadyspelt out the title, "Little Red Riding-Hood. " The story was certainlynot very long; still, it filled several of the narrow pages, and it wasexciting to spell out the subject, for it was new to me. In triumphantdelight at having conquered some difficulties and being on the verge ofconquering others, I kept stopping in front of a strange nurse-girl, showed her the book, and asked: "Can you read writing?"

Twenty-three years later I paced up and down the same avenue as a youngman, once more with a book of manuscript, that I was reading, in myhand. I was fixing my first lecture in my mind, and I repeated it overand over again to myself until I knew it almost by heart, only todiscover, to my disquiet, a few minutes later, that I had forgotten thewhole, and that was bad enough; for what I wished to say in my lecturewere things that I had very much at heart. 

The King's Garden continued to occupy its place in my life. Later on, for so many years, when Spring and Summer passed by and I was tied tothe town, and pined for trees and the scent of flowers, I used to go tothe park, cross it obliquely to the beds near the beautiful copperbeeches, by the entrance from the ramparts, where there were alwaysflowers, well cared for and sweet scented. I caressed them with my eyes, and inhaled their perfume leaning forward over the railings. 

But just now I preferred to be shut up in the wood-loft to being fetchedby the nurse from school to the Gardens. It was horrid, too, to beobliged to walk so slowly with the girl, even though no longer obligedto take hold of her skirt. How I envied the boys contemptuously calledstreet boys! They could run in and out of the courtyard, shout and makeas much noise as they liked, quarrel and fight out in the street, andmove about freely. I knew plenty of streets. If sent into the town on anerrand I should be able to find my way quite easily. 

And at last I obtained permission. Happy, happy day! I flew off like anarrow. I could not possibly have walked. And I ran home again at fullgalop. From that day forth I always ran when I had to go out alone. Yes, and I could not understand how grown-up people and other boys couldwalk. I tried a few steps to see, but impatience got the better of meand off I flew. It was fine fun to run till you positively felt thehurry you were in, because you hit your back with your heels at everystep. 

My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible tocompete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow oldpeople were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it tryingto climb stairs. 

IX. 

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether onewere good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain andFather and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, ofcourse, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, morehard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired anyterror. They were in the main protecting powers. 

The terrifying power at this first stage was supplied by the bogey-man. He came rushing suddenly out of a corner with a towel in front of hisface and said: "Bo!" and you jumped. If the towel were taken away theresoon emerged a laughing face from behind it. That at once made thebogey-man less terrible. And perhaps that was the reason Maren's threat:"Now, if you are not good, the bogey-man will come and take you, "quickly lost its effect. And yet it was out of this same bogey-man, socold-bloodedly shaken off, that at a later stage a personality with whomthere was no jesting developed, one who was not to be thrust aside inthe same way, a personality for whom you felt both fear and trembling--the Devil himself. 

But it was only later that he revealed himself to my ken. It was not hewho succeeded first to the bogey-man. It was--the police. The police wasthe strange and dreadful power from which there was no refuge for alittle boy. The police came and took him away from his parents, awayfrom the nursery and the drawing-room, and put him in prison. 

In the street the police wore a blue coat and had a large cane in hishand. Woe to the one who made the acquaintance of that cane!

My maternal grandfather was having his warehouse done up, a largewarehouse, three stories high. Through doors at the top, just under thegable in the middle, there issued a crane, and from it hung down atremendously thick rope at the end of which was a strong iron hook. Bymeans of it the large barrels of sky-blue indigo, which were brought onwaggons, were hoisted. Inside the warehouse the ropes passed throughevery storey, through holes in the floors. If you pulled from the insideat the one or the other of the ropes, the rope outside with the ironcrook went up or down. 

In the warehouse you found Jens; he was a big, strong, taciturn, majestic man with a red nose and a little pipe in his mouth, and hisfingers were always blue from the indigo. If you had made sure of Jens'good-will, you could play in the warehouse for hours at a time, roll theempty barrels about, and--which was the greatest treat of all--pull theropes. This last was a delight that kept all one's faculties at extremetension. The marvellous thing about it was that you yourself stoodinside the house and pulled, and yet at the same time you could watchthrough the open doors in the wall how the rope outside went up or down. How it came about was an enigma. But you had the refreshingconsciousness of having accomplished something--saw the results of yourefforts before your eyes. 

Nor could I resist the temptation of pulling the ropes when Jens was outand the warehouse empty. My little brother had whooping cough, so Icould not live at home, but had to be at my grandfather's. One day Jenssurprised me and pretty angry he was. "A nice little boy you are! If youpull the rope at a wrong time you will cut the expensive rope through, and it cost 90 Rigsdaler! What do you think your grandfather willsay?" [Footnote: A Rigsdaler was worth about two shillings andthreepence, English money. It is a coin that has been out of use about40 years. ]

It was, of course, very alarming to think that I might destroy such avaluable thing. Not that I had any definite ideas of money and numbers. I was well up in the multiplication table and was constantly wrestlingwith large numbers, but they did not correspond to any actual conceptionin my mind. When I reckoned up what one number of several digits came tomultiplied by another of much about the same value, I had not the leastidea whether Father or Grandfather had so many Rigsdaler, or less, ormore. There was only one of the uncles who took an interest in my giftfor multiplication, and that was my stout, rich uncle with the crookedmouth, of whom it was said that he owned a million, and who was alwaysthinking of figures. He was hardly at the door of Mother's drawing-roombefore he called out: "If you are a sharp boy and can tell me what27, 374 times 580, 208 are, you shall have four skilling;" and quicklyslate and pencil appeared and the sum was finished in a moment and thefour skilling pocketed. [Footnote: Four skilling would be a sum equal to1-1/2d. English money. ]

I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values. All the same, it would be a terrible thing to destroy such a value as 90Rigsdaler seemed to be. But might it not be that Jens only said so? Hesurely could not see from the rope whether it had been pulled or not. 

So I did it again, and one day when Jens began questioning me sternlycould not deny my guilt. "I saw it, " said Jens; "the rope is nearly cutin two, and now you will catch it, now the policeman will come and fetchyou. "

For weeks after that I did not have one easy hour. Wherever I went, orwhatever I did, the fear of the police followed me. I dared not speak toanyone of what I had done and of what was awaiting me. I was too muchashamed, and I noticed, too, that my parents knew nothing. But if a dooropened suddenly I would look anxiously at the incomer. When I waswalking with the nurse and my little brother I looked all round on everyside, and frequently peeped behind me, to see whether the police wereafter me. Even when I lay in my bed, shut in on all four sides by itstrellis-work, the dread of the police was upon me still. 

There was only one person to whom I dared mention it, and that was Jens. When a few weeks had gone by I tried to get an answer out of him. Then Iperceived that Jens did not even know what I was talking about. Jens hadevidently forgotten all about it. Jens had been making fun of me. If myrelief was immense, my indignation was no less. So much torture fornothing at all! Older people, who had noticed how the word "police" wasto me an epitome of all that was terrible, sometimes made use of it asan explanation of things that they thought were above my comprehension. 

When I was six years old I heard the word "war" for the first time. Idid not know what it was, and asked. "It means, " said one of my aunts, "that the Germans have put police in Schleswig and forbidden the Danesto go there, and that they will beat them if they stay there. " That Icould understand, but afterwards I heard them talking about soldiers. "Are there soldiers as well?" I asked. "Police and soldiers, " was theanswer. But that confused me altogether, for the two things belonged inmy mind to wholly different categories. Soldiers were beautiful, gay-coloured men with shakos, who kept guard and marched in step to thesound of drums and fifes and music, till you longed to go with them. That was why soldiers were copied in tin and you got them on yourbirthday in boxes. But police went by themselves, without music, withoutbeautiful colours on their uniforms, looked stern and threatening, andhad a stick in their hands. Nobody dreamt of copying them in tin. I wasvery much annoyed to find out, as I soon did, that I had been misled bythe explanation and that it was a question of soldiers only. 

Not a month had passed before I began to follow eagerly, when the grown-up people read aloud from the farthing newspaper sheets about thebattles at Bov, Nybböl, etc. The Danes always won. At bottom, war was acheerful thing. 

Then one day an unexpected and overwhelming thing happened. Mother wassitting with her work on the little raised platform in the drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little compartments, inwhich, under the loose mahogany lid, there lay so many beautiful andwonderful things--rings and lovely earrings, with pearls in them--whenthe door to the kitchen opened and the maid came in. "Has Madame heard?The _Christian VIII_. Has been blown up at Eckernförde and the_Gefion_ is taken. "

"Can it be possible?" said Mother. And she leaned over the sewing-tableand burst into tears, positively sobbed. It impressed me as nothing hadever done before. I had never seen Mother cry. Grown-up people did notcry. I did not even know that they could. And now Mother was crying tillthe tears streamed down her face. I did not know what either the_Christian VIII_. Or the _Gefion_ were, and it was only nowthat the maid explained to me that they were ships. But I understoodthat a great misfortune had happened, and soon, too, how people wereblown up with gunpowder, and what a good thing it was that one of ouracquaintances, an active young man who was liked by everyone and alwaysgot on well, had escaped with a whole skin, and had reached Copenhagenin civilian's dress. 

X. 

About this time it dawned upon me in a measure what birth and deathwere. Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwardsthere was one child more in the house. One day, when I was sitting onthe sofa between Grandmamma and Grandpapa at their dining-table inKlareboderne, having dinner with a fairly large company, the door at theback of the room just opposite to me opened. My father stood in thedoorway, and, without a good-morning, said: "You have got a littlebrother"--and there really was a little one in a cradle when I wenthome. 

Death I had hitherto been chiefly acquainted with from a large, handsomepainting on Grandfather's wall, the death of the King not havingaffected me. The picture represented a garden in which Aunt Rosette saton a white-painted bench, while in front of her stood Uncle Edward withcurly hair and a blouse on, holding out a flower to her. But UncleEdward was dead, had died when he was a little boy, and as he had beensuch a very good boy, everyone was very sorry that they were not goingto see him again. And now they were always talking about death. So andso many dead, so and so many wounded! And all the trouble was caused bythe Enemy. 

XI. 

There were other inimical forces, too, besides the police and the Enemy, more uncanny and less palpable forces. When I dragged behind thenursemaid who held my younger brother by the hand, sometimes I heard ashout behind me, and if I turned round would see a grinning boy, makingfaces and shaking his fist at me. For a long time I took no particularnotice, but as time went on I heard the shout oftener and asked the maidwhat it meant. "Oh, nothing!" she replied. But on my repeatedly askingshe simply said: "It is a bad word. "

But one day, when I had heard the shout again, I made up my mind that Iwould know, and when I came home asked my mother: "What does it mean?""Jew!" said Mother. "Jews are people. " "Nasty people?" "Yes, " saidMother, smiling, "sometimes very ugly people, but not always. " "Could Isee a Jew?" "Yes, very easily, " said Mother, lifting me up quickly infront of the large oval mirror above the sofa. 

I uttered a shriek, so that Mother hurriedly put me down again, and myhorror was such that she regretted not having prepared me. Later on sheoccasionally spoke about it. 

XII. 

Other inimical forces in the world cropped up by degrees. When you hadbeen put to bed early the maids often sat down at the nursery table, andtalked in an undertone until far on into the evening. And then theywould tell stories that were enough to make your hair stand on end. Theytalked of ghosts that went about dressed in white, quite noiselessly, orrattling their chains through the rooms of houses, appeared to peoplelying in bed, frightened guilty persons; of figures that stepped out oftheir picture-frames and moved across the floor; of the horror ofspending a night in the dark in a church--no one dared do that; of whatdreadful places churchyards were, how the dead in long grave-clothesrose up from their graves at night and frightened the life out ofpeople, while the Devil himself ran about the churchyard in the shape ofa black cat. In fact, you could never be sure, when you saw a black cattowards evening, that the Devil was not inside it. And as easily aswinking the Devil could transform himself into a man and come up behindthe person he had a grudge against. 

It was a terrifying excitement to lie awake and listen to all this. Andthere was no doubt about it. Both Maren and Karoline had seen things ofthe sort themselves and could produce witnesses by the score. It causeda revolution in my consciousness. I learnt to know the realm of Darknessand the Prince of Darkness. For a time I hardly ventured to pass througha dark room. I dared not sit at my book with an open door behind me. Whomight not step noiselessly in! And if there were a mirror on the wall infront of me I would tremble with fear lest I might see the Devil, standing with gleaming eyes at the back of my chair. 

When at length the impression made upon me by all these ghost and devilstories passed away, I retained a strong repugnance to all darknessterror, and to all who take advantage of the defenceless fear of theignorant for the powers of darkness. 

XIII. 

The world was widening out. It was not only home and the houses of mydifferent grandparents, and the clan of my uncles, aunts, and cousins;it grew larger. 

I realized this at the homecoming of the troops. They came home twice. The impression they produced the first time was certainly a great, though not a deep one. It was purely external, and indistinctly mergedtogether: garlands on the houses and across the streets, the densethrong of people, the flower-decked soldiers, marching in step to themusic under a constant shower of flowers from every window, and lookingup smiling. The second time, long afterwards, I took things in in muchgreater detail. The wounded, who went in front and were greeted with asort of tenderness; the officers on horseback, saluting with theirswords, on which were piled wreath over wreath; the bearded soldiers, with tiny wreaths round their bayonets, while big boys carried theirrifles for them. And all the time the music of _Den tapreLandsoldat_, when not the turn of _Danmark dejligst_ or _Viftstolt!_ [Footnote: Three favourite Danish tunes: "The Brave Soldier, ""Fairest Denmark, " and "Proudly Wave. " ]

But the second time I was not wholly absorbed by the sight, for I wastormented by remorse. My aunt had presented me the day before with threelittle wreaths to throw at the soldiers; the one I was to keep myself, and I was to give each of my two small brothers one of the others; I hadpromised faithfully to do so. And I had kept them all three, intendingto throw them all myself. I knew it was wrong and deceitful; I wassuffering for it, but the delight of throwing all the wreaths myself wastoo great. I flung them down. A soldier caught one on his bayonet; theothers fell to the ground. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself, and havenever forgotten my shame. 

XIV. 

I knew that the theatre (where I had never been) was the place whereMother and Father enjoyed themselves most. They often talked of it, andwere most delighted if the actors had "acted well, " words which conveyedno meaning to me. 

Children were not at that time debarred from the Royal Theatre, and Ihad no more ardent wish than to get inside. I was still a very smallchild when one day they took me with them in the carriage in whichFather and Mother and Aunt were driving to the theatre. I had my seatwith the others in the pit, and sat speechless with admiration when thecurtain went up. The play was called _Adventures on a WalkingTour_. I could not understand anything. Men came on the stage andtalked together. One crept forward under a bush and sang. I could notgrasp the meaning of it, and when I asked I was only told to be quiet. But my emotion was so great that I began to feel ill, and had to becarried out. Out in the square I was sick and had to be taken home. Unfortunately for me, that was precisely what happened the second time, when, in response to my importunity, another try was made. Myexcitement, my delight, my attention to the unintelligible were toooverwhelming. I nearly fainted, and at the close of the first act had toleave the theatre. After that, it was a very long time before I wasregarded as old enough to stand the excitement. 

Once, though, I was allowed to go to see a comedy. Mr. Voltelen gave mea ticket for some students' theatricals at the Court Theatre, in whichhe himself was going to appear. The piece was called _A Spendthrift_, and I saw it without suffering for it. There was a young, flighty man init who used to throw gold coins out of the window, and there was an uglyold hag, and a young, beautiful girl as well. I sat and kept a sharplookout for when my master should come on, but I was disappointed; therewas no Mr. Voltelen to be seen. 

Next day, when I thanked him for the entertainment, I added: "But youmade game of me. You were not in it at all. " "What? I was not in it? Didyou not see the old hag? That was I. Didn't you see the girl? That wasI. " It was incomprehensible to me that anyone could disguise himself so. Mr. Voltelen must most certainly have "acted well. " But yearsafterwards, I could still not understand how one judged of this. Sinceplays affected me exactly like real life, I was, of course, not in aposition to single out the share the actors took. 

XV. 

The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It wasimpossible to have boxes enough of them. You could set them out incompanies and battalions; they opened their ranks to attack, stormed, were wounded, and fell. Sometimes they lay down fatigued and slept onthe field of battle. But a new box that came one day made the old oneslose all value for me. For the soldiers in the new box were propersoldiers, with chests and backs, round to the touch, heavy to hold. Incomparison with them, the older ones, profile soldiers, so small thatyou could only look at them sideways, sank into utter insignificance. Astep had been taken from the abstract to the concrete. It was no longerany pleasure to me to play with the smaller soldiers. I said: "Theyamused me last year, when I was little. " There was a similar change, asimilar picture of historic progress, when the hobby-horse on which Ihad spent so many happy hours, and on which I had ridden through roomsand passages, was put in the corner in favour of the new rocking-horsewhich, long coveted and desired, was carried in through the door, andstood in the room, rocking slightly, as though ready for the boldestride, the moment its rider flung himself into the saddle. 

I mounted it and oh, happiness! I began to ride, and rode on withpassionate delight till I nearly went over the horse's head. "When I wasa little boy the hobby-horse amused me, but it does not now. " Every timeI climbed a fresh rung of the ladder, no matter how low an one, the samefeeling possessed me, and the same train of thought. Mother often jokedabout it, up to the time when I was a full grown man. If I quicklyoutgrew my fancies, if I had quite done with anything or anybody thathad absorbed me a little while before, she would say, with a smile:"Last year, when I was a little boy, the hobby-horse amused me. "

Still, progress was not always smooth. When I was small I had prettyblouses, one especially, grey, with brown worsted lace upon it, that Iwas fond of wearing; now I had plain, flat blouses with a leather beltround the waist. Later on, I was ambitious to have a jacket, like bigboys, and when this wish had been gratified there awoke in me, ashappens in life, a more lofty ambition still, that to wear a frock coat. In the fulness of time an old frock coat of my father's was altered tofit me. I looked thin and lank in it, but the dress was honourable. Thenit occurred to me that everybody would see I was wearing a frock coatfor the first time. I did not dare to go out into the streets with iton, but went out of my way round the ramparts for fear of meetinganyone. 

When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about myappearance. I did not remember that my portrait had been drawn severaltimes. But when I was nine years old, Aunt Sarah--at that time everybodywas either uncle or aunt--determined that we brothers should have ourportraits taken in daguerreotype for Father's birthday. The event made aprofound impression, because I had to stand perfectly still while thepicture was being taken, and because the daguerreotypist, a German, whose name was Schätzig, rolled his _r_s and hissed his _s_s. The whole affair was a great secret, which was not to be betrayed. Thepresent was to be a surprise, and I was compelled to promise perfectsilence. I kept my promise for one day. But next day, at the dinner-table, I accidentally burst out: "Now! quite shtill! _as the mansaid_. " "What man?" "Ah! that was the secret!"

The visit to Schätzig in itself I had reason to remember a long time. Some one or another had said that I had a slender neck, and that it waspretty. Just as we were going in, my aunt said: "You will catch coldinside, " and in spite of my protests tied a little silk handkerchiefround my neck. That handkerchief spoilt all my pleasure in beingimmortalised. And it is round my neck on the old picture to this day. 

XVI. 

The tin soldiers had called all my warlike instincts into being. Afterthe rocking-horse, more and more military appurtenances followed. Ashining helmet to buckle firmly under the chin, in which one lookedquite imposing; a cuirass of real metal like the Horseguards', and ashort rapier in a leather scabbard, which went by the foreign name ofHirschfänger, and was a very awe-inspiring weapon in the eyes of one'ssmall brothers, when they were mercilessly massacred with it. Sitting onthe rocking-horse, arrayed in all this splendour, wild dreams ofmilitary greatness filled the soul, dreams which grew wilder and moreambitious from year to year until between the age of 8 and 9 theyreceived a fresh and unwholesome stimulus from Ingemann's novels. [Footnote: B. S. Ingemann (1789-1862), a Danish writer celebrated chieflyas the author of many historical novels, now only read by very youngchildren. ]

On horseback, at the head of a chosen band, fighting like the lostagainst unnumbered odds! Rock goes the rocking-horse, violently up anddown. The enemy wavers, he begins to give way. The rocking-horse ispulled up. A sign with the Hirschfänger to the herd of common troops. The enemy is beaten and flies, the next thing is to pursue him. Therocking-horse is set once more in furious motion. Complete victory. Procession into the capital; shouts of jubilation and wreaths offlowers, for the victor and his men. 

XVII. 

Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, Ihad good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken toschool by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, twoyears my junior. The start from home was pleasant enough. Lunch boxes oftin with the Danish greeting after meals in gold letters upon them, stood open on the table. Mother, at one end of the table, spread eachchild six pieces of bread and butter, which were then placed together, two and two, white bread on brown bread, a mixture which, was uncommonlynice. The box would take exactly so many. Then it was put in the school-bag with the books. And with bag on back you went to school, always thesame way. But those were days when the journey was much impeded. Everyminute you met boys who called you names and tried to hit the littleone, and you had to fight at every street corner you turned. And thosewere days when, even in the school itself, despite the humanity of theage (not since attained to), terms of abuse, buffets and choice insultswere one's daily bread, and I can see myself now, as I sprang up one dayin a fight with a much bigger boy and bit him in the neck, till a masterwas obliged to get me away from him, and the other had to have his neckbathed under the pump. 

I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself. There was in theclass one big, stout, squarely built, inexpressibly good-natured boy, for whom no one was a match in fighting. He was from Lolland, and hisname was Ludvig; he was not particularly bright, but robust and asstrong as a giant. Then one day there arrived at the school a WestIndian of the name of Muddie, dark of hue, with curly hair, as strongand slim as a savage, and with all the finesse and feints which he hadat his command, irresistible, whether wrestling or when fighting withhis fists. He beat all the strongest boys in the school. Only Ludvig andhe had not challenged each other. But the boys were very anxious to seea bout between the two, and a wrestling match between them was arrangedfor a free quarter of an hour. For the boys, who were all judges, it wasa fine sight to see two such fighters wrestle, especially when theLollander flung himself down on the other and the West Indian struggledvainly, writhing like a very snake to twist himself out of his grasp. 

One day two new boys came to school, two brothers; the elder, Adam, wassmall and sallow, extraordinarily withered, looking like a cripple, without, however, being one; the somewhat younger brother, Sofus, wassplendidly made and amazed us in the very first lesson in which the newarrivals took part--a gymnastic class--by his unusual agility inswarming and walking up the sloping bar. He seemed to be as strong as hewas dexterous, and in a little boy with a reverence for those who werestrong, he naturally aroused positive enthusiasm. This was evenaugmented next day, when a big, malicious boy, who had scoffed at Adamfor being puny, was, in a trice, so well thrashed by Sofus that he lostboth his breath and his courage. 

Sofus, the new arrival, and I, who had achieved fighting exploits fromthe rocking-horse only, were henceforth, for some time, inseparablefriends. It was one of the usual friendships between little boys, inwhich the one admires and the other allows himself to be worshipped. Theadmirer in this case could only feed his feelings by presenting theother with the most cherished thing he possessed. This most cherishedthing happened to be some figures cut out in gold paper, from France, representing every possible object and personage, from ships with mastsand sails, to knights and ladies. I had collected them for a long timeand preserved them, piece by piece, by gumming them into a book whichwas the pride of my existence. I gave the book, without the slightesthesitation, to Sofus, who accepted it without caring for it in theleast. 

And then by reason of the exaggerated admiration of which he was theobject, Sofus, who hitherto had been so straightforward, began to growcapricious. It was a settled rule that he and I went home from schooltogether. But one day a difficulty cropped up; Sofus had promisedValdemar, a horrid boy, who cheated at lessons, to go home with him. Andnext day something else prevented him. But when, suddenly having learntto know all the pangs of neglect and despised affection, I met him thethird day, after having waited vainly for him, crossing Our Lady'sSquare with Valdemar, in my anger I seized my quondam friend roughly bythe arm, my face distorted with rage, and burst out: "You are a rascal!"then rushed off, and never addressed him again. It was a very ill-advised thing to do, in fact, the very most foolish thing I could havedone. But I was too passionate to behave sensibly. Valdemar spread theaccount of my conduct all through the class, and next day, in ourquarter of an hour's playtime, I heard on every side from the laughingboys: "You are a rascal! You are a rascal!"

XVIII. 

The world was widening out. The instruction I received grew more varied. There were a great many lessons out of school. From my drawing mistress, a pleasant girl, who could draw Fingal in a helmet in charcoal, I learntto see how things looked in comparison with one another, how they hidone another and revealed themselves, in perspective; from my musicmistress, my kind aunt, to recognise the notes and keys, and to play, first short pieces, then sonatas, alone, then as duets. But alas!Neither in the arts of sight nor hearing did I ever prove myself morethan mediocre. I never attained, either in drawing or piano-playing, tomore than a soulless accuracy. And I hardly showed much greater aptitudewhen, on bright Sunday mornings, which invited not at all to thedelights of dancing, with many another tiny lad and lass I wasmarshalled up to dance in the dancing saloon of Mr. Hoppe, the royaldancer, and learnt to take up the first to the fifth positions and swingthe girls round in the polka mazurka. I became an ardent, but never aspecially good, dancer. 

XIX. 

The world was widening out. Father brought from Paris a marvellous game, called Fortuna, with bells over pockets in the wood, and balls whichwere pushed with cues. Father had travelled from Paris with it five daysand six nights. It was inexpressibly fascinating; no one else inCopenhagen had a game like it. And next year, when Father came home fromParis again, he brought a large, flat, polished box, in which there werea dozen different games, French games with balls, and battledores andshuttlecocks, games which grown-up people liked playing, too; and therewere carriages which went round and round by clockwork, and a tumblerwho turned somersaults backwards down a flight of steps as soon as hewas placed on the top step. Those were things that the people in Francecould do. 

The world was widening out more and more. Relations often came over fromGöteborg. They spoke Swedish, but if you paid great attention you couldunderstand quite well what they said. They spoke the language of_Frithiof's Saga_, but pronounced it differently from Mr. Voltelen. And there came a young French count whose relations my father's brotherhad known; he had come as a sailor on a French man-o'-war, and he cameand stayed to dinner and sang the Marseillaise. It was from him that Iheard the song for the first time. He was only fifteen, and very good-looking, and dressed like an ordinary sailor, although he was a count. 

And then there were my two uncles, Uncle Jacob and Uncle Julius--mymother's brother Jacob and my father's brother Julius, who had bothbecome Frenchmen long ago and lived in Paris. Uncle Jacob often came fora few weeks or more at a time. He was small and broad-shouldered andgood-looking. Everybody was fond of Uncle Jacob; all the ladies wantedto be asked to the house when Uncle Jacob came. He had a wife and fourchildren in Paris. But I had pieced together from the conversation ofthe grown-up people that Aunt Victorine was his wife and yet not hiswife. Grandmother would have nothing to do with her. And Uncle Jacob hadgone all the way to the Pope in Rome and asked for her to remain hiswife. But the Pope had said No. Why? Because Aunt Victorine had hadanother husband before, who had been cruel to her and beaten her, andthe man came sometimes, when Uncle was away, and took her furniture awayfrom her. It was incomprehensible that he should be allowed to, and thatthe Pope would do nothing to prevent it, for after all she was a Catholic. 

Uncle Jacob had a peculiar expression about his mouth when he smiled. There was a certain charm about everything he said and did, but hissmile was sad. He had acted thoughtlessly, they said, and was not happy. One morning, while he was visiting Father and Mother and was lyingasleep in the big room, there was a great commotion in the house; amessenger was sent for the doctor and the word _morphia_ wasspoken. He was ill, but was very soon well again. When he asked hissister next day: "What has become of my case of pistols?" she repliedwith a grave face: "I have taken it and I shall keep it. "

I had not thought as a boy that I should ever see Uncle Jacob's wife andchildren. And yet it so happened that I did. Many years afterwards, whenI was a young man and went to Paris, after my uncle's death, I soughtout Victorine and her children. I wished to bring her personally themonthly allowance that her relatives used to send her from Denmark. Ifound her prematurely old, humbled by poverty, worn out by privation. How was it possible that she should be so badly off? Did she not receivethe help that was sent from Copenhagen every month to uncle's bestfriend, M. Fontane, in the Rue Vivienne? Alas, no! M. Fontane gave her alittle assistance once in a while, and at other times sent her and herchildren away with hard words. 

It turned out that M. Fontane had swindled her, and had himself kept themoney that had been sent for years to the widow of his best friend. Hewas a tall, handsome man, with a large business. No one would havebelieved that a scoundrel could have looked as he did. He was eventuallycompelled to make the money good. And when the cousin from Denmark rangafter that at his French relatives' door, he was immediately hung round, like a Christmas tree, with little boys and one small girl, who jumpedup and wound their arms round his neck, and would not let him go. 

BOYHOOD'S YEARS

Our House--Its Inmates--My Paternal Grandfather--My MaternalGrandfather--School and Home--Farum--My Instructors--A Foretaste of Life--Contempt for the Masters--My Mother--The Mystery of Life--My FirstGlimpse of Beauty--The Head Master--Religion--My Standing in School--Self-esteem--An Instinct for Literature--Private Reading--Heine's_Buch der Lieder_--A Broken Friendship. 

I. 

The house belonged to my father's father, and had been in his possessionsome twenty years. My parents lived on the second floor. It was situatedin the busy part of the town, right in the heart of Copenhagen. On thefirst floor lived a West Indian gentleman who spoke Danish with aforeign accent; sometimes there came to see him a Danish man of Frenchdescent, Mr. Lafontaine, who, it was said, was so strong that he couldtake two rifles and bayonets and hold them out horizontally withoutbending his arm. I never saw Mr. Lafontaine, much less his marvellousfeat of strength, but when I went down the stairs I used to stare hard atthe door behind which these wonderful doings went on. 

In the basement lived Niels, manservant to the family, who, besides hisdomestic occupations, found time to develop a talent for business. Inall secrecy he carried on a commerce, very considerable under thecircumstances, in common watches and in mead, two kinds of wares that insooth had no connection with each other. The watches had no particularattraction for a little boy, but the mead, which was kept in jars, on ashelf, appealed to me doubly. It was the beverage the old Northmen hadloved so much that the dead drank it in Valhalla. It was astonishingthat it could still be had. How nice it must be! I was allowed to tasteit and it surpassed all my expectations. Sweeter than sugar! Moredelicious than anything else on earth that I had tasted! But if youdrank more than a very small glass of it, you felt sick. 

And I profoundly admired the dead warriors for having been able to tossoff mead from large drinking-horns and eat fat pork with it. What achoice! And they never had stomach-ache!

II. 

On the ground floor was the shop, which occupied the entire breadth andnearly the entire depth of the house, a silk and cloth business, large, according to the ideas of the time, which was managed by my father andgrandfather together until my eleventh year, when Father began to dealwholesale on his own account. It was nice in the shop, because when youwent down the assistants would take you round the waist and lift youover to the other side of the semi-circular counter which divided themfrom the customers. The assistants were pleasant, dignified gentlemen, of fine appearance and behaviour, friendly without woundingcondescension. 

Between my fifth and sixth years some alterations were done at the shop, which was consequently closed to me for a long time. When it was oncemore accessible I stood amazed at the change. A long, glass-coveredgallery had been added, in which the wares lay stored on new shelves. The extension of the premises was by no means inconsiderable, andsimultaneously an extension had been made in the staff. Among the newarrivals was an apprentice named Gerhard, who was as tall as a grownman, but must have been very young, for he talked to me, a six-year-oldchild, like a companion. He was very nice-looking, and knew it. "Youdon't want harness when you have good hips, " he would say, pointing tohis mightily projecting loins. This remark made a great impression uponme, because it was the first time I had heard anyone praise his ownappearance. I knew that one ought not to praise one's self and thatself-praise was no recommendation. So I was astonished to find thatself-praise in Gerhard's mouth was not objectionable; in fact, itactually suited him. Gerhard often talked of what a pleasure it was togo out in the evenings and enjoy one's self--what the devil did itmatter what old people said?--and listen to women singing--amusementswhich his hearer could not manage to picture very clearly to himself. 

It soon began to be said that Gerhard was not turning out well. Themanner in which he procured the money for his pleasures resulted, as Ilearnt long afterwards, in his sudden dismissal. But he had made someslight impression on my boyish fancy--given me a vague idea of aheedless life of enjoyment, and of youthful defiance. 

III. 

On the landing which led from the shop to the stockroom behind, mygrandfather took up his position. He looked very handsome up there, withhis curly white hair. Thence, like a general, he looked down oneverything--on the customers, the assistants, the apprentices, bothbefore and behind him. If some specially esteemed lady customer cameinto the shop, he hurriedly left his exalted position to give advice. Ifthe shopman's explanations failed to satisfy her, he put things right. He was at the zenith of his strength, vigour, and apparently of hisglory. 

The glory vanished, because from the start he had worked his way upwithout capital. The Hamburg firm that financed the business lent moneyat too high a rate of interest and on too hard conditions for it tocontinue to support two families. 

But when later on my grandfather had his time at his own disposal, hetook up the intellectual interests which in his working years he had hadto repress. In his old age, for instance, he taught himself Italian, andhis visitors would find him, with Tasso's _Gerusalemme liberata_ infront of him, looking out in a dictionary every word that presented anydifficulty to him, and of such there were many. 

The old man was an ardent Buonapartist, and, strangely enough, an evenmore ardent admirer of the Third Napoleon than of the First, because heregarded him as shrewder, and was convinced that he would bequeath theEmpire to his son. But he and I came into collision on this point fromthe time I was fourteen years of age. For I was of course a Republican, and detested Napoleon III. For his breach of the Constitution, and usedto write secretly in impossible French, and in a still more impossiblemetre (which was intended to represent hexameters and pentameters)verses against the tyrant. An ode to the French language began:

 "Ah! quelle langue magnifique, si belle, si riche, si sonore, Langue qu'un despote cruel met aux liens et aux fers!"

On the subject of Napoleon III. Grandfather and grandson could notpossibly agree. But this was the only subject on which we ever had anydispute. 

IV. 

My maternal grandfather was quite different, entirely devoid ofimpetuosity, even-tempered, amiable, very handsome. He too had workedhis way up from straightened circumstances; in fact, it was only when hewas getting on for twenty that he had taught himself to read and write, well-informed though he was at the time I write of. He had once beenapprentice to the widow of Möller the dyer, when Oehlenschläger and theOersteds used to dine at the house. After the patriarchal fashion of theday, he had sat daily at the same table as these great, much-admiredmen, and he often told how he had clapped his hands till they almostbled at Oehlenschläger's plays, in the years when, by reason ofBaggesen's attack, opinions about them at the theatre were divided. 

My great-grandfather, the father of my mother's stepmother, who worehigh boots with a little tassel in front, belonged to an even oldergeneration. He used to say: "If I could only live to see a Danish man-o'-war close with an English ship and sink it, I should be happy; theEnglish are the most disgraceful pack of robbers in the world. " He wasso old that he had still a vivid recollection of the battle in theroadstead and of the bombardment of Copenhagen. 

V. 

School and Home were two different worlds, and it often struck me that Iled a double life. Six hours a day I lived under school discipline inactive intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or withrelatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody atschool. 

On Oct. 1st, 1849, I was taken to school, led in through the sober-looking doorway, and up into a classroom, where I was received by akindly man, the arithmetic master, who made me feel at my ease. Inoticed at once that when the master asked a boy anything which anotherknew, this other had a right to publish his knowledge by holding up afinger--a right of which I myself made an excessive use in the firstlessons, until I perceived the sense of not trying, in season and out ofseason, to attract attention to my knowledge or superiority, and kept myhands on the table in front of me. 

VI. 

Suddenly, with surprising vividness, a little incident of my childhoodrises up before me. I was ten years old. I had been ill in the Winterand my parents had boarded me out in the country for the Summerholidays; all the love of adventure in me surged up. At the Straw Marketa fat, greasy, grinning peasant promised to take me in his cart as faras the little town of Farum, where I was to stay with the schoolmaster. He charged two dalers, and got them. Any sum, of course, was the same tome. I was allowed to drive the brown horses, that is to say, to hold thereins, and I was in high glee. Where Farum was, I did not know and didnot care, but it was a new world. Until now I, who was a town child, hadseen nothing of the country except my nurse's house and land atGlostrup, --but what lay in front of me was a village, a schoolhouse, alarge farm, in short an adventure in grand style. 

I had my shirts and blouses and stockings in a portmanteau, and amongstthem a magnificent garment, never yet worn, a blue cloth jacket, and awhite waistcoat belonging to it, with gold buttons, which my mother hadgiven me permission to wear on Sundays. For days, I always wore blouses, so the jacket implied a great step forward. I was eager to wear it, andregretted profoundly that it was still only Monday. 

Half-way there, the peasant pulled up. He explained to me that he couldnot very well drive me any farther, so must put me down; he was notgoing to Farum himself at all. But a peat cart was coming along the roadyonder, the driver of which was going to Farum, and he transferred me, poor defenceless child as I was, to the other conveyance. He had had mymoney; I had nothing to give the second man, and sadly I exchanged thequick trot of the brown horses for the walking pace of the jades in thepeat-cart. 

My first experience of man's perfidy. 

At last I was there. On a high, wide hill--high and wide as it seemed tome then--towered the huge schoolhouse, a miniature ChristiansborgCastle, with the schoolmaster's apartments on the right and theschoolroom on the left. And the schoolmaster came out smiling, holding apipe which was a good deal taller than I, held out his hand, and askedme to come in, gave me coffee at once, and expressed the profoundestcontempt for the peasant who had charged two rigsdaler for such atrifle, and then left me in the road. I asked at once for pen andpaper, and wrote in cipher to a comrade, with whom I had concocted thismysterious means of communication, asking him to tell my parents that Ihad been most kindly received. I felt a kind of shyness at theschoolmaster seeing what I wrote home from his house. I gave him thesheet, and begged him to fold it up, as I could not do it myself. Therewere no envelopes in those days. But what was my surprise to hear him, without further ado, read aloud with a smile, from my manufacturedcipher: "I have been most kindly received, " etc. I had never thoughtsuch keen-wittedness possible. And my respect for him and his long piperose. 

Just then there was a light knock at the door. In walked two girls, onetall and one short, the former of whom positively bewildered me. She wasfair, her sister as dark as a negro. They were ten and eight years oldrespectively, were named Henrietta and Nina K. , came from Brazil, wheretheir home was, and were to spend a few years in Denmark; came as a ruleevery day, but had now arrived specially to inspect the strange boy. After gazing for two minutes at the lovely Henrietta's fair hair andwonderful grey eyes, I disappeared from the room, and five minutesafterwards reappeared again, clothed in the dark-blue jacket and thewhite waistcoat with gold buttons, which I had been strictly forbiddento wear except on Sundays. And from that time forth, sinner that I was, I wore my Sunday clothes every blessed day, --but with what qualms ofconscience!

I can still see lovely fields, rich in corn, along the sides of which weplayed; we chased beautiful, gaudy butterflies, which we caught in ourhats and cruelly stuck on pins, and the little girls threw oats at mynew clothes, and if the oats stuck fast it meant something, sweethearts, I believe. Sweethearts--and I!

Then we were invited to the manor, a big, stately house, a veritablecastle. There lived an old, and exceedingly handsome, white-hairedChamberlain, called the General, who frequently dined with Frederik VII, and invariably brought us children goodies from dessert, lovely largepieces of barley sugar in papers with gay pictures on the outside ofshepherd lovers, and crackers with long paper fringes. His youngest son, who owned a collection of insects and many other fine things, became mysworn friend, which means that I was his, for he did not care in theleast about me; but I did not notice that, and I was happy and proud ofhis friendship and sailed with him and lots of other boys and girls onthe pretty Farum lake, and every day was more convinced that I was quitea man. It was a century since I had worn blouses. 

Every morning I took all the newspapers to Dr. Dörr, the German tutor atthe castle, and every morning I accidentally met Henrietta, and afterthat we were hardly separated all day. I had no name for the admirationthat attached me to her. I knew she was lovely, that was all. We wereanxious to read something together, and so read the whole of atranslation of _Don Quixote_, sitting cheek against cheek in thesummer-house. Of course, we did not understand one-half of it, and Iremember that we tried in vain to get an explanation of the frequentlyrecurring word "doxy"; but we laughed till we cried at what we didunderstand. And after all, it is this first reading of _DonQuixote_ which has dominated all my subsequent attempts to understandthe book. 

But Henrietta had ways that I did not understand in the least; she usedto amuse herself by little machinations, was inventive and intriguing. One day she demanded that I should play the school children, small, white-haired boys and girls, all of whom we had long learnt to know, adownright trick. I was to write a real love-letter to a nine-year-oldlittle girl named Ingeborg, from an eleven or twelve-year-old boy calledPer, and then Henrietta would sew a fragrant little wreath of flowersround it. The letter was completed and delivered. But the only result ofit was that next day, as I was walking along the high road withHenrietta, Per separated himself from his companions, called me a dandyfrom Copenhagen, and asked me if I would fight. There was, of course, noquestion of drawing back, but I remember very plainly that I was alittle aghast, for he was much taller and broader than I, and I had, into the bargain, a very bad cause to defend. But we had hardlyexchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelminglysuperior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight. From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricksand feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this Iflung him into the ditch like a glove. He sprang up again, but, withlofty indifference, I threw him a second time, till his head buzzed. That satisfied me that I had not been shamed before Henrietta, who, forthat matter, took my exploit very coolly and did not fling me so much asa word for it. However, she asked me if I would meet her the sameevening under the old May-tree. When we met, she had two long strapswith her, and at once asked me, somewhat mockingly and dryly, whether Ihad the courage to let myself be bound. Of course I said I had, whereupon, very carefully and thoroughly, she fastened my hands togetherwith the one strap. Could I move my arms? No. Then, with eager haste, she swung the other strap and let it fall on my back. Again and again. 

My first smart jacket was a well-thrashed one. She thoroughly enjoyedexerting her strength. Naturally, my boyish ideas of honour would notpermit me to scream or complain; I merely stared at her with theprofoundest astonishment. She gave me no explanation, released my hands, we each went our own way, and I avoided her the rest of my stay. 

This was my first experience of woman's perfidy. 

Still, I did not bear a grudge long, and the evening before I left wemet once again, at her request, and then she gave me the first and onlykiss, neither of us saying anything but the one word, "Good-bye. "

I have never seen her since. I heard that she died twenty years ago inBrazil. But two years after this, when I was feeling my first schoolboyaffection for an eleven-year-old girl, she silenced me at a children'sball with the scoffing remark: "Ah! it was you who let Henrietta K. Thrash you under the May-tree at Farum. " Yes, it was I. So cruel had myfair lady been that she had not even denied herself the pleasure oftelling her friends of the ignominious treatment to which she hadsubjected a comrade who, from pure feeling of honour, had not struckback. 

This was my first real experience of feminine nature. 

VII. 

For nearly ten years I went to one and the same school. I came to knowthe way there and back, to and from the three different places, all neartogether, where my parents lived during the time, as I knew no other. Inthat part of the town, all about the Round Tower, I knew, not only everyhouse, but every archway, every door, every window, every Paving-stone. It all gradually imprinted itself so deeply upon me that in after years, when gazing on foreign sights and foreign towns, even after I had beenliving for a long time in the same place, I had a curious feeling that, however beautiful and fascinating it all might be, or perhaps for thatvery reason, it was dreamland, unreality, which would one day elude meand vanish; reality was the Round Tower in Copenhagen and all that layabout it. It was ugly, and altogether unattractive, but it was reality. That you always found again. 

Similarly, though in a somewhat different sense, the wooded landscape inthe neighbourhood of Copenhagen, to be exact, the view over theHermitage Meadows down to the Sound, as it appears from the benchopposite the Slesvig Stone, the first and dearest type of landscapebeauty with which I became acquainted, was endowed to me with an imprintof actuality which no other landscape since, be it never so lovely ornever so imposing, has ever been able to acquire. 

VIII. 

The instruction at school was out of date, inasmuch as, in every branch, it lacked intelligibility. The masters were also necessarily, in someinstances, anything but perfect, even when not lacking in knowledge oftheir subject. Nevertheless, the instruction as a whole, especially whenone bears in mind how cheap it was, must be termed good, careful andcomprehensive; as a rule it was given conscientiously. When as a grownup man I have cast my thoughts back, what has surprised me most is thevariety of subjects that were instilled into a boy in ten years. Therecertainly were teachers so lacking in understanding of the proper way tocommunicate knowledge that the instruction they gave was altogetherwasted. For instance, I learnt geometry for four or five years withoutgrasping the simplest elements of the science. The principles of itremained so foreign to me that I did not even recognise a right-angledtriangle, if the right angle were uppermost. It so happened that theyear before I had to sit for my examinations, a young University studentin his first year, who had been only one class in front of the rest ofus, offered us afternoon instruction in trigonometry and sphericalgeometry gratis, and all who appreciated the help that was being offeredto them streamed to his lessons. This young student, later Pastor JörgenLund, had a remarkable gift for mathematics, and gave his instructionwith a lucidity, a fire, and a swing that carried his hearers with him. I, who had never before been able to understand a word of the subject, became keenly interested in it, and before many lessons were over wasvery well up in it. As Jörgen Lund taught mathematics, so all the othersubjects ought to have been taught. We were obliged to be content withless. 

Lessons might have been a pleasure. They never were, or rather, only theDanish ones. But in childhood's years, and during the first years ofboyhood they were fertilising. As a boy they hung over me like a dreadcompulsion; yet the compulsion was beneficial. It was only when I wasalmost fourteen that I began inwardly to rebel against the time whichwas wasted, that the stupidest and laziest of the boys might be enabledto keep up with the industrious and intelligent. There was too muchconsideration shown towards those who would not work or could notunderstand. And from the time I was sixteen, school was my despair. Ihad done with it all, was beyond it all, was too matured to submit tothe routine of lessons; my intellectual pulses no longer beat within thelimits of school. What absorbed my interest was the endeavour to becomemaster of the Danish language in prose and verse, and musings over themystery of existence. In school I most often threw up the spongeentirely, and laid my head on my arms that I might neither see nor hearwhat was going on around me. 

There was another reason, besides my weariness of it all, which at thislatter period made my school-going a torture to me. I was by nowsufficiently schooled for my sensible mother to think it would be goodfor me to make, if it were but a small beginning, towards earning my ownliving. Or rather, she wanted me to earn enough to pay for my amusementsmyself. So I tried, with success, to find pupils, and gave them lessonschiefly on Sunday mornings; but in order to secure them I had calledmyself _Studiosus_. Now it was an ever present terror with me lestI should meet any of my pupils as I went to school in the morning, orback at midday, with my books in a strap under my arm. Not to betraymyself, I used to stuff these books in the most extraordinary places, inside the breast of my coat till it bulged, and in all my pockets tillthey burst. 

IX. 

School is a foretaste of life. A boy in a large Copenhagen school wouldbecome acquainted, as it were in miniature, with Society in its entiretyand with every description of human character. I encountered among mycomrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, fromgoodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. 

In our quarter of an hour's playtime it was easy to see how cowardiceand meanness met with their reward in the boy commonwealth. There was aJewish boy of repulsive appearance, very easy to cow, with a positivelyslavish disposition. Every single playtime his schoolfellows would makehim stand up against a wall and jump about with his feet close togethertill playtime was over, while the others stood in front of him andlaughed at him. He became later a highly respected Conservativejournalist. 

In lesson time it was easy to see that the equality under onediscipline, under the hierarchy of merit, which was expressed in theboys' places on the forms, from highest to lowest, was not maintainedwhen opposed to the very different hierarchy of Society. On the lowestform sat a boy whose gifts were exceedingly mediocre, and who wasignorant, moreover, from sheer laziness; to him were permitted thingsforbidden to all the others: he was the heir of a large feudal barony. He always came late to school, and even at that rode in followed by agroom on a second horse. He wore a silk hat and, when he came into theschoolroom, did not hang it up on the peg that belonged to him, where hewas afraid it might be interfered with, but in the school cupboard, inwhich only the master was supposed to keep his things; and the tall hatcrowning so noble a head impressed the masters to such an extent thatnot one of them asked for it to be removed. And they acquiesced likelambs in the young lord's departure half-way through the last lesson, ifthe groom happened to be there with his horse to fetch him. 

It seemed impossible to drive knowledge of any sort into the head ofthis young peer, and he was taken from school early. To what an extenthe must have worked later to make up for lost time was proved byresults. For he became nothing less than a Minister. 

X. 

The reverence with which the boys, as youngsters, had looked up to themasters, disappeared with striking rapidity. The few teachers in whoselessons you could do what you liked were despised. The masters who knewhow to make themselves respected, only in exceptional cases inspiredaffection. The love of mockery soon broke out. Children had not been atschool long before the only opinion they allowed scope to was that themasters were the natural enemies of the boys. There was war betweenthem, and every stratagem was permissible. They were fooled, misled, andplagued in every conceivable manner. Or they were feared and weflattered them. 

A little boy with a natural inclination to reverence and respect and whobrought both industry and good-will to his work, felt confused by allthe derogatory things he was constantly hearing about the masters, and, long before he was half grown up, formed as one result of it the fixeddetermination that, whatever he might be when he grew up, there was onething he would never, under any circumstances be, and that was--masterin a school. 

From twelve years of age upwards, contempt for the masters was thekeynote of all conversation about them. The Latin master, a little, insignificant-looking man, but a very good teacher, was said to be sodisgracefully enfeebled by debauchery that an active boy could throw himwithout the least difficulty. The Natural History master, a clever, outspoken young man, who would call out gaily: "Silence there, or you'llget a dusting on the teapot that will make the spout fly off!" sankdeeply in our estimation when one of the boys told us that he spent hisevenings at music-halls. One morning there spread like wildfire throughthe class the report that the reason the Natural History master had notcome that day was because he had got mixed up the night before in afight outside a music-pavilion. The contempt and the ridicule that wereheaped upon him in the conversation of the boys were immeasurable. Whenhe came next morning with a black, extravasated eye, which he bathed atintervals with a rag, he was regarded by most of us as absolute scum. The German master, a tall, good-looking man, was treated as utterlyincompetent because, when he asked a question in grammar or syntax, hewalked up and down with the book in front of him, and quite plainlycompared the answer with the book. We boys thought that anyone could bea master, with a book in his hand. History and Geography were taught byan old man, overflowing with good-humour, loquacious, but self-confident, liked for his amiability, but despised for what was deemedunmanliness in him. The boys pulled faces at him, and imitated hisexpressions and mannerisms. 

The Danish master, Professor H. P. Holst, was not liked. He evidentlytook no interest in his scholastic labours, and did not like the boys. His coolness was returned. And yet, that which was the sole aim andobject of his instruction he understood to perfection, and drilled intous well. The unfortunate part of it was that there was hardly more thanone boy in the class who enjoyed learning anything about just thatparticular thing. Instruction in Danish was, for Holst, instruction inthe metrical art. He explained every metre and taught the boys to pickout the feet of which the verses were composed. When we made fun of himin our playtime, it was for remarks which we had invented and placed inhis mouth ourselves; for instance: "Scan my immortal poem, _The DyingGladiator_. " The reason of this was simply that, in elucidation ofthe composition of the antique distich, he made use of his own poem ofthe above name, which he had included in a Danish reading-book edited byhimself. As soon as he took up his position in the desk, he began:

"Hark ye the--storm of ap--plause from the--theatre's--echoing circle!Go on, Möller!"

How could he find it in his heart, his own poem!

XI. 

The French master knew how to command respect; there was never a soundduring his lessons. He was altogether absorbed in his subject, wasabsolutely and wholly a Frenchman; he did not even talk Danish with thesame accentuation as others, and he had the impetuous French dispositionof which the boys had heard. If a boy made a mess of his pronunciation, he would bawl, from the depths of his full brown beard, which he wasfond of stroking: "You speak French _comme un paysan d'Amac_. " Whenhe swore, he swore like a true Frenchman: _"Sacrebleu-Mops-Carot-ten-Rapée!"_ [Footnote: Needless to say, this is impossible French, composed chiefly of distorted Danish words. (Trans. )] If he got angry, and he very often did, he would unhesitatingly pick up the full glass ofwater that always stood in front of him on the desk, and in Gallicexasperation fling it on the floor, when the glass would be smashed toatoms and the water run about, whereupon he would quietly, with his_Grand seigneur_ air, take his purse out of his pocket and lay themoney for the glass on the desk. 

For a time I based my ideas of the French mind and manner upon thismaster, although my uncle Jacob, who had lived almost all his life inParis, was a very different sort of Frenchman. It was only later that Ibecame acquainted with a word and an idea which it was well I did notknow, as far as the master's capacity for making an impression wasconcerned--the word _affected_. 

At last, one fine day, a little event occurred which was not without itseffect on the master's prestige, and yet aroused my compassion almost asmuch as my surprise. The parents of one of my best friends wereexpecting a French business friend for the evening. As they knewthemselves to be very weak in the language, they gave their son a politenote to the French master, asking him to do them the honour of spendingthe next evening at their house, on the occasion of this visit, whichrendered conversational support desirable. The master took the note, which we two boys had handed to him, grew--superior though he usuallywas--rather red and embarrassed, and promised a written reply. To ourastonishment we learnt that this reply was to the effect that he mustunfortunately decline the honour, as he had never been in France, hadnever heard anyone speak French, and was not proficient in the language. Thus this tiger of a savage Frenchman suddenly cast his tiger's skin andrevealed himself in his native wool. 

Unfortunately, the instruction of this master left long and deep tracesupon me. When I was fifteen and my French uncle began to carry on hisconversations with me in French, the Parisian was appalled at myabominable errors of pronunciation. The worst of them were weeded out inthose lessons. But there were enough left to bring a smile many a timeand oft to the lips of the refined young lady whom my friends procuredme as a teacher on my first visit to Paris. 

XII. 

Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods. There would beseveral during the course of the season. When the weather seemed toinspire confidence, a few phaetons would be engaged for the family andtheir relations and friends, and some Sunday morning the seat of eachcarriage would be packed full of good things. We took tablecloth andserviettes with us, bread, butter, eggs and salmon, sausages, cold meatand coffee, as well as a few bottles of wine. Then we drove to somekeeper's house, where for money and fair words they scalded the tea forus, and the day's meal was seasoned with the good appetite which theoutdoor air gave us. 

As a child I preserved an uncomfortable and instructive recollection ofone of these expeditions. The next day my mother said to me: "Youbehaved very ridiculously yesterday, and made a laughing stock ofyourself. " "How?" "You went on in front of the grown-up people all thetime, and sang at the top of your voice. In the first place, you oughtnot to go in front, and in the next place, you should not disturb otherpeople by singing. " These words made an indelible impression upon me, for I was conscious that I had not in the least intended to push myselfforward or put on airs. I could only dimly recollect that I had beensinging, and I had done it for my own pleasure, not to draw attention tomyself. 

I learnt from this experience that it was possible, without beingnaughty or conceited, to behave in an unpleasing manner, understood thatthe others, whom I had not been thinking about, had looked on me withdisfavour, had thought me a nuisance and ridiculous, my mother inparticular; and I was deeply humiliated at the thought. 

It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult toplease than my mother. No one was more chary of praise than she, and shehad a horror of all sentimentality. She met me with superiorintelligence, corrected me, and brought me up by means of satire. It waspossible to impress my aunts, but not her. The profound dread she had ofbetraying her feelings or talking about them, the shrewdness that dweltbehind that forehead of hers, her consistently critical and clear-sighted nature, the mocking spirit that was so conspicuous in her, especially in her younger days, gave me, with regard to her, aconviction that had a stimulating effect on my character--namely, thatnot only had she a mother's affection for me, but that the two shrewdand scrutinising eyes of a very clever head were looking down upon me. Rational as she was through and through, she met my visionaryinclinations, both religious and philosophical, with unshaken commonsense, and if I were sometimes tempted, by lesser people's over-estimating of my abilities, to over-estimate them myself, it was shewho, with inflexible firmness, urged her conviction of the limitationsof my nature. None of my weaknesses throve in my mother's neighbourhood. 

This was the reason why, during the transitional years between boyhoodand adolescence, the years in which a boy feels a greater need ofsympathy than of criticism and of indulgence than of superiority, Ilooked for and found comprehension as much from a somewhat youngersister of my mother's as from the latter herself. This aunt was allheart. She had an ardent, enthusiastic brain, was full of tenderness andgoodness and the keenest feeling for everything deserving of sympathy, not least for me, while she had not my mother's critical understanding. Her judgment might be obscured by passion; she sometimes allowed herselfto be carried to imprudent extremes; she had neither Mother'sequilibrium nor her satirical qualities. She was thus admirably adaptedto be the confidant of a big boy whom she gave to understand that sheregarded as extraordinarily gifted. When these transitional years wereover, Mother resumed undisputed sway, and the relations between usremained in all essentials the same, even after I had become much hersuperior in knowledge and she in some things my pupil. So that itaffected me very much when, many years after, my younger brother said tome somewhat sadly: "Has it struck you, too, that Mother is getting old?""No, not at all, " I replied. "What do you think a sign of it?" "I think, God help me, that she is beginning to admire us. "

XIII. 

My mind, like that of all other children, had been exercised by thegreat problem of the mystery of our coming into the world. I was nolonger satisfied with the explanation that children were brought by thestork, or with that other, advanced with greater seriousness, that theydrifted up in boxes, which were taken up out of Peblinge Lake. As achild I tormented my mother with questions as to how you could tell whomevery box was for. That the boxes were numbered, did not make thingsmuch clearer. That they were provided with addresses, sounded verystrange. Who had written the addresses? I then had to be content withthe assurance that it was a thing that I was too small to understand; itshould be explained to me when I was older. 

My thoughts were not directed towards the other sex. I had no littlegirl playfellows, and as I had no sister, knew very few. When I waseight or nine years old, it is true, there was one rough and altogetherdepraved boy whose talk touched upon the sexual question in expressionsthat were coarse and in a spirit coarser still. I was scoffed at for notknowing how animals propagated themselves, and that human beingspropagated themselves like animals. 

I replied: "My parents, at any rate, never behaved in any such manner. "Then, with the effrontery of childhood, my schoolfellows went on to themost shameless revelations, not only about a morbid development ofnatural instincts, but actual crimes against nature and against theelementary laws of society. In other words, I was shown the mostrepulsive, most agitating picture of everything touching the relationsof the sexes and the propagation of the species. 

It is probable that most boys in a big school have the great mystery ofNature sullied for them in their tender years by coarseness anddepravity. Whereas, in ancient Greek times, the mystery was holy, andwith a pious mind men worshipped the Force of Nature without exaggeratedprudery and without shamelessness, such conditions are impossible in asociety where for a thousand years Nature herself has been depreciatedby Religion, associated with sin and the Devil, stamped as unmentionableand in preference denied, in which, for that very reason, brutalitytakes so much more terrible a satisfaction and revenge. As grown-uppeople never spoke of the forces of Nature in a pure and simple manner, it became to the children a concealed thing. Individual children, inwhom the sexual impulse had awakened early, were taught its nature bybestial dispositions, and the knowledge was interpreted by them withchildish shamelessness. These children then filled the ears of theircomrades with filth. 

In my case, the nastiness hit, and rebounded, without making anyimpression. I was only infected by the tone of the other scholars in sofar as I learnt from them that it was manly to use certain ugly words. When I was twelve years old, my mother surprised me one day, when I wasstanding alone on the stairs, shouting these words out. I was reprovedfor it, and did not do it again. 

XIV. 

I hardly ever met little girls except at children's balls, and in myearly childhood I did not think further of any of them. But when I wastwelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of thefundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be forlife--namely, Beauty. 

It was revealed to me for the first time in the person of a slender, light-footed little girl, whose name and personality secretly haunted mybrain for many a year. 

One of my uncles was living that Summer in America Road, which at thattime was quite in the country, and there was a beautiful walk thenceacross the fields to a spot called _The Signal_, where you couldwatch the trains go by from Copenhagen's oldest railway station, whichwas not situated on the western side of the town, where the presentstations are. Near here lived a family whose youngest daughter used torun over almost every day to my uncle's country home, to play with thechildren. 

She was ten years old, as brown as a gipsy, as agile as a roe, and fromher childish face, from all the brown of her hair, eyes, and skin, fromher smile and her speech, glowed, rang, and as it were, struck me, thatoverwhelming and hitherto unknown force, Beauty. I was twelve, she wasten. Our acquaintance consisted of playing touch, not even alonetogether, but with other children; I can see her now rushing away fromme, her long plaits striking against her waist. But although this wasall that passed between us, we both had a feeling as of a mysteriouslink connecting us. It was delightful to meet. She gave me a pink. Shecut a Queen of Hearts out of a pack of cards, and gave it to me; Itreasured it for the next five years like a sacred thing. 

That was all that passed between us and more there never was, even whenat twelve years of age, at a children's ball, she confessed to me thatshe had kept everything I had given her--gifts of the same order as herown. But the impression of her beauty filled my being. 

Some one had made me a present of some stuffed humming-birds, perched onvarnished twigs under a glass case. I always looked at them while I wasreading in the nursery; they stood on the bookshelves which were myspecial property. These birds with their lovely, shining, gay-colouredplumage, conveyed to me my first impression of foreign or tropicalvividness of colouring. All that I was destined to love for a long timehad something of that about it, something foreign and afar off. 

The girl was Danish as far as her speech was concerned, but not reallyDanish by descent, either on her father or her mother's side; her name, too, was un-Danish. She spoke English at home and was called Mary at myuncle's, though her parents called her by another name. All thiscombined to render her more distinctive. 

Once a year I met her at a children's ball; then she had a white dresson, and was, in my eyes, essentially different from all the other littlegirls. One morning, after one of these balls, when I was fourteen, Ifelt in a most singular frame of mind, and with wonder and reverence atwhat I was about to do, regarding myself as dominated by a higher, incomprehensible force, I wrote the first poetry I ever composed. 

There were several strophes of this heavenly poetry. Just because I soseldom met her, it was like a gentle earthquake in my life, when I did. I had accustomed myself to such a worship of her name that, for me, shehardly belonged to the world of reality at all. But when I was sixteenand I met her again, once more at a young people's ball, the glamoursuddenly departed. Her appearance had altered and corresponded no longerto my imaginary picture of her. When we met in the dance she pressed myhand, which made me indignant, as though it were an immodest thing. Shewas no longer a fairy. She had broad shoulders, a budding bust, warmhands; there was youthful coquetry about her--something that, to me, seemed like erotic experience. I soon lost sight of her. But I retaineda sentiment of gratitude towards her for what, as a ten-year-old child, she had afforded me, this naturally supernatural impression, my firstrevelation of Beauty. 

XV. 

The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster. To the very young ones, the Headmaster was merelypowerful and paternal, up above everything. As soon as the criticalinstinct awoke, its utterances were specially directed, by the evil-disposed, at him, petty and malicious as they were, and were echoedslavishly by the rest. 

As the Head was a powerful, stout, handsome, distinguished-looking manwith a certain stamp of joviality and innocent good-living about him, these malicious tongues, who led the rest, declared that he only livedfor his stomach. In the next place, the old-fashioned punishment ofcaning, administered by the Head himself in his private room, gave somecause of offence. It was certainly only very lazy and obdurate boys whowere thus punished; for others such methods were never even dreamt of. But when they were ordered to appear in his room after school-time, andthe Head took them between his knees, thrashed them well and thenafterwards caressed them, as though to console them, he created ill-feeling, and his dignity suffered. If there were some little sense inthe disgust occasioned by this, there was certainly none at all incertain other grievances urged against him. 

It was the ungraceful custom for the boys, on the first of the month, tobring their own school fees. In the middle of one of the lessons theHead would come into the schoolroom, take his seat at the desk, andjauntily and quickly sweep five-daler bills [Footnote: Five daler, alittle over 11/--English money. ] into his large, soft hat and thenceinto his pockets. One objection to this arrangement was that the fewpoor boys who went to school free were thus singled out to theirschoolfellows, bringing no money, which they felt as a humiliation. Inthe next place, the sight of the supposed wealth that the Head thusbecame possessed of roused ill-feeling and derision. It became thefashion to call him boy-dealer, because the school, which in its palmydays had 550 scholars, was so well attended. This extraordinary influx, which in all common sense ought to have been regarded as a proof of thehigh reputation of the school, was considered a proof of the Head'savarice. 

It must be added that there was in his bearing, which was evidently andwith good reason, calculated to impress, something that might justlyappear unnatural to keen-sighted boys. He always arrived with blusteringsuddenness; he always shouted in a stentorian voice, and, when he gavethe elder boys a Latin lesson, he always appeared, probably fromindolence, a good deal behind time, but to make up, and as though therewere not a second to waste, began to hurl his questions at them themoment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic, and wascertainly a man with a naturally warm heart. On a closer acquaintance, he would have won much affection, for he was a clever man and a gay, optimistic figure. As the number of his scholars was so great, heproduced more effect at a distance. 

XVI. 

Neither he nor any of the other masters reproduced the atmosphere of theclassical antiquity round which all the instruction of the Latin sidecentred. The master who taught Greek the last few years did so, not onlywith sternness, but with a distaste, in fact, a positive hatred for hisclass, which was simply disgusting. 

The Head, who had the gift of oratory, communicated to us some idea ofthe beauty of Latin poetry, but the rest of the instruction in the deadlanguages was purely grammatical, competent and conscientious though themen who gave it might have been. Madvig's [Translator's note: JohanNicolai Madvig (1804-1886), a very celebrated Danish philologist, forfifty years professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is especiallynoted for his editions of the ancient classics, with critical notes onthe text, and for his Latin Grammar. ] spirit brooded over the school. Still, there was no doubt in the Head's mind as to the greatness ofVirgil or Horace, so that a boy with perception of stylistic emphasisand metre could not fail to be keenly interested in the poetry of thesetwo men. Being the boy in the class of whom the Head entertained thegreatest hopes, I began at once secretly to translate them. I made aDanish version of the second and fourth books of the Aeneid Danicised agood part of the Songs and Epistles of Horace in imperfect verse. 

XVII. 

Nothing was ever said at home about any religious creed. Neither of myparents was in any way associated with the Jewish religion, and neitherof them ever went to the Synagogue. As in my maternal grandmother'shouse all the Jewish laws about eating and drinking were observed, andthey had different plates and dishes for meat and butter and a specialservice for Easter, orthodox Judaism, to me, seemed to be a collectionof old, whimsical, superstitious prejudices, which specially applied tofood. The poetry of it was a sealed book to me. At school, where I waspresent at the religious instruction classes as an auditor only, Ialways heard Judaism alluded to as merely a preliminary stage ofChristianity, and the Jews as the remnant of a people who, as apunishment for slaying the Saviour of the world, had been scattered allover the earth. The present-day Israelites were represented as peoplewho, urged by a stiff-necked wilfulness and obstinacy and almostincomprehensible callousness, clung to the obsolete religious ideal ofthe stern God in opposition to the God of Love. 

When I attempted to think the matter out for myself, it annoyed me thatthe Jews had not sided with Jesus, who yet so clearly betokened progresswithin the religion that He widened and unintentionally overthrew. Thesupernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible to me. Thedemand made by faith, namely, that reason should be fettered, awakened alatent rebellious opposition, and this opposition was fostered by mymother's steady rationalism, her unconditional rejection of everymiracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed, in accordance withthe law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on what lay before meas a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the Rabbi only inspired mewith distaste; his German pronunciation of Danish was repulsive andridiculous to me. The abominable Danish in which the lesson-book wascouched offended me, as I had naturally a fine ear for Danish. Information about ancient Jewish customs and festivals was of nointerest to me, with my modern upbringing. The confirmation, accordingto my mocking summary of the impression produced by it, consisted mainlyin the hiring of a tall silk hat from the hat-maker, and the sending ofit back next day, sanctified. The silly custom was at that timeprevalent for boys to wear silk hats for the occasion, idiotic thoughthey made them look. With these on their heads, they went, afterexamination, up the steps to a balustrade where a priest awaited, whispered a few affecting words in their ear about their parents orgrandparents, and laid his hand in blessing upon the tall hat. Whencalled upon to make my confession of faith with the others, I certainlyjoined my first "yes, " this touching a belief in a God, to theirs, butremained silent at the question as to whether I believed that God hadrevealed Himself to Moses and spoken by His prophets. I did not believeit. 

I was, for that matter, in a wavering frame of mind unable to arrive atany clear understanding. What confused me was the unveracious manner inwhich historical instruction, which was wholly theological, was given. The History masters, for instance, told us that when Julian the Apostatewanted to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, flames had shot out of theearth, but they interpreted this as a miracle, expressing the Divinewill. If this were true--and I was unable to refute it then--God hadexpressly taken part against Judaism and the Jews as a nation. Thenation, in that case, seemed to be really cursed by Him. Still, Christianity fundamentally repelled me by its legends, its dogmatism, and its church rites. The Virgin birth, the three persons in theTrinity, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in particular, seemed tome to be remnants of the basest barbarism of antiquity. 

Under these circumstances, my young soul, feeling the need of somethingit could worship, fled from Asia's to Europe's divinities, fromPalestine to Hellas, and clung with vivid enthusiasm to the Greek worldof beauty and the legends of its Gods. From all the learned education Ihad had, I only extracted this one thing: an enthusiasm for ancientHellas and her Gods; they were my Gods, as they had been those ofJulian. Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Eros and Aphrodite grew to bepowers that I believed in and rejoiced over in a very different sensefrom any God revealed on Sinai or in Emmaus. They were near to me. 

And under these circumstances the Antiquities Room at Charlottenburg, where as a boy I had heard Höyen's lectures, grew to be a place that Ientered with reverence, and Thorwaldsen's Museum my Temple, imperfectlythough it reproduced the religious and heroic life and spirit of theGreeks. But at that time I knew no other, better door to the world ofthe Gods than the Museum offered, and Thorwaldsen and the Greeks, fromfourteen to fifteen, were in my mind merged in one. Thorwaldsen's Museumwas to me a brilliant illustration of Homer. There I found my Church, myGods, my soul's true native land. 

XVIII. 

I had for several years been top of my class, when a boy was put in whowas quite three years older than I, and with whom it was impossible forme to compete, so much greater were the newcomer's knowledge andmaturity. It very soon became a settled thing for the new boy always tobe top, and I invariably No. 2. However, this was not in the leastvexatious to me; I was too much wrapped up in Sebastian for that. Theadmiration which as a child I had felt for boys who distinguishedthemselves by muscular strength was manifested now for superiority inknowledge or intelligence. Sebastian was tall, thin, somewhat disjointedin build, with large blue eyes, expressive of kindness, andintelligence; he was thoroughly well up in all the school subjects, andwith the ripeness of the older boy, could infer the right thing evenwhen he did not positively know it. The reason why he was placed atlessons so late was doubtless to be found in the narrow circumstances ofhis parents. They considered that they had not the means to allow him tofollow the path towards which his talents pointed. But the Head, ascould be seen on pay days, was now permitting him to come to schoolfree. He went about among his jacketed schoolfellows in a long frockcoat, the skirts of which flapped round his legs. 

No. 2 could not help admiring No. 1 for the confidence with which hedisported himself among the Greek aorists, in the labyrinths of which Imyself often went astray, and for the knack he had of solvingmathematical problems. He was, moreover, very widely read in belleslettres, and had almost a grown-up man's taste with regard to books at atime when I still continued to admire P. P. 's [Footnote: P. P. Was awriter whose real name was Rumohr. He wrote a number of historicalnovels of a patriotic type, but which are only read by children up to14. ] novels, and was incapable of detecting the inartistic quality andunreality of his popular descriptions of the exploits of sailor heroes. As soon as my eyes were opened to the other's advanced acquirements, Iopened my heart to him, gave him my entire confidence, and found in myfriend a well of knowledge and superior development from which I felt adaily need to draw. 

When at the end of the year the large number of newcomers made itdesirable for the class to be divided, it was a positive blow to me thatin the division, which was effected by separating the scholars accordingto their numbers, odd or even, Sebastian and I found ourselves indifferent classes. I even took the unusual step of appealing to the Headto be put in the same class as Sebastian, but was refused. 

However, childhood so easily adapts itself to a fresh situation thatduring the ensuing year, in which I myself advanced right gaily, notonly did I feel no lack, but I forgot my elder comrade. And at thecommencement of the next school year, when the two parallel classes, through several boys leaving, were once more united, and I again foundmyself No. 2 by the side of my one-time friend, the relations between uswere altogether altered, so thoroughly so, in fact, that our rôles werereversed. If formerly the younger had hung upon the elder's words, nowit was the other way about. If formerly Sebastian had shown the interestin me that the half-grown man feels for a child, now I was too absorbedby my own interests to wish for anything but a listener in him when Iunfolded the supposed wealth of my ideas and my soaring plans for thefuture, which betrayed a boundless ambition. I needed a friend at thisstage only in the same sense as the hero in French tragedies requires aconfidant, and if I attached myself as before, wholly and completely tohim, it was for this reason. It is true that the other was still a gooddeal in front of me in actual knowledge, so that there was much I had toconsult him about; otherwise our friendship would hardly have lasted;but the importance of this superiority was slight, inasmuch as Sebastianhenceforward voluntarily subordinated himself to me altogether; indeed, by his ready recognition of my powers, contributed more than anyone elseto make me conscious of these powers and to foster a self-esteem whichgradually assumed extraordinary forms. 

XIX. 

This self-esteem, in its immaturity, was of a twofold character. It wasnot primarily a belief that I was endowed with unusual abilities, but achildish belief that I was one set apart, with whom, for mysteriousreasons, everything must succeed. The belief in a personal God hadgradually faded away from me, and there were times when, with theconviction of boyhood, I termed myself an atheist to my friend; myattitude towards the Greek gods had never been anything more than apersonification of the ideal forces upon which I heaped my enthusiasm. But I believed in my star. And I hypnotised my friend into the samebelief, infected him so that he talked as if he were consecrating hislife to my service, and really, as far as was possible for a schoolboy, lived and breathed exclusively for me, I, for my part, being gratifiedat having, as my unreserved admirer and believer, the one whom, of allpeople I knew, I placed highest, the one whose horizon seemed to me thewidest, and whose store of knowledge was the greatest; for in manysubjects it surpassed even that of the masters in no mean degree. 

Under such conditions, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I was deeplyimpressed by a book that one might think was infinitely beyond theunderstanding of my years, Lermontof's _A Hero of Our Time_, inXavier Marmier's French translation. The subject of it would seemutterly unsuited to a schoolboy who had never experienced anything inthe remotest degree resembling the experiences of a man of the world, atany rate those which produced the sentiments pervading this novel. Nevertheless, this book brought about a revolution in my ideas. For thefirst time I encountered in a book a chief character who was not auniversal hero, a military or naval hero whom one had to admire and ifpossible imitate, but one in whom, with extreme emotion, I fancied thatI recognised myself!

I had certainly never acted as Petsjórin did, and never been placed insuch situations as Petsjórin. No woman had ever loved me, still less hadI ever let a woman pay with suffering the penalty of her affection forme. Never had any old friend of mine come up to me, delighted to see meagain, and been painfully reminded, by my coolness and indifference, howlittle he counted for in my life. Petsjórin had done with life; I hadnot even begun to live. Petsjórin had drained the cup of enjoyment; Ihad never tasted so much as a drop of it. Petsjórin was as blasé as asplendid Russian Officer of the Guards could be; I, as full ofexpectation as an insignificant Copenhagen schoolboy could be. Nevertheless, I had the perplexing feeling of having, for the first timein my life, seen my inmost nature, hitherto unknown even to myself, understood, interpreted, reproduced, magnified, in this unharmoniouswork of the Russian poet who was snatched away so young. 

XX. 

The first element whence the imaginary figure which I fancied Irecognized again in Lermontof had its rise was doubtless to be found inthe relations between my older friend and myself (in the reversal of ourrôles, and my consequent new feeling of superiority over him). Theessential point, however, was not the comparatively accidental shape inwhich I fancied I recognised myself, but that what was at that timetermed _reflection_ had awaked in me, introspection, self-consciousness, which after all had to awake some day, as all otherimpulses awake when their time comes. This introspection was not, however, by any means a natural or permanent quality in me, but on thecontrary one which made me feel ill at ease and which I soon came todetest. During these transitional years, as my pondering over myselfgrew, I felt more and more unhappy and less and less sure of myself. Thepondering reached its height, as was inevitable, when there arose thequestion of choosing a profession and of planning the future rather thanof following a vocation. But as long as this introspection lasted, I hada torturing feeling that my own eye was watching me, as though I were astranger, a feeling of being the spectator of my own actions, theauditor of my own words, a double personality who must nevertheless oneday become one, should I live long enough. After having, with a friend, paid a visit to Kaalund, who was prison instructor at Vridslöselille atthe time and showed us young fellows the prison and the cells, I used topicture my condition to myself as that of a prisoner enduring thetorture of seeing a watchful eye behind the peep-hole in the door. I hadnoticed before, in the Malmö prison, how the prisoners tried to besmearthis glass, or scratch on it, with a sort of fury, so that it was oftenimpossible to see through it. My natural inclination was to act naïvely, without premeditation, and to put myself wholly into what I was doing. The cleavage that introspection implies, therefore, was a horror to me;all bisection, all dualism, was fundamentally repellent to me; and itwas consequently no mere chance that my first appearance as a writer wasmade in an attack on a division and duality in life's philosophy, andthat the very title of my first book was a branding and rejection of a_Dualism_. So that it was only when my self-contemplation, and withit the inward cleavage, had at length ceased, that I attained toquietude of mind. 

XXI. 

Thus violently absorbing though the mental condition here suggested was, it was not permanent. It was childish and child-like by virtue of myyears; the riper expressions which I here make use of to describe italways seem on the verge of distorting its character. My faith in mylucky star barely persisted a few years unassailed. My childish idea hadbeen very much strengthened when, at fifteen years of age, in the firstpart of my finishing examination, I received _Distinction_ in allmy subjects, and received a mighty blow when, at seventeen, I only had_Very Good_ in five subjects, thus barely securing Distinction forthe whole. 

I ceased to preoccupy myself about my likeness to Petsjórin after havingrecovered from a half, or quarter, falling in love, an unharmoniousaffair, barren of results, which I had hashed up for myself throughfanciful and affected reverie, and which made me realise the fundamentalsimplicity of my own nature, --and I then shook off the unnaturalphysiognomy like a mask. Belief in my own unbounded superiority and theabsolutely unmeasured ambition in which this belief had vented itself, collapsed suddenly when at the age of eighteen, feeling my wayindependently for the first time, and mentally testing people, I learntto recognise the real mental superiority great writers possess. It waschiefly my first reading of the principal works of Kierkegaard thatmarked this epoch in my life. I felt, face to face with the first greatmind that, as it were, had personally confronted me, all my realinsignificance, understood all at once that I had as yet neither livednor suffered, felt nor thought, and that nothing was more uncertain thanwhether I might one day evince talent. The one certain thing was that mypresent status seemed to amount to nothing at all. 

XXII. 

In those boyhood's years, however, I revelled in ideas of greatness tocome which had not so far received a shock. And I was in no doubt as tothe domain in which when grown up I should distinguish myself. All myinstincts drew me towards Literature. The Danish compositions which wereset at school absorbed all my thoughts from week to week; I took thegreatest pains with them, weighed the questions from as many sides as Icould and endeavoured to give good form and style to my compositions. Unconsciously I tried to find expressions containing striking contrasts;I sought after descriptive words and euphonious constructions. Althoughnot acquainted with the word style in any other sense than that it bearsin the expression "style-book, " the Danish equivalent for what inEnglish is termed an "exercise-book, " I tried to acquire a certainstyle, and was very near falling into mannerism, from sheerinexperience, when a sarcastic master, to my distress, reminded me oneday of Heiberg's words: "The unguent of expression, smeared thickly overthe thinness of thoughts. "

XXIII. 

Together with a practical training in the use of the language, theDanish lessons afforded a presentment of the history of our nationalliterature, given intelligently and in a very instructive manner by amaster named Driebein, who, though undoubtedly one of the manyHeibergians of the time, did not in any way deviate from what might betermed the orthodoxy of literary history. Protestantism carried itagainst Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschläger against Baggesen, Romanticism against Rationalism; Oehlenschläger as the Northern poet ofhuman nature against a certain Björnson, who, it was said, claimed to bemore truly Norse than he. In Mr. Driebein's presentment, no recognisedgreat name was ever attacked. And in his course, as in Thortsen'sHistory of Literature, literature which might be regarded as historicstopped with the year 1814. 

The order in which in my private reading I became acquainted with Danishauthors was as follows: Ingemann, Oehlenschläger, Grundtvig, PoulMöller, many books by these authors having been given me at Christmasand on birthdays. At my grandfather's, I eagerly devoured Heiberg'svaudevilles as well. As a child, of course, I read uncritically, merelyaccepting and enjoying. But when I heard at school of Baggesen'streatment of Oehlenschläger, thus realising that there had been varioustendencies in literature at that time, and various opinions as to whichwas preferable, I read with enthusiasm a volume of selected poems byBaggesen, which I had had one Christmas, and the treatment of languagein it fascinated me exceedingly, with its gracefulness and light, conversational tone. Then, when Hertz's [Footnote: Henrik Hertz, aDanish poet (1797-1870), published "Ghost Letters" anonymously, andcalled them thus because in language and spirit they were a kind ofcontinuation of the long-deceased Baggesen's rhymed contribution to aliterary dispute of his day. Hertz, like the much greater Baggesen, laidgreat stress upon precise and elegant form. --[Translator's note. ]]_Ghost Letters_ fell into my hands one day, and the diction of themappealed to me almost more, I felt myself, first secretly, afterwardsmore consciously, drawn towards the school of form in Danish literature, and rather enjoyed being a heretic on this point. For to entertainkindly sentiments for the man who had dared to profane Oehlenschlägerwas like siding with Loki against Thor. Poul Möller's Collected Works Ihad received at my confirmation, and read again and again with suchenthusiasm that I almost wore the pages out, and did not skip a line, even of the philosophical parts, which I did not understand at all. ButHertz's Lyrical Poems, which I read in a borrowed copy, gave me as muchpleasure as Poul Möller's Verses had done. And for a few years, graceand charm, and the perfect control of language and poetic form, were inmy estimation the supreme thing until, on entering upon my eighteenthyear, a violent reaction took place, and resonance, power and grandeuralone seemed to have value. From Hertz my sympathies went over toChristian Winther, from Baggesen to Homer, Aeschylus, the Bible, Shakespeare, Goethe. One of the first things I did as a student was toread the Bible through in Danish and the Odyssey in Greek. 

XXIV. 

The years of approaching maturity were still distant, however, and myinner life was personal, not real, so that an element of fermentationwas cast into my mind when a copy of Heine's _Buch der Lieder_ wasone day lent to me. What took my fancy in it was, firstly, thecombination of enthusiasm and wit, then its terse, pithy form, and afterthat the parts describing how the poet and his lady love, unable toovercome the shyness which binds their tongues, involuntarily play hideand seek with one another and lose each other; for I felt that I shouldbe equally unable to find natural and simple expression for my feelings, should things ever come to such a pass with me. Of Heine's personality, of the poet's historic position, political tendencies or importance, Iknew nothing; in these love-poems I looked more especially for thoseverses in which violent self-esteem and blasé superiority to everysituation find expression, because this fell in with the Petsjórin note, which, since reading Lermontof's novel, was the dominant one in my mind. As was my habit in those years, when it was still out of the questionfor me to buy books that pleased me, I copied out of the _Buch derLieder_ all that I liked best, that I might read it again. 

XXV. 

Of all this life of artistic desire and seeking, of externalimpressions, welcomed with all the freshness and impulsiveness of aboy's mind, but most of self-study and self-discovery, the elder of thetwo comrades was a most attentive spectator, more than a spectator. Hemade use of expressions and said things which rose to my head and mademe conceited. Sebastian would make such a remark as: "It is not for yourabilities that I appreciate you, it is for your enthusiasm. All otherpeople I know are machines without souls, at their best full ofaffected, set phrases, such as one who has peeped behind the sceneslaughs at; but in you there is a fulness of ideality too great for youever to be happy. " "Fulness of ideality" was the expression of the timefor the supremest quality of intellectual equipment. No wonder, then, that I felt flattered. 

And my older comrade united a perception of my mental condition, whichunerringly perceived its immaturity, with a steadfast faith in a futurefor me which in spite of my arrogance, I thirsted to find in the one ofall others who knew me best and was most plainly my superior inknowledge. One day, when I had informed him that I felt "more mature andclearer about myself, " he replied, without a trace of indecision, thatthis was undoubtedly a very good thing, if it were true, but that hesuspected I was laboring under a delusion. "I am none the lessconvinced, " he added, "that you will soon reach a crisis, will overcomeall obstacles and attain the nowadays almost giant's goal that you haveset before you. " This goal, for that matter, was very indefinite, andwas to the general effect that I intended to make myself strongly felt, and bring about great changes in the intellectual world; of what kind, was uncertain. 

Meanwhile, as the time drew near for us to enter the University, and Iapproached the years of manhood which the other, in spite of his modestposition as schoolboy, had already long attained, Sebastian grew utterlymiserable. He had, as he expressed it, made up his mind to be my_Melanchthon_. But through an inward collapse which I could notunderstand he now felt that the time in which he could be anything to mehad gone by; it seemed to him that he had neglected to acquire theknowledge and the education necessary, and he reproached himselfbitterly. "I have not been in the least what I might have been to you, "he exclaimed one day, and without betraying it he endured torments ofjealousy, and thought with vexation and anxiety of the time when alarger circle would be opened to me in the University, and he himselfwould become superfluous. 

His fear was thus far unfounded, that, naïve in my selfishness, as in myreliance on him, I still continued to tell him everything, and in returnconstantly sought his help when philological or mathematicaldifficulties which I could not solve alone presented themselves to me. 

But I had scarcely returned to Copenhagen, after my first journey abroad(a very enjoyable four weeks' visit to Göteborg), I had scarcely been amonth a freshman, attending philosophical lectures and taking part instudent life than the dreaded separation between us two so differentlyconstituted friends came to pass. The provocation was trifling, in factpaltry. One day I was standing in the lecture-room with a few fellow-students before a lecture began, when a freshman hurried up to us andasked: "Is it true, what Sebastian says, that he is the person you thinkmost of in the world?" My reply was: "Did he say that himself?" "Yes. "And, disgusted that the other should have made such a remark in order toimpress perfect strangers, though it might certainly very easily haveescaped him in confidence, I said hastily: "Oh! he's mad!" whichoutburst, bearing in mind young people's use of the word "mad, " wasdecidedly not to be taken literally, but was, it is quite true, ill-naturedly meant. 

The same evening I received a short note from Sebastian in which, thoughin polite terms, he repudiated his allegiance and fidelity; the letter, in which the polite form _you_ was used instead of the accustomed_thou_, was signed: "Your 'mad' and 'foolish, ' but respectfulSebastian. "

The impression this produced upon me was exceedingly painful, but anearly developed mental habit of always accepting a decision, and avehement repugnance to renew any connection deliberately severed byanother party, resulted in my never even for a moment thinking ofshaking his resolution, and in my leaving the note unanswered. However, the matter was not done with, and the next few months brought me manyinsufferable moments, indeed hours, for Sebastian, whose existence hadfor so long centred round mine that he was evidently incapable of doingwithout me altogether, continually crossed my path, planted himself nearme on every possible occasion, and one evening, at a students'gathering, even got a chair outside the row round the table, sat himselfdown just opposite to me, and spent a great part of the evening instaring fixedly into my face. As may be supposed, I felt exceedinglyirritated. 

Three months passed, when one day I received a letter from Sebastian, and at intervals of weeks or months several others followed. They wereimpressive letters, splendidly written, with a sort of grim humour aboutthem, expressing his passionate affection and venting his despair. Thiswas the first time that I had come in contact with passion, but it was apassion that without having any unnatural or sensual element in it, nevertheless, from a person of the same sex, excited a feeling ofdispleasure, and even disgust, in me. 

Sebastian wrote: "I felt that it was cheating you to take so muchwithout being able to give you anything in return; I thought it mean toassociate with you; consequently, I believe that I did perfectly rightto break with you. Still, it is true that I hardly needed to do it. Timeand circumstances would have effected the breach. " And feeling that ourways were now divided, he continued:

 Hie locus est, partes ubi se via findit in ambas. Dextera, quae Ditis magni sub moenia tendit Hac iter Elysium nobis; at laeva malorum Exercet poenas et ad impia Tartara mittit. 

"I cannot kill myself at present, but as soon as I feel able I shall doso. "

Or he wrote: "Towards the end of the time when we were friends, I wasnot quite myself when talking to you; I was unbalanced; for I wasconvinced that you wasted your valuable time talking to me, and at thesame time was oppressed with grief at the thought that we must part. Then I tried to make you angry by pretending to question your abilities, by affecting indifference and scorn; but it was the dog baying at themoon. I had to bring about the severance that I did. That I should be sochildish as to be vexed about a slight from you, you cannot yourselfbelieve. I cannot really regret it, for I could no longer be of use toyou; you doubtless think the same yourself; but I cannot do without you;my affection for you is the only vital thing in me; your life throbbedin mine. "

Sometimes the letters ended with an outburst of a sort of despairinghumour, such as: "Vale! (Fanfare! somersaults by Pagliaccio. )" Butwhether Sebastian assumed a serious or a desperate tone, the renewal ofour old companionship was equally impossible to me. I could not ignorewhat had happened, and I could not have a friend who was jealous if Italked to others. Since my intellectual entity had awakened, alljealousy had been an abomination to me, but jealousy in one man ofanother man positively revolted me. I recognised Sebastian's greatmerits, respected his character, admired his wide range of knowledge, but I could not associate with him again, could not even so much as walkdown the street by his side. All his affectionate and beautiful lettersglanced off ineffectual from this repugnance. Something in me hadsuddenly turned stony, like a plant plunged in petrifying water. 

Six years passed before we saw each other again. We met then with simpleand sincere affection. Sebastian's old passion had evaporated withoutleaving a trace; he himself could no longer understand it. And, thoughfar apart, and with nothing to connect us closely, we continued to thinkkindly of one another and to exchange reflections, until, after a fewyears, Death carried him away, ere he had reached the years of realmanhood, or fulfilled any of the promises of his gifted and industriousyouth. 

TRANSITIONAL YEARS

Schoolboy Fancies--Religion--Early Friends--_Daemonic_ Theory--AWest Indian Friend--My Acquaintance Widens--Politics--The ReactionaryParty--The David Family--A Student Society--An Excursion to Slesvig--Temperament--The Law--Hegel--Spinoza--Love for Humanity--A ReligiousCrisis--Doubt--Personal Immortality--Renunciation. 

I. 

My second schoolboy fancy dated from my last few months at school. Itwas a natural enough outcome of the attraction towards the other sexwhich, never yet encouraged, was lurking in my mind; but it was nototherwise remarkable for its naturalness. It had its origin partly in mylove of adventure, partly in my propensity for trying my powers, but, aslove, was without root, inasmuch as it was rooted neither in my heartnor in my senses. 

The object of it was again a girl from another country. Her name andperson had been well known to me since I was twelve years old. We hadeven exchanged compliments, been curious about one another, gone so faras to wish for a lock of each other's hair. There was consequently aromantic background to our first meeting. When I heard that she wascoming to Denmark I was, as by chance, on the quay, and saw her arrive. 

She was exactly the same age as I, and, without real beauty, was verygood-looking and had unusually lovely eyes. I endeavoured to make heracquaintance through relatives of hers whom I knew, and had nodifficulty in getting into touch with her. An offer to show her themuseums and picture galleries in Copenhagen was accepted. Although I hadvery little time, just before my matriculation examination, my newacquaintance filled my thoughts to such an extent that I did not carehow much of this valuable time I sacrificed to her. In the Summer, whenthe girl went out near Charlottenlund, whereas my parents were stayingmuch nearer to the town, I went backwards and forwards to the woodsnearly every day, in the uncertain but seldom disappointed hope ofseeing her. Sometimes I rowed her about in the Sound. 

Simple and straightforward though the attraction I felt might seem, theimmature romance I built up on it was anything but simple. 

It was, as stated, not my senses that drew me on. Split and divided upas I was just then, a merely intellectual love seemed to me quitenatural; one might feel an attraction of the senses for an altogetherdifferent woman. I did not wish for a kiss, much less an embrace; infact, was too much a child to think of anything of the sort. 

But neither was it my heart that drew me on; I felt no tenderness, hardly any real affection, for this young girl whom I was so anxious towin. She only busied my brain. 

In the condition of boyish self-inquisition in which I then foundmyself, this acquaintance was a fresh element of fermentation, and thestrongest to which my self-examination had hitherto been subjected. Iinstinctively desired to engage her fancy; but my attitude was frommyself through her to myself. I wanted less to please than to dominateher, and as it was only my head that was filled with her image, I whollylacked the voluntary and cheerful self-humiliation which is an elementof real love. I certainly wished with all my heart to fascinate her; butwhat I more particularly wanted was to hold my own, to avoid submission, and retain my independence. My boyish pride demanded it. 

The young foreigner, whose knowledge of the world was hardly greaterthan my own, had certainly never, during her short life, come in contactwith so extraordinary a phenomenon; it afforded matter for reflection. She certainly felt attracted, but, woman-like, was on her guard. She wasof a quiet, amiable disposition, innocently coquettish, naturallyadapted for the advances of sound common sense and affectionate good-will, not for the volts of passion; she was, moreover, femininelypractical. 

She saw at a glance that this grown-up schoolboy, who almost staggeredher with his eloquence, his knowledge, his wild plans for the future, was no wooer, and that his advances were not to be taken too seriously. Next, with a woman's unfailing intuition, she discovered his empty loveof power. And first involuntarily, and then consciously, she placedherself in an attitude of defence. She did not lack intelligence. Sheshowed a keen interest in me, but met me with the self-control of alittle woman of the world, now and then with coolness, on one occasionwith well-aimed shafts of mockery. 

Our mutual attitude might have developed into a regular war between thesexes, had we not both been half-children. Just as I, in the midst of acarefully planned assault on her emotions, occasionally forgot myselfaltogether and betrayed the craving to be near her which drove me almostevery day to her door, she also would at times lose the equilibrium shehad struggled for, and feverishly reveal her agitated state of mind. Butimmediately afterwards I was again at the assault, she once more on thealert, and after the lapse of four months our ways separated, without akiss, or one simple, affectionate word, ever having passed between us. 

In my morbid self-duplication, I had been busy all this time fixing inmy memory and writing down in a book all that I had said to her or sheto me, weighing and probing the scope and effect of the words that hadbeen uttered, laying plans for future methods of advance, noting actualvictories and defeats, pondering over this inanity, bending over allthis abnormality, like a strategist who, bending over the map, markswith his nail the movements of troops, the carrying or surrender of afortified position. 

This early, unsatisfactory and not strictly speaking erotic experiencehad the remarkable effect of rendering me for the next seven yearsimpervious to the tender passion, so that, undisturbed by women orerotic emotions, I was able to absorb myself in the world of variedresearch that was now opening up to me. 

II. 

A school-friend who was keenly interested in astronomy and had directedmy nightly contemplations of the heavens, drew me, just about this time, a very good map of the stars, by the help of which I found those stars Iknew and extended my knowledge further. 

The same school-friend sometimes took me to the Observatory, to see oldProfessor d'Arrest--a refined and sapient man--and there, for the firsttime, I saw the stellar heavens through a telescope. I had learntastronomy at school, but had lacked talent to attain any real insightinto the subject. Now the constellations and certain of the stars beganto creep into my affections; they became the nightly witnesses of myjoys and sorrows, all through my life; the sight of them sometimescomforted me when I felt lonely and forsaken in a foreign land. TheLyre, the Swan, the Eagle, the Crown and Boötes, Auriga, the Hyades andthe Pleiades, and among the Winter constellations, Orion; all thesetwinkling groups, that human eyes have sought for thousands of years, became distant friends of mine, too. And the thoughts which the sight ofthe countless globes involuntarily and inevitably evokes, were born inme, too, --thoughts of the littleness of the earth in our Solar System, and of our Solar System in the Universe, of immeasurable distances--sogreat that the stars whose rays, with the rapidity of light'stravelling, are striking against our eyes now, may have gone out in ourchildhood; of immeasurable periods of time, in which a human life, oreven the lifetime of a whole people, disappears like a drop in theocean. And whereas at school I had only studied astronomy as a subject, from its mathematical aspect, I now learnt the results of spectroscopicanalysis, which showed me how the human genius of Bunsen and Kirchhoffhad annihilated the distance between the Earth and the Sun; and at thesame time I perceived the inherent improbability of the culture of ourEarth ever being transmitted to other worlds, even as the Earth hadnever yet received communications from the civilisation of any of thestars. 

This circumstance, combined with the certainty of the gradual coolingand eventual death of the Earth, gave me a conclusive impression of thefinality of all earthly existence and of the merely temporary characterof all progress. 

Feeling that all religions built up on a belief in a God werecollapsing, Europe had long inclined towards the religion of Progress asthe last tenable. Now I perceived as I raised my eyes to the starryexpanse and rejoiced in my favourite stars, Sirius in the Great Dog, andVega in the Lyre or Altair in the Eagle, that it, too, was tottering, this last religion of all. 

III. 

At school, I had known a score of boys of my own age, and naturallyfound few amongst them who could be anything to me. Among the advantagesthat the freedom of student life afforded was that of coming in contactall at once with hundreds of similarly educated young men of one's ownage. Young men made each other's acquaintance at lectures and banquets, were drawn to one another, or felt themselves repulsed, and electiveaffinity or accident associated them in pairs or groups for a longer orshorter period. 

A young fellow whose main passion was a desire for intellectualenrichment was necessarily obliged to associate with many of the otheryoung men of his own age, in order to learn to know them, in order, externally and internally, to gain as much experience as possible andthereby develop himself. 

In the case of many of them, a few conversations were enough to provethat any fruitful intimacy was out of the question. I came into fleetingcontact with a number of suave, or cold, or too ordinary young students, without their natures affecting mine or mine theirs. But there wereothers who, for some months, engaged my attention to a considerableextent. 

The first of these was a type of the student of the time. Vilsing wasfrom Jutland, tall, dark, neither handsome nor plain, remarkable for hisunparalleled facility in speaking. He owed his universal popularity tothe fact that at students' Parties he could at any time stand up andrattle off at a furious rate an apparently unprepared speech, a sort ofstump speech in which humorous perversions, distortions, lyric remarks, clever back-handed blows to right and left, astonishing incursions andrapid sorties, were woven into a whole so good that it was anentertaining challenge to common sense. 

The starting point, for instance, might be some travesty of Sibbern'swhimsical definition of life, which at that time we all had to learn byheart for the examination. It ran:

"Life altogether is an activity and active process, preceding from aninner source and working itself out according to an inner impulse, producing and by an eternal change of matter, reproducing, organisingand individualising, and, since it by a certain material or substratumconstitutes itself a certain exterior, within which it reveals itself, it simultaneously constitutes itself as the subsisting activity andendeavour in this, its exterior, of which it may further be inquired howfar a soul can be said to live and subsist in it, as a living entity--appearing in such a life. "

It is not difficult to conceive what delightful nonsense this barbaricelucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkennesswere defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks onearlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one ofthe bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could read in the play oftheir features: "Forget me not! I, too, was an orator. "

Vilsing, who had been studying for some years already, paid a freshman acompliment by desiring his acquaintance and seeking his society. Hefrequented the Students' Union, was on terms of friendship with thosewho led the fashion, and was a favourite speaker. It was a species ofcondescension on his part to seek out a young fellow just escaped fromschool, a fellow who would have sunk into the earth if he had had tomake a speech, and who had no connection with the circle of olderstudents. 

Vilsing was a young man of moods, who, like many at that time, likeAlbrecht, the chief character in Schandorph's [Footnote: SophusSchandorph, b. 1820, d. 1901; a prominent Danish novelist, who commencedhis literary activity in the sixties. --[Translator's note. ]] _Withouta Centre_, would exhibit all the colours of the rainbow in onemorning. He would give himself, and take himself back, show himselfaffectionate, cordial, intimate, confidential, full of affectionateanxiety for me his young friend, and at the next meeting be as cursoryand cool as if he scarcely remembered having seen me before; for hewould in the meantime have been attacked by vexation at his too greatfriendliness, and wish to assert himself, as knowing his own value. 

He impressed me, his junior, by revealing himself, not precisely as aman of the world, but as a much sought after society man. He told me howmuch he was asked out, and how he went from one party and one ball toanother, which, to me, with my hankering after experiences, seemed to bean enviable thing. But I was more struck by what Vilsing told me of thefavour he enjoyed with the other sex. One girl--a charming girl!--he wasengaged to, another loved him and he her; but those were the least ofhis erotic triumphs; wherever he showed himself, he conquered. Andproofs were to hand. For one day, when he had dragged me up to his roomwith him, he bewildered me by shaking out before my eyes a profusion ofembroidered sofa-cushions, fancy pillows, cigar-cases, match-holders, crocheted purses, worked waistcoats, etc. ; presents from everydescription of person of the feminine gender. In every drawer he pulledout there were presents of the sort; they hung over chairs and on pegs. 

I was young enough to feel a certain respect for a man so sought afterby the fair sex, although I thought his frankness too great. What firstbegan to undermine this feeling was not doubt of the truth of his tales, or the genuineness of the gifts, but the fact that one after another ofmy comrades, when the first cool stages of acquaintance were passed, invariably found a favourable opportunity of confidentially informingme--he could not explain why it was himself, but it was a fact--thatwherever he showed himself women were singularly fascinated by the sightof him; there must be something about him which vanquished them in spiteof him. When at last one evening the most round-backed of all of them, aswain whose blond mustache, of irregular growth, resembled an old, worn-out toothbrush more than anything else, also confided in me that he didnot know how it was, or what could really be the cause of it, but theremust be something about him, etc. , --then my belief in Vilsing'ssingularity and my admiration for him broke down. It must not besupposed that Vilsing regarded himself as a sensual fiend. He did notpose as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and instinct with feeling. He was studying theology, and cherished no dearer wish than eventuallyto become a priest. He constantly alternated between contrition andself-satisfaction, arrogance and repentance, enjoyed the consciousnessof being exceptionally clever, an irresistible charmer, and a trueChristian. It seemed to him that, in the freshman whom he had singledout from the crowd and given a place at his side, he had found anintellectual equal, or even superior, and this attracted him; he metwith in me an inexperience and unworldliness so great that theinferiority in ability which he declared he perceived was more thancounterbalanced by the superiority he himself had the advantage of, bothin social accomplishments and in dealing with women. 

It thus seemed as though many of the essential conditions of a tolerablypermanent union between us were present. But during the firstconversation in which he deigned to be interested in my views, thereoccurred in our friendship a little rift which widened to a chasm. Vilsing sprang back horrified when he heard how I, greenhorn though Iwas, regarded life and men and what I considered right. "You are in theclutches of Evil, and your desire is towards the Evil. I have not timeor inclination to unfold an entire Christology now, but what you rejectis the Ideal, and what you appraise is the Devil himself. God! God! Howdistressed I am for you! I would give my life to save you. But enoughabout it for the present; I have not time just now; I have to go out todinner. "

This was our last serious conversation. I was not saved. He did not givehis life. He went for a vacation tour the following Summer holidays, avoided me on his return, and soon we saw no more of each other. 

IV. 

The theory, the intimation of which roused Vilsing to such a degree, bore in its form witness to such immaturity that it could only have madean impression on a youth whose immaturity, in spite of his age, wasgreater still. To present it with any degree of clearness is scarcelypossible; it was not sufficiently clear in itself for that. But this wasabout what it amounted to:

The introspection and energetic self-absorption to which I had givenmyself up during my last few years at school became even more persistenton my release from the restraint of school and my free admission to thesociety of grown-up people. 

I took advantage of my spare time in Copenhagen, and on the restrictedtravels that I was allowed to take, to slake my passionate thirst forlife; firstly, by pondering ever and anon over past sensations, andsecondly, by plunging into eager and careful reading of the lightliterature of all different countries and periods that I had heardabout, but did not yet myself know at first hand. 

Through all that I experienced and read, observed and made my own, myattitude towards myself was, that before all, I sought to become clearas to what manner of man I really, in my inmost being, was. I askedmyself who I was. I endeavoured to discover the mysterious word thatwould break the charm of the mists in which I found myself and wouldanswer my fundamental question, _What_ was I? And then at last, myponderings and my readings resulted in my finding the word that seemedto fit, although nowadays one can hardly hear it without a smile, theword _Daemonic_. 

I was daemonic in giving myself this reply it seemed to me that I hadsolved the riddle of my nature. I meant thereby, as I then explained itto myself, that the choice between good and evil did not present itselfto me, as to others, since evil did not interest me. For me, it was nota question of a choice, but of an unfolding of my ego, which had itsjustification in itself. 

That which I called the _daemonic_ I had encountered for the firsttime outside my own mind in Lermontof's hero. Petsjórin was compelled toact in pursuance of his natural bent, as though possessed by his ownbeing. I felt myself in a similar manner possessed. I had met with theword _Daimon_ and _Daimones_ in Plato; Socrates urges that by_daemons_ the Gods, or the children of the Gods, were meant. I feltas though I, too, were one of the children of the Gods. In all the greatlegendary figures of the middle ages I detected the feature of divinepossession, especially in the two who had completely fascinated thepoets of the nineteenth century, Don Juan and Faust. The first was thesymbol of magic power over women, the second of the thirst for knowledgegiving dominion over humanity and Nature. Among my comrades, in Vilsing, even in the hunch-backed fellow with the unsuccessful moustache, I hadseen how the Don Juan type which had turned their heads still held swayover the minds of young people; I myself could quite well understand themagic which this beautiful ideal of elementary irresistibility musthave; but the Faust type appealed to me, with my thirst for knowledge, very much more. Still, the main thing for me was that in the first greatand wholly modern poets that I made acquaintance with, Byron and hisintellectual successors, Lermontof and Heine, I recognised again thevery fundamental trait that I termed _daemonic_, the worship ofone's own originality, under the guise of an uncompromising love ofliberty. 

I was always brooding over this idea of the _daemonic_ with whichmy mind was filled. I recorded my thoughts on the subject in my firstlong essay (lost, for that matter), _On the Daemonic, as it RevealsItself in the Human Character_. 

When a shrewdly intelligent young fellow of my own age criticised mywork from the assumption that the _daemonic_ did not exist, Ithought him ridiculous. I little dreamt that twenty-five years laterRelling, in _The Wild Duck_, would show himself to be on myfriend's side in the emphatic words: "What the Devil does it mean to bedaemonic! It's sheer nonsense. "

V. 

The "daemonic" was also responsible for the mingled attraction that wasexerted over me at this point by a young foreign student, and for theintercourse which ensued between us. Kappers was born somewhere in theWest Indies, was the son of a well-to-do German manufacturer, and hadbeen brought up in a North German town. His father, for what reason I donot know, wished him to study at Copenhagen University, and there takehis law examination. There was coloured blood in his veins, though muchdiluted, maybe an eighth or so. He was tall and slender, somewhat loosein his walk and bearing, pale-complexioned, with dark eyes and negrohair. His face, though not handsome, looked exceedingly clever, and itsexpression was not deceptive, for the young man had an astonishingintellect. 

He was placed in the house of a highly respected family in Copenhagen, that of a prominent scientist, a good-natured, unpractical savant, veryunsuited to be the mentor of such an unconventional young man. He wasconspicuous among the native Danish freshmen for his elegant dress andcosmopolitan education, and was so quick at learning that before verymany weeks he spoke Danish almost without a mistake, though with amarked foreign accent, which, however, lent a certain charm to what hesaid. His extraordinary intelligence was not remarkable either for itscomprehensiveness or its depth, but it was a quicker intelligence thanany his Copenhagen fellow-student had ever known, and so keen that heseemed born to be a lawyer. 

Kappers spent almost all his day idling about the streets, talking tohis companions; he was always ready for a walk; you never saw him workor heard him talk about his work. Nevertheless, he, a foreigner, who hadbarely mastered the language, presented himself after six months--beforehe had attended all the lectures, that is, --for the examination inphilosophy and passed it with _Distinction_ in all three subjects;indeed, Rasmus Nielsen, who examined him in Propaedeutics, was sodelighted at the foreigner's shrewd and ready answers that he gave him_Specially excellent_, a mark which did not exist. 

His gifts in the juridical line appeared to be equally remarkable. Whenhe turned up in a morning with his Danish fellow-students at the coach'shouse it might occasionally happen that he was somewhat tired and slack, but more often he showed a natural grasp of the handling of legalquestions, and a consummate skill in bringing out every possible aspectof each question, that were astonishing in a beginner. 

His gifts were of unusual power, but for the externalities of thingsonly, and he possessed just the gifts with which the sophists of oldtime distinguished themselves. He himself was a young sophist, and atthe same time a true comedian, adapting his behaviour to whomsoever hemight happen to be addressing, winning over the person in question bystriking his particular note and showing that side of his character withwhich he could best please him. Endowed with the capacity of mystifyingand dazzling those around him, exceedingly keen-sighted, adaptable butin reality empty, he knew how to set people thinking and to fascinateothers by his lively, unprejudiced and often paradoxical, butentertaining conversation. He was now colder, now more confidential; heknew how to assume cordiality, and to flatter by appearing to admire. 

With a young student like myself who had just left school, was quiteinexperienced in all worldly matters, and particularly in the chapter ofwomen, but in whom he detected good abilities and a very strainedidealism, he affected ascetic habits. With other companions he showedhimself the intensely reckless and dissipated rich man's son he was;indeed, he amused himself by introducing some of the most inoffensiveand foolish of them into the wretched dens of vice and letting themindulge themselves at his expense. 

Intellectually interested as he was, he proposed, soon after our firstmeeting, that we should start a "literary and scientific" society, consisting of a very few freshmen, who, at the weekly meetings, shouldread a paper one of them had composed, whereupon two members who hadpreviously read the paper should each submit it to a prepared criticismand after that, general discussion of the question. All that concernedthe proposed society was carried out with a genuine Kappers-likemystery, as if it were a conspiracy, and with forms and ceremoniesworthy of a diplomat's action. 

Laws were drafted for the society, although it eventually consisted onlyof five members, and elaborate minutes were kept of the meetings. Amongthe members was V. Topsöe, afterwards well known as an editor andauthor, at that time a cautious and impudent freshman, whose motto was:"It is protection that we people must live by. " He read the society apaper _On the Appearance_, dealing with how one ought to dress, behave, speak, do one's hair, which revealed powers of observation and asarcastic tendency. Amongst those who eagerly sought for admission butnever secured it was a young student, handsome, and with no small loveof study, but stupid and pushing, for whom I, who continued to seemyself in Lermontof's Petsjórin, cherished a hearty contempt, for thecurious reason that he in every way reminded me of Petsjórin's fatuousand conceited adversary, Gruchnitski. Vilsing was asked to take part inthe society's endeavours, but refused. "What I have against all thesesocieties, " he said, "is the self-satisfaction they give rise to; theonly theme I should be inclined to treat is that of how the modern DonJuan must be conceived; but that I cannot do, since I should be obligedto touch on so many incidents of my own life. "

This was the society before which I read the treatise on _TheDaemonic_, and it was Kappers who, with his well-developedintelligence, would not admit the existence of anything of the sort. 

The regular meetings went on for six months only, the machinery beingtoo large and heavy in comparison with the results attained. Kappers andhis intimate friends, however, saw none the less of each other. Thebrilliant West Indian continued to pursue his legal studies and to carryon his merry life in Copenhagen for some eighteen months. But hisstudies gradually came to a standstill, while his gay life took up moreand more of his time. He was now living alone in a flat which, to beginwith, had been very elegantly furnished, but grew emptier and emptier bydegrees, as his furniture was sold, or went to the pawnbroker's. Hisfurniture was followed by his books, and when Schou's "_Orders inCouncil_" had also been turned into money, his legal studies ceasedof themselves. When the bookshelves were empty it was the turn of thewardrobe and the linen drawers, till one Autumn day in 1861, an emissaryof his father, who had been sent to Copenhagen to ascertain what the sonwas really about, found him in his shirt, without coat or trousers, wrapped up in his fur overcoat, sitting on the floor in his drawing-room, where there was not so much as a chair left. Asked how it was thatthings had come to such a pass with him, he replied: "It is the cursethat follows the coloured race. "

A suit of clothes was redeemed for Kappers junior, and he was hurriedaway as quickly as possible to the German town where his father lived, and where the son explained to everyone who would listen that he hadbeen obliged to leave Copenhagen suddenly "on account of a duel with agentleman in a very exalted position. "

VI. 

My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after yearswhen I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had graduallygrown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow outof it. 

One of the members of Kappers' "literary and scientific" society, andthe one whom the West Indian had genuinely cared most for, was a youngfellow whose father was very much respected, and to whom attention wascalled for that reason; he was short, a little heavy on his feet, and atrifle indolent, had beautiful eyes, was warm-hearted and well educated, had good abilities without being specially original, and was somewhatcareless in his dress, as in other things. 

His father was C. N. David, well known in his younger days as aUniversity professor and a liberal politician, who later became the Headof the Statistical Department and a Member of the Senate. He had been inhis youth a friend of Johan Ludvig Heiberg, [Footnote: J. L. Heiberg, towhom such frequent allusion is made, was a well-known Danish author ofthe last century (1791-1860). Among many other things, he wrote a seriesof vaudevilles for the Royal Theatre at Copenhagen, Of which he wasmanager. In every piece he wrote there was a special part for his wife, Johanne Luise Heiberg, who was the greatest Danish actress of the 19thcentury. ] and had been dramatic contributor to the latter's paper. 

He was a very distinguished satirist and critic and his influence uponthe taste and critical opinion of his day can only be compared with thatof Holberg in the 18th century. 

Now, in concert with Bluhme and a few other of the elder politicians, hehad formed a Conservative Fronde, opposed to the policy of the NationalLiberals. One day as we two young men were sitting in his son's room, drafting the rules for the freshmen's society of five members, the oldgentleman came through and asked us what we were writing. "Rules for asociety; we want to get them done as quickly as we can. " "That is right. That kind of constitution may very well be written out expeditiously. There has not been very much more trouble or forethought spent on theone we have in this country. "

It was not, however, so much the internal policy of the NationalLiberals that he objected to--it was only the Election Law that he wasdissatisfied with--as their attitude towards Germany. Whenever a stepwas taken in the direction of the incorporation of Slesvig, he wouldexclaim: "We are doing what we solemnly promised not to do. How cananyone be so childish as to believe that it will turn out well!"

The son, whose home impressions in politics had been Conservative, was ahappy young man with a somewhat embarrassed manner, who sometimes hidhis uncertainty under the cloak of a carelessness that was notaltogether assumed. Behind him stood his family, to whom he hospitablyintroduced those of his companions whom he liked, and though the familywere not gentle of origin, they belonged, nevertheless, to the highestcircles in the country and exercised their attraction through the son. 

I, whom Ludvig David was now eagerly cultivating, had known him for manyyears, as we had been school-fellows and even classmates, although Davidwas considerably older. I had never felt drawn to him as a boy, in fact, had not liked him. Neither had David, in our school-days, ever made anyadvances to me, having had other more intimate friends. Now, however, hewas very cordial to me, and expressed in strong terms his appreciationof my industry and abilities; he himself was often teased at home forhis lack of application. 

C. N. David was the first public personality with whom, as a student, Ibecame acquainted and into whose house I was introduced. For many yearsI enjoyed unusual kindness and hospitality at the hands of the oldpolitician, afterwards Minister of Finance. 

VII. 

I had hitherto been only mildly interested in politics. I had, ofcourse, as a boy, attentively followed the course of the Crimean war, which my French uncle, on one of his visits, had called the fight forcivilisation against barbarism, although it was a fight for Turkey! now, as a student, I followed with keen interest the Italian campaign and therevolt against the Austrian Dukes and the Neapolitan Bourbons. But theinternal policy of Denmark had little attraction for me. As soon as Ientered the University I felt myself influenced by the spirit of suchmen as Poul Möller, J. L. Heiberg, Sören Kierkegaard, and distinctlyremoved from the belief in the power of the people which was beingpreached everywhere at that time. This, however, was hardly more than aframe of mind, which did not preclude my feeling myself in sympathy withwhat at that time was called broad thought (i. E. , Liberalism). AlthoughI was often indignant at the National Liberal and Scandinavian terrorismwhich obtained a hearing at both convivial and serious meetings in theStudents' Union, my feelings in the matter of Denmark's foreign policywith regard to Sweden and Norway, as well as to Germany, were the sameas those held by all the other students. I felt no intellectual debt toeither Sweden or Norway, but I was drawn by affection towards the Swedesand the Norsemen, and in Christian Richardt's lovely song at theNorthern Celebration in 1860, _For Sweden and Norway_, I found theexpression of the fraternal feelings that I cherished in my breast forour two Northern neighbours. On the other hand, small as my store ofknowledge still was, I had already acquired some considerable impressionof German culture. Nevertheless, the increasingly inimical attitude ofthe German people towards Denmark, and the threatenings of war withGermany, together with my childish recollections of the War of 1848-50, had for their effect that in the Germany of that day I only saw anenemy's country. A violent affection that I felt at sixteen for acharming little German girl made no difference to this view. 

VIII. 

The old men, who advocated the greatest caution in dealing with theimpossible demands of the German Federation, and were profoundlydistrustful as to the help that might be expected from Europe, werevituperated in the press. As _Whole-State Men_, they were regardedas unpatriotic, and as so-called _Reactionaries_, accused of beingenemies to freedom. When I was introduced into the house of one of thesepolitically ill-famed leaders, in spite of my ignorance, I knew enoughof politics, as of other subjects, to draw a sharp distinction betweenthat which I could in a measure grasp, and that which I did notunderstand; I was sufficiently educated to place Danish constitutionalquestions in the latter category, and consequently I crossed, devoid ofprejudice, the threshold of a house whence proceeded, according to theopinion of the politically orthodox, a pernicious, though fortunatelypowerless, political heterodoxy. 

It must not be supposed that I came into close touch with anything ofthe sort. The old Minister never opened his mouth on political mattersin the bosom of his family. But the impression of superior intelligenceand knowledge of men that he conveyed was enough to place him in adifferent light from that in which he was depicted in _TheFatherland_, the paper whose opinions were swallowed blindly by thestudent body. And my faith in the infallibility of the paper was shakeneven more one day, when I saw the Leader of the Reactionary Partyhimself, Privy Councillor Bluhme, at the house, and sat unnoticed in acorner, listening to his conversation. He talked a great deal, although, like the master of the house, he did not allude to his public work. Likea statesman of the old school, he expressed himself with exquisitepoliteness and a certain ceremony. But of the affectation of which_The Fatherland_ accused him, there was not a trace. Whatprofoundly impressed me was the Danish the old gentleman spoke, the mostperfect Danish. He told of his travels in India--once upon a time he hadbeen Governor of Trankebar--and you saw before you the banks of theGanges and the white troops of women, streaming down to bathe in theriver, as their religion prescribed. 

I never forgot the words with which Bluhme rose to go: "May I borrow theEnglish blue-books for a few days? There might be something or otherthat the newspapers have not thought fit to tell us. " I started at thewords. It dawned upon me for the first time, though merely as a remotepossibility, that the Press might purposely and with intent to misleadkeep silence about facts that had a claim upon the attention of thepublic. 

IX. 

Young David had once asked me to read Ovid's Elegiacs with him, and thiswas the beginning of our closer acquaintance. In town, in the Winter, wetwo younger ones were only rarely with the rest of the family, but inSummer it was different. The Minister had built a house at Rungsted, ona piece of land belonging to his brother, who was a farmer and the ownerof Rungstedgaard, Rungstedlund and Folehavegaard, a shrewd and practicalman. To this villa, which was in a beautiful situation, overlooking thesea, I was often invited by my friend to spend a few days in the Summer, sometimes even a month at a time. At first, of course, I was nothing tothe rest of the family; they received me for the son's sake; but bydegrees I won a footing with them, too. The handsome, clever andsprightly mistress of the house took a motherly interest in me, and theyoung daughters showed me kindness for which I was very grateful. 

The master of the house sometimes related an anecdote, as, for instance, about Heiberg's mad pranks as a young man. When he went off into thewoods and got hungry, he used to take provisions from the stores in thelockers of the phaetons that put up at Klampenborg, while the peoplewere walking about in the park, and the coachmen inside the public-house. One day, with Möhl and David, he got hold of a huge layer-cake. The young fellows had devoured a good half of it and replaced it underthe seat of the carriage, when the family came back, caught sight ofHeiberg, whom they knew, and invited the young men to have a piece ofcake and a glass of wine. When they made the horrifying discovery of thehavoc that had been wrought, they themselves would not touch it, and therobbers, who were stuffed already, were obliged to consume the remainderof the cake between them. 

There was often music at the Villa; sometimes I was asked to read aloud, and then I did my best, choosing good pieces not well known, and readingcarefully. The pleasant outdoor life gave me a few glimpses of that rareand ardently desired thing, still contentment. It was more particularlyalone with Nature that I felt myself at home. 

A loose page from my diary of those days will serve to indicate theuntried forces that I felt stirring within me:

 On the way down, the sky was dappled with large and many-coloured clouds. I wandered about in the woods to-day, among the oaks and beeches, and saw the sun gilding the leaves and the tree-trunks, lay down under a tree with my Greek Homer and read the first and second books of the Odyssey. Went backwards and forwards in the clover field, revelled in the clover, smelt it, and sucked the juice of the flowers. I have the same splendid view as of old from my window. The sea, in all its flat expanse, moved in towards me to greet me, when I arrived. It was roaring and foaming mildly. Hveen could be seen quite clearly. Now the wind is busy outside my window, the sea is stormy, the dark heavens show streaks of moonlight.... 

 East wind and rain. Went as far as Valloröd in a furious wind. The sky kept clear; a dark red patch of colour showed the position of the Sun on the horizon. The Moon has got up hurriedly, has turned from red to yellow, and looks lovely. I am drunk with the beauties of Nature. Go to Folehave and feel, like the gods in Homer, without a care.... 

 I can never get sleepy out in the open country on a windy night. Rested a little, got up at four o'clock, went at full speed along soaked roads to Humlebaek, to Gurre Ruins and lake, through the woods to Fredensborg park, back to Humlebaek, and came home to Rungsted by steamer. Then went up on the hill. Quiet beauty of the landscape. Feeling that Nature raises even the fallen into purer, loftier regions. Took the Odyssey and went along the field-path to the stone table; cool, fresh air, harmony and splendour over Nature. "Wildly soars the hawk. " Went up into the sunlit wood at Hörsholm, gazed at the melancholy expression in the faces of the horses and sheep. 

 I made ducks and drakes and asked the others riddles. A woman came and begged for help to bury her husband; he had had such an easy death. (She is said to have killed him with a blow from a wooden shoe. ) Sat under a giant beech in Rungsted Wood; then had a splendid drive after the heavy rain up to Folehave and thence to Hörsholm. Everything was as fresh and lovely as in an enchanted land. What a freshness! The church and the trees mirrored themselves in the lake. The device on my shield shall be three lucky peas. [Footnote: There seems to be some such legendary virtue attached in Denmark to a pea-pod containing _three_ or _nine_ peas, as with us to a four-leaved clover. --[Translator's note. ]] To Vedbaek and back. We were going for a row. My hostess agreed, but as we had a large, heavy and clumsy boat, they were all nervous. Then Ludvig's rowlock snapped and he caught a crab. It was no wonder, as he was rowing too deep. So I took both sculls myself. It was tiring to pull the heavy boat with so many, but the sea was inexpressibly lovely, the evening dead calm. Silver sheen on the water, visible to the observant and initiated Nature-lover. Ripple from the west wind (GREEK: phrhix). 

 Grubbed in the shingle, and went to Folehave. Gathered flowers and strawberries. My fingers still smell of strawberries. 

 Went out at night. Pictures of my fancy rose around me. A Summer's night, but as cold as Winter, the clouds banked up on the horizon. Suppose in the wind and cold and dark I were to meet one I know! Over the corn the wind whispered or whistled a name. The waves dashed in a short little beat against the shore. It is only the sea that is as Nature made it; the land in a thousand ways is robbed of its virginity by human hands, but the sea now is as it was thousands of years ago. A thick fog rose up. The birches bent their heads and went to sleep. But I can hear the grass grow and the stars sing. 

Gradually my association with Ludvig David grew more and more intimate, and the latter proved himself a constant friend. A few years after ourfriendship had begun, when things were looking rather black for me, myfather having suffered great business losses, and no longer being ableto give me the same help as before, Ludvig David invited me to go andlive altogether at his father's house, and be like a son there--an offerwhich I of course refused, but which affected me deeply, especially whenI learnt that it had only been made after the whole family had beenconsulted. 

X. 

In November, 1859, at exactly the same time as Kappers' "literary andscientific" society was started, a fellow-student named Grönbeck, fromFalster, who knew the family of Caspar Paludan-Müller, the historian, proposed my joining another little society of young students, of whomGrönbeck thought very highly on account of their altogether unusualknowledge of books and men. 

In the old Students' Union in Boldhusgade, the only meeting-place atthat time for students, which was always regarded in a poetic light, Ihad not found what I wanted. There was no life in it, and at theconvivial meetings on Saturday night the punch was bad, the speecheswere generally bad, and the songs were good only once in a way. 

I had just joined one new society, but I never rejected any prospect ofacquaintances from whom I could learn anything, and nothing was too muchfor me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I wasintroduced to the society so extolled by Grönbeck, which called itselfneither "literary" nor "scientific, " had no other object thansociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a youngphilological student, Frederik Nutzhorn. 

Expecting as I did something out of the ordinary, I was very muchdisappointed. The society proved to be quite vague and indefinite. Thosepresent, the host, a certain Jens Paludan-Müller, son of the historian, a certain Julius Lange, son of the Professor of Pedagogy, and a fewothers, received me as though they had been waiting for me to put thesociety on its legs; they talked as if I were going to do everything toentertain them, and as if they themselves cared to do nothing; theyseemed to be indolent, almost sluggish. First we read aloud in turnsfrom Björnson's _Arne_, which was then new; a lagging conversationfollowed. Nutzhorn talked nonsense, Paludan-Müller snuffled, JuliusLange alone occasionally let fall a humorous remark. The contrastbetween Nutzhorn's band, who took sociability calmly and quietly, andKappers' circle, which met to work and discuss things to its utmostcapacity, was striking. The band seemed exceedingly phlegmatic incomparison. 

This first impression was modified at subsequent meetings. As I talkedto these young men I discovered, first and foremost, how ignorant I wasof political history and the history of art; in the next place, Iseemed, in comparison with them, to be old in my opinions and my habits. They called themselves Republicans, for instance, whereas Republicanismin Denmark had in my eyes hitherto been mere youthful folly. Then again, they were very unconventional in their habits. After a party nearChristmas time, which was distinguished by a pretty song by JuliusLange, they proposed--at twelve o'clock at night!--that we should go toFrederiksborg. And extravagances of this kind were not infrequent. 

Still it was only towards midsummer 1860 that I became properly mergedinto the new circle and felt myself at home in it. It had been increasedby two or three first-rate fellows, Harald Paulsen, at the present timeLord Chief Justice, a courageous young fellow, who was not afraid oftackling any ruffian who interfered with him in a defile; Troels Lund, then studying theology, later on the esteemed historian, who was alwaysrefined, self-controlled, thoughtful, and on occasion caustic, great atfeints in the fencing class; and Emil Petersen, then studying law (diedin 1890, as Departmental Head of Railways), gentle, dreamy, exceedinglyconscientious, with a marked lyric tendency. 

One evening, shortly before Midsummer's eve, when we had gone out toVedbaek, fetched Emil Petersen from Tryggeröd and thoroughly enjoyed thebeautiful scenery, we had a wrestling match out in the water offSkodsborg and a supper party afterwards at which, under the influence ofthe company, the gaiety rose to a wild pitch and eventually passed allbounds. We made speeches, sang, shouted our witticisms at each other allat once, seized each other round the waist and danced, till we had tostop for sheer tiredness. Then we all drank pledges of eternalfriendship, and trooped into the town together, and hammered at thedoors of the coffee-houses after midnight to try to get in somewherewhere we could have coffee. We had learnt all at once to know andappreciate each other to the full; we were united by a feeling ofbrotherhood and remained friends for life. The life allotted to severalof the little band was, it is true, but short; Jens Paludan-Müller fellat Sankelmark three and a half years later; Nutzhorn had only five yearsand a half to live. Of the others, Emil Petersen and Julius Lange aredead. But, whether our lives were long or short, our meetings frequentor rare, we continued to be cordially attached to one another, and nomisunderstanding or ill-feeling ever cropped up between us. 

XI. 

Among my Danish excursions was one to Slesvig in July, 1860. TheCopenhagen students had been asked to attend a festival to be held atAngel at the end of July for the strengthening of the sparse Danishelement in that German-minded region. There were not many who wished togo, but several of those who did had beautiful voices, and sangfeelingly the national songs with which it was hoped the hearts of theAngel people, and especially of the ladies, might be touched. Severalgentlemen still living, at that time among the recognised leaders of thestudents, went with us. 

We sailed from Korsör to Flensborg one exquisite Summer night; we gaveup the berths we had secured and stayed all night on deck with a bowl ofpunch. It was a starlight night, the ship cut rapidly through the calmwaters, beautiful songs were sung and high-flown speeches made. Onespeech was held in a whisper, the one in honour of General de Meza, whowas still a universal favourite, and who was sitting in his stateroom, waked up out of his sleep, with his white gloves and gaufred lace cuffson and a red and white night-cap on his head. We young ones only thoughtof him as the man who, during the battle of Fredericia, had never moveda muscle of his face, and when it was over had said quietly: "The resultis very satisfactory. "

Unfriendly and sneering looks from the windows at Flensborg very soonshowed the travellers that Danish students' caps were not a welcomesight there. The Angel peasants, however, were very pleasant. Thefestival, which lasted all day and concluded with dancing and fireworks, was a great success, and a young man who had been carousing all night, travelling all day, and had danced all the evening with pretty girlstill his senses were in a whirl, could not help regarding the scene ofthe festival in a romantic light, as he stood there alone, late atnight, surrounded by flaring torches, the fireworks sputtering andglittering about him. Some few of the students sat in the fields roundflaming rings of pitch, an old Angel peasant keeping the fires alightand singing Danish songs. Absolutely enraptured, and with tears in hiseyes, he went about shaking hands with the young men and thanking themfor coming. It was peculiarly solemn and beautiful. 

Next day, when I got out at Egebaek station on my way from Flensborg, intending to go to Idsted, it seemed that three other young men had hadthe same idea, so we all four walked together. They were young men of atype I had not met with before. The way they felt and spoke was new tome. They all talked in a very affectionate manner, betrayed at once thatthey worshipped one another, and seemed to have strong, open natures, much resembling each other. They were Ernst Trier, Nörregaard, andBaagöe, later the three well-known High School men. 

The little band arrived at a quick pace on Idsted's beautiful heath, alltufts of ling, the red blossoms of which looked lovely in the light ofthe setting sun. We sat ourselves down on the hill where Baudissin andhis staff had stood. Then Baagöe read aloud Hammerich's description ofthe battle of Idsted, while each of us in his mind's eye saw theseething masses of troops advance and fall upon one another, as they haddone just ten years before. 

Our time was short, if we wanted to get under a roof that night. At 9o'clock we were still eight miles from Slesvig. We did the first four ata pace that was novel to me. Three-parts of the way we covered in forty-five minutes, the last two miles took us twenty. When we arrived at thehotel, there stood Madam Esselbach, of war renown, in the doorway, withher hands on her hips, as in her portrait; she summed up the arrivalswith shrewd, sharp eyes, and exclaimed: "_Das ist ja das jungeDänemark_. " Inside, officers were sitting, playing cards. MajorSommer promised us young men to show us Gottorp at 6 o'clock nextmorning; we should then get a view of the whole of the town fromHersterberg beforehand. 

The Major, who was attacked in the newspapers after the war, and whoseexpression "my maiden sword, " was made great fun of, showed us youngerones the magnificent church, and afterwards the castle, which, as abarracks, was quite spoilt. He acted as the father of the regiment, and, like Poul Möller's artist, encouraged the efficient, and said hard wordsto the slighty, praising or blaming unceasingly, chatted Danish to thesoldiers, Low German to the cook, High German to the little housekeeperat the castle, and called the attention of his guests to the perfectorder and cleanliness of the stables. He complained bitterly that acertain senior lieutenant he pointed out to us, who in 1848 had flunghis cockade in the gutter and gone over to the Germans, had beenreinstated in the regiment, and placed over the heads of brave second-lieutenants who had won their crosses in the war. 

Here I parted with my Grundtvigian friends. When I spoke of them toJulius Lange on my return, he remarked: "They are a good sort, who weartheir hearts in their buttonholes as decorations. "

The society I fell in with for the rest of my journey was very droll. This consisted of Borup, later Mayor of Finance, and a journalist namedFalkman (really Petersen), even at that time on the staff of _TheDally Paper_. I little guessed then that my somewhat vulgartravelling companion would develop into the Cato who wished Ibsen's_Ghosts_ "might be thrust into the slime-pit, where such thingsbelong, " and would write articles by the hundred against me. Neither hadI any suspicion, during my acquaintance with Topsöe, that the latterwould one day be one of my most determined persecutors. Without exactlybeing strikingly youthful, the large, broad-shouldered Borup was still ayoung man. Falkman wrote good-humouredly long reports to Bille aboutSlesvig, which I corrected for him. Borup and Falkman generallyexclaimed the moment I opened my mouth: "Not seraphic, now!"

We travelled together to Glücksborg, saw the camp there, and, as we hadhad nothing since our morning coffee at 5 o'clock, ate between the threeof us a piece of roast meat six pounds weight. We spent the night atFlensborg and drove next day to Graasten along a lovely road with woodedbanks on either side. It was pouring with rain, and we sat in deadsilence, trying to roll ourselves up in horse-cloths. When in an hour'stime the rain stopped, and we put up at an inn, our enforced silencegave place to the wildest merriment. We three young fellows--the futureFinance Minister as well--danced into the parlour, hopped about likewild men, spilt milk over ourselves, the sofa, and the waitress; thensprang, waltzing and laughing, out through the door again and up intothe carriage, after having heaped the girl with small copper coins. 

From Graasten we proceeded to Sönderborg. The older men lay down andslept after the meal. I went up to Dybbölmölle. On the way back, I foundon a hill looking out over Als a bench from which there was a beautifulview across to Slesvig. I lay down on the seat and gazed up at the skyand across the perfect country. The light fields, with their tall, darkhedges, which give the Slesvig scenery its peculiar stamp, from thishigh-lying position looked absolutely lovely. 

XII. 

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light. My nature, oneuninterrupted endeavour, was too tense for that. Although I occasionallyfelt the spontaneous enjoyments of breathing the fresh air, seeing thesun shine, and listening to the whistling of the wind, and alwaysdelighted in the fact that I was in the heyday of my youth, there wasyet a considerable element of melancholy in my temperament, and I was soloth to abandon myself to any illusion that when I looked into my ownheart and summed up my own life it seemed to me that I had never beenhappy for a day. I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole dayat a time, scarcely for an hour. I had only known a moment's rapture inthe companionship of my comrades at a merry-making, in intercourse witha friend, under the influence of the beauties of Nature, or the charm ofwomen, or in delight at gaining intellectual riches--during the readingof a poem, the sight of a play, or when absorbed in a work of art. 

Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me wasunfortunately rare with me. Almost always, when talking to strangers, Ifelt the exact opposite, which annoyed me exceedingly, namely, that Iwas being intellectually sucked, squeezed like a lemon, and whereas Iwas never bored when alone, in the society of other people I sufferedoverwhelmingly from boredom. In fact, I was so bored by the visitsheaped upon me by my comrades and acquaintances, who inconsideratelywasted my time, in order to kill a few hours, that I was almost drivento despair; I was too young obstinately to refuse to see them. 

By degrees, the thought of the boredom that I suffered at almost allsocial functions dominated my mind to such an extent that I wrote alittle fairy tale about boredom, by no means bad (but unfortunatelylost), round an idea which I saw several years later treated in anotherway in Sibbern's well-known book of the year 2135. This fairy tale wasread aloud to Nutzhorn's band and met with its approval. 

But although I could thus by no means be called of a happy disposition, I was, by reason of my overflowing youth, in a constant state ofelation, which, as soon as the company of others brought me out of myusual balance, acted like exuberant mirth and made me burst outlaughing. 

I was noted, among my comrades, and not always to my advantage, for myabsolutely ungovernable risibility. I had an exceedingly keen eye forthe ridiculous, and easily influenced as I still was, I could notcontent myself with a smile. Not infrequently, when walking about thetown, I used to laugh the whole length of a street. There were timeswhen I was quite incapable of controlling my laughter; I laughed like achild, and it was incomprehensible to me that people could go so soberlyand solemnly about. If a person stared straight at me, it made me laugh. If a girl flirted a little with me, I laughed in her face. One day Iwent out and saw two drunken labourers, in a cab, each with a wreath onhis knee; I was obliged to laugh; I met an old dandy whom I knew, withtwo coats on, one of which hung down below the other; I had to laugh atthat, too. Sometimes, walking or standing, absorbed in thoughts, I wasoutwardly abstracted, and answered mechanically, or spoke in a mannerunsuited to my words; if I noticed this myself, I could not refrain fromlaughing aloud at my own absent-mindedness. It occasionally happenedthat at an evening party, where I had been introduced by the son of thehouse to a stiff family to whom I was a stranger, and where theconversation at table was being carried on in laboured monosyllables, Iwould begin to laugh so unrestrainedly that every one stared at me inanger or amazement. And it occasionally happened that when some sadevent, concerning people present, was being discussed, the recollectionof something comical I had seen or heard the same day would crop up inmy mind to the exclusion of all else, and I would be overtaken by fitsof laughter that were both incomprehensible and wounding to those roundme, but which it was impossible to me to repress. At funeral ceremonies, I was in such dread of bursting out laughing that my attention wouldinvoluntarily fix itself on everything it ought to avoid. This habit ofmine was particularly trying when my laughter had a ruffling effect onothers in a thing that I myself was anxious to carry through. Thus Ispoilt the first rehearsals of Sophocles' Greek play _Philoctetes_, which a little group of students were preparing to act at the request ofJulius Lange. Some of them pronounced the Greek in an unusual manner, others had forgotten their parts or acted badly--and that was quiteenough to set me off in a fit of laughter which I had difficulty instopping. Thus I often laughed, when I was tormented at being compelledto laugh, in reality feeling melancholy, and mentally worried; I used tothink of Oechlenschläger's Oervarodd, who does not laugh when he ishappy, but breaks into a guffaw when he is deeply affected. 

These fits of laughter were in reality the outcome of sheeryouthfulness; with all my musings and reflection, I was still in manyways a child; I laughed as boys and girls laugh, without being able tostop, and especially when they ought not. But this painful trait inmyself directed my thoughts to the nature proper of laughter; I tried tosum up to myself why I laughed, and why people in general laughed, pondered, as well as I was capable of doing the question of what thecomical consisted of, and then recorded the fruits of my reflections inmy second long treatise, _On Laughter_, which has been lost. 

As I approached my twentieth year, these fits of laughter stopped. "Ihave, " wrote I at the time, "seen into that Realm of Sighs, on thethreshold of which I--like Parmeniscus after consulting the Oracle ofTrophonius--have suddenly forgotten how to laugh. "

XIII. 

Meanwhile I had completed my eighteenth year and had to make my choiceof a profession. But what was I fitted for? My parents, and those otherof my relations whose opinions I valued, wished me to take up the law;they thought that I might make a good barrister; but I myself held back, and during my first year of study did not attend a single law lecture. In July, 1860, after I had passed my philosophical examination (with_Distinction_ in every subject), the question became urgent. Whether I was likely to exhibit any considerable talent as a writer, itwas impossible for me to determine. There was only one thing that I feltclear about, and that was that I should never be contented with asubordinate position in the literary world; better a hundred times be ajudge in a provincial town. I felt an inward conviction that I shouldmake my way as a writer. It seemed to me that a deathlike stillnessreigned for the time being over European literature, but that there weremighty forces working in the silence. I believed that a revival wasimminent. In August, 1860, I wrote in my private papers: "We Danes, withour national culture and our knowledge of the literatures of othercountries, will stand well equipped when the literary horn of the Godsresounds again through the world, calling fiery youth to battle. I amfirmly convinced that that time will come and that I shall be, if notthe one who evokes it in the North, at any rate one who will contributegreatly towards it. "

One of the first books I had read as a student was Goethe's _Dichtungund Wahrheit_, and this career had extraordinarily impressed me. Inmy childlike enthusiasm I determined to read all the books that Goethesays that he read as a boy, and thus commenced and finishedWinckelmann's collected works, Lessing's _Laocoon_ and other booksof artistic and archaeological research; in other words, studied thehistory and philosophy of Art in the first instance under aspects which, from the point of view of subsequent research, were altogetherantiquated, though in themselves, and in their day, valuable enough. 

Goethe's life fascinated me for a time to such an extent that I foundduplicates of the characters in the book everywhere. An old languagemaster, to whom I went early in the morning, in order to acquire fromhim the knowledge of English which had not been taught me at school, reminded me vividly, for instance, of the old dancing master in Goethe, and my impression was borne out when I discovered that he, too, had twopretty daughters. A more important point was that the book awoke in me arestless thirst for knowledge, at the same time that I conceived amental picture of Goethe's monumental personality and began to beinfluenced by the universality of his genius. 

Meanwhile, circumstances at home forced me, without further vacillation, to take up some special branch of study. The prospects literaturepresented were too remote. For Physics I had no talent; the logical bentof my abilities seemed to point in the direction of the Law; soJurisprudentia was selected and my studies commenced. 

The University lectures, as given by Professors Aagesen and Gram, wereappalling; they consisted of a slow, sleepy dictation. A death-likedreariness brooded always over the lecture halls. Aagesen was especiallyunendurable; there was no trace of anything human or living about hisdictation. Gram had a kind, well-intentioned personality, but had barelyreached his desk than it seemed as though he, too, were saying: "I am ahuman being, everything human is alien to me. "

We consequently had to pursue our studies with the help of a coach, andthe one whom I, together with Kappers, Ludvig David and a few others, had chosen, Otto Algreen-Ussing, was both a capable and a pleasantguide. Five years were yet to elapse before this man and his even moregifted brother, Frederik, on the formation of the Loyal and ConservativeSociety of August, were persecuted and ridiculed as reactionaries, bythe editors of the ascendant Press, who, only a few years later, provedthemselves to be ten times more reactionary themselves. Otto waspositively enthusiastic over Law; he used to declare that a barrister"was the finest thing a man could be. "

However, he did not succeed in infecting me with his enthusiasm. I tookpains, but there was little in the subject that aroused my interest. Christian the Fifth's _Danish Law_ attracted me exclusively onaccount of its language and the perspicuity and pithiness of theexpressions occasionally made use of. 

With this exception what impressed me most of all that I heard in thelessons was Anders Sandöe Oersted's _Interpretation of the Law_. When I had read and re-read a passage of law which seemed to me to beeasily intelligible, and only capable of being understood in one way, how could I do other than marvel and be seized with admiration, when thecoach read out Oersted's Interpretation, proving that the Law wasmiserably couched, and could be expounded in three or four differentways, all contradicting one another! But this Oersted very often didprove in an irrefutable manner. 

In my lack of receptivity for legal details, and my want of interest inPositive Law, I flung myself with all the greater fervour into the studyof what in olden times was called Natural Law, and plunged again andagain into the study of Legal Philosophy. 

XIV. 

About the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning, I plannedout a study of Philosophy and Aesthetics on a large scale as well. Myday was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night, and there was time for everything, for ancient and modern languages, forlaw lessons with the coach, for the lectures in philosophy whichProfessors H. Bröchner and R. Nielsen were holding for more advancedstudents, and for independent reading of a literary, scientific andhistoric description. 

One of the masters who had taught me at school, a very eruditephilologian, now Dr. Oscar Siesbye, offered me gratuitous instruction, and with his help several of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, various things of Plato's, and comedies by Plautus and Terence werecarefully studied. 

Frederik Nutzhorn read the _Edda_ and the _Niebelungenlied_with me in the originals; with Jens Paludan-Müller I went through theNew Testament in Greek, and with Julius Lange, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Horace and Ovid, and a little of Aristotle and Theocritus. Catullus, Martial and Caesar I read for myself. 

But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until Iapproached my nineteenth year. In philosophy I had hitherto masteredonly a few books by Sören Kierkegaard. But now I began a conscientiousstudy of Heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavoured tomake myself familiar with his speculative logic. As Heiberg's _ProseWritings_ came out, in the 1861 edition, they were studied withextreme care. Heiberg's death in 1860 was a great grief to me; as athinker I had loved and revered him. The clearness of form and theinternal obscurity of his adaptation of Hegel's Teachings, gave one acertain artistic satisfaction, at the same time that it provoked aneffort really to understand. 

But in the nature of things, Heiberg's philosophical life-work could notto a student be other than an admission into Hegel's train of thought, and an introduction to the master's own works. I was not aware that by1860 Europe had long passed his works by in favour of more modernthinking. With a passionate desire to reach a comprehension of thetruth, I grappled with the System, began with the Encyclopaedia, readthe three volumes of Aesthetics, The Philosophy of Law, the Philosophyof History, the Phenomenology of the Mind, then the Philosophy of Lawagain, and finally the Logic, the Natural Philosophy and the Philosophyof the Mind in a veritable intoxication of comprehension and delight. One day, when a young girl towards whom I felt attracted had asked me togo and say good-bye to her before her departure, I forgot the time, herjourney, and my promise to her, over my Hegel. As I walked up and downmy room I chanced to pull my watch out of my pocket, and realised that Ihad missed my appointment and that the girl must have started long ago. 

Hegel's Philosophy of Law had a charm for me as a legal student, partlyon account of the superiority with which the substantial quality ofHegel's mind is there presented, and partly on account of the challengein the attitude of the book to accepted opinions and expressions, "morality" here being almost the only thing Hegel objects to. 

But it was the book on Aesthetics that charmed me most of all. It waseasy to understand, and yet weighty, superabundantly rich. 

Again and again while reading Hegel's works I felt carried away withdelight at the new world of thought opening out before me. And whenanything that for a long time had been incomprehensible to me, at lastafter tenacious reflection became clear, I felt what I myself called "anunspeakable bliss. " Hegel's system of thought, anticipatory ofexperience, his German style, overburdened with arbitrarily constructedtechnical words from the year 1810, which one might think would daunt ayoung student of another country and another age, only meant to medifficulties which it was a pleasure to overcome. Sometimes it was notHegelianism itself that seemed the main thing. The main thing was that Iwas learning to know a world-embracing mind; I was being initiated intoan attempt to comprehend the universe which was half wisdom and halfpoetry; I was obtaining an insight into a method which, ifscientifically unsatisfying, and on that ground already abandoned byinvestigators, was fruitful and based upon a clever, ingenuous, highlyintellectual conception of the essence of truth; I felt myself put toschool to a great intellectual leader, and in this school I learnt tothink. 

I might, it is true, have received my initiation in a school built up onmore modern foundations; it is true that I should have saved much time, been spared many detours, and have reached my goal more directly had Ibeen introduced to an empirical philosophy, or if Fate had placed me ina school in which historical sources were examined more critically, butnot less intelligently, and in which respect for individuality wasgreater. But such as the school was, I derived from it all the benefitit could afford to my _ego_, and I perceived with delight that myintellectual progress was being much accelerated. Consequently it didnot specially take from my feeling of having attained a measure ofscientific insight, when I learnt--what I had not known at first--thatmy teachers, Hans Bröchner, as well as Rasmus Nielsen, were agreed notto remain satisfied with the conclusions of the German philosopher, had"got beyond Hegel. " At the altitude to which the study of philosophy hadnow lifted me, I saw that the questions with which I had approachedScience were incorrectly formulated, and they fell away of themselves, even without being answered. Words that had filled men's minds forthousands of years, God, Infinity, Thought, Nature and Mind, Freedom andPurpose, all these words acquired another and a deeper meaning, werestamped with a new character, acquired a new value, and the depuratedideas which they now expressed opposed each other, and combined witheach other, until the universe was seen pierced by a plexus of thoughts, and resting calmly within it. 

Viewed from these heights, the petty and the every-day matters whichoccupied the human herd seemed so contemptible. Of what account, forinstance, was the wrangling in the Senate and the Parliament of a littlecountry like Denmark compared with Hegel's vision of the mighty march, inevitable and determined by spiritual laws, of the idea of Freedom, through the world's History! And of what account was the daily gossip ofthe newspapers, compared with the possibility now thrown open of a lifeof eternal ideals, lived in and for them!

XV. 

I had an even deeper perception of my initiation when I went back fromHegel to Spinoza and, filled with awe and enthusiasm, read the_Ethica_ for the first time. Here I stood at the source of modernpantheistic Philosophy. Here Philosophy was even more distinctlyReligion, since it took Religion's place. Though the method applied wasvery artificial, purely mathematical, at least Philosophy had here theattraction of a more original type of mind, the effect being much thesame as that produced by primitive painting, compared with a moredeveloped stage. His very expression, _God or Nature_, had afascinating mysticism about it. The chapter in the book which is devotedto the Natural History of passions, surprised and enriched one by itssimple, but profound, explanation of the conditions of the human soul. And although his fight against Superstition's views of life is conductedwith a keenness that scouts discussion, whereas in modern Philosophy thecontention is merely implied, it seemed as though his thoughts travelledalong less stormy paths. 

In Hegel, it had been exclusively the comprehensiveness of the thoughtsand the mode of the thought's procedure that held my attention. WithSpinoza it was different. It was his personality that attracted, thegreat man in him, one of the greatest that History has known. With him anew type had made its entrance into the world's History; he was the calmthinker, looking down from above on this earthly life, reminding one, bythe purity and strength of his character, of Jesus, but a contrast toJesus, inasmuch as he was a worshipper of Nature and Necessity, and aPantheist. His teaching was the basis of the faith of the new age. Hewas a Saint and a Heathen, seditious and pious, at the same time. 

XVI. 

Still, while I was in this way making a purely mental endeavour topenetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to becomemaster of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peacewith regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself inincontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire forinsight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness inthe delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going onin my emotions. 

As my being grew and developed within me and I slowly emerged from thedouble state of which I had been conscious, in other words, the more Ibecame one and individual and strove to be honest and true, the less Ifelt myself to be a mere individual, the more I realised that I wasbound up with humanity, one link in the chain, one organ belonging tothe Universe. The philosophical Pantheism I was absorbed by, itselfworked counter to the idea of individualism inherent in me, taught meand presented to me the union of all beings in Nature the All-Divine. But it was not from Pantheism that the crisis of my spiritual lifeproceeded; it was from the fountains of emotion which now shot up andfilled my soul with their steady flow. A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had beenlying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vastcompassion. 

This gradually absorbed me till I could hardly bear the thought of thesuffering, the poor, the oppressed, the victims of Injustice. I alwayssaw them in my mind's eye, and it seemed to be my duty to work for them, and to be disgraceful of me to enjoy the good things of life while somany were being starved and tortured. Often as I walked along thestreets at night I brooded over these ideas till I knew nothing of whatwas passing around me, but only felt how all the forces of my brain drewme towards those who suffered. 

There were warm-hearted and benevolent men among my near relatives. Theman whom my mother's younger sister had married had his heart in theright place, so much indeed that he no sooner saw or heard of distressthan his hand was in his pocket, although he had little from which togive. My father's brother was a genuinely philanthropic man, who foundedone beneficent institution or society after the other, had an unusualpower of inducing his well-to-do fellow-townsmen to carry his schemesthrough, and in the elaboration of them showed a perception andpractical sense that almost amounted to genius; this was the moresurprising since his intelligence was not otherwise remarkable for itskeenness and his reasoning methods were confused. But what I felt wasquite different. My feelings were not so easily roused as those of thefirst-mentioned; I was not so good-natured or so quick to act as he. Neither did they resemble those of my other uncle, who merelyrepresented compassion for those unfortunately situated, but was withoutthe least vestige of rebellious feeling against the conditions or thepeople responsible for the misery; my uncle was always content with lifeas it was, saw the hand of a loving Providence everywhere and was fullyand firmly convinced that he himself was led and helped by this sameProvidence, which specially watched over the launching of his projectsfor the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite another kind. Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes quite childishoptimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the sufferings of a fewindividuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I sought the causes ofthem in brutality and injustice. Neither could I recognise the finger ofa Universal Ruler in a confusion of coincidences, conversations, newspaper articles, and advice by prudent men, the outcome of all whichwas the founding of a society for seamstresses or the erection of ahospital to counteract the misery that the Controlling Power had Itselfoccasioned. I was a child no longer, and in that sense never had beenchildish. But my heart bled none the less with sympathy for society'sunfortunates. I did not as yet perceive the necessity of thatselfishness which is self-assertion, and I felt oppressed and tormentedby all that I, in my comparatively advantageous position as a non-proletarian, enjoyed, while many others did not. 

Then another mood, with other promptings, asserted itself. I felt animpulse to step forward as a preacher to the world around me, to thethoughtless and the hardhearted. Under the influence of strong emotion Iwrote an edifying discourse, _The Profitable Fear_. I began toregard it as my duty, so soon as I was fitted for it, to go out into thetown and preach at every street-corner, regardless of whether a laypreacher, like myself, should encounter indifference or harvest scorn. 

This course attracted me because it presented itself to me under theguise of the most difficult thing, and, with the perversity of youth, Ithought difficulty the only criterion of duty. I only needed to hit uponsomething that seemed to me to be the right thing and then say tomyself: "You dare not do it!" for all the youthful strength and daringthat was in me, all my deeper feelings of honour and of pride, all mylove of grappling with the apparently insurmountable to unite, and inface of this _You dare not_, satisfy myself that I did dare. 

As provisionally, self-abnegation, humility, and asceticism seemed to meto be the most difficult things, for a time my whole spiritual life wasconcentrated into an endeavour to attain them. Just at this time--I wasnineteen--my family was in a rather difficult pecuniary position, and I, quite a poor student, was cast upon my own resources. I had consequentlynot much of this world's goods to renounce. From a comfortable residencein Crown Prince's Street, my parents had moved to a more modest flat inthe exceedingly unaristocratic Salmon Street, where I had an attic oflimited dimensions with outlook over roofs by day and a view of thestars by night. Quiet the nights were not, inasmuch as the neighbouringhouses re-echoed with screams and shrieks from poor women, whom theirlate-returning husbands or lovers thrashed in their cups. But never hadI felt myself so raised, so exhilarated, so blissfully happy, as in thatroom. My days slipped by in ecstasy; I felt myself consecrated acombatant in the service of the Highest. I used to test my body, inorder to get it wholly under my control, ate as little as possible, slept as little as possible, lay many a night outside my bed on the barefloor, gradually to make myself as hardy as I required to be. I tried tocrush the youthful sensuality that was awakening in me, and by degreesacquired complete mastery over myself, so that I could be what I wishedto be, a strong and willing instrument in the fight for the victory ofTruth. And I plunged afresh into study with a passion and a delight thatprevented my perceiving any lack, but month after month carried mealong, increasing in knowledge and in mental power, growing from day today. 

XVII. 

This frame of mind, however, was crossed by another. The religioustransformation in my mind could not remain clear and unmuddied, placedas I was in a society furrowed through and through by differentreligious currents, issued as I was from the European races that forthousands of years had been ploughed by religious ideas. All theatavism, all the spectral repetition of the thoughts and ideas of thepast that can lie dormant in the mind of the individual, leaped to thereinforcement of the harrowing religious impressions which came to mefrom without. 

It was not the attitude of my friends that impressed me. All my moreintimate friends were orthodox Christians, but the attempts whichvarious ones, amongst them Julius Lange, and Jens Paludan-Müller, hadmade to convert me had glanced off from my much more advanced thoughtwithout making any impression. I was made of much harder metal thanthey, and their attempts to alter my way of thinking did not penetratebeyond my hide. To set my mind in vibration, there was needed a brainthat I felt superior to my own; and I did not find it in them. I foundit in the philosophical and religious writings of Sören Kierkegaard, insuch works, for instance, as _Sickness unto Death_. 

The struggle within me began, faintly, as I approached my nineteenthyear. My point of departure was this: one thing seemed to me requisite, to live in and for _The Idea_, as the expression for the highest atthat time was. All that rose up inimical to _The Idea_ or Idealmerited to be lashed with scorn or felled with indignation. And one dayI penned this outburst: "Heine wept over _Don Quixote_. Yes, he wasright. I could weep tears of blood when I think of the book. " But thefirst thing needed was to acquire a clear conception of what must beunderstood by the Ideal. Heiberg had regarded the uneducated as thosedevoid of ideals. But I was quite sure myself that education afforded nocriterion. And I could find no other criterion of devotion to the Idealthan a willingness to make sacrifices. If, I said, I prove myself lessself-sacrificing than any one of the wretches I am fighting, I shallmyself incur well-merited scorn. But if self-sacrifice were thecriterion, then Jesus, according to the teachings of tradition, was theIdeal, for who as self-sacrificing as He?

This was an inclined plane leading to the Christian spiritual life, anda year later, when I was nearly twenty, I had proceeded so far on thisplane that I felt myself in all essentials in agreement with theChristian mode of feeling, inasmuch as my life was ascetic, and mysearching, striving, incessantly working mind, not only found repose, but rapture, in prayer, and was elated and fired at the idea of beingprotected and helped by "God. "

But just as I was about to complete my twentieth year, the storm brokeout over again, and during the whole of the ensuing six months ragedwith unintermittent violence. Was I, at this stage of my development, aChristian or not? And if not, was it my duty to become a Christian?

The first thought that arose was this: It is a great effort, a constanteffort, sometimes a minutely recurring effort, to attain moral masteryover one's self, and though this certainly need not bring with it afeeling of self-satisfaction, much less _ought_ to do so, it doesbring with it a recognition of the value of this self-mastery. Howstrange, then, that Christianity, which commands its attainment, at thesame time declares it to be a matter of indifference to the revealed Godwhether a man has lived morally or not, since Faith or lack of Faith isthe one condition upon which so-called Salvation depends!

The next thought was this: It is only in the writings of Kierkegaard, inhis teachings concerning paradox, that Christianity appears so definitethat it cannot be confused with any other spiritual trend whatever. Butwhen one has to make one's choice between Pantheism and Christianity, then the question arises, Are Kierkegaard's teachings really historicChristianity, and not rather a rational adaptation? And this questionmust be answered in the negative, since it is possible to assimilate itwithout touching upon the question of the revelation of the Holy Ghostin the shape of a dove, to the Voice from the clouds, and the wholestring of miracles and dogmas. 

The next thought again was this: Pantheism does not place any oneunconditional goal in front of man. The unbeliever passes his lifeinterested in the many aims that man, as man, has. The Pantheist willtherefore have difficulty in living a perfect ethical life. There aremany cases in which, by deviating from the strictly ethic code, you donot harm anyone, you only injure your own soul. The Non-Believer will inthis case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up hismind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by hispassionate fear of offending God. 

Thus was I tossed backwards and forwards in my reflections. 

XVIII. 

What I dreaded most was that if I reached a recognition of the truth, alack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Couragewas needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being aChristian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. Whenthinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between thecowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed underdiscussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. Andit was clear to me that, on the road which led to Christianity, doubtmust be overcome before cowardice--not the contrary, as Kierkegaardmaintains in his _For Self-Examination_, where he says that none ofthe martyrs doubted. 

But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it wasonly to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror ormadness. For me it was sometimes both. I concluded therefrom that I hadno consciousness of sin, and found this idea confirmed when I lookedinto my own heart. For however violently at this period I reproachedmyself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknessesthat ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, neversins that necessitated forgiveness, and for the obtaining of thisforgiveness, a Saviour. That God had died for me as my Saviour, --I couldnot understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed nothing tome. 

And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be ableto understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason wasconsidered the highest truth. 

XIX. 

With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack ofcourage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me backfrom embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemedpermeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front ofit and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could onlybe understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itselfto the world of men at their highest development, was present, inpossibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primevalcreation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements. The whole of Nature was in its essence Divine, and I felt myself atheart a worshipper of Nature. 

But this same Nature was indifferent to the weal or woe of humans. Itobeyed its own laws regardless of whether men were lost thereby; itseemed cruel in its callousness; it took care that the species should bepreserved, but the individual was nothing to it. 

Now, like all other European children, I had been brought up in thetheory of personal immortality, a theory which, amongst other things, isone way of expressing the immense importance, the eternal importance, which is attributed to each individual. The stronger the feeling of hisown _ego_ that the individual has, the more eagerly he necessarilyclings to the belief that he cannot be annihilated. But to none couldthe belief be more precious than to a youth who felt his life pulsatewithin, as if he had twenty lives in himself and twenty more to live. Itwas impossible to me to realise that I could die, and one evening, abouta year later, I astonished my master, Professor Bröchner, by confessingas much. "Indeed, " said Bröchner, "are you speaking seriously? Youcannot realise that you will have to die one day? How young! You arevery different from me, who always have death before my eyes. "

But although my vitality was so strong that I could not imagine my owndeath, I knew well enough that my terrestrial life, like all othermen's, would come to an end. But I felt all the more strongly that itwas impossible everything could be at an end then; death could not be atermination; it could only, as the religions preached and as eighteenth-century Deism taught, be a moment of transition to a new and fullerexistence. In reward and punishment after death I could not believe;those were mediaeval conceptions that I had long outgrown. But the dreamof immortality I could not let go. And I endeavoured to hold it fast byvirtue of the doctrine of the impossibility of anything disappearing. The quantity of matter always remained the same; energy survived everytransformation. 

Still, I realised that this could not satisfy one, as far as the formwhich we term individuality was concerned. What satisfaction was it toAlexander that his dust should stop a bung-hole? or to Shakespeare thatRomeo and Juliet were acted in Chicago? So I took refuge in parallelsand images. Who could tell whether the soul, which on earth had beenblind to the nature of the other life, did not, in death, undergo theoperation which opened its eyes? Who could tell whether death were not, as Sibbern had suggested, to be compared with a birth? Just as theunborn life in its mother's womb would, if it were conscious, believethat the revolution of birth meant annihilation, whereas it was for thefirst time awakening to a new and infinitely richer life, so it wasperhaps for the soul in the dreaded moment of death.... 

But when I placed before my master these comparisons and the hopes Ibuilt upon them, they were swept away as meaningless; he pointed outsimply that nothing went to prove a continuation of personality afterdeath, while on the contrary everything argued against it, --and to thisI could not refuse my assent. 

Then I understood that in what I called Pantheism, the immortality ofthe individual had no place. And a slow, internal struggle commenced forrenunciation of the importance and value of the individual. I had many aconversation on this point with my teacher, a man tired of life andthoroughly resigned. 

He always maintained that the desire of the individual for acontinuation of personality was nothing but the outcome of vanity. Hewould very often put the question in a comical light. He related thefollowing anecdote: In summer evenings he used to go for a walk alongthe Philosopher's Avenue (now West Rampart Street). Here he hadfrequently met, sitting on their benches, four or five old gentlemen whotook their evening ramble at the same time; by degrees they made eachother's acquaintance and got into conversation with one another. Itturned out that the old gentlemen were candle-makers who had retiredfrom business and now had considerable difficulty in passing their timeaway. In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly. These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred withenthusiasm--their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And itamused Bröchner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill somuch as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have awhole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself ofthe grotesqueness of wishing to endure for millions of centuries, whichtime even then was nothing in comparison with eternity. 

XX. 

But in spite of it all, it was a hard saying, that in the pantheisticview of life the absorption of the individual into the great whole tookthe place of the continued personal existence which was desired by the_ego_. But what frightened me even more was that the divine All wasnot to be moved or diverted by prayer. But pray I had to. From myearliest childhood I had been accustomed, in anxiety or necessity, toturn my thoughts towards a Higher Power, first forming my needs andwishes into words, and then later, without words, concentrating myselfin worship. It was a need inherited from many hundreds of generations offorefathers, this need of invoking help and comfort. Nomads of theplains, Bedouins of the desert, ironclad warriors, pious priests, rovingsailors, travelling merchants, the citizen of the town and the peasantin the country, all had prayed for centuries, and from the very dawn oftime; the women, the hundreds and hundreds of women from whom I wasdescended, had centred all their being in prayer. It was terrible, neverto be able to pray again.... Never to be able to fold one's hands, neverto raise one's eyes above, but to live, shut in overhead, alone in theuniverse!

If there were no eye in Heaven that watched over the individual, no earthat understood his plaint, no hand that protected him in danger, thenhe was placed, as it were, on a desolate steppe where the wolves werehowling. 

And in alarm I tried once more the path towards religious quietude thatI had recently deemed impracticable, --until the fight within me calmedagain, and in renunciation I forced my emotion to bow to what my reasonhad acknowledged as the Truth. 

ADOLESCENCE

Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University PrizeCompetition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of ScandinavianStudents--The Paludan-Müllers--Björnstjerne Björnson--MagdaleneThoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The PoliticalSituation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--_Admissus cum laudepraecipua_--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A WalkingTour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David--Stockholm. 

I. 

Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whomcomradeship had developed into friendship, and this friendship againassumed a passionate character. We were the two, who, of them all, weremost exactly suited to one another, completed one another. Fundamentallydifferent though we were, we could always teach each other something. Wegrew indispensable to one another; for years there seldom a day went bythat we did not meet. The association with his junior cannot possiblyhave given Julius Lange a delight corresponding to that which hissociety gave me. Intellectually equal, we were of temperamentsdiametrically opposed. Having the same love of Art and the sameenthusiasm for Art, --save that the one cared more for its pictorial andthe other for its literary expression, --we were of mutual assistance toone another in the interchange of thoughts and information. Entirely atvariance in our attitude towards religious tradition, in our frequentcollisions we were both perpetually being challenged to a criticalinspection of our intellectual furniture. But I was the one who did theworshipping. 

When Julius Lange, on December 17, 1861, after having twice been to seeme and found me out, the third time met with me and informed me: "I havereceived an invitation to go to Italy on Saturday and be away fivemonths, " was, though surprised, exceedingly glad for my friend's sake, but at the same time I felt as if I had received a blow in the face. What would become of me, not only during the interval, but afterwards?Who could say whether Lange would ever come back, or whether he wouldnot come back changed? How should I be able to endure my life! I shouldhave to work tremendously hard, to be able to bear the loss of him. Icould hardly understand how I should be able to exist when I could nolonger, evening after evening, slip up to my friend's little room to sitthere in calm, quiet contentment, seeing pictures and exchangingthoughts! It was as though a nerve had been cut. I only then realisedthat I had never loved any man so much. I had had four eyes; now I hadonly two again; I had had two brains; now I had only one; in my heart Ihad felt the happiness of two human beings; now only the melancholy ofone was left behind. 

There was not a painting, a drawing, a statue or a bas-relief in thegalleries and museums of Copenhagen that we had not studied together andcompared our impressions of. We had been to Thorwaldsen's Museumtogether, we went together to Bissen's studio, where in November, 1861, I met for the first time my subsequent friends, Vilhelm Bissen andWalter Runeberg. The memory of Julius Lange was associated in my mindwith every picture of Hobbema, Dubbels or Ruysdael, Rembrandt or Rubens, every reproduction of Italian Renaissance art, every photograph ofchurch or castle. And I myself loved pictures even more ardently thanpoetry. I was fond of comparing my relations with literature toaffection for a being of the same sex; my passion for pictures to thestormy passion of a youth for a woman. It is true that I knew much lessabout Art than about Poetry, but that made no difference. I worshippedmy favourite artists with a more impetuous enthusiasm than any of myfavourite authors. And this affection for pictures and statuary was alink between my friend and myself. When we were sitting in my roomtogether, and another visitor happened to be there, I positivelysuffered over the sacrifice of an hour's enjoyment and when Lange got upto go, I felt as though a window had been slammed to, and the fresh airshut out. 

II. 

I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I couldwithout the assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. Andwhen a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Bröchner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who cared topresent themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt stronglytempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some time, for Iwas unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious freedom; Ienjoyed my retirement, the mystery of my modest life of study, but onthe other hand I could not grapple with Plato and Aristotle without thehints of a competent guide as to the why and wherefore. 

I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Bröchner speak onPsychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was somonotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. Itwas only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attractedme, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautifulexpression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now, Idetermined to venture up to Bröchner. But I had not the courage tomention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it shouldfrighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step Iwas taking. When the day which I had fixed upon for the attempt arrived--it was the 2nd of September, 1861, --I walked up and down in front ofthe house several times before I could make up my mind to go upstairs; Itried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say, and what itwould be best for me to reply, interminably. 

The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, openedthe door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to becomehis most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as heheard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I hadrecently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going througha course of Plato and Aristotle, saying it would be too great a strain--said, or implied, that I should be spared the difficult path he hadhimself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modernPhilosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and leftbehind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner alluseless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as Iwent home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History ofPhilosophy from the beginning. 

My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quicklysprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder, in an attitude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hithertobeen a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving himpractical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could furtherhis well-being and assist his future; my attitude was one of reverenceand affection, and of profound gratitude for the care of which I was theobject. 

I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness andhis skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painfuldistrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, comparedwith his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as itwere, being struck in our intercourse, when Bröchner, despite the doubtsand objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that Ishared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was stilltossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But theconfidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had anattraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfullyprejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of alifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on thesympathies and antipathies of a young man. 

To me, for instance, Ploug's _The Fatherland_ was at that timeDenmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille's _Daily Paper_disgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and thetone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms. Bröchner, who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any specialdistinction between the two, looked down on both these papers of theeducated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against thetrivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality ofhis mind. Bröchner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile, "You do not read _The Daily Paper_ on principle, " made me perceivein a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as itcontained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me tosuppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, whenmaking a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naïveté ofnineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute mypersonality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardententhusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, _a widehorizon_ and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must makeup for my lack of humour and facility. "

It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that Ifelt myself in essential agreement with Hans Bröchner. I had beenenraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was thefirst thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of God inthe human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found apresentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the usual heavyformulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a verysalutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling ofsecurity. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservativethan my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways Ifelt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in theeternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link. 

III. 

I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before itbegan to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of_Schou's Ordinances_, which filled the whole of the back of mywriting-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that Ishould not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. Andthe lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think ofsuicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from thetorment of them. I felt myself so little adapted to the Law that Iwasted my time with Hamlet-like cogitations as to how I could give upthe study without provoking my parents' displeasure, and withoutstripping myself of all prospects for the future. And for quite a yearthese broodings grew, till they became a perfect nightmare to me. 

I had taken a great deal of work upon myself; I gave lessons every day, that I might have a little money coming in, took lessons myself inseveral subjects, and not infrequently plunged into philosophical worksof the past, that were too difficult for me, such as the principal worksof Kant. Consequently when I was nineteen, I begun to feel my strengthgoing. I felt unwell, grew nervous, had a feeling that I could not drawa deep breath, and when I was twenty my physical condition was a violentprotest against overwork. One day, while reading Kant's _Kritik derUrteilskraft_, I felt so weak that I was obliged to go to the doctor. The latter recommended physical exercises and cold shower-baths. 

The baths did me good, and I grew so accustomed to them that I went ontaking them and have done so ever since. I did my gymnastic exerciseswith a Swede named Nycander, who had opened an establishment for Swedishgymnastics in Copenhagen. 

There I met, amongst others, the well-known Icelandic poet anddiplomatist, Grimur Thomsen, who bore the title of Counsellor ofLegation. His compatriots were very proud of him. Icelandic studentsdeclared that Grimur possessed twelve dress shirts, three pairs ofpatent leather boots, and had embraced a marchioness in Paris. Atgymnastics, Grimur Thomsen showed himself audacious and not seldomcoarse in what he said and hinted. It is true that by reason of my youthI was very susceptible and took offence at things that an older manwould have heard without annoyance. 

IV. 

I continued to be physically far from strong. Mentally, I workedindefatigably. The means of deciding the study question that, after longreflection, seemed to me most expedient, was this: I would compete forone of the University prizes, either the aesthetic or the philosophical, and then, if I won the gold medal, my parents and others would see thatif I broke with the Law it was not from idleness, but because I reallyhad talents in another direction. 

As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes at the prize questions that hadbeen set, and which hung up in the Entrance Hall of the University. Butnone of them were suited to me. In 1861 I made up my mind to attempt areply, even if the questions in themselves should not be attractive. 

There was amongst them one on the proper correlation between poeticfiction and history in the historical romances. The theme in itself didnot particularly fascinate me; but I was not ignorant of the subject, and it was one that allowed of being looked at in a wide connection, i. E. , the claims of the subject as opposed to the imagination of theartist, in general. I was of opinion that just as in sculpture the humanfigure should not be represented with wings, but the conception of itsspecies be observed, so the essential nature of a past age should beunassailed in historic fiction. Throughout numerous carefully elaboratedabstractions, extending over 120 folio pages, and in which I aimed atscientific perspicuity, I endeavoured to give a soundly supported theoryof the limits of inventive freedom in Historical Romance. Thesubstructure was so painstaking that it absorbed more than half of thetreatise. Quite apart from the other defects of this tyro handiwork, itlauded and extolled an aesthetic direction opposed to that of both themen who were to adjudicate upon it. Hegel was mentioned in it as "Thesupreme exponent of Aesthetics, a man whose imposing greatness it isgood to bow before. " I likewise held with his emancipated pupil, Fr. Th. Vischer, and vindicated him. Of Danish thinkers, J. L. Heiberg and S. Kierkegaard were almost the only ones discussed. 

Heiberg was certainly incessantly criticised, but was treated withprofound reverence and as a man whose slightest utterance was ofimportance. Sibbern's artistic and philosophical researches, on theother hand, were quite overlooked, indeed sometimes Vischer was praisedas being the first originator of psychological developments, whichSibbern had suggested many years before him. I had, for that matter, made a very far from sufficient study of Sibbern's researches, whichwere, partly, not systematic enough for me, and partly had repelled meby the peculiar language in which they were couched. 

Neither was it likely that this worship of Heiberg, which undeniablypeeped out through all the proofs of imperfections and self-contradictions in him, would appeal to Hauch. 

When I add that the work was youthfully doctrinaire, in language notfresh, and that in its skeleton-like thinness it positively totteredunder the weight of its definitions, it is no wonder that it did not winthe prize. The verdict passed upon it was to the effect that thetreatise was thorough in its way, and that it would have been awardedthe prize had the question asked been that of determining thecorrelation between History and Fiction in general, but that under thecircumstances it dwelt too cursorily on Romance and was only deemeddeserving of "a very honourable mention. "

Favourable as this result was, it was nevertheless a blow to me, who hadmade my plans for the following years dependent on whether I won theprize or not. Julius Lange, who knocked at my door one evening to tellme the result, was the witness of my disappointment. "I can understand, "he said, "that you should exclaim: _'Oleum et operam perdidi!'_, but you must not give up hope for so little. It is a good thing that youprohibited the opening of the paper giving your name in the event of thepaper not winning the prize, for no one will trouble their heads aboutthe flattering criticism and an honourable mention would only harm youin People's eyes; it would stamp you with the mark of mediocrity. "

V. 

The anonymous recipient of the honourable mention neverthelessdetermined to call upon his judges, make their acquaintance, and letthem know who he was. 

I went first to Hauch, who resided at that time at Frederiksberg Castle, in light and lofty rooms. Hauch appeared exaggeratedly obliging, the oldman of seventy and over paying me, young man as I was, one complimentafter the other. The treatise was "extraordinarily good, " they had beenvery sorry not to give me the prize; but I was not to bear them any ill-will for that; they had acted as their consciences dictated. In eighteenmonths I should be ready to take my Magister examination; the old poetthought he might venture to prophesy that I should do well. He wassurprised at his visitor's youth, could hardly understand how at my ageI could have read and thought so much, and gave me advice as to thecontinuation of my studies. 

Sibbern was as cordial as Hauch had been polite and cautious. It wasvery funny that, whereas Hauch remarked that he himself had wished togive me the prize with an _although_ in the criticism, but thatSibbern had been against it, Sibbern declared exactly the reverse; inspite of all its faults he had wanted to award the medal, but Hauch hadexpressed himself adverse. Apparently they had misunderstood oneanother; but in any case the result was just, so there was nothing tocomplain of. 

Sibbern went into the details of the treatise, and was stricter thanHauch. He regretted that the main section of the argument was deficient;the premises were too prolix. He advised a more historic, lessphilosophical study of Literature and Art. He was pleased to hear of theintimate terms I was on with Bröchner, whereas Hauch would havepreferred my being associated with Rasmus Nielsen, whom he jestinglydesignated "a regular brown-bread nature. " When the treatise was givenback to me, I found it full of apt and instructive marginal notes fromSibbern's hand. 

Little as I had gained by my unsuccessful attempt to win this prize, andunequivocally as my conversation with the practical Sibbern had provedto me that a post as master in my mother tongue at a Grammar-school wasall that the Magister degree in Aesthetics was likely to bring me, whereas from my childhood I had made up my mind that I would never be amaster in a school, this conversation nevertheless ripened mydetermination to give up my law studies, but of course only when bysuccessfully competing for the prize the next year I had satisfactorilyproved my still questionable ability. 

VI. 

The Meeting of Scandinavian students at Copenhagen in June, 1862, taughtme what it meant to be a Scandinavian. Like all the otherundergraduates, I was Scandinavian at heart, and the arrangements of theMeeting were well calculated to stir the emotions of youth. Although, aninsignificant Danish student, I did not take part in the expedition toNorth Zealand specially arranged for our guests, consequently neitherwas present at the luncheon given by Frederik VII to the students atFredensborg (which was interrupted by a heavy shower), I wasnevertheless deeply impressed by the Meeting. 

It was a fine sight to behold the students from the three otherScandinavian Universities come sailing across the Sound from Malmö toCopenhagen. The Norwegians were especially striking, tall and straight, with narrow faces under tasseled caps, like a wood of young fir trees;the national type was so marked that at first I could hardly see anydifference between them. 

For me, there were three perfect moments during the festivities. Thefirst was at the meeting of all the students in the Square of Our Lady, after the arrival of the visitors, when the scholars of the MetropolitanSchool, crowding the windows of the building, greeted them with a shoutof delight. There was such a freshness, such a childish enthusiasm aboutit, that some of us had wet eyes. It was as though the still distantfuture were acclaiming the young ones now advancing to the assault, andpromising them sympathy and conquest. 

The second was when the four new flags embroidered by Danish ladies forthe students were consecrated and handed over. Clausen's speech was fullof grandeur, and addressed, not to the recipients, but to the flags asliving beings: "Thou wilt cross the Baltic to the sanctuary at Upsala. Thou wilt cross the Cattegat to the land of rocks.... " and the addressto each of the flags concluded: "Fortune and Honour attend thee!" Theevening after the consecration of the flags, there was a specialperformance at the Royal Theatre for the members of the Meeting, atwhich Heiberg, radiant as she always was, and saluted with well-meritedenthusiasm, played _Sophie_ in the vaudeville "_No_, " with arosette of the Scandinavian colours at her waist. Then it was thatPaludan-Müller's prologue, recited by our idolised actor, Michael Wiehe, caused me the third thrilling moment. Listening to the words of the poetfrom a bad place in the gallery, I was hardly the only one who feltstrangely stirred, as Wiehe, letting his eyes roam round the theatre, said:

 Oh! that the young of the North might one day worthily play Their part! Oh that each one might do his best For the party he has chosen! That never there be lack Of industry, fidelity, strength and talents! And may he firm step forth, the mighty genius (_Mayhap, known only to the secret power within him, Seated amongst us now_), the mighty genius, Who, as Fate hath willed it, is to play The mighty part and do the mighty things. 

Involuntarily we looked round, seeking for the one to whom the poet'ssummons referred. 

The general spirit of this Meeting has been called flat in comparisonwith that pervading former meetings. It did not strike the youngerparticipants so. A breath of Scandinavianism swept over every heart; onefelt borne along on a historic stream. It seemed like a bad dream thatthe peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and laidwaste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered itimpossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence inEurope. 

One could feel at the Meeting, though very faintly, that the Swedes andNorwegians took more actual pleasure in each other, and regardedthemselves as to a greater extent united than either of them looked uponthemselves as united with the Danes, who were outside the politicalUnion. I was perhaps the only Dane present who fancied I detected this, but when I mentioned what I thought I observed to a gifted youngNorwegian, so far was he from contradicting me that he merely replied:"Have you noticed that, too?"

Notwithstanding, during the whole of the Meeting, one constantly heardexpressed on every hand the conviction that if Germany were shortly todeclare war against Denmark--which no one doubted--the Swedes andNorwegians would most decidedly not leave the Danes in the lurch. Thepromise was given oftener than it was asked. Only, of course, it waschildish on the part of those present at the Meeting to regard suchpromises, given by the leaders of the students, and by the studentsthemselves in festive mood, as binding on the nations and theirstatesmen. 

I did not make any intellectually inspiring acquaintances through theMeeting, although I was host to two Upsala students; neither of them, however, interested me. I got upon a friendly footing through mutualintellectual interests with Carl von Bergen, later so well known as anauthor, he, like myself, worshipping philosophy and hoping to contributeto intellectual progress. Carl von Bergen was a self-confident, ceremonious Swede, who had read a great many books. At that time he wasa new Rationalist, which seemed to promise one point of interest incommon; but he was a follower of the Boström philosophy, and as such anardent Theist. At this point we came into collision, my researches andreflections constantly tending to remove me farther from a belief in anyGod outside the world, so that after the Meeting Carl von Bergen and Iexchanged letters on Theism and Pantheism, which assumed the width andthickness of treatises. For very many years the Swedish essayist and Ikept up a friendly, though intermittent intercourse. Meanwhile vonBergen, whose good qualities included neither character nor originality, inclined, as years went on, more and more towards Conservatism, and atforty years old he had attained to a worship of what he had detested, and a detestation of what he had worshipped. His vanity simultaneouslyassumed extraordinary proportions. In a popular Encyclopaedia, which hetook over when the letter B was to be dealt with, and, curiously enough, disposed of shortly afterwards, _von Bergen_ was treated no less indetail than _Buonaparte_. He did battle with some of the best menand women in Sweden, such as Ellen Key and Knut Wicksell, who did notfail to reply to him. When in 1889 his old friend from the Students'Meeting gave some lectures on Goethe in Stockholm, he immediatelyafterwards directed some poor opposition lectures against him, whichneither deserved nor received any reply. It had indeed become aspecialty of his to give "opposition lectures. " When he died, some fewyears later, what he had written was promptly forgotten. 

There was another young Swedish student whom I caught a glimpse of forthe first time at the Students' Meeting, towards whom I felt more andmore attracted, and who eventually became my friend. This was thedarling of the gods, Carl Snoilsky. At a fête in Rosenborg Park, amongstthe songs was one which, with my critical scent, I made a note of. Itwas by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was far frompossessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that laterdistinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a troubadoursong to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of it was ayouth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and smoothbrown hair, a regular Adonis. The following year he came again, drawn bystrong cords to Christian Winther's home, loving the old poet like ason, as Swinburne loved Victor Hugo, sitting at Mistress Julie Winther'sfeet in affectionate admiration and semi-adoration, although she washalf a century old and treated him as a mother does a favourite child. 

It was several years, however, before there was any actual friendshipbetween the Swedish poet and myself. He called upon me one day in myroom in Copenhagen, looking exceedingly handsome in a tight-fittingwaistcoat of blue quilted silk. In the absence of the Swedo-NorwegianAmbassador, he was Chargé d'Affaires in Copenhagen, after, in hiscapacity as diplomatic attaché, having been stationed in various partsof the world and, amongst others, for some time in Paris. He could haveno warmer admirer of his first songs than myself, and we very frequentlyspent our evenings together in Bauer's wine room--talking overeverything in Scandinavian, English, or French literature which both ofus had enthusiastically and critically read. On many points our verdictswere agreed. 

There came a pause in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed. It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had hadto promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, theyregarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was atthat time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivationof the freedom without which it was impossible to write. Still, he nevermentioned these strictly personal matters. But one evening that we weretogether, Snoilsky was so overcome by the thought of his lack of freedomthat tears suddenly began to run down his cheeks. He was almostincapable of controlling himself again, and when we went home togetherlate at night, poured out a stream of melancholy, half-despairingremarks. 

A good eighteen months later we met again in Stockholm; Snoilsky wasdignified and collected. But when, a few years later, so-called publicopinion in Sweden began to rave against the poet for the passion for hissecond wife which so long made him an exile from his country, I oftenthought of that evening. 

As years passed by, his outward bearing became more and more reservedand a trifle stiff, but he was the same at heart, and no one who hadknown him in the heyday of his youth could cease to love him. 

VII. 

A month after the Students' Meeting, at the invitation of my friend JensPaludan-Müller, I spent a few weeks at his home at Nykjöbing, in theisland of Falster, where his father, Caspar Paludan-Müller, thehistorian, was at the time head master of the Grammar-school. Those wererich and beautiful weeks, which I always remembered later withgratitude. 

The stern old father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressedone by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from theworld as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of thehouse likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known inDanish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Göiske. Jens was a cordial andattentive host, the daughters were all of them women out of theordinary, and bore the impress of belonging to a family of the highestculture in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second, with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in amanner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiableyoung girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony ofprovincial life, and their release came when their father was appointedto a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of mannerand a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family. Two young, handsome Counts Reventlow were being brought up in the house, still onlyhalf-grown boys at that time, but who were destined later to winhonourable renown. One of them, the editor of his ancestress's papers, kept up his acquaintance with the guest he had met in the Paludan-Müllerhome for over forty years. 

There often came to the house a young Dane from Caracas in Venezuela, ofunusual, almost feminine beauty, with eyes to haunt one's dreams. Heplayed uncommonly well, was irresistibly gentle and emotional. After astay of a few years in Denmark he returned to his native place. Thepreviously mentioned Grönbeck, with his pretty sister, and other youngpeople from the town, were frequent guests during the holidays, and thedays passed in games, music, wanderings about the garden, and delightfulexcursions to the woods. 

On every side I encountered beauty of some description. I said to Jensone day: "One kind of beauty is the glow which the sun of Youth castsover the figure, and it vanishes as soon as the sun sets. Another isstamped into shape from within; it is Mind's expression, and will remainas long as the mind remains vigorous. But the supremest beauty of all isin the unison of the two harmonies, which are contending for existence. In the bridal night of this supremest beauty, Mind and Nature melt intoone. "

A few years later the old historian was called upon to publish thelittle book on Gulland, with its short biography prefixed, as a memorialto his only son, fallen at Sankelmark, and again, a few years later, toedit Frederik Nutzhorn's translation of Apuleius in memory of his son'sfriend, his elder daughter's fiancé. During the preparation of these twolittle books, our relations became more intimate, and our friendshipcontinued unbroken until in the month of February, 1872, a remark in oneof my defensive articles caused him to take up his pen against me. Myremark was to the effect that there were men of the same opinions asmyself even among the priests of the established church. Caspar Paludan-Müller declared it my public duty to mention of whom I was thinking atthe time, since such a traitor was not to be tolerated in the lap of theChurch. As I very naturally did not wish to play the part of informer, Iincurred, by my silence, the suspicion of having spoken withoutfoundation. The Danish man whom I had in my thoughts, and who hadconfided his opinions to me, was still alive at the time. This was thelate Dean Ussing, at one time priest at Mariager, a man of anextraordinarily refined and amiable disposition, secretly a convincedadherent of Ernest Renan. A Norwegian priest, who holds the sameopinions, is still living. 

VIII. 

In August, 1863, on a walking tour through North Sjaelland, Julius Langeintroduced me to his other celebrated uncle, Frederik Paludan-Müller, whose Summer residence was at Fredensborg. In appearance he was of avery different type from his brother Caspar. The distinguishing mark ofthe one was power, of the other, nobility. For Frederik Paludan-Mülleras a poet I cherished the profoundest admiration. He belonged to thereally great figures of Danish literature, and his works had so fed andformed my inmost nature that I should scarcely be the same had I notread them. It was unalloyed happiness to have access to his house and beallowed to enjoy his company. It was a distinction to be one of the fewhe vouchsafed to take notice of and one of the fewer still in whosefuture he interested himself. Do the young men of Denmark to-day, Iwonder, admire creative intellects as they were admired by some few ofus then? It is in so far hardly possible, since there is not at thepresent time any Northern artist with such a hall-mark of refineddelicacy as Frederik Paludan-Müller possessed. 

The young people who came to his house might have wished him a younger, handsomer wife, and thought his choice, Mistress Charite, as, curiouslyenough, she was called, not quite worthy of the poet. Unjustly so, sincehe himself was perfectly satisfied with her, and was apparently whollyabsorbed by a union which had had its share in isolating him from theworld. His wife was even more theologically inclined than himself, andappeared anonymously--without anyone having a suspicion of the fact--asa religious authoress. Still, she was exceedingly kind to anyone, regardless of their private opinions, who had found favour in the poet'seyes. 

The dry little old lady was the only one of her sex with whom Paludan-Müller was intimate. He regarded all other women, however young andbeautiful, as mere works of art. But his delight in them was charming inhim, just because of its freedom from sense. One evening that he wasgiving a little banquet in honour of a Swedish lady painter, namedRibbing, a woman of rare beauty, he asked her to stand by the side ofthe bust of the Venus of Milo, that the resemblance, which reallyexisted between them, might be apparent. His innocent, enthusiasticdelight in the likeness was most winning. 

IX. 

Two other celebrated personages whom I met for the first time a littlelater were Björnstjerne Björnson and Magdalene Thoresen. 

I became acquainted with Björnstjerne Björnson at the Nutzhorns, theirson, Ditlev, being a passionate admirer of his. His _King Sverre_of 1861 had been a disappointment, but _Sigurd Slembe_ of thefollowing year was new and great poetry, and fascinated young people'sminds. Björnson, socially, as in literature, was a strong figure, self-confident, loud-voiced, outspoken, unique in all that he said, and inthe weight which he knew how to impart to all his utterances. His mannerjarred a little on the more subdued Copenhagen style; the impression heproduced was that of a great, broad-shouldered, and very much spoiltchild. In the press, all that he wrote and did was blazoned abroad bythe leading critics of the day, who had a peculiar, challenging way ofpraising Björnson, although his ability was not seriously disputed byanyone. The National Liberal Leaders, Alfred Hage, Carl Ploug, etc. , hadopened their hearts and houses to him. It is said that at one timeHeiberg had held back; the well-bred old man, a little shocked by thesomewhat noisy ways of the young genius, is said to have expressed tohis friend Krieger some scruples at inviting him to his house. ToKrieger's jesting remark: "What does it matter! He is a young man; lethim rub off his corners!" Heiberg is credited with having replied: "Verytrue! Let him! but not in my drawing-room! That is not a place wherepeople may rub anything off. " Heiberg's wife, on the other hand, admiredhim exceedingly, and was undoubtedly very much fascinated by him. 

In a circle of younger people, Björnson was a better talker thanconversationalist. Sometimes he came out with decidedly rash expressionsof opinion, conclusively dismissing a question, for instance, withsevere verdicts over Danish music, Heyse's excepted, judgments whichwere not supported by sufficient knowledge of the subject at issue. Butmuch of what he said revealed the intellectual ruler, whose self-confidence might now and again irritate, but at bottom was justified. Henarrated exceptionally well, with picturesque adjectives, longremembered in correct Copenhagen, spoke of the _yellow_ howl ofwolves, and the like. Take it all in all, his attitude was that of aconqueror. 

He upheld poetry that was actual and palpable, consequently had littleappreciation for poetry, that, like Paludan-Müller's, was the perfectionof thought and form, and boldly disapproved of my admiration for it. 

X. 

It was likewise through Frederik Nutzhorn that I, when a young beginnerin the difficult art of life, became acquainted with Madame MagdaleneThoresen. Our first conversation took place in the open air one Summerday, at the Klampenborg bathing establishment. Although MagdaleneThoresen was at that time at least forty-six years old, her warm, brownish complexion could well stand inspection in the strongest light. Her head, with its heavy dark hair, was Southern in its beauty, hermouth as fresh as a young girl's; she had brilliant and very strikingeyes. Her figure was inclined to be corpulent, her walk a trifle heavy, her bearing and movements full of youth and life. 

She was remarkably communicative, open and warmhearted, with apropensity towards considerable extravagance of speech. Originallyincited thereto by Björnson's peasant stories, she had then publishedher first tales, _The Student and Signe's Story_, which belonged, half to Norwegian, half to Danish literature, and had been wellreceived. She was the daughter of a fisherman at Fredericia, and afterhaving known both the buffets and the smiles of Fortune, had come to beon terms of friendship with many men and women of importance, nowbelonging to the recognised personalities of the day. She was also verywell received and much appreciated in the Heiberg circle. 

In comparison with her, a woman, I might have been called erudite andwell-informed. Her own knowledge was very desultory. She was interestedin me on account of my youth, and her warm interest attached me to herfor the next five years, --as long, that is, as she remained in Denmark. She very soon began to confide in me, and although she scarcely did sounreservedly, still, no woman, at least no mature and gifted woman, hadtold me so much about herself before. She was a woman who had feltstrongly and thought much; she had lived a rich, and eventful life; butall that had befallen her she romanticised. Her poetic tendency wastowards the sublime. She was absolutely veracious, and did not reallymean to adorn her tales, but partly from pride, partly fromwhimsicality, she saw everything, from greatest to least, throughbeautifully coloured magnifying-glasses, so that a translation of hercommunications into every-day language became a very difficult matter, and when an every-day occurrence was suspected through the narrative, the same could not be reproduced in an every-day light, and according toan every-day standard, without wounding the narrator to the quick. Forthese reasons I never ventured to include among my Collected Essays alittle biographical sketch of her (written just as she herself hadidealised its events to me), one of the first articles I had printed. 

She saw strong natures, rich and deep natures, in lives that were meagreor unsuccessful. Again, from lack of perspicacity, she sometimes sawnothing but inefficiency in people with wide intellectual gifts; thus, she considered that her son-in-law, Henrik Ibsen, who at that time hadnot become either known or celebrated, had very imperfect poetic gifts. "What he writes is as flat as a drawing, " she would say. Or she wouldremark: "He ought to be more than a collaborator of Kierkegaard. " It wasonly much later that she discovered his genius. Björnson, on the otherhand, she worshipped with an enthusiastic love; it was a trouble to herthat just about this time he had become very cool to her. 

Vague feelings did not repel her, but all keen and pointed intelligencedid. She was wholly and entirely romantic. Gallicism she objected to;the clarity of the French seemed to her superficial; she saw depth inthe reserved and taciturn Northern, particularly the Norwegian, nature. She had groped her way forward for a long time without realising whather gifts really were. Her husband, who had done all he could to assisther education, had even for a time imagined, and perhaps persuaded her, that her gifts lay in the direction of Baggesen's. Now, however, she hadfound her vocation and her path in literature. 

On all questions of thought, pure and simple, she was extremely vague. She was a Christian and a Heathen with equal sincerity, a Christian withher overflowing warm-heartedness, with her honest inclination tobelieve, a Heathen in her averseness to any negation of either life orNature. She used to say that she loved Christ and Eros equally, orrather, that to her, they both meant the same. To her, Christianity wasthe new, the modern, in contrast to the rationalism of a past age, sothat Christianity and modern views of life in general merged in her eyesinto one unity. 

Hers was a deeply feminine nature, and a productive nature. Her fertilecharacter was free from all taint of over-estimation of herself. Sheonly revealed a healthy and pleasing self-satisfaction when she imaginedthat some person wished to set up himself or herself over her andmisjudge acts or events in her life with respect to which she consideredherself the only person qualified to judge. At such times she woulddeclare in strong terms that by her own unassisted strength she hadraised herself from a mean and unprotected position to the level of thebest men and women of her day. Herself overflowing with emotion, and ofa noble disposition, she craved affection and goodwill, and gave back ahundredfold what she received. If she felt herself the object of coldand piercing observation, she would be silent and unhappy, but if sheherself were at ease and encountered no coolness, she was all genialityand enthusiasm, though not to such an extent that her enthusiasm ceasedto be critical. 

She could over-value and under-value people, but was at the same time akeen, in fact a marvellous psychologist, and sometimes astonished one bythe pertinent things she said, surprising one by her accurate estimateof difficult psychological cases. For instance, she understood as fewothers did the great artist, the clever coquette, and the old maid inHeiberg's wife, the actress. 

She had no moral prejudices, and had written _Signe's Story_ as aprotest against conventional morality; but she was none the lessthoroughly permeated by Christian and humane ideas of morality, andthere was no element of rebellion in her disposition. 

On the whole, she was more a woman than an authoress. Her nature wastropical in comparison with Mrs. Charite Paludan-Müller's North Polenature. She lived, not in a world of ideas remote from reality, but in aworld of feeling and passion, full of affection and admiration, jealousyand dislike. Being a woman, she was happy at every expression ofpleasure over one of her books that she heard or read of, and liked tofancy that the solitary young man who sent her an enthusiastic letter ofthanks was only one of hundreds who thought as he did. Like a woman, also, she was hurt by indifference, which, however, her warm heartrarely encountered. 

This richly endowed woman made me appear quite new to myself, inasmuchas, in conversations with my almost maternal friend, I began to think Iwas of a somewhat cold nature, a nature which in comparison with hersseemed rather dry, unproductive and unimaginative, a creature withthoughts ground keen. 

Magdalene Thoresen compared me one day to an unlighted glass candelabra, hanging amid several others all lighted up, which had the gleam of thefire on the countless facets of its crystals, but was itself nothing butcold, smooth, polished, prisms. 

Thus during my association with Magdalene Thoresen I came to regardmyself in a new light, when I saw myself with her eyes, and I was struckmore than ever by how different the verdicts over me would be were myvarious friends and acquaintances each to describe me is I appeared tothem. To Magdalene Thoresen I was all mind, to others all passion, toothers again all will. At the Nutzhorns' I went by the name of themodest B. , elsewhere I was deemed conceitedly ambitious, some peoplethought me of a mild temper, others saw in me a quarrelsome unbeliever. 

All this was a challenge to me to come to a clear understanding about myreal nature. The fruits of my work must show me what sort of man I was. 

XI. 

I continued my legal studies with patient persistence, and gradually, after having made myself master of Civil Proceedings, I worked my waythrough the whole of the juridic system, Roman Law excluded. But theindustry devoted to this was purely mechanical. I pursued my otherstudies, on the contrary, with delight, even tried to produce somethingmyself, and during the last months of 1862 elaborated a very long paperon _Romeo and Juliet_, chiefly concerning itself with thefundamental problems of the tragedy, as interpreted in the Aesthetics ofthe day; it has been lost, like so much else that I wrote during thoseyears. I sent it to Professor Bröchner and asked his opinion of it. 

Simultaneously I began to work upon a paper on the Idea of Fate in GreekTragedy, a response to the Prize question of the year 1862-1863, and onDecember 31, 1862, had finished the Introduction, which was publishedfor the first time about six years later, under the title _The Idea ofTragic Fate_. Appended to this was a laborious piece of work dealingwith the conceptions of Fate recorded in all the Greek tragedies thathave come down to us. This occupied the greater part of the next sixmonths. 

The published Introduction gives a true picture of the stage of mydevelopment then, partly because it shows the manner in which I hadworked together external influences, the Kierkegaardian thoughts and theHegelian method, partly because with no little definiteness it reveals afundamental characteristic of my nature and a fundamental tendency of mymind, since it is, throughout, a protest against the ethical conceptionof poetry and is a proof of how moral ideas, when they become part of anartistic whole, lose their peculiar stamp and assume another aspect. 

In November, 1862, I joined a very large recently startedundergraduates' society, which met once a fortnight at Borch's Collegeto hear lectures and afterwards discuss them together. It numbered fullfifty members, amongst them most of the men of that generation whoafterwards distinguished themselves in Denmark. The later knownpolitician, Octavius Hansen, was Speaker of the Meetings, and even thenseemed made for the post. His parliamentary bearing was unrivalled. Itwas not for nothing he was English on the mother's side. He lookeduncommonly handsome on the platform, with his unmoved face, hisbeautiful eyes, and his brown beard, curled like that of Pericles in theGreek busts. He was good-humoured, just, and well-informed. Of thenumerous members, Wilhelm Thomsen the philologist was certainly the mostprominent, and the only one whom I later on came to value, that is, forpurely personal reasons; in daily association it was only once in a waythat Thomsen could contribute anything from his special store ofknowledge. One day, when we had been discussing the study of cuneiforminscriptions, the young philologist had said, half in jest, half inearnest: "If a stone were to fall down from the Sun with an inscriptionin unknown signs, in an unknown language, upon it, we should be able tomake it out, "--a remark which I called to mind many years later whenThomsen deciphered the Ancient Turkish inscriptions in the Mountains ofSiberia. 

A great many political lectures were given. I gave one on Heiberg'sAesthetics. 

On January 1, 1863, I received a New Year's letter from Bröchner, inwhich he wrote that the essay on Romeo and Juliet had so impressed himthat, in his opinion, no one could dispute my fitness to fill the Chairof Aesthetics, which in the nature of things would soon be vacant, sinceHauch, at his advanced age, could hardly continue to occupy it verylong. 

Thus it was that my eager patron first introduced what became awearisome tangle, lasting a whole generation, concerning my claims to acertain post, which gradually became in my life what the French call_une scie_, an irritating puzzle, in which I myself took no part, but which attached itself to my name. 

That letter agitated me very much; not because at so young an age theprospect of an honourable position in society was held out to me by aman who was in a position to judge of my fitness for it, but becausethis smiling prospect of an official post was in my eyes a snare whichmight hold me so firmly that I should not be able to pursue the path ofrenunciation that alone seemed to me to lead to my life's goal. I feltmyself an apostle, but an apostle and a professor were, very far apart. I certainly remembered that the Apostle Paul had been a tent-maker. ButI feared that, once appointed, I should lose my ideal standard of lifeand sink down into insipid mediocrity. If I once deviated from my path, I might not so easily find it again. It was more difficult to resign aprofessorship than never to accept it. And, once a professor, a man soongot married and settled down as a citizen of the state, not in aposition to dare anything. To dispose of my life at Bröchner's requestwould be like selling my soul to the Devil. 

So I replied briefly that I was too much attached to Hauch to be able orwilling to speculate on his death. But to this Bröchner very logicallyreplied: "I am not speculating on his death, but on his life, for thelonger he lives, the better you will be prepared to be his successor. "

By the middle of June, 1863, the prize paper was copied out. InSeptember the verdict was announced; the gold medal was awarded to mewith a laudatory criticism. The gold medal was also won by my friendJens Paludan-Müller for a historic paper, and in October, at the annualCeremony at the University, we were presented with the thin medalbearing the figure of Athene, which, for my part, being in need of aWinter overcoat, I sold next day. Clausen, the Rector, a little man withregular features, reserved face and smooth white hair, said to us thathe hoped this might prove the first fruits of a far-reaching activity inthe field of Danish literature. But what gave me much greater pleasurewas that I was shaken hands with by Monrad, who was present as Ministerfor Education. Although Clausen was well known, both as a theologian andan important National Liberal, I cared nothing for him. But I was alittle proud of Monrad's hand-pressure, for his political liberality, and especially his tremendous capacity for work, compelled respect, while from his handsome face with its thoughtful, commanding forehead, there shone the evidence of transcendent ability. 

XII. 

On the morning of November 15th, 1863, Julius Lange and I went togetherto offer our congratulations to Frederik Nutzhorn, whose birthday itwas. His sisters received me with their usual cheerfulness, but theirfather, the old doctor, remarked as I entered: "You come with gravethoughts in your mind, too, " for the general uneasiness occasioned byFrederik VII's state of health was reflected in my face. There was goodreason for anxiety concerning all the future events of which anunfavourable turn of his illness might be the signal. 

I went home with Julius Lange, who read a few wild fragments of his"System" to me. This turned upon the contrasting ideas of_Contemplation_ and _Sympathy_, corresponding to the inhalingand exhaling of the breath; the resting-point of the breathing was themoment of actual consciousness, etc. ; altogether very young, curious, and confused. 

In the afternoon came the news of the King's death. In the evening, atthe Students' Union, there was great commotion and much anxiety. Therewere rumours of a change of Ministry, of a Bluhme-David-Ussing Ministry, and of whether the new King would be willing to sign the Constitutionfrom which people childishly expected the final incorporation of Slesviginto Denmark. That evening I made the acquaintance of the poet ChristianRichardt, who told me that he had noticed my face before he knew myname. Julius Lange was exceedingly exasperated and out of spirits. Plougwent down the stairs looking like a man whose hopes had been shattered, and whom the blow had found unprepared. His paper had persistently sowndistrust of the Prince of Denmark. 

The Proclamation was to take place in front of Christiansborg Castle onDecember 16th, at 11 o'clock. I was fetched to it by a student of thesame age, the present Bishop Frederik Nielsen. The latter had made myacquaintance when a Free-thinker, but fortunately he recognised hiserrors only a very few years later, and afterwards the valianttheologian wrote articles and pamphlets against the heretic he hadoriginally cultivated for holding the same opinions as himself. There ishardly anyone in Denmark who persists in error; people recognise theirmistakes in time, before they have taken harm to their souls; sometimes, indeed, so much betimes that they are not even a hindrance to theirworldly career. 

The space in front of the Castle was black with people, most of whomwere in a state of no little excitement. Hall, who was then PrimeMinister, stepped out on the balcony of the castle, grave and upright, and said, first standing with his back to the Castle, then looking tothe right and the left, these words: "King Frederik VII is dead. Longlive King Christian IX!"

Then the King came forward. There were loud shouts, doubtless some criesof "Long live the King, " but still more and louder shouts of: "TheConstitution forever!" which were by no means loyally intended. At adistance, from the Castle balcony, the different shouts could, ofcourse, not be distinguished. As the King took them all to be shouts ofacclamation, he bowed politely several times, and as the shoutscontinued kissed his hand to right and left. The effect was not what hehad intended. His action was not understood as a simple-heartedexpression of pure good-will. People were used to a very differentbearing on the part of their King. With all his faults and foibles, Frederik VII was always in manner the Father of his people; always thegraceful superior; head up and shoulders well back, patronisingly andaffectionately waving his hand: "Thank you, my children, thank you! Andnow go home and say 'Good-morning' to your wives and children from theKing!" One could not imagine Frederik VII bowing to the people, muchless kissing his hand to them. 

There was a stormy meeting of the Students' Union that evening. VilhelmRode made the principal speech and caustically emphasised that it tookmore than a "Kiss of the hand and a parade bow" to win the hearts of theDanish people. The new dynasty, the head of which had been abused foryears by the National Liberal press, especially in _The Fatherland_, who had thrown suspicion of German sympathies on the heir-presumptive, wasstill so weak that none of the students thought it necessary to take muchnotice of the change of sovereigns that had taken place. This was partlybecause since Frederik VII's time people had been accustomed toindiscriminate free speech concerning the King's person--it was thefashion and meant nothing, as he was beloved by the body of the people--partly because what had happened was not regarded as irrevocable. Alldepended on whether the King signed the Constitution, and even the coolestand most conservative, who considered that his signing it would be a fatalmisfortune, thought it possible that Christian IX. Would be dethroned ifhe did not. So it is not difficult to form some idea of how the Hotspurstalked. The whole town was in a fever, and it was said that Prince Oscarwas in Scania, ready at the first sign to cross the Sound and allowhimself to be proclaimed King on behalf of Charles XV. Men withScandinavian sympathies hoped for this solution, by means of which thethree kingdoms would have been united without a blow being struck. 

In the middle of the meeting, there arrived a message from Crone, theHead of Police, which was delivered verbally in this incrediblyirregular form--that the Head of Police was as good a Scandinavian asanyone, but he begged the students for their own sakes to refrain fromany kind of street disturbance that would oblige him to interfere. 

I, who had stood on the open space in front of the Castle, lost in thecrowd, and in the evening at the meeting of the students was auditor tothe passionate utterances let fall there, felt my mood violently swayed, but was altogether undecided with regard to the political question, thecompass of which I could not fully perceive. I felt anxious as to theattitude of foreign powers would be in the event of the signing of theConstitution. Old C. N. David had said in his own home that if the mattershould depend on him, which, however, he hoped it would not, he wouldnot permit the signing of the Constitution, were he the only man inDenmark of that way of thinking, since by so doing we should lose ourguarantee of existence, and get two enemies instead of one, Russia aswell as Germany. 

The same evening I wrote down: "It is under such circumstances as thesethat one realises how difficult it is to lead a really ethicalexistence. I am not far-sighted enough to perceive what would be theresults of that which to me seems desirable, and one cannotconscientiously mix one's self up in what one does not understand. Nevertheless, as I stood in the square in front of the Castle, I was soexcited that I even detected in myself an inclination to come forward asa political speaker, greenhorn though I be. "

XIII. 

On the 18th of November, the fever in the town was at its height. Fromearly in the morning the space in front of the Castle was crowded withpeople. Orla Lehmann, a Minister at the time, came out of the Castle, made his way through the crowd, and shouted again and again, first toone side, then to the other:

"He has signed! He has signed!"

He did not say: "The King. "

The people now endured seven weeks of uninterrupted change andkaleidoscopic alteration of the political situation. Relations with allforeign powers, and even with Sweden and Norway, presented a differentaspect to the Danish public every week. Sweden's withdrawal created avery bitter impression; the public had been induced to believe that analliance was concluded. Then followed the "pressure" in Copenhagen bythe emissaries of all the Powers, to induce the Government to recall theNovember Constitution, then the Czar's letter to the Duke ofAugustenborg, finally the occupation of Holstein by German troops, withall the censure and disgrace that the Danish army had to endure, forHolstein was evacuated without a blow being struck, and the Duke, to theaccompanyment of scorn and derision heaped on the Danes, was proclaimedin all the towns of Holstein. 

On Christmas Eve came tidings of the convocation of the Senate, simultaneously with a change of Ministry which placed Monrad at the headof the country, and in connection with this a rumour that all young menof twenty-one were to be called out at once. This last proved to beincorrect, and the minds of the young men alternated between composureat the prospect of war and an enthusiastic desire for war, and a beliefthat there would be no war at all. The first few days in January, building on the rumour that the last note from England had promised helpin the event of the Eider being passed, people began to hope that thewar might be avoided, and pinned their faith to Monrad's dictatorship. 

Frederik Nutzhorn, who did not believe there would be a war, started ona visit to Rome; Jens Paludan-Müller, who had been called out, wasquartered at Rendsborg until the German troops marched in; Julius Lange, who, as he had just become engaged, did not wish to see his workinterrupted and his future prospects delayed by the war, had gone toIslingen, where he had originally made the acquaintance of his fiancée. Under these circumstances, as a twenty-one-year-old student who hadcompleted his university studies, I was anxious to get my examinationover as quickly as possible. At the end of 1863 I wrote to my teacher, Professor Bröchner, who had promised me a short philosophical summary asa preparation for the University test: "I shall sit under a conjunctionof all the most unfavourable circumstances possible, since for more thana month my head has been so full of the events of the day that I havebeen able neither to read nor think, while the time of the examinationitself promises to be still more disquiet. Still, I dare not draw back, as I should then risk--which may possibly happen in any case--beinghindered from my examination by being called out by the conscription andperhaps come to lie in my grave as _Studiosus_ instead of_candidatus magisterii_, which latter looks infinitely moreimpressive and is more satisfying to a man as greedy of honour as Yourrespectful and heartily affectionate, etc. "

XIV. 

Shortly before, I had paid my first visit to Professor Rasmus Nielsen. He was exceedingly agreeable, recognised me, whom perhaps he rememberedexamining, and accorded me a whole hour's conversation. He was, asalways, alert and fiery, not in the least blasé, but with a slightsuggestion of charlatanism about him. His conversation was as lively anddisconnected as his lectures; there was a charm in the clear glance ofhis green eyes, a look of genius about his face. He talked for a longtime about Herbart, whose Aesthetics, for that matter, he betrayedlittle knowledge of, then of Hegel, Heiberg, and Kierkegaard. To myintense surprise, he opened up a prospect, conflicting with the opinionshe had publicly advocated, that Science, "when analyses had been carriedfar enough, " might come to prove the possibility of miracles. This wasan offence against my most sacred convictions. 

Nielsen had recently, from the cathedra, announced his renunciation ofthe Kierkegaard standpoint he had so long maintained, in the phrase:"The Kierkegaard theory is impracticable"; he had, perhaps influencedsomewhat by the Queen Dowager, who about that time frequently invitedhim to meet Grundtvig, drawn nearer to Grundtvigian ways of thinking, --as Bröchner sarcastically remarked about him: "The farther fromKierkegaard, the nearer to the Queen Dowager. "

In the midst of my final preparations for the examination, I wrestled, as was my wont, with my attempts to come to a clear understanding overDuty and Life, and was startled by the indescribable irony in the wordby which I was accustomed to interpret my ethically religiousendeavours, --_Himmelspraet_. [Footnote: Word implying one whoattempts to spring up to Heaven, and of course falls miserably to earthagain. The word, in ordinary conversation, is applied to anyone tossedin a blanket. ]

I handed in, then, my request to be allowed to sit for my Master of Artsexamination; the indefatigable Bröchner had already mentioned the matterto the Dean of the University, who understood the examinee's reasons forhaste. But the University moved so slowly that it was some weeks beforeI received the special paper set me, which, to my horror, ran asfollows: "Determine the correlation between the pathetic and thesymbolic in general, in order by that means to elucidate the contrastbetween Shakespeare's tragedies and Dante's _Divina Commedia_, together with the possible errors into which one might fall through aone-sided preponderance of either of these two elements. "

This paper, which had been set by R. Nielsen, is characteristic of thepurely speculative manner, indifferent to all study of history, in whichAesthetics were at that time pursued in Copenhagen. It was, moreover, worded with unpardonable carelessness; it was impossible to tell from itwhat was to be understood by the correlation on which it was based, andwhich was assumed to be a given conclusion. Even so speculative athinker as Frederik Paludan-Müller called the question absolutelymeaningless. It looked as though its author had imagined Shakespeare'sdramas and Dante's epic were produced by a kind of artistic comminglingof pathetic with symbolic elements, and as though he wished to callattention to the danger of reversing the correct proportions, forinstance, by the symbolic obtaining the preponderance in tragedy, orpathos in the epopee, or to the danger of exaggerating theseproportions, until there was too much tragic pathos, or too much epicsymbolism. But a scientific definition of the expressions used wasaltogether lacking, and I had to devote a whole chapter to theexamination of the meaning of the problem proposed to me. 

The essay, for the writing of which I was allowed six weeks, was handedin, 188 folio pages long, at the right time. By reason of the sheerfoolishness of the question, it was never published. 

In a postscript, I wrote: "I beg my honoured examiners to remember thetime during which this treatise was written, a time more eventful thanany other young men can have been through, and during which I, for mypart, have for days at a time been unable to work, and should have beenashamed if I could have done so. "

In explanation of this statement, the following jottings, written downat the time on a sheet of paper:

_Sunday, Jan. 17th_. Received letter telling me I may fetch myleading question to-morrow at 5 o'clock. 

_Monday, Feb. 1st_. Heard to-day that the Germans have passed theEider and that the first shots have been exchanged. 

_Saturday, Feb. 6th_. Received to-day the terrible, incomprehensible, but only too certain news that the Danevirke has beenabandoned without a blow being struck. This is indescribable, overwhelming. 

_Thursday, Feb. 28th_. We may, unfortunately, assume it as certainthat my dear friend Jens Paludan-Müller fell at Oversö on Feb. 5th. 

_Feb. 28th_. Heard definitely to-day. --At half-past one this nightfinished my essay. 

XV. 

I thought about this time of nothing but my desire to become a competentsoldier of my country. There was nothing I wanted more, but I feltphysically very weak. When the first news of the battles of Midsunde andBustrup arrived, I was very strongly inclined to follow Julius Lange tothe Reserve Officers' School. When tidings came of the abandonment ofthe Danevirke my enthusiasm cooled; it was as though I foresaw howlittle prospect of success there was. Still, I was less melancholy thanLange at the thought of going to the war. I was single, and delighted atthe thought of going straight from the examination-table into a camplife, and from a book-mad student to become a lieutenant. I wasinfluenced most by the prospect of seeing Lange every day at theOfficers' School, and on the field. But my comrades explained to me thateven if Lange and I came out of the School at the same time, it did notfollow that we should be in the same division, and that the thing, moreover, that was wanted in an officer, was entire self-dependence. They also pointed out to me the improbability of my being able to do theleast good, or having the slightest likelihood in front of me of doinganything but quickly find myself in hospital. I did not really thinkmyself that I should be able to stand the fatigue, as the pupils of themilitary academy went over to the army with an equipment that I couldscarcely have carried. I could not possibly suppose that theconscription would select me as a private, on account of my fragilebuild; but like all the rest, I was expecting every day a generalordering out of the fit men of my age. 

All this time I worked with might and main at the development of myphysical strength and accomplishments. I went every day to fencingpractice, likewise to cavalry sword practice; I took lessons in the useof the bayonet, and I took part every afternoon in the shootingpractices conducted by the officers--with the old muzzle-loaders whichwere the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr. Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holsteinnon-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "Asmart fencer. "

XVI. 

Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, Ihere reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to inwriting were:

1. To what extent can poetry be called the ideal History?

2. In what manner may the philosophical ideas of Spinoza and Fichte leadto a want of appreciation of the idea of beauty?

3. In what relation does the comic stand to its limitations and itsvarious contrasts?

The three questions which were to be replied to in lectures before theUniversity ran as follows:

1. Show, through poems in our literature, to what extent poetry mayventure to set itself the task of presenting the Idea in a formcoinciding with the philosophical understanding of it?

2. Point out the special contributions to a philosophical definition ofthe Idea made by Aesthetics in particular. 

3. What are the merits and defects of Schiller's tragedies?

These questions, in conjunction with the main question, may well bedesignated a piece of contemporary history; they depict exactly both theScience of the time and the peculiar philosophical language it adopted. Hardly more than one, or at most two, of them could one imagine set to-day. 

After the final (and best) lecture, on Schiller, which was given at sixhours' notice on April 25th, the judges, Hauch, Nielsen and Bröchner, deliberated for about ten minutes, then called in the auditors and R. Nielsen read aloud the following verdict: "The candidate, in his longessay, in the shorter written tests, and in his oral lectures, hasmanifested such knowledge of his subject, such intellectual maturity, and such originality in the treatment of his themes, that we have onthat account unanimously awarded him the mark: _admissus cum laudepraecipua_. "

XVII. 

The unusually favourable result of this examination attracted theattention of academical and other circles towards me. The mark_admissus cum praecipua laude_ had only very rarely been givenbefore. Hauch expressed his satisfaction at home in no measured terms. His wife stopped my grandfather in the street and informed him that hisgrandson was the cleverest and best-read young man that her husband hadcome across during his University experience. When I went to the oldpoet after the examination to thank him, he said to me (these were hisvery words): "I am an old man and must die soon; you must be mysuccessor at the University; I shall say so unreservedly; indeed, I willeven say it on my death-bed. " Strangely enough, he did say it and recordit on his death-bed seven years later, exactly as he had promised to do. 

In Bröchner's house, too, there was a great deal said about my becominga professor. I myself was despondent about it; I thought only of thewar, only wished to be fit for a soldier. Hauch was pleased at mywanting to be a soldier. "It is fine of you, if you can only stand it. "When Hauch heard for certain that I was only 22 years old (he himselfwas 73), he started up in his chair and said:

"Why, it is incredible that at your age you can have got so far. " RasmusNielsen was the only one of the professors who did not entertain me withthe discussion of my future academic prospects; but he it was who gaveme the highest praise:

"According to our unanimous opinions, " said he, "you are the foremost ofall the young men. "

I was only the more determined not to let myself be buried alive in theflower of my youth by accepting professorship before I had been able tolive and breathe freely. --I might have spared myself any anxiety. 

XVIII. 

A few days later, on May both, a month's armistice was proclaimed, whichwas generally construed as a preliminary to peace, if this could beattained under possible conditions. It was said, and soon confirmed, that at the Conference of London, Denmark had been offered NorthSlesvig. Most unfortunately, Denmark refused the offer. On June 26th, the war broke out again; two days later Alsen was lost. When the youngmen were called up to the officers' board for conscription, "being tooslight of build, " I was deferred till next year. Were the guerilla warwhich was talked about to break out, I was determined all the same totake my part in it. 

But the Bluhme-David Ministry succeeded to Monrad's, and concluded theoppressive peace. 

I was very far from regarding this peace as final; for that, I was tooinexperienced. I correctly foresaw that before very long the state ofaffairs in Europe would give rise to other wars, but I incorrectlyconcluded therefrom that another fight for Slesvig, or in any case, itsrestoration to Denmark, would result from them. 

In the meantime peace, discouraging, disheartening though it was, openedup possibilities of further undisturbed study, fresh absorption inscientific occupations. 

When, after the termination of my University studies, I had to think ofearning my own living, I not only, as before, gave private lessons, butI gave lectures, first to a circle before whom I lectured on Northernand Greek mythology, then to another, in David's house, to whom Iunfolded the inner history of modern literature to interested listeners, amongst them several beautiful young girls. I finally engaged myself tomy old Arithmetic master as teacher of Danish in his course for Nationalschool-mistresses. I found the work horribly dull, but there was oneracy thing about it, namely, that I, the master, was three years youngerthan the youngest of my pupils; these latter were obliged to be at least25, and consequently even at their youngest were quite old in my eyes. 

But there were many much older women amongst them, one even, a priest orschoolmaster's widow, of over fifty, a poor thing who had to begin--ather age!--from the very beginning, though she was anything but gifted. It was not quite easy for a master without a single hair on his face tomake himself respected. But I succeeded, my pupils being so well-behaved. 

It was an exciting moment when these pupils of mine went up for theirteacher's examination, I being present as auditor. 

I continued to teach this course until the Autumn of 1868. When I left, I was gratified by one of the ladies rising and, in a little speech, thanking me for the good instruction I had given. 

XIX. 

Meanwhile, I pursued my studies with ardour and enjoyment, read a verygreat deal of _belles-lettres_, and continued to work at Germanphilosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plungedinto a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much morestimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism. It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before histime, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived amost abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyesand independent thoughts, was an emancipating phenomenon. He haddivested himself of all Danish prejudices. "There is still a great dealof phlogiston in our philosophy, " he used to say sometimes. 

I had long been anxious to come to a clear scientific understanding ofthe musical elements in speech. I had busied myself a great deal withmetrical art. Brücke's _Inquiries_ were not yet in existence, but Iwas fascinated by Apel's attempt to make use of notes (crotchets, quavers, dotted quavers, and semi-quavers) as metrical signs, and byJ. L. Heiberg's attempt to apply this system to Danish verse. But thesystem was too arbitrary for anything to be built up upon it. And I thenmade up my mind, in order better to understand the nature of verse, tobegin at once to familiarise myself with the theory of music, whichseemed to promise the opening out of fresh horizons in theinterpretation of the harmonies of language. 

With the assistance of a young musician, later the well-known composerand Concert Director, Victor Bendix, I plunged into the mysteries ofthorough-bass, and went so far as to write out the entire theory ofharmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music, to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant byenharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, permissible and non-permissible octaves; but I did not find what I hoped. I composed a fewshort tunes, which I myself thought very pretty, but which my youngmaster made great fun of, and with good reason. One evening, when he wasin very high spirits, he parodied one of them at the piano in front of alarge party of people. It was a disconcerting moment for the composer ofthe tune. 

A connection between metrical art and thorough-bass was notdiscoverable. Neither were there any unbreakable laws governingthorough-bass. The unversed person believes that in harmonics he willfind quite definite rules which must not be transgressed. But again andagain he discovers that what is, as a general rule, forbidden, isnevertheless, under certain circumstances, quite permissible. 

Thus he learns that in music there is no rule binding on genius. Andperhaps he asks himself whether, in other domains, there are rules whichare binding on genius. 

XX. 

I had lived so little with Nature. The Spring of 1865, the first SpringI had spent in the country--although quite near to Copenhagen--meant tome rich impressions of nature that I never forgot, a long chain of themost exquisite Spring memories. I understood as I had never done beforethe inborn affection felt by every human being for the virgin, thefresh, the untouched, the not quite full-blown, just as it is about topass over into its maturity. It was in the latter half of May. I waslooking for anemones and violets, which had not yet gone to seed. Thebudding beech foliage, the silver poplar with its shining leaves, themaple with its blossoms, stirred me, filled me with Spring rapture. Icould lie long in the woods with my gaze fastened on a light-greenbranch with the sun shining through it, and, as if stirred by the wind, lighted up from different sides, and floating and flashing as if coatedwith silver. I saw the empty husks fall by the hundred before the wind. I followed up the streams in the wood to their sources. For a while arivulet oozed slowly along. Then came a little fall, and it began tospeak, to gurgle and murmur; but only at this one place, and here itseemed to me to be like a young man or woman of twenty. Now that I, whoin my boyhood's days had gone for botanical excursions with my masterand school-fellows, absorbed myself in every plant, from greatest toleast, without wishing to arrange or classify any, it seemed as thoughan infinite wisdom in Nature were being revealed to me for the firsttime. 

As near to Copenhagen as Söndermarken, stood the beech, with its curlyleaves and black velvet buds in their silk jackets. In the gardens ofFrederiksberg Avenue, the elder exhaled its fragrance, but was soonover; the hawthorn sprang out in all its splendour. I was struck by theloveliness of the chestnut blooms. When the blossom on the cherry-treeshad withered, the lilac was out, and the apple and pear-trees paradedtheir gala dress. 

It interested me to notice how the colour sometimes indicated the shape, sometimes produced designs quite independently of it. I loitered ingardens to feast my eyes on the charming grouping of the rhubarb leavesno less than on the exuberance of their flowers, and the leaves of thescorzonera attracted my attention, because they all grew in one plane, but swung about like lances. 

And as my habit was, I philosophised over what I saw and had made myown, and I strove to understand in what beauty consisted. I consideredthe relations between beauty and life; why was it that artificialflowers and the imitation of a nightingale's song were so far behindtheir originals in beauty? What was the difference between the beauty ofthe real, the artificial and the painted flower? Might not Herbart'sAesthetics be wrong, in their theory of form? The form itself might bethe same in Nature and the imitation, in the rose made of velvet and therose growing in the garden. And I reflected on the connection betweenthe beauty of the species and that of the individual. Whether a lily bea beautiful flower, I can say without ever having seen lilies before, but whether it be a beautiful lily, I cannot. The individual can only betermed beautiful when more like than unlike to the ideal of the species. And I mused over the translation of the idea of beauty into actions andintellectual conditions. Was not the death of Socrates more beautifulthan his preservation of Alcibiades' life in battle?--though this wasnone the less a beautiful act. 

XXI. 

In the month of July I started on a walking tour through Jutland, withthe scenery of which province I had not hitherto been acquainted;travelled also occasionally by the old stage-coaches, found myself atSkanderborg, which, for me, was surrounded by the halo of mediaevalromance; wandered to Silkeborg, entering into conversation with no endof people, peasants, peasant boys, and pretty little peasant girls, whose speech was not always easy to understand. I studied their Juttish, and laughed heartily at their keen wit. The country inns were oftenover-full, so that I was obliged to sleep on the floor; my wanderingswere often somewhat exhausting, as there were constant showers, and thenight rain had soaked the roads. I drove in a peasant's cart to Mariagerto visit my friend Emil Petersen, who was in the office of the districtjudge of that place, making his home with his brother-in-law and hisvery pretty sister, and I stayed for a few days with him. Here I becameacquainted with a little out-of-the-world Danish town. The priest andhis wife were an interesting and extraordinary couple. The priest, thebefore-mentioned Pastor Ussing, a little, nervous, intelligent andunworldly man, was a pious dreamer, whose religion was entirelyrationalistic. Renan's recently published _Life of Jesus_ was sofar from shocking him that the book seemed to him in all essentials tobe on the right track. He had lived in the Danish West Indies, and therehe had become acquainted with his wife, a lady with social triumphsbehind her, whose charms he never wearied of admiring. The mere way inwhich she placed her hat upon her head, or threw a shawl round hershoulders, could make him fall into ecstasies, even though he onlyexpressed his delight in her in half-facetious terms. This couple showedme the most cordial kindness; to their unpractised, provincial eyes, Iseemed to be a typical young man of the world, and they amazed me withthe way in which they took it for granted that I led the dances at everyball, was a lion in society, etc. I was reminded of the student's wordsin Hostrup's vaudeville: "Goodness! How innocent they must be to think_me_ a dandy!" and vainly assured them that I lived an exceedinglyunnoticed life in Copenhagen, and had never opened a ball in my life. 

The priest asked us two young men to go and hear his Sunday sermon, andpromised that we should be pleased with it. We went to church somewhatexpectant, and the sermon was certainly a most unusual one. It wasdelivered with great rapture, after the priest had bent his head in hishands for a time in silent reflection. With great earnestness headdressed himself to his congregation and demanded, after having putbefore them some of the cures in the New Testament, generally extolledas miracles, whether they dared maintain that these so-called miraclescould not have taken place according to Nature's laws. And when heimpressively called out: "Darest thou, with thy limited humanintelligence, say, 'This cannot happen naturally?'" it was in the sametone and style in which another priest would have shouted out: "Darestthou, with thy limited human intelligence, deny the miracle?" Thepeasants, who, no doubt, understood his words quite in this lattersense, did not understand in the least the difference and the contrast, but judged much the same as a dog to whom one might talk angrily withcaressing words or caressingly with abusive words, simply from thespeaker's tone; and both his tone and facial expression were ecstatic. They perceived no heresy and felt themselves no less edified by theaddress than did the two young Copenhagen graduates. 

XXII. 

My first newspaper articles were printed in _The Fatherland_ andthe _Illustrated Times_; the very first was a notice of Paludan-Müller's _Fountain of Youth_, in which I had compressed matter forthree or four lectures; a commissioned article on Dante was about thenext, but this was of no value. But it was a great event to see one'sname printed in a newspaper for the first time, and my mother saw it notwithout emotion. 

About this time Henrik Ibsen's first books fell into my hands andattracted my attention towards this rising poet, who, among the leadingDanish critics, encountered a reservation of appreciation that scarcelyconcealed ill-will. From Norway I procured Ibsen's oldest dramas, whichhad appeared there. 

Frederik Algreen-Ussing asked me to contribute to a large biographicaldictionary, which he had for a long time been planning and preparing, and which he had just concluded a contract for with the largest Danishpublishing firm of the time. A young man who hated the AugustAssociation and all its deeds could not fail to feel scruples aboutengaging in any collaboration with its founder. But Algreen-Ussing knewhow to vanquish all such scruples, inasmuch as he waived all rights ofcensorship, and left it to each author to write as he liked upon his ownresponsibility. And he was perfectly loyal to his promise. Moreover, thequestion here was one of literature only, and not politics. 

As the Danish authors were to be dealt with in alphabetical order, thearticle that had to be set about at once was an account of the onlyDanish poet whose name began with _Aa_. Thus it was that EmilAarestrup came to be the first Danish poet of the past of whom I chancedto write. I heard of the existence of a collection of unprinted lettersfrom Aarestrup to his friend Petersen, the grocer, which were of verygreat advantage to my essay. A visit that I paid to the widow of thepoet, on the other hand, led to no result whatever. It was strange tomeet the lady so enthusiastically sung by Aarestrup in his young days, as a sulky and suspicious old woman without a trace of former beauty, who declared that she had no letters from her husband, and could notgive me any information about him. It was only a generation later thathis letters to her came into my hands. 

In September, 1865, the article on Aarestrup was finished. It wasintended to be quickly followed up by others on the remaining Danishauthors in A. But it was the only one that was written, for Algreen-Ussing's apparently so well planned undertaking was suddenly brought toa standstill. The proprietors of the National Liberal papers declared, as soon as they heard of the plan, that they would not on any accountagree to its being carried out by a man who took up such a "reactionary"position in Danish politics as Ussing, and in face of their threat toannihilate the undertaking, the publishers, who were altogetherdependent on the attitude of these papers, did not dare to defy them. They explained to Algreen-Ussing that they felt obliged to break theircontract with him, but were willing to pay him the compensation agreedupon beforehand for failure to carry it out. He fought long to get hisproject carried through, but his efforts proving fruitless, he refused, from pride, to accept any indemnity, and was thus compelled to see withbitterness many years' work and an infinite amount of trouble completelywasted. Shortly afterwards he succumbed to an attack of illness. 

XXIII. 

A young man who plunged into philosophical study at the beginning of thesixties in Denmark, and was specially engrossed by the boundaryrelations between Philosophy and Religion, could not but come to theconclusion that philosophical life would never flourish in Danish soiluntil a great intellectual battle had been set on foot, in the course ofwhich conflicting opinions which had never yet been advanced in expressterms should be made manifest and wrestle with one another, until itbecame clear which standpoints were untenable and which could bemaintained. Although he cherished warm feelings of affection for both R. Nielsen and Bröchner the two professors of Philosophy, he could not helphoping for a discussion between them of the fundamental questions whichwere engaging his mind. As Bröchner's pupil, I said a little of what wasin my mind to him, but could not induce him to begin. Then I beggedGabriel Sibbern to furnish a thorough criticism of Nielsen's books, buthe declined. I began to doubt whether I should be able to persuade theelder men to speak. 

A review in The _Fatherland_ of the first part of Nielsen's_Logic of Fundamental Ideas_ roused my indignation. It was indiametric opposition to what I considered irrefutably true, and waswritten in the style, and with the metaphors, which the paper's literarycriticisms had brought into fashion, a style that was repugnant to mewith its sham poetical, or meaninglessly flat expressions ("Matter isthe hammer-stroke that the Ideal requires"--"Spontaneity is like foodthat has once been eaten"). 

In an eleven-page letter to Bröchner I condensed all that I had thoughtabout the philosophical study at the University during these first yearsof my youth, and proved to him, in the keenest terms I could think of, that it was his duty to the ideas whose spokesman he was, to comeforward, and that it would be foolish, in fact wrong, to leave thematter alone. I knew well enough that I was jeopardising my preciousfriendship with Bröchner by my action, but I was willing to take therisk. I did not expect any immediate result of my letter, but thought tomyself that it should ferment, and some time in the future might bearfruit. The outcome of it far exceeded my expectations, inasmuch asBröchner was moved by my letter, and not only thanked me warmly for mydaring words, but went without delay to Nielsen and told him that heintended to write a book on his entire philosophical activity andsignificance. Nielsen took his announcement with a good grace. 

However, as Bröchner immediately afterwards lost his young wife, and wasattacked by the insidious consumption which ravaged him for ten years, the putting of this resolution into practice was for several yearsdeferred. 

At that I felt that I myself must venture, and, as a beginning, JuliusLange and I, in collaboration, wrote a humorous article on Schmidt'sreview of _The Logic of Fundamental Ideas_, which Lange was to getinto _The Daily Paper_, to which he had access. Three days afterthe article was finished Lange came to me and told me that to his dismayit was--gone. It was so exactly like him that I was just as delighted asif he had informed me that the article was printed. For some time wehoped that it might be on Lange's table, for, the day before, he hadsaid:

"I am not of a curious disposition, but I should like to know what therereally is on that table!"

However, it had irrevocably disappeared. 

I then came forward myself with a number of shorter articles which Isucceeded in getting accepted by the _Fatherland_. When I enteredfor the first time Ploug's tiny little office high up at the top of ahouse behind Höjbro Place, the gruff man was not unfriendly. Surprisedat the youthful appearance of the person who walked in, he merely burstout: "How old are you?" And to the reply: "Twenty-three and a half, " hesaid smilingly, "Don't forget the half. "

The first article was not printed for months; the next ones appearedwithout such long delay. But Ploug was somewhat uneasy about thecontents of them, and cautiously remarked that there was "not to be anyfun made of Religion, " which it could not truthfully be said I had done. But I had touched upon dogmatic Belief and that was enough. 

Later on, Ploug had a notion that, as he once wrote, he had excluded mefrom the paper as soon as he perceived my mischievous tendency. This wasa failure of memory on his part; the reason I left the paper was adifferent one, and I left of my own accord. 

Bold and surly, virile and reliable as Ploug seemed, in thingsjournalistic you could place slight dependence on his word. His dearestfriend admitted as much; he gave his consent, and then forgot it, orwithdrew it. Nothing is more general, but it made an overweeningimpression on a beginner like myself, inexperienced in the ways of life. 

When Ibsen's _Brand_ came out, creating an unusual sensation, Iasked Ploug if I might review the book and received a definite "Yes"from him. I then wrote my article, to which I devoted no little pains, but when I took it in it was met by him, to my astonishment, with theremark that the paper had now received another notice from their regularreviewer, whom he "could not very well kick aside. " Ploug's promise hadapparently been meaningless! I went my way with my article, firmlyresolved never to go there again. 

From 1866 to 1870 I sought and found acceptance for my newspaperarticles (not very numerous) in Bille's _Daily Paper_, which in itsturn closed its columns to me after my first series of lectures at theUniversity of Copenhagen. Bille as an editor was pleasant, a littlepatronising, it is true, but polite and invariably good-tempered. Heusually received his contributors reclining at full length on his sofa, his head, with its beautifully cut features, resting against a cushionand his comfortable little stomach protruding. He was scarcely of mediumheight, quick in everything he did, very clear, a little flat; veryeloquent, but taking somewhat external views; pleased at the greatfavour he enjoyed among the Copenhagen bourgeoisie. If he enteredTivoli's Concert Hall in an evening all the waiter's ran about at oncelike cockroaches. They hurried to know what he might please to want, andfetched chairs for him and his party. Gay, adaptable, and practised, hewas the principal speaker at every social gathering. In his editorialcapacity he was courteous, decided, and a man of his word; he did notallow himself to be alarmed by trifles. When Björnson attacked me (I wasat the time his youngest contributor), he raised my scale of pay, unsolicited. The first hitch in our relations occurred when in 1869 Ipublished a translation of Mill's Subjection of Women. This book rousedBille's exasperation and displeasure. He forbade it to be reviewed inhis paper, refused me permission to defend it in the paper, and wouldnot even allow the book in his house, so that his family had to read itclandestinely, as a dangerous and pernicious work. 

XXIV. 

In the beginning of the year 1866 Ludvig David died suddenly in Rome, oftyphoid fever. His sorrowing parents founded in memory of him anexhibition for law-students which bears and perpetuates his name. Thefirst executors of the fund were, in addition to his most intimatefriend, two young lawyers named Emil Petersen and Emil Bruun, who hadboth been friends of his. The latter, who has not previously beenmentioned in these pages, was a strikingly handsome and clever youngman, remarkable for his calm and superior humour, and exceedingly self-confident and virile. His attitude towards Ludvig David in his earlyyouth had been somewhat that of a protector. Unfortunately he wasseriously wounded during the first storming of the Dybböl redoubts bythe Germans; a bullet crushed one of the spinal vertebrae; gradually thewound brought on consumption of the lungs and he died young. 

Ludvig David's death was a great loss to his friends. It was not onlythat he took such an affectionate interest in their welfare andhappiness, but he had a considerable gift for Mathematics and History, and, from his home training, an understanding of affairs of state whichwas considerably above that of most people. Peculiarly his own was acombination of keen, disintegrating intelligence, and a tendency towardscomprehensive, rounded off, summarising. He had strong publicantipathies. In his opinion the years of peace that had followed thefirst war in Slesvig had had an enervating effect; public speakers andjournalists had taken the places of brave men; many a solution of adifficulty, announced at first with enthusiasm, had in course of timepetrified into a mere set phrase. He thought many of the leading menamong the Liberals superficial and devoid of character, and accusedthem, with the pitilessness of youth, of mere verbiage. Influenced as hewas by Kierkegaard, such a man as Bille was naturally his aversion. Heconsidered--not altogether justly--that Bille cloaked himself in falseearnestness. 

He himself was profoundly and actively philanthropic, with an impulse--by no means universal--to relieve and help. Society life he hated; tohim it was waste of time and a torture to be obliged to figure in aballroom; he cared very little for his appearance, and was by no meanselegant in his dress. He was happy, however, in the unconstrainedsociety of the comrades he cared about, enjoyed a merry chat or afrolicsome party, and in intimate conversation he would reveal hisinmost nature with modest unpretension, with good-natured wit, directedagainst himself as much as against others, and with an understanding andsympathetic eye for his surroundings. His warmest outburst had generallya little touch of mockery or teasing about it, as though he wererepeating, half roguishly, the feelings of another, rather thanunreservedly expressing his own. But a heartfelt, steadfast look wouldoften come into his beautiful dark eyes. 

XXV. 

His death left a great void in his home. His old father said to me oneday:

"Strange how one ends as one begins! I have written no verses since myearly youth, and now I have written a poem on my grief for Ludvig. Iwill read it to you. "

There was an Art and Industrial Exhibition in Stockholm, that Summer, which C. N. David was anxious to see. As he did not care to go alone, hetook me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreigncapital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I no longer, it istrue, had the same intense boyish impressionability as when I was inSweden for the first time, seven years before. The most trifling thingthen had been an experience. In Göteborg I had stayed with a friend ofmy mother's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, Bluma Alida, a wondrouslycharming little maiden, had jokingly been destined by the two mothersfor my bride from the child's very birth. And at that time I hadassimilated every impression of people or scenery with a voraciousappetite which rendered these impressions ineffaceable all my life long. That Summer month, my fancy had transformed every meeting with a younggirl into an adventure and fixed every landscape on my mental retinawith an affection such as the landscape painter generally only feels fora place where he is specially at home. Then I had shared for a wholemonth Göteborg family and social life. Now I was merely travelling as atourist, and as the companion of a highly respected old man. 

I was less entranced at Stockholm by the Industrial Exhibition than bythe National Museum and the Royal Theatre, where the lovely Hyassercaptivated me by her beauty and the keen energy of her acting. I becameexceedingly fond of Stockholm, this most beautifully situated of theNorthern capitals, and saw, with reverence, the places associated withthe name of Bellman. I also accompanied my old friend to Ulriksdal, where the Swedish Queen Dowager expected him in audience. More than anhour before we reached the Castle he threw away his cigar. 

"I am an old courtier, " he remarked. He had always been intimatelyassociated with the Danish Royal family; for a long time the CrownPrince used to go regularly to his flat in Queen's Crossway Street, tobe instructed by him in political economy. He was consequently used toCourt ceremonial. 

Beautiful were those Summer days, lovely the light nights in Stockholm. 

One recollection from these weeks is associated with a night when thesky was overcast. I had wandered round the town, before retiring torest, and somewhere, in a large square, slipping my hand in my pocket, and feeling it full of bits of paper, could not remember how they gotthere, and threw them away. When I was nearly back at the hotel itflashed upon me that it had been small Swedish notes--all the money thatI had changed for my stay in Stockholm--that I had been carrying loosein my pocket and had so thoughtlessly thrown away. With a great deal oftrouble, I found the square again, but of course not a sign of theriches that in unpardonable forgetfulness I had scattered to the winds. I was obliged to borrow six Rigsdaler (a sum of a little over thirteenshillings) from my old protector. That my requirements were modest isproved by the fact that this sum sufficed. 

The Danish Ambassador was absent from Stockholm just at this time, andthe Chargé d'Affaires at the Legation had to receive the Danish ex-Minister in his stead. He was very attentive to us, and took thetravellers everywhere where C. N. David wished his arrival to be madeknown. He himself, however, was a most unfortunate specimen of Danishdiplomacy, a man disintegrated by hideous debauchery, of coarseconversation, and disposition so brutal that he kicked little childrenaside with his foot when they got in front of him in the street. Abnormities of too great irregularity brought about, not longafterwards, his dismissal and his banishment to a little Danish island. 

This man gave a large dinner-party in honour of the Danish ex-Minister, to which, amongst others, all the Swedish and Norwegian Ministers inStockholm were invited. It was held at Hasselbakken, [Footnote: afavourite outdoor pleasure resort at Stockholm. ] and the arrangementswere magnificent. But what highly astonished me, and was in reality mostout of keeping in such a circle, was the tone that the conversation attable gradually assumed, and especially the obscenity of the subjects ofconversation. It was not, however, the Ministers and Diplomats present, but a Danish roué, a professor of Physics, who gave this turn to thetalk. He related anecdotes that would have made a sailor blush. NeitherCount Manderström, nor any of the other Ministers, neither Malmgren, northe dignified and handsome Norwegian Minister Bretteville, seemed to beoffended. Manderström's expression, however, changed very noticeablywhen the professor ventured to make some pointed insinuations regardingthe Swedish attitude, and his personal attitude in particular, previousto the Dano-German war and during its course. He suddenly pretended notto understand, and changed the subject of conversation. 

It produced an extremely painful impression upon me that not only theDanish Chargé d'Affaires, but apparently several of these finegentlemen, had determined on the additional amusement of making medrunk. Everybody at table vied one with the other to drink my health, and they informed me that etiquette demanded I should each time empty myglass to the bottom; the contrary would be a breach of good form. As Ivery quickly saw through their intention, I escaped from the difficultyby asking the waiter to bring me a very small glass. By emptying this Icould, without my manners being affected, hold my own against them all. 

But, --almost for the first time in my life, --when the company rose fromtable I felt that I had been in exceedingly bad company, and a disgustfor the nominally highest circles, who were so little capable of actingin accordance with the reputation they enjoyed, and the polish imputedto them, remained with me for many years to come. 

FIRST LONG SOJOURN ABROAD

My Wish to See Paris--_Dualism in our Modern Philosophy_--AJourney--Impressions of Paris--Lessons in French--Mademoiselle Mathilde--Taine. 

I. 

I had wished for years to see Paris, the city that roused my most devoutfeelings. As a youth I had felt a kind of reverent awe for the FrenchRevolution, which represented to me the beginning of human conditionsfor all those who were not of the favoured among men, --and Paris was thecity of the Revolution. Moreover, it was the city of Napoleon, the onlyruler since Caesar who had seriously fascinated me, though my feelingsfor him changed so much that now admiration, now aversion, got the upperhand. And Paris was the city, too, of the old culture, the city ofJulian the Apostate, the city of the middle ages, that Victor Hugo hadportrayed in _Notre Dame de Paris_--the first book I had read inFrench, difficult though it was with its many peculiar expressions forGothic arches and buttresses--and it was the city where Alfred de Mussethad written his poems and where Delacroix had painted. The Louvre andthe Luxembourg, the Théâtre Français and the Gymnase were immensetreasuries that tempted me. In the Autumn of 1866, when Gabriel Sibbernstarted to Paris, somewhat before I myself could get away, my last wordsto him: "Till we meet again in the Holy City!" were by no means a jest. 

II. 

Before I could start, I had to finish the pamphlet which, with Sibbern'shelp, I had written against Nielsen's adjustment of the split betweenProtestant orthodoxy and the scientific view of the universe, and whichI had called _Dualism in our Modern Philosophy_. I was not troubledwith any misgivings as to how I should get the book published. As longago as 1864 a polite, smiling, kindly man, who introduced himself to meas Frederik Hegel, the bookseller, had knocked at the door of my littleroom and asked me to let him print the essay which I had written for myMaster of Arts examination, and if possible he would also like the paperwhich had won the University gold medal; and in fact, anything else Imight wish published. To my amazed reply that those essays were notworth publishing, and that in general I did not consider what I wrotesufficiently mature for publication, Hegel had first suggested that Ishould leave that question to the publisher, and then, when he saw thatmy refusal was honestly meant, had simply asked me to take my work tohim when I myself considered that the moment had arrived. On thisoccasion, as on many others, the acute and daring publisher gave proofof the _flair_ which made him the greatest in the North. Heaccepted the little book without raising any difficulties, merelyremarking that it would have to be spread out a little in the printing, that it might not look too thin. Even before the pamphlet was mentionedin the Press, its author was on his way to foreign parts. 

III. 

On one of the first days of November, I journeyed, in a tremendousstorm, to Lübeck, the characteristic buildings of which (the Church ofMary, the Exchange, the Town-hall), together with the remains of the oldfortifications, aroused my keen interest. In this Hanse town, with itsstrongly individual stamp, I found myself carried back three hundredyears. 

I was amazed at the slave-like dress of the workmen, the pointed hats ofthe girls, and the wood pavements, which were new to me. 

I travelled through Germany with a Portuguese, a little doctor from theUniversity of Coimbra, in whose queer French fifteen was _kouss_and Goethe _Shett_. A practical American, wrapped up in awaterproof, took up three places to lie down in one evening, pretendedto sleep, and never stirred all night, forcing his inexperienced fellow-travellers to crowd up into the corners of the carriage, and when theday broke, chatted with them as pleasantly as if they and he were thebest friends in the world. 

At Cologne, where I had stood, reverential, in the noble forest ofpillars in the Cathedral, then afterwards, in my simplicity, allowedsomeone to foist a whole case of Eau de Cologne upon me, I shortened mystay, in my haste to see Paris. But, having by mistake taken a trainwhich would necessitate my waiting several hours at Liège, I decidedrather to continue my journey to Brussels and see that city too. The runthrough Belgium seemed to me heavenly, as for a time I happened to bequite alone in my compartment and I walked up and down, intoxicated withthe joy of travelling. 

Brussels was the first large French town I saw; it was a foretaste ofParis, and delighted me. 

Never having been out in the world on my own account before, I was stillas inexperienced and awkward as a child. It was not enough that I hadgot into the wrong train; I discovered, to my shame, that I had mislaidthe key of my box, which made me think anxiously of the customsofficials in Paris, and I was also so stupid as to ask the boots in theBrussels hotel for "a little room, " so that they gave me a miserablelittle sleeping-place under the roof. 

But at night, after I had rambled about the streets of Brussels, as Isat on a bench somewhere on a broad boulevard, an overwhelming, terrifying, transporting sense of my solitariness came over me. Itseemed to me as though now, alone in a foreign land, at night time, inthis human swarm, where no one knew me and I knew no one, where no onewould look for me if anything were to happen to me, I was for the firsttime thrown entirely on my own resources, and I recognised in theheavens, with a feeling of reassurance, old friends among the stars. 

With a guide, whom in my ignorance I thought necessary, I saw the sightsof the town, and afterwards, for the first time, saw a French play. Solittle experience of the world had I, that, during the interval, I leftmy overcoat, which I had not given up to the attendant, lying on theseat in the pit, and my neighbour had to explain to me that such greatconfidence in my fellow-men was out of place. 

Everything was new to me, everything fascinated me. I, who only knew"indulgence" from my history lessons at school, saw with keen interestthe priest in a Brussels church dispense "_indulgence plénière_, "or, in Flemish, _vollen aflaet_. I was interested in the curiousnames of the ecclesiastical orders posted up in the churches, marvelled, for instance, at a brotherhood that was called "St. Andrew Avellin, patron saint against apoplexy, epilepsy and sudden death. "

In the carriage from Brussels I had for travelling companion a prettyyoung Belgian girl named Marie Choteau, who was travelling with herfather, but talked all the time to her foreign fellow-traveller, and inthe course of conversation showed me a Belgian history and a Belgiangeography, from which it appeared that Belgium was the centre of theglobe, the world's most densely built over, most religious, and at thesame time most enlightened country, the one which, in proportion to itssize, had the most and largest industries. I gave her some of mybountiful supply of Eau de Cologne. 

IV. 

The tiring night-journey, with its full four hours' wait at Liège, wasall pure enjoyment to me, and in a mood of mild ecstasy, at last, athalf-past ten on the morning of November 11th 1866, I made my entry intoParis, and was received cordially by the proprietors of a modest butclean little hotel which is still standing, No. 20 Rue Notre Dame desVictoires, by the proprietors, two simple Lorrainers, François andMüller, to whom Gabriel Sibbern, who was staying there, had announced myarrival. The same morning Sibbern guided my first steps to one ofPasdeloup's great classical popular concerts. 

In the evening, in spite of my fatigue after travelling all night, Iwent to the Théâtre Français for the first time, and there, lost inadmiration of the masterly ensemble and the natural yet passionateacting, with which I had hitherto seen nothing to compare, I sawGirardin's _Le supplice d'une femme_, and Beaumarchais' _Lemariage de Figaro_, in one evening making the acquaintance of suchstars as Régnier, Madame Favart, Coquelin and the Sisters Brohan. 

Régnier especially, in his simple dignity, was an unforgettable figure, being surrounded, moreover, in my eyes by the glory which the well-knownlittle poem of Alfred de Musset, written to comfort the father's heart, had shed upon him. Of the two celebrated sisters, Augustine was all wit, Madeleine pure beauty and arch, melting grace. 

These first days were rich days to me, and as they did not leave me anytime for thinking over what I had seen, my impressions overwhelmed me atnight, till sometimes I could not sleep for sheer happiness. This, tome, was happiness, an uninterrupted garnering of intellectual wealth inassociation with objects that all appealed to my sympathies, and I wrotehome: "To be here, young, healthy, with alert senses, keen eyes and goodears, with all the curiosity, eagerness to know, love of learning, andsusceptibility to every impression, that is youth's own prerogative, andto have no worries about home, all that is so great a happiness that Iam sometimes tempted, like Polycrates, to fling the handsome ring I hadfrom Christian Richardt in the gutter. "

For the rest, I was too fond of characteristic architecture to feelattracted by the building art displayed in the long, regular streets ofNapoleon III, and too permeated with national prejudices to be able atonce to appreciate French sculpture. I was justified in feeling repelledby many empty allegorical pieces on public monuments, but during thefirst weeks I lacked perception for such good sculpture as is to befound in the _foyer_ of the Théâtre Français. "You reel at everystep, " I wrote immediately after my arrival, "that France has never had aThorwaldsen, and that Denmark possesses an indescribable treasure inhim. We are and remain, in three or four directions, the first nation inEurope. This is pure and simple truth. "

To my youthful ignorance it was the truth, but it hardly remained suchafter the first month. 

Being anxious to see as much as possible and not let anything ofinterest escape me, I went late to bed, and yet got up early, and triedto regulate my time, as one does a blanket that is too short. 

I was immensely interested in the art treasures from all over the worldcollected in the Louvre. Every single morning, after eating my modestbreakfast at a _crêmerie_ near the château, I paid my vows in the_Salon carré_ and then absorbed myself in the other halls. Thegallery of the Louvre was the one to which I owe my initiation. Before, I had seen hardly any Italian art in the original, and no French at all. In Copenhagen I had been able to worship all the Dutch masters. Leonardoand the Venetians spoke to me here for the first time. French paintingand sculpture, Puget and Houdon, Clouet and Delacroix, and the Frenchart that was modern then, I learnt for the first time to love andappreciate at the Luxembourg. 

I relished these works of art, and the old-time art of the Greeks andEgyptians which the Museum of the Louvre contained, in a mildintoxication of delight. 

And I inbreathed Paris into my soul. When on the broad, handsome Placede la Concorde, I saw at the same time, with my bodily eyes, thebeautifully impressive obelisk, and in my mind's eye the scaffold onwhich the royal pair met with their death in the Revolution; when in theLatin quarter I went upstairs to the house in which Charlotte Cordaymurdered Marat, or when, in the highest storey of the Louvre, I gazed atthe little gray coat from Marengo and the three-cornered hat, or fromthe Arc de Triomphe let my glance roam over the city, the life thatpulsated through my veins seemed stimulated tenfold by sight andvisions. 

Yet it was not only the city of Paris, its appearance, its art gems, that I eagerly made my own, and with them much that intellectuallybelonged to Italy or the Netherlands; it was French culture, the bestthat the French nature contains, the fragrance of her choicest flowers, that I inhaled. 

And while thus for the first time learning to know French people, andFrench intellectual life, I was unexpectedly admitted to constantassociation with men and women of the other leading Romance races, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Brazilians. 

Bröchner had given me a letter of introduction to Costanza Testa, afriend of his youth, now married to Count Oreste Blanchetti and livingin Paris, with her somewhat older sister Virginia, a kind-hearted andamiable woman of the world. The latter had married in Brazil, as hersecond husband, the Italian banker Pagella, and to their house came, notonly Italians and other European Southerners, but members of the SouthAmerican colony. 

So warm a reception as I met with from the two sisters and theirhusbands I had never had anywhere before. After I had known the twofamilies one hour, these people treated me as though I were theirintimate friend; Costanza's younger brother, they called me. I had aseat in their carriage every day, when the ladies drove out in the Boisde Boulogne; they never had a box at the Italian opera, where AdelinaPatti's first notes were delighting her countrymen, without sending me aseat. They expected me every evening, however late it often might bewhen I came from the theatre, in their drawing-room, where, according tothe custom of their country, they always received the same circle offriends. 

I was sincerely attached to the two sisters, and felt myself at ease intheir house, although the conversation there was chiefly carried on in alanguage of which I understood but little, since French was spoken onlyon my account. The only shadow over my pleasure at spending my eveningsin the Rue Valois du Roule was the fact that this necessitated mymissing some acts at the Théâtre Français, for which the DanishMinister, through the Embassy, had procured me a free pass. Certainly noDane was ever made so happy by the favour. They were enraptured hoursthat I spent evening after evening in the French national theatre, whereI became thoroughly acquainted with the modern, as well as theclassical, dramatic repertoire, --an acquaintance which was furtherfortified during my long stay in Paris in 1870. 

I enjoyed the moderation of the best actors, their restraint, andsubordination of self to the rôle and the general effect. It is truethat the word genius could only be applied to a very few of the actors, and at that time I saw none who, in my opinion, could be compared withthe great representatives of the Danish stage, such as Michael Wiehe, Johanne Luise Heiberg, or Phister. But I perceived at once that themannerisms of these latter would not be tolerated here for a moment;here, under the influence of this artistic whole-harmony, they wouldnever have been able to give free vent to individuality and peculiarityas they did at home. 

I saw many hundred performances in these first years of my youth at theThéâtre Français, which was then at its zenith. There, if anywhere, Ifelt the silent march of the French muses through Time and Space. 

V. 

A capable journalist named Grégoire, a sickly, prematurely aged, limpingfellow, with alert wits, an Alsatian, who knew Danish and regularly readBille's _Daily Paper_, had in many ways taken me up almost from thefirst day of my sojourn on French soil. This man recommended me, on myexpressing a wish to meet with a competent teacher, to take instructionin the language from a young girl, a friend of his sister, who was anorphan and lived with her aunt. She was of good family, the daughter ofa colonel and the granddaughter of an admiral, but her own and heraunt's circumstances were narrow, and she was anxious to give lessons. 

When I objected that such lessons could hardly be really instructive, Iwas told that she was not only in every way a nice but a very gifted andpainstaking young girl. 

The first time I entered the house, as a future pupil, I found the younglady, dressed in a plain black silk dress, surrounded by a circle oftoddlers of both sexes, for whom she had a sort of school, and whom onmy arrival she sent away. She had a pretty figure, a face that wasattractive without being beautiful, a large mouth with good teeth, anddark brown hair. Her features were a little indefinite, her face ratherbroad than oval, her eyes brown and affectionate. She had at any ratethe beauty that twenty years lends. We arranged for four lessons a week, to begin with. 

The first dragged considerably. My teacher was to correct any mistakesin pronunciation and grammar that I made in conversation. But we couldnot get up any proper conversation. She was evidently bored by thelessons, which she had only undertaken for the sake of the fees. If Ibegan to tell her anything, she only half listened, and yawned with allher might very often and very loudly, although she politely put her handin front of her large mouth. There only came a little animation into herexpression when I either pronounced as badly as I had been taught by myFrench master at school, or made some particularly ludicrous mistake, such as _c'est tout égal_ for _bien égal_. At other times shewas distracted, sleepy, her thoughts elsewhere. 

After having tried vainly for a few times to interest the young lady bymy communications, I grew tired of the lessons. Moreover, they were ofvery little advantage to me, for the simple reason that my youthfulteacher had not the very slightest scientific or even grammaticalknowledge of her own tongue, and consequently could never answer myquestions as to _why_ you had to pronounce in such and such a way, or by virtue of what _rule_ you expressed yourself in such and sucha manner. I began to neglect my lessons, sometimes made an excuse, butoftener remained away without offering any explanation. 

On my arrival one afternoon, after having repeatedly stayed away, theyoung lady met me with some temper, and asked the reason of my failuresto come, plainly enough irritated and alarmed at my indifference, whichafter all was only the reflection of her own. I promised politely to bemore regular in future. To insure this, she involuntarily became moreattentive. 

She yawned no more. I did not stay away again. 

She began to take an interest herself in this eldest pupil of hers, whoat 24 years of age looked 20 and who was acquainted with all sorts ofthings about conditions, countries, and people of which she knewnothing. 

She had been so strictly brought up that nearly all secular reading wasforbidden to her, and she had never been to any theatre, not even theThéâtre Français. She had not read Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Musset, had not even dared to read _Paul et Virginie_, only knew expurgatededitions of Corneille, Racine and Molière. She was sincerely clerical, had early been somewhat influenced by her cousin, later the well-knownRoman Catholic author, Ernest Hello, and in our conversations was alwaysready to take the part of the Jesuits against Pascal; what the latterhad attacked were some antiquated and long-abandoned doctrinal books;even if there were defects in the teaching of certain Catholicecclesiastics, their lives at any rate were exemplary, whereas thecontrary was the case with the free-thinking men of science; theirteaching was sometimes unassailable, but the lives they led could not betaken seriously. 

When we two young people got into a dispute, we gradually drew nearer toone another. Our remarks contradicted each other, but an understandingcame about between our eyes. One day, as I was about to leave, shecalled me back from the staircase, and, very timidly, offered me anorange. The next time she blushed slightly when I came in. Shefrequently sent me cards of admission to the Athénée, a recently startedinstitution, in which lectures were given by good speakers. She began tolook pleased at my coming and to express regret at the thought of mydeparture. 

On New Year's day, as a duty gift, I had sent her a bouquet of whiteflowers, and the next day she had tears in her eyes as she thanked me:"I ask you to believe that I highly appreciate your attention. " Fromthat time forth she spoke more and more often of how empty it would befor her when I was gone. I was not in love with her, but was too youngfor her feelings, so unreservedly expressed, to leave me unaffected, andlikewise young enough to imagine that she expected me before long to askfor her hand. So I soon informed her that I did not feel so warmlytowards her as she did towards me, and that I was not thinking ofbinding myself for the present. 

"Do you think me so poor an observer?" she replied, amazed. "I havenever made any claims upon you, even in my thoughts. But I owe you thehappiest month of my life. "

VI. 

This was about the state of affairs between Mademoiselle Louise and me, when one evening, at Pagella's, where there were Southerners of variousraces present, I was introduced to a young lady, Mademoiselle MathildeM. , who at first sight made a powerful impression upon me. 

She was a young Spanish Brazilian, tall of stature, a proud and dazzlingracial beauty. The contours of her head were so impeccably perfect thatone scarcely understood how Nature could have made such a beinginadvertently, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion made thecarnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or crimson by theside of hers. At the same time there was a something in the colour ofher skin that made me understand better the womanish appearance ofZurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen in Naturebefore. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the fashion of theday, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick ringlets uponher shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled, arched andalmost met over her delicate nose, her eyes were burning and a deepbrown; they conquered, and smiled; her mouth was a little too small, with white teeth that were a little too large, her bust slender andfull. Her manner was distinguished, her voice rich; but most marvellousof all was her hand, such a hand as Parmeggianino might have painted, all soul, branching off into five delightful fingers. 

Mentally I unhesitatingly dubbed her the most marvelous femininecreature I had ever seen, and that less on account of her lovelinessthan the blending of the magnificence of her bearing with the ardour, and often the frolicsomeness, of her mode of expression. 

She was always vigorous and sometimes daring in her statements, caredonly for the unusual, loved only "the impossible, " but neverthelesscarefully observed every established custom of society. To my very firstremark to her, to the effect that the weakness of women was mostly onlyan habitual phrase; they were not weak except when they wished to be, she replied: "Young as you are, you know women very well!" In that shewas quite wrong. 

Besides Spanish and Portuguese, she spoke French perfectly and Englishnot badly, sang in a melodious contralto voice, drew well for anamateur, carved alabaster vases, and had all kinds of talents. She didnot care to sing ballads, only cared for grand pathos. 

She was just twenty years of age, and had come into the world at Rio, where her father represented the Spanish government. The family weredescended from Cervantes. As she had early been left motherless, herfather had sent her over in her fifteenth year to her aunt in Paris. This latter was married to an old monstrosity of a Spaniard, religiousto the verge of insanity, who would seem to have committed some crime inhis youth and now spent his whole day in the church, which was next doorto his house, imploring forgiveness for his sins. He was only at home atmealtimes, when he ate an alarming amount, and he associated only withpriests. The aunt herself, however, in spite of her age, was a pleasure-seeking woman, rarely allowed her niece to stay at home and occupyherself as she liked, but dragged her everywhere about with her toparties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she waslike a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony andmagnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well-brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendlinessand mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understoodeverything; but there was a certain sublimity in her manner. 

While Mademoiselle Louise, the little Parisian, had been brought up in aconvent, kept from all free, intelligent, mundane conversation, and allfree artistic impressions, the young Spaniard, at the same age, had theeducation and the style of a woman of the world in her manner. 

We two young frequenters of the Pagella salon, felt powerfully drawn toone another. We understood one another at once. Of course, it was only Iwho was fascinated. When, in an evening, I drove across Paris in theexpectation of seeing her, I sometimes murmured to myself Henrik Hertz'sverse:

 "My beloved is like the dazzling day, Brazilia's Summer!"

My feelings, however, were much more admiration than love or desire. Idid not really want to possess her. I never felt myself quite on a levelwith her even when she made decided advances to me. I rejoiced over heras over something perfect, and there was the rich, foreign colouringabout her that there had been about the birds of paradise in my nursery. She seldom disturbed my peace of mind, but I said to myself that if Iwere to go away then, I should in all probability never see her again, as her father would be taking her the next year to Brazil or Madrid, andI sometimes felt as though I should be going away from my happinessforever. She often asked me to stay with such expressions and with suchan expression that I was quite bewildered. And then she monopolised mythoughts altogether, like the queenly being she was. 

A Danish poet had once called the beautiful women of the South "Large, showy flowers without fragrance. " Was she a large, showy flower? Forget-me-nots were certainly by no means showy, but they were none the moreodorous for that. 

Now that I was seeing the radiant Mathilde almost every day, my positionwith regard to Louise seemed to me a false one. I did not yet know howexceedingly rare an undivided feeling is, did not understand that myfeelings towards Mathilde were just as incomplete as those I cherishedfor Louise. I looked on Mademoiselle Mathilde as on a work of art, but Icame more humanly close to Mademoiselle Louise. She did not evoke myenthusiastic admiration; that was quite true, but Mademoiselle Mathildeevoked my enthusiastic admiration only. If there were a great deal ofcompassion mingled with my feelings for the Parisian, there was likewisea slight erotic element. 

The young Frenchwoman, in her passion, found expressions for affectionand tenderness, in which she forgot all pride. She lived in acommingling, very painful for me, of happiness at my still being inParis, and of horror at my approaching departure, which I was now aboutto accelerate, merely to escape from the extraordinary situation inwhich I found myself, and which I was too young to carry. AlthoughMathilde, whom I had never seen alone, was always the same, quite thegreat lady, perfectly self-controlled, it was the thought of sayinggood-bye to her that was the more painful to me. Every other day, on theother hand, Louise was trembling and ill, and I dreaded the moment ofseparation. 

VII. 

I had not left off my daily work in Paris, but had read industriously atthe Imperial Library. I had also attended many lectures, someoccasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Lévêqueand Taine. 

Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begunstudying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of histhat I read was _The French Philosophers of the NineteenthCentury_, in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern. Thebook entranced me, and I determined to read every word that I could gethold of by the same author. In the Imperial Library in Paris I readfirst of all _The History of English Literature_, of which I hadhitherto only been acquainted with a few fragments, which had appearedin the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Taine was to me an antidote toGerman abstraction and German pedantry. Through him I found the way tomy own inmost nature, which my Dano-German University education hadcovered over. 

Shortly after my arrival in Paris, therefore, I had written to Taine andbegged for an interview. By a singular piece of ill-luck his reply to mewas lost, and it was only at the very end of my stay that I received asecond invitation to go to him. Although this one conversation could notbe of any vast importance to me, it was nevertheless the first personallink between me and the man who was and remained my greatly loved masterand deliverer, even though I mistrusted his essential teachings. I wasafraid that I had created a bad impression, as I had wasted the timeraising objections; but Taine knew human nature well enough to perceivethe personality behind the clumsy form and the admiration behind thecriticism. In reality, I was filled with passionate gratitude towardsTaine, and this feeling remained unaltered until his latest hour. 

During this my first stay in Paris I added the impression of Taine'spersonality to the wealth of impressions that I took back with me fromParis to Copenhagen. 

EARLY MANHOOD

Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--MyFirst Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of ModernCoercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Tripto Germany--Johanne Louise Heiberg--Magdalene Thoresen--Rudolph Bergh--The Sisters Spang--A Foreign Element--The Woman Subject--Orla Lehmann--M. Goldschmidt--Public Opposition--A Letter from Björnstjerne Björnson--Hard Work. 

I. 

After my return from France to Denmark, in 1867, my thoughts were takenup once more by the feud that had broken out in Danish literaturebetween Science and so-called Revelation (in the language of the time, Faith and Knowledge). More and more had by degrees entered the lists, and I, who centred my greatest intellectual interest in the battle, tookpart in it with a dual front, against the orthodox theologians, and moreespecially against R. Nielsen, the assailant of the theologians, whom Iregarded as no less theologically inclined than his opponents. 

I thereby myself became the object of a series of violent attacks fromvarious quarters. These did not have any appreciable effect on myspirits, but they forced me for years into a somewhat irritatingattitude of self-defence. Still I was now arrived at that period of myyouth when philosophy and art were unable to keep temperament in check. 

II. 

This manifested itself first in a fresh need for physical exercise. During the first two years after the decision of 1864, while things wereleading up to war between Prussia and Austria, and while the young bloodof Denmark imagined that their country would be drawn into this war, Ihad taken part, as a member of the Academic Shooting Society, in drilland shooting practice. After the battle of Königgratz these occupationslost much of their attraction. 

I was now going in for an exercise that was new to me and which I hadlong wished to become proficient in. This was riding. 

Up to that time I had never been able to afford to ride. But just then acaptain of the dragoons offered to teach me for a very low fee, and inthe Queen's Riding-School I was initiated during the Spring months intothe elementary stages of the art, in order that in Summer I might beable to ride out. These riding-lessons were the keenest possible delightto me. I, who so seldom felt happy, and still more seldom jubilant, waspositively exultant as I rode out in the morning along the Strand Road. Even if I had had an almost sleepless night I felt fresh on horseback. 

It was no pleasure to me to ride the same horse often, if I knew itsdisposition. I liked to change as often as possible, and preferredrather difficult horses to mares too well broken in. I felt the arrogantpride of youth seethe in my veins as I galloped briskly along. 

I was still far from an accomplished horseman when an examination of myfinances warned me that I must give up my riding lessons. 

When I informed my instructor that I could no longer allow myself thepleasure of his lessons, and in reply to his "Why?" had mentioned thereason, the captain answered that it would be very easy to settle thatmatter: he had a sister, an elderly maiden lady, who was passionatelyfond of literature and literary history. Lessons in that subject couldto our mutual satisfaction balance the riding lessons, which could thusgo on indefinitely. It is unnecessary to say how welcome the propositionwas to me. It was such a relief!

The captain was a pleasant, good-natured man, quite uneducated inliterary matters, who confidingly communicated his bachelor experiencesto his pupil. These were summed up in the reflection that when womenkindfall in love, they dread neither fire nor water; the captain himself, who yet, in his own opinion, only looked well on horseback, had once hadan affair with a married lady who bombarded him with letters, and who, in her ardour, began writing one day without noticing that her husband, who was standing behind her chair, was looking over her shoulder. Sincethen the captain had not felt the need of women, so to speak, preferredto be without them, and found his greatest pleasure in his horses andhis skill as an equestrian. 

The sister was a maiden lady of forty, by no means devoid ofintellectual ability, with talent for observation and an appreciation ofgood books, but whose development had been altogether neglected. She nowcherished an ambition to write. She wrote in secret little tales thatwere not really stupid but had not the slightest pretensions to style orliterary talent. She was very plain and exceedingly stout, whichproduced a comical effect, especially as she was inclined toexaggeration both of speech and gesture. 

There was a disproportion between the ages of the master and the pupil;in my eyes she was quite an old person, in her eyes, being herintellectual equal, I was likewise her equal in age. In the naturalorder of things she felt more personal sympathy for me than I for her. Consequently, I involuntarily put a dash of teasing into my instruction, and occasionally made fun of her sentimentality, and when the largelady, half angry, half distressed, rose to seize hold of me and give mea shaking, I would run round the table, pursued by her, or shoot out achair between her and myself, --which indubitably did not add to thedignity of our lessons. 

There was no question of thorough or connected instruction. What thelady wanted more particularly was that I should go through her literaryattempts and correct them, but corrections could not transform them intoart. And so it came about that after no very long time I gave up thesearduous lessons, although obliged to give up my precious riding lessonsat the same time. 

Consequently I never became a really expert rider, although during thenext few years I had a ride now and then. But after a severe attack ofphlebitis following upon typhoid fever, in 1870-71, I was compelled togive up all the physical exercises that I loved best. 

III. 

My temperament expressed itself in a profusion of youthful longings, aswell as in my love of athletics. 

During my University studies, in my real budding manhood, I hadvoluntarily cut myself away from the usual erotic diversions of youth. Precocious though I was in purely intellectual development, I was verybackward in erotic experience. In that respect I was many years youngerthan my age. 

On my return, my Paris experiences at first exercised me greatly. Between the young French lady and myself an active correspondence hadsprung up, while the young Spaniard's radiant figure continued to retainthe same place in my thoughts. 

Then my surroundings claimed their rights, and it was not withoutemotion that I realised how charming the girls at home were. For I wasonly then entering upon the Cherubino stage of my existence, when thesight of feminine grace or beauty immediately transports a youth into amild state of love intoxication. 

It was incredible how rich the world was in bewitching creatures, andthe world of Copenhagen especially. If you walked down Crown PrincessStreet, at a window on the ground floor you saw a dark girl with aGrecian-shaped head and two brown eyes, exquisitely set, beneath a highand noble forehead. She united the chaste purity of Pallas Athene with astern, attractive grace. 

If you went out towards the north side of the town, there was a housethere on the first floor of which you were very welcome, where ahandsome and well-bred couple once a week received young men for thesake of the lady's young niece. The master of the house was a lean andsilent man, who always looked handsome, and was always dignified; he hadhonourably filled an exalted official post. His wife had been veryattractive in her youth, had grown white while still quite young, andwas now a handsome woman with snow-white curls clustering round herfresh-coloured face. To me she bore, as it were, an invisible mark uponher forehead, for when quite a young girl she had been loved by a greatman. She was sincerely kind and genuinely pleasant, but the advantage ofknowing her was not great; for that she was too restless a hostess. Whenit was her At Home she never remained long enough with one group oftalkers properly to understand what was being discussed. After about aminute she hurried off to the opposite corner of the drawing-room, saida few words there, and then passed on to look after the tea. 

It was neither to see her nor her husband that many of the young peoplecongregated at the house. It was for the sake of the eighteen-year-oldfairy maiden, her niece, whose face was one to haunt a man's dreams. Itwas not from her features that the witchery emanated, although in shapeher face was a faultless oval, her narrow forehead high and well-shaped, her chin powerful. Neither was it from the personality one obtained aglimpse of through her features. The girl's character and mental qualityseemed much the same as that of other girls; she was generally silent, or communicative about trifles, and displayed no other coquetry than thevery innocent delight in pleasing which Nature itself would demand. 

But all the same there was a fascination about her, as about a fairymaiden. There was a yellow shimmer about her light hair; azure flamesflashed from her blue eyes. These flames drew a magic circle about her, and the dozen young men who had strayed inside the circle flocked roundher aunt the evening in the week that the family were "at home" and satthere, vying with each other for a glance from those wondrous eyes, hating each other with all their hearts, and suffering from theridiculousness of yet meeting like brothers, week after week, as guestsin the same house. The young girl's male relatives, who had outgrowntheir enthusiasm for her, declared that her character was not good andreliable--poor child! had she to be all that, too? Others who did notask so much were content to enjoy the sound of her voice. 

She was not a Copenhagen girl, only spent a few Winters in the town, then disappeared again. 

Some years after, it was rumoured, to everybody's astonishment, that shehad married a widower in a provincial town--she who belonged to therealms of Poesy!

Then there was another young girl, nineteen. Whereas the fairy maidendid not put herself out to pretend she troubled her head about the youngmen whom she fascinated with the rhythm of her movements or theradiation of her loveliness, was rather inclined to be short in hermanner, a little staccato in her observations, too accustomed toadmiration to attract worshippers to herself by courting them, tooundeveloped and impersonal to consciously assert herself--this othergirl was of quite another sort. She had no innate irresistibility, butwas a shrewd and adaptable human girl. Her face did not attract by itsbeauty, though she was very much more beautiful than ugly, with adelicately hooked nose, a mouth full of promise, an expression ofthoughtfulness and determination. When she appeared at a ball, men'seyes lingered on her neck, and even more on her white back, with itsfirm, smooth skin, and fine play of the muscles; for if she did notallow very much of her young bust to be seen, her dress at the back wascut down nearly to her belt. Her voice was a deep contralto, and sheknew how to assume an expression of profound gravity and reflection. Butshe captivated most by her attentiveness. When a young man whom shewished to attract commenced a conversation with her, she never took hereyes from his, or rather she gazed into his, and showed such a raptattention to his words, such an interest in his thoughts and hisoccupations, that after meeting her once he never forgot her again. Hercoquetry did not consist of languishing glances, but of a pretendedsympathy, that flattered and delighted its object. 

IV. 

These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returnedfrom travels abroad, during which his emotions had been doubly stirred, for the first time, by feminine affection and by enthusiasm for a woman. They influenced me the more strongly because they were Danish, andbecause I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to themonuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, manor woman, who was foreign to Denmark. 

But in the midst of all these visitations of calf-love, and theirvibrations among undefined sensations, I was pulled back with a jerk, asit were, to my earlier and deepest impression, that of the lovelinessand exalted person of the young Spaniard. Letters from Paris furrowed mymind like steamers the waters of a lake, made it foam, and the waves runhigh, left long streaks across its wake. Not that Mlle. Mathilde sentletters to me herself, but her Italian lady and gentlemen friends wrotefor her, apparently in her name, loudly lamenting my unreasonabledeparture, wishing and demanding my return, telling me how she missedme, sometimes how angry she was. 

I was too poor to be able to return at once. I did what I could toprocure money, wrote to those of my friends whom I thought could bestafford it and on whom I relied most, but met with refusals, which mademe think of the messages Timon of Athens received in response to similarrequests. Then I staked in the lottery and did not win. 

Urged from France to return, and under the high pressure of my ownromantic imagination, it seemed clear to me all at once that I ought tounite my lot for good to that of this rare and beautiful woman, whom, itis true, I had never spoken to one minute alone, who, moreover, hadscarcely anything in common with me, but who, just by the dissimilarityof her having been born of Spanish parents in Rio, and I of a Danishfather and mother in Copenhagen, seemed destined by Fate for me, as Ifor her. The Palm and the Fir-tree had dreamed of one another, and couldnever meet; but men and women could, however far apart they might havebeen born. In the middle of the Summer of 1867 I was as though possessedby the thought that she and I ought to be united. 

The simplest objection of all, namely, that I, who was scarcely able tosupport myself, could not possibly support a wife, seemed to mealtogether subordinate. My motives were purely chivalric; I could notleave her in the lurch, as the miserable hero of Andersen's _Only aPlayer_ did Noomi. And a vision of her compelling loveliness hoveredbefore my eyes. 

The whole of the month of July and part of the month of August I was onthe rack, now passionately desiring a successful issue of my plans, nowhoping just as ardently that they would be stranded through theopposition of the foreign family; for I was compelled to admit to myselfthat the beautiful Spaniard would be very unsuited to Copenhagen, wouldfreeze there, mentally as well as literally. And I said to myself everyday that supposing the war expected in Denmark were to break out again, and the young men were summoned to arms, the most insignificant littleDanish girl would make me a better Valkyrie; all my feelings would beforeign to her, and possibly she would not even be able to learn Danish. Any other woman would understand more of my mind than she. And yet! Yetshe was the only one for me. 

Thus I was swayed by opposing wishes the whole of the long time duringwhich the matter was pending and uncertain. I was so exhausted bysuspense that I only kept up by taking cold baths twice a day and bybrisk rides. The mere sight of a postman made my heart beat fast. Thescorn heaped upon me in the Danish newspapers had a curious effect uponme under these circumstances; it seemed to me to be strangely far away, like blows at a person who is somewhere else. 

I pondered all day on the painful dilemma in which I was placed; Idreamt of my Dulcinea every night, and began to look as exhausted as Ifelt. One day that I went to Fredensborg, in response to an invitationfrom Frederik Paludan-Müller, the poet said to me: "Have you been illlately? You look so pale and shaken. " I pretended not to care; whateverI said or did in company was incessant acting. 

I experienced revulsions of feeling similar to those that troubled DonQuixote. Now I saw in my distant Spanish maiden the epitome ofperfection, now the picture melted away altogether; even my affectionfor her then seemed small, artificial, whimsical, half-forgotten. Andthen again she represented supreme happiness. 

When the decision came, when, --as everyone with the least experience ofthe world could have foretold, --all the beautiful dreams and audaciousplans collapsed suddenly, I felt as though this long crisis had thrownme back indescribably; my intellectual development had been at astandstill for months. It was such a feeling as when the death of someloved person puts an end to the long, tormenting anxiety of theforegoing illness. I, who had centred everything round one thought, mustnow start joylessly along new paths. My outburst, --which astonishedmyself, --was:

"How I wanted a heart!"

V. 

I could not at once feel it a relief that my fancies had all beendissipated into thin air. Physically I was much broken down, but, withmy natural elasticity, quickly recovered. Yet in my relations towardsthe other sex I was torn as I had never been before. My soul, or moreexactly, that part of my psychical life bordering on the other sex, waslike a deep, unploughed field, waiting for seed. 

It was not much more than a month before the field was sown. Amongst myDanish acquaintances there was only one, a young and very beautifulwidow, upon whom, placed as I was with regard to Mile. Mathilde, I haddefinitely counted. I should have taken the young Spaniard to her; shealone would have understood her--they would have been friends. 

There had for a long time been warm feelings of sympathy between her andme. It so chanced that she drew much closer to me immediately after thedecisive word had been spoken. She became, consequently, the only one towhom I touched upon the wild fancies to which I had given myself up, andconfided the dreams with which I had wasted my time. She listened to mesympathetically, no little amazed at my being so devoid of practicalcommon sense. She stood with both feet on the earth; but she had onecapacity that I had not met with before in any young woman--the capacityfor enthusiasm. She had dark eyes, with something melancholy in theirdepths; but when she spoke of anything that roused her enthusiasm, hereyes shone like stars. 

She pointed out how preposterous it was in me to wish to seek so faraway a happiness that perhaps was very close to me, and how even morepreposterous to neglect, as I had done, my studies and intellectual aimsfor a fantastic love. And for the first time in my life, a young womanspoke to me of my abilities and of the impression she had received ofthem, partly through the reading of the trifles that I had had printed, partly, and more particularly, through her long talks with me. Neitherthe little French girl nor the young Spanish lady had ever spoken to meof myself, my talents, or my future; this Danish woman declared that sheknew me through and through. And the new thing about it all, the thinghitherto unparalleled in my experience, was that she believed in me. More than that: she had the highest possible conception of my abilities, asserted in contradiction to my own opinion, that I was already a man ofunusual mark, and was ardently ambitious for me. 

Just at this moment, when so profoundly disheartened, and when in idlehopes and plans I had lost sight of my higher goal, by her firm beliefin me she imparted to me augmented self-respect. Her confidence in megave me increasing confidence in myself, and a vehement gratitude awokein me for the good she thus did me. 

Then it happened that one day, without preamble, she admitted that theinterest she felt in me was not merely an intellectual one; things hadnow gone so far that she could think of nothing but me. 

My whole nature was shaken to its foundations. Up to this time I hadonly regarded her as my friend and comforter, had neither felt norfought against any personal attraction. But she had scarcely spoken, before she was transformed in my eyes. The affection I had thirsted forwas offered to me here. The heart I had felt the need of was this heart. And it was not only a heart that was offered me, but a passion thatscorned scruples. 

In my austere youth hitherto, I had not really had erotic experienceswhatever. I had led the chaste life of the intellectual worker. Mythoughts had been the thoughts of a man; they had ascended high and haddelved deep, but my love affairs had been the enthusiasms and fancies ofa half-grown boy, chimeras and dreams. This young woman was my firstliving erotic reality. 

And suddenly, floodgates seemed to open within me. Streams of lava, streams of molten fire, rushed out over my soul. I loved for the firsttime like a man. 

The next few days I went about as if lifted above the earth; in thetheatre, in the evening, I could not follow the performance, but sat inthe pit with my face in my hands, full of my new destiny, as though myheart would burst. 

And yet it was more a physical state, an almost mechanical outcome ofwhat to me was overwhelmingly new, association with a woman. It was notbecause it was just this particular woman. For my emotional nature wasso composite that even in the first moment of my bliss I did not regardthis bliss as unmixed. From the very first hour, I felt a gnawing regretthat it was not I who had desired her, but she who had chosen me, sothat my love in my heart of hearts was only a reflection of hers. 

VI. 

About this time it so happened that another woman began to engage mythoughts, but in an altogether different manner. Circumstances resultedin my being taken into the secret of unhappy and disturbing domesticrelations in a well-to-do house to which I was frequently invited, andwhere to all outward seeming all the necessary conditions of domestichappiness were present. 

The master of the house had in his younger days been a very handsomeman, lazy, not clever, and of an exceedingly passionate temper. He wasthe son of a man rich, worthy and able, but of a very weak character, and of a kept woman who had been the mistress of a royal personage. Through no fault of his own, he had inherited his mother's professionalvices, persistent untruthfulness, a comedian's manner, prodigality, alove of finery and display. He was quite without intellectual interests, but had a distinguished bearing, a winning manner, and no gross vices. 

His wife, who, for family reasons, had been married to him much tooyoung, had never loved him, and never been suited to him. As aninnocent, ignorant girl, she had been placed in the arms of a man whowas much the worse for a reckless life, and suffering from an illnessthat necessitated nursing, and made him repulsive to her. Every day thatpassed she suffered more from being bound to a man whose slightestmovement was objectionable to her and whose every remark a torture. Inthe second decade of her marriage the keenest marital repulsion haddeveloped in her; this was so strong that she sometimes had to pullherself together in order, despite her maternal feelings, not totransfer her dislike to the children, who were likewise his, and in whomshe dreaded to encounter his characteristics. 

Towards her, the man was despotic and cunning, but not unkind, and in sofar excusable that, let him have done what he might, she could not havegot rid of the hatred that plagued him and consumed her. So dissimilarwere their two natures. 

Her whole aim and aspiration was to get the bond that united themdissolved. But this he would not hear of, for many reasons, and moreespecially from dislike of scandal. He regarded himself, and accordingto the usual conception of the words, justly so, as a good husband andfather. He asked for no impossible sacrifice from his wife, and he wasaffectionate to his children. He could not help her detesting him, andindeed, did not fully realise that she did. And yet, it was difficultfor him to misunderstand. For his wife scarcely restrained her aversioneven when there were guests in the house. If he told an untruth, shekept silence with her lips, but scarcely with her expression. And shewould sometimes talk of the faults and vices that she most abhorred, andthen name his. 

The incessant agitation in which she lived had made her nervous andrestless to excess. As the feminine craving to be able, in marriage, tolook up to the man, had never been satisfied, she only enacted the morevehemently veracity, firmness and intellect in men. But undeveloped asshe was, and in despair over the dissatisfaction, the drowsiness, andthe darkness in which her days glided away, whatever invaded thestagnation and lighted up the darkness: sparkle, liveliness, brillianceand wit, were estimated by her more highly than they deserved to be. 

At first when, in the desolation of her life, she made advances to me, this repelled me somewhat. The equestrian performer in Heiberg's MadameVoltisubito cannot sing unless she hears the crack of a whip. Thus itseemed to me that her nature could not sing, save to the accompanimentof all the cart, carriage and riding whips of the mind. But I saw howunhappy she was, and that the intense strain of her manner was only anexpression of it. 

She could not know the beauty of inward peace, and in spite of herProtestant upbringing she had retained all the unaffectedness andsincerity of the natural human being, all the obstinate love of freedom, unmoved in the least by what men call discipline, ethics, Christianity, convention. She did not believe in it all, she had seen what it resultedin, and what it covered up, and she passed her life in unmitigateddespair, which was ordinarily calm to all appearance, but in realityrebellious: what she was enduring was the attempted murder of her soul. 

To all that she suffered purely mentally from her life with her husbandin the home that was no home at all, there had of late been addedcircumstances which likewise from a practical point of view madeinterference and alteration necessary. Her lord and master had alwaysbeen a bad manager, in fact worse than that; in important matters, thoroughly incapable and fatuous. That had not mattered much hitherto, since others had looked after his affairs; but now the control of themhad fallen entirely into his own hands, and he managed them in such away that expenses increased at a terrific rate, while his incomediminished with equal rapidity, and the question of total ruin onlyseemed a matter of time. 

His wife had no outside support. She was an orphan and friendless. Herhusband's relations did not like her and did not understand her. And yetjust at this time she required as a friend a man who understood her andcould help her to save her own and the children's fortunes from theshipwreck, before it was too late. She felt great confidence in me, whomshe had met, at intervals, from my boyhood, and she now opened her heartto me in conversation more and more. She confided in me fully, gave me acomplete insight into the torture of her life, and implored me to helpher to acquire her freedom. 

Thus it was that while still quite a young man a powerful, never-to-be-effaced impression of the miseries of modern coercive marriage wasproduced upon me. The impression was not merely powerful, but it waked, like a cry of distress, both my thinking powers and my energy. Asthrough a chink in the smooth surface of society, I looked down into thedepths of horror. Behind the unhappiness of one, I suspected that of ahundred thousand, knew that of a hundred thousand. And I felt myselfvehemently called upon, not only to name the horror by its name, but tostep in, as far as I was able, and prevent the thing spreading unheeded. 

Scales had fallen from my eyes. Under the semblance of affection andpeace, couples were lacerating one another by the thousand, swallowed upby hatred and mutual aversion. The glitter of happiness among thosehigher placed dazzled the thoughtless and the credulous. He who had eyesto see, observed how the wretchedness due to the arrangement of society, wound itself right up to its pinnacles. 

The vices and paltrinesses of the individual could not be directlyremedied; inherited maladies and those brought upon one's self, stupidity and folly, brutality and malice, undeniably existed. But theinstitutions of society ought to be so planned as to render thesedestructive forces inoperative, or at least diminish their harmfulness, not so as to give them free scope and augment their terrors by securingthem victims. 

In marriage, the position of the one bound against his or her will wasundignified, often desperate, but worst in the case of a woman. As amother she could be wounded in her most vulnerable spot, and what wasmost outrageous of all, she could be made a mother against her will. Onesingle unhappy marriage had shown me, like a sudden revelation, whatmarriage in countless cases is, and how far from free the position ofwoman still was. 

But that woman should be oppressed in modern society, that the one-halfof the human race could be legally deprived of their rights, revealedthat justice in society, as it at present stood, was in a sorry state. In the relations between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the same legalised disproportion would necessarily prevail as betweenman and woman. 

My thought pierced down into the state of society that obtained and waspraised so highly, and with ever less surprise and ever greaterdisquiet, found hollowness everywhere. And this called my will tobattle, armed it for the fight. 

VII. 

From this time forth I began to ponder quite as much over Life as overArt, and to submit to criticism the conditions of existence in the sameway as I had formerly done with Faith and Law. 

In matters concerning Life, as in things concerning Art, I was not apredetermined Radical. There was a great deal of piety in my nature andI was of a collecting, retentive disposition. Only gradually, and stepby step, was I led by my impressions, the incidents I encountered, andmy development, to break with many a tradition to which I had clung tothe last extremity. 

It was in the spirit of the Aesthetics of the time, that, after havingbeen engaged upon the Tragic Idea, I plunged into researches on theComic, and by degrees, as the material ordered itself for me, I tried towrite a doctor's thesis upon it, Abstract researches were regarded asmuch more valuable than historic investigation. In comic literatureAristophanes in particular delighted me, and I was thinking of lettingmy general definitions merge into a description of the greatness of theGreek comedian; but as the thread broke for me, I did not get fartherthan the theory of the Comic in general. It was not, like my previoustreatise on the Tragic, treated under three headings, according to theHegelian model, but written straight ahead, without any subdivision intosections. 

Whilst working at this paper I was, of course, obliged constantly toconsult the national comedies and lighter plays, till I knew them fromcover to cover. Consequently, when Gotfred Rode, the poet, who wasconnected with a well-known educational establishment for girls, askedme whether I would care to give a course of public lectures for ladies, I chose as my subject _The Danish Comedy_. The lectures wereattended in force. The subject was supremely innocent, and it wastreated in quite a conservative manner. At that time I cherished asincere admiration, with only slight reservations, for Heiberg, Hertz, Hostrup and many others as comic playwriters, and was not far short ofattributing to their works an importance equal to those of Holberg. Andyet I was unable to avoid giving offence. I had, it appears, aboutHeiberg's _Klister and Malle_, an inseparable betrothed couple, used what was, for that matter, an undoubtedly Kierkegaardianexpression, viz. , _to beslobber a relation_. This expression wasrepeated indignantly to the Headmistress, and the thoughtless lecturerwas requested to call upon the Principal of the college. When, after along wait, and little suspecting what was going to be said to me, I wasreceived in audience, it appeared that I had been summoned to receive apolite but decided admonition against wounding the susceptibilities ofmy listeners by expressions which were not "good form, " and when I, unconscious of wrongdoing, asked which expression she alluded to, theunfortunate word "beslobber" was alleged; my young hearers were not"'Arriets" for whom such expressions might be fitting. 

I was not asked again to give lectures for young ladies. 

VIII. 

Hitherto, when I had appeared before the reading public, it had onlybeen as the author of shorter or longer contributions to thephilosophical discussion of the relations between Science and Faith;when these had been accepted by a daily paper it had been as itsheaviest ballast. I had never yet written anything that the ordinaryreader could follow with pleasure, and I had likewise been obliged tomake use of a large number of abstruse philosophical words. 

The proprietors of the _Illustrated Times_ offered me the reviewingof the performances at the Royal Theatre in their paper, which had nothitherto printed dramatic criticisms. I accepted the offer, because itafforded me a wished-for opportunity of further shaking off the dust ofthe schools. I could thus have practice with my pen, and get into touchwith a section of the reading public who, without caring for philosophy, nevertheless had intellectual interests; and these articles were inreality a vent for what I had at heart about this time touching mattershuman and artistic. They were written in a more colloquial style thananything I had written before, or than it was usual to write in Denmarkat that time, and they alternated sometimes with longer essays, such asthose on Andersen and Goldschmidt. 

Regarded merely as dramatic criticisms, they were of little value. TheRoyal Theatre, the period of whose zenith was nearly at an end, I caredlittle for, and I was personally acquainted with next to none of theactors, only meeting, at most, Phister and Adolf Rosenkilde and ofladies, Södring in society. 

I found it altogether impossible to brandish my cane over the individualactor in his individual part. But the form of it was merely a pretext. Iwanted to show myself as I was, speak out about dramatic and otherliterature, reveal how I felt, show what I thought about all theconditions of life represented or touched upon on the stage. 

My articles were read with so much interest that the editors of the_Illustrated Times_ raised the writer's scale of remuneration to 10Kr. A column (about 11_s_. 3_d_. ), which at that time was veryrespectable pay. Unfortunately, however, I soon saw that even at that, if I wrote in the paper all the year round, I could not bring up myyearly income from this source to more than 320 kroner of our money, about I7_l_. 12_s_. 6_d_. In English money; so that, without aUniversity bursary, I should have come badly off, and even with itwas not rolling in riches. 

The first collection of my articles, which I published in 1868 under thetitle of _Studies in Aesthetics_, augmented my income a little, itis true, but for that, as for the next collection, _Criticisms andPortraits_, I only received 20 kroner (22_s_. 6_d_. ) persheet of sixteen pages. Very careful management was necessary. 

IX. 

With the first money I received for my books, I went in the middle ofthe Summer of 1868 for a trip to Germany. I acquired some idea ofBerlin, which was then still only the capital of Prussia, and inpopulation corresponded to the Copenhagen of our day; I spent a fewweeks in Dresden, where I felt very much at home, delighted in theexquisite art collection and derived no small pleasure from the theatre, at that time an excellent one. I saw Prague for the first time, worshipped Rubens in Munich, and, with him specially in my mind, triedto realise how the greatest painters had regarded Life. Switzerlandadded to my store of impressions with grand natural spectacles. I sawthe Alps, and a thunderstorm in the Alps, passed starlit nights on theSwiss lakes, traced the courses of foaming mountain streams such as theTamina at Pfäffers, ascended the Rigi at a silly forced march, and fromthe Kulm saw a procession of clouds that gripped my fancy like theprocession of the Vanir in Northern mythology. Many years afterwards Idescribed it in the Fourth volume of _Main Currents_. FromInterlaken I gazed on the whiteness of the Jungfrau, but scarcely withgreater emotion than once upon a time when I had gazed at the whitecliffs of Möen. On my homeward journey I saw Heidelberg's lovely ruins, to which Charles V. 's castle, near the Al-hambra, makes a marvellouspendant, Strassburg's grave Cathedral, and Goethe's house at Frankfurt. 

My travels were not long, but were extraordinarily instructive. I madeacquaintance with people from the most widely different countries, withyouthful frankness engaged in conversation with Germans and Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans, Poles and Russians, Dutchmen, Belgians andSwiss, met them as travelling companions, and listened attentively towhat they narrated. They were, moreover, marvellously frank towards theyoung man who, with the curiosity of his age, plied them with questions. 

Young Dutchmen, studying music in Dresden, gave me some idea of the ill-will felt in their country towards the Prussians, an ill-will notunmingled with contempt. On the other hand, I was astonished, during ahalf day's excursion on foot with a few Leipzig students, to learn howstrong was the feeling of the unity of Germany and of the necessity ofthe supremacy of Prussia, even in the states which in the 1866 war hadbeen on the side of Austria. The students felt no grief over having beendefeated, the victors were Germans too; everything was all right so longas the German Empire became one. These and similar conversations, whichfinally brought me to the conclusion that the whole of the bourgeoisiewas satisfied with the dominance of Prussia, had for result that in 1870I did not for a moment share the opinion of the Danes and the French, that the defeated German states would enter into an alliance with Franceagainst Prussia. 

English undergraduates told me what philosophical and historical workswere being most read in the universities of Great Britain; Bohemianstudents explained to me that in the German philosophical world Kant hadquite outshone Hegel and put him in the background. 

The lady members of an American family from Boston treated me quitematernally; the wife suggested almost at once, in the railway-carriage, that I should give her when we reached the hotel whatever linen orclothes I had that wanted repairs; she would be very pleased to mendthem for me. The husband, who was very pious and good-natured, had allhis pockets full of little hymn-books and in his memorandum book aquantity of newspaper cuttings of devotional verse, which he now andthen read aloud enthusiastically. 

But I also met with Americans of quite a different cast. A young studentfrom Harvard University, who, for that matter, was not in love with theGermans and declared that the United States could with difficulty absorband digest those who were settled there, surprised me with his view thatin the future Bismarck would come to be regarded as no less a figurethan Cavour. The admiration of contemporary educated thought was thencentred around Cavour, whereas Bismarck had hitherto only encounteredpassionate aversion outside Germany, and even in Germany was the objectof much hatred. This student roused me into thinking about Bismarck formyself. 

Having lain down, all bathed in perspiration, during the ascent withouta guide of a mountain in Switzerland, I was accosted by a woman, whofeared I had come to some harm. I walked on up with her. She turned outto be a young peasant woman from Normandy, who lived half-way up themountain. She had accompanied her husband to Switzerland, but cursed herlot, and was always longing to be back in France. When I remarked thatit must be some consolation to live in so lovely a place, sheinterrupted me with the most violent protests. A beautiful place! This!The steep mountain, the bristly fir-trees and pine-trees, the snow onthe top and the lake deep down below--anything uglier it would be hardto conceive. No fields, no pasture-land, no apple-trees! No indeed! Ifshe had to mention a country that really was beautiful, it was Normandy. There was plenty of food for all there, you did not need to go either upor down hill; there, thank God, it was flat. Did I think stonesbeautiful, perhaps? She had not been down in the valley for five months, and higher than her house she had never been and would never go; no, thank you, not she! She let her husband fetch what they required for thehouse; she herself sat and fretted all through the Winter; life then wasalmost more than she could bear. 

On one of the steamers on the Lake of Lucerne, I caught, for the firsttime, a glimpse of Berthold Auerbach, who was very much admired by mycomrades in Copenhagen and by myself. 

At the hotel table at Lucerne I made the acquaintance of a Dutch captainfrom Batavia, an acquaintance productive of much pleasure to me. Beforethe soup was brought round I had pulled out a letter I had justreceived, opened it and begun to read it. A voice by my side said inFrench:

"Happy man! You are reading a letter in a woman's writing!" With thatour acquaintance was made. 

The captain was a man of forty, who in the course of an active life hadhad many and varied experiences and met with prosperity, but wassuffering from a feeling of great void. His society was exceedinglyattractive to me, and he related to me the main events of his life; butafter one day's association only, we were obliged to part. All throughmy trip I had a curious feeling of every farewell on the journey beingin all human probability a farewell for life, but had not realised itpainfully before. But when next day the brave captain, whose home wasfar away in another quarter of the globe, held his hand out to say good-bye, I was much affected. "Till we meet again" said the captain. 

"And where?"

"Till we meet again all and everywhere, for we live an eternal life;till we meet again in time and space, or outside time and space!"

I reflected sadly that I should never again see this man, who, the lasttwenty-four hours had shown me, was in extraordinary sympathy andagreement with me. 

Separated from those dearest to me, the whole of the journey, for thatmatter, was a sort of self-torment to me, even though a profitable one. Like every other traveller, I had many a lonely hour, and plenty of timeto ponder over my position and vocation in life. I summed up myimpressions in the sentence: "The Powers have designated me the championof great ideas against great talents, unfortunately greater than I. "

X. 

There was only one distinguished person outside my circle ofacquaintance to whom I wished to bring my first descriptive book, as amark of homage, Johanne Louise Heiberg, the actress. I had admired heron the stage, even if not to the same extent as Michael Wiehe; but to meshe was the representative of the great time that would soon sink intothe grave. In addition, I ventured to hope that she, being a friend ofFrederik Paludan-Müller, Magdalene Thoresen and others who wished mewell, would be at any rate somewhat friendly inclined towards me. A fewyears before, it had been rumoured in Copenhagen after the publicationof my little polemical pamphlet against Nielsen, that at a dinner at theHeiberg's there had been a good deal of talk about me; even BishopMartensen had expressed himself favourably, and it also attractedattention that a short time afterwards, in a note to his book _OnKnowledge and Faith_, he mentioned me not unapprovingly, andcontented himself with a reminder to me not to feel myself too soonbeyond being surprised. When the Bishop of Zealand, one of the actress'smost faithful adherents, had publicly spoken thus mildly of the youthfulheretic, there was some hope that the lady herself would be free fromprejudice. My friends also eagerly encouraged me to venture upon a visitto her home. 

I was admitted and asked to wait in a room through the glass doors ofwhich I was attentively observed for some time by the lady's adoptedchildren. Then she came in, in indoor dress, with a stocking in herhand, at which she uninterruptedly continued to knit during thefollowing conversation: She said: "Well! So you have collected yourarticles. " I was simple enough to reply--as if that made any differenceto the lady--that the greater part of the book had not been printedbefore. She turned the conversation upon Björnson's _Fisher Girl_, which had just been published, and which had been reviewed by _TheFatherland_ the evening before, declaring that she disagreedaltogether with the reviewer, who had admired in the _Fisher Girl_a psychological study of a scenic genius. "It is altogether a mistake, "said Mrs. Heiberg, absorbed in counting her stitches, "altogether amistake that genius is marked by restlessness, refractoriness, anirregular life, or the like. That is all antiquated superstition. Truegenius has no connection whatever with excesses and caprices, in fact, is impossible without the strict fulfilment of one's duty. (Knittingfuriously. ) Genius is simple, straightforward, domesticated, industrious. "

When we began to speak of mutual acquaintances, amongst others, Magdalene Thoresen, feeling very uncomfortable in the presence of thelady, I blurted out most tactlessly that I was sure that lady was muchinterested in me. It was a mere nothing, but at the moment sounded likeconceit and boasting. I realised it the moment the words were out of mymouth, and instinctively felt that I had definitely displeased her. Butthe conversational material was used up and I withdrew. I never sawJohanne Louise Heiberg again; henceforth she thought anything but wellof me. 

XI. 

Magdalene Thoresen was spending that year in Copenhagen, and ourconnection, which had been kept up by correspondence, brought with it alively mutual interchange of thoughts and impressions. Our natures, itis true, were as much unlike as it was possible for them to be; butMagdalene Thoresen's wealth of moods and the overflowing warmth of herheart, the vivacity of her disposition, the tenderness that filled hersoul, and the incessant artistic exertion, which her exhausted bodycould not stand, all this roused in me a sympathy that the mistiness ofher reasoning, and the over-excitement of her intellectual life, couldnot diminish. Besides which, especially when she was away fromCopenhagen, but when she was there, too, she needed a literary assistantwho could look through her MSS. And negotiate over them with thepublishers of anthologies, year-books, and weekly papers, and for thispurpose she not infrequently seized upon me, innocently convinced, likeeverybody else for that matter, that she was the only person who made asimilar demand upon me. 

Still, it was rather trying that, when my verdict on her work did nothappen to be what she wished, she saw in what I said an unkindness, forwhich she alleged reasons that had nothing whatever to do with Art. 

Magdalene Thoresen could not be otherwise than fond of Rasmus Nielsen;they were both lively, easily enraptured souls, who breathed most freelyin the fog. That, however, did not come between her and me, whom sheoften thought in the right. With regard to my newspaper activity, shemerely urged the stereotyped but pertinent opinion, that I ought not towrite so many small things; my nature could not stand this wasting, dropby drop. 

I had myself felt for a long time that I ought to concentrate my forceson larger undertakings. 

XII. 

There were not many of the upper middle class houses in Copenhagen atthat time, the hospitality of which a young man with intellectualinterests derived any advantage from accepting. One of these houses, which was opened to me, and with which I was henceforward associated, was that of Chief Physician Rudolph Bergh. His was the home ofintellectual freedom. 

The master of the house was not only a prominent scientist and savant, but, at a time when all kinds of prejudices ruled unassailed, a man whohad retained the uncompromising radicalism of the first half of thecentury. The spirit of Knowledge was the Holy Spirit to him; theprofession of doctor had placed him in the service of humanity, and tofirmness of character he united pure philanthropy. The most despisedoutcasts of society met with the same consideration and the samekindness from him as its favoured ones. 

His wife was well calculated, by her charm of manner, to be the centreof the numerous circle of talented men who, both from Denmark andabroad, frequented the house. There one met all the foreign naturalscientists who came to Copenhagen, all the esteemed personalitiesDenmark had at the time, who might be considered as belonging to thefreer trend of thought, and many neutrals. Actors such as Höedt andPhister went there, favourite narrators such as Bergsöe, painters likeKröyer, distinguished scientists like J. C. Schiödte, the entomologist. This last was an independent and intellectual man, somewhat touchy, anddomineering in his manner, a master of his subject, a man of learning, besides, ceremonious, often cordial, ready to listen to anything worthhearing that was said. He had weaknesses, never would admit that he hadmade a mistake, and was even very unwilling to own he had not read abook that was being spoken of. Besides which, he had spent too great apart of his life in virulent polemics to be devoid of the narrowing ofthe horizon which is the concomitant of always watching and being readyto attack the same opponent. But he was in the grand style, which israre in Denmark, as elsewhere. 

XIII. 

The house of the sisters Spang was a pleasant one to go to; they weretwo unmarried ladies who kept an excellent girls' school, at whichJulius Lange taught drawing. Benny Spang, not a beautiful, but abrilliant girl, with exceptional brains, daughter of the well-knownPastor Spang, a friend of Sören Kierkegaard, adopted a tone of good-fellowship towards me that completely won my affection. She wascheerful, witty, sincere and considerate. Not long after we becameacquainted she married a somewhat older man than herself, the gentle andrefined landscape painter, Gotfred Rump. The latter made a very goodsketch of me. 

The poet Paludan-Müller and the Lange family visited at the house; sodid the two young and marvellously beautiful girls, Alma Trepka andClara Rothe, the former of whom was married later to Carl Bloch thepainter, the other to her uncle, Mr. Falbe, the Danish Minister inLondon. 

It was hard to say which of the two was the more beautiful. Both wereunusually lovely. Alma Trepka was queenly, her movements sedate, herdisposition calm and unclouded--Carl Bloch could paint a Madonna, oreven a Christ, from her face without making any essential alteration inthe oval of its contours. Clara Rothe's beauty was that of the whitehart in the legend; her eyes like a deer's, large and shy, timid, andunself-conscious, her movements rapid, but so graceful that one wasfascinated by the harmony of them. 

XIV. 

Just about this time a foreign element entered the circle of Copenhagenstudents to which I belonged. One day there came into my room a youthwith a nut-brown face, short and compactly built, who after only a fewweeks' stay in Copenhagen could speak Danish quite tolerably. He was ayoung Armenian, who had seen a great deal of the world and was of verymixed race. His father had married, at Ispahan, a lady of Dutch-Germanorigin. Up to his seventh year he had lived in Batavia. When the familyafterwards moved to Europe, he was placed at school in Geneva. He hadthere been brought up, in French, to trade, but as he revealed anextraordinary talent for languages, was sent, for a year or eighteenmonths at a time, to the four German universities of Halle, Erlangen, Göttingen and Leipzig. Now, at the age of 22, he had come to Copenhagento copy Palahvi and Sanscrit manuscripts that Rask and Westergaard hadbrought to Europe. He knew a great many languages, and was moreover verymany-sided in his acquirements, sang German student songs charmingly, was introduced and invited everywhere, and with his foreign appearanceand quick intelligence was a great success. He introduced new points ofview, was full of information, and brought with him a breath from thegreat world outside. Industrious though he had been before, Copenhagensocial life tempted him to idleness. His means came to an end; he saidthat the annual income he was in the habit of receiving by ship fromIndia had this year, for some inexplicable reason, failed to arrive, dragged out a miserable existence for some time under greatdifficulties, starved, borrowed small sums, and disappeared as suddenlyas he had come. 

XV. 

Knowing this Armenian made me realise how restricted my own learningwas, and what a very general field of knowledge I had chosen. 

I wrote my newspaper articles and my essays, and I worked at my doctor'sthesis on French Aesthetics, which cost me no little pains; it was myfirst attempt to construct a consecutive book, and it was only by avigorous effort that I completed it at the end of 1869. But I had thenbeen casting over in my mind for some years thoughts to which I neverwas able to give a final form, thoughts about the position of women insociety, which would not let me rest. 

A woman whose thought fired mine even further just about this time, alarge-minded woman, who studied society with an uncompromisingdirectness that was scarcely to be met with in any man of the time inDenmark, was the wife of the poet Carsten Hauch. When she spoke ofDanish women, the stage of their development and their position in law, their apathy and the contemptibleness of the men, whether these latterwere despots, pedants, or self-sufficient Christians, she made me asharer of her point of view; our hearts glowed with the same flame. 

Rinna Hauch was not, like certain old ladies of her circle, a "woman'smovement" woman before the name was invented. She taught no doctrine, but she glowed with ardour for the cause of freedom and justice. She sawthrough the weak, petty men and women of her acquaintance and despisedthem. She too passionately desired a thorough revolution in modernsociety to be able to feel satisfied merely by an amelioration of thecircumstances of women of the middle classes; and yet it was thecondition of women, especially in the classes she knew well, that shethought most about. 

She began to place some credence in me and cherished a hope that Ishould do my utmost to stir up the stagnation at home, and during thelong conversations we had together, when, in the course of theseSummers, I now and again spent a week at a time with the Hauchs atHellebaek, she enflamed me with her ardour. 

In September, 1868, after wandering with my old friend up and down theshore, under the pure, starlit heaven, and at last finding myself lateat night in my room, I was unable to go to rest. All that had beentalked of and discussed in the course of the day made my head hot andurged me to reflection and action. Often I seized a piece of paper andscribbled off, disconnectedly, in pencil, remarks corresponding to theinternal agitation of my mind, jottings like the following, for example:

 S. R. , that restive fanatic, has a wife who cannot believe, and wishes for nothing but to be left in peace on religious matters. He _forces her_ to go to Communion, though he knows the words of Scripture, that he who partakes unworthily eats and drinks to his own damnation. 

 There is not one sound, healthy sentiment in the whole of our religious state of being. You frequently hear it said: "Everyone can't be a hypocrite. " True enough. But begin, in the middle classes, to deduct hypocrisy, and gross affectation and cowardly dread of Hell, and see what is left!

 If we have young people worthy the name, I will tell them the truth; but this band of backboneless creatures blocks up the view. 

 Women whom Life has enlightened and whom it has disappointed! You I can help. 

 I see two lovers hand in hand, kissing the tears away from each other's eyes. 

 I can only rouse the wakeful. Nothing can be done with those who are incapable of feeling noble indignation. 

 I have known two women prefer death to the infamy of conjugal life. 

 Open the newspapers!--hardly a line that is not a lie. 

 And poets and speakers flatter a people like that. 

 Christianity and Humanity have long wished for divorce. Now this is an accomplished fact. 

 And the priests are honoured. They plume themselves on not having certain vices, for which they are too weak. 

 I know that I shall be stoned, that every boy has his balderdash ready against that to which the reflection of years and sleepless nights has given birth. But do you think I am afraid of anyone?

 Stupidity was always the bodyguard of Lies. 

 A people who have put up with the Oldenborgs for four hundred years and made loyalty to them into a virtue!

 They do not even understand that here there is no Antichrist but Common Sense. 

 Abandoned by all, except Unhappiness and me. 

 When did God become Man? When Nature reached the point in its development at which the first man made his appearance; when Nature became man, then God did. 

 Women say of the beloved one: "A bouquet he brings smells better than one another brings. "

 You are weak, dear one, God help you! And you help! and I help!

 These thoughts have wrought a man of me, have finally wrought me to a man. 

I procured all that was accessible to me in modern French and Englishliterature on the woman subject. 

In the year 1869 my thoughts on the subordinate position of women insociety began to assume shape, and I attempted a connected record ofthem. I adopted as my starting point Sören Kierkegaard's altogetherantiquated conception of woman and contested it at every point. But allthat I had planned and drawn up was cast aside when in 1869 John StuartMill's book on the subject fell into my hands. I felt Mill's superiorityto be so immense and regarded his book as so epoch-making that Inecessarily had to reject my own draft and restrict myself to thetranslation and introduction of what he had said. In November, 1869, Ipublished Mill's book in Danish and in this manner introduced the modernwoman's movement into Denmark. 

The translation was of this advantage to me that it brought me firstinto epistolary communication, and later into personal contact with oneof the greatest men of the time. 

XVI. 

There was one of the political figures of the time whom I often metduring these years. This was the man most beloved of the previousgeneration, whose star had certainly declined since the war, but whosename was still one to conjure with, Orla Lehmann. 

I had made his acquaintance when I was little more than a boy, in a verycurious way. 

In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C. N. David's house, onRuneberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and Lehmannhouses, despite the political differences between them, were closelyrelated one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla Lehmann hadheard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he had justfounded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremelyconservative Society of August, and, looking out for lecturers for it, hit upon the twenty-three-year-old speaker as upon a possibility. 

I was then living in a little cupboard of a room on the third floor inCrystal Street, and over my room was one, in the attic, inhabited by myseventeen-year-old brother, who had not yet matriculated. 

Orla Lehmann, who had been told that the person he was seeking livedhigh up, rapidly mounted the four storeys, and knocked, a little out ofbreath, at the schoolboy's door. When the door opened, he walked in, andsaid, still standing:

"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann. " Without heeding the surprise he read inthe young fellow's face, he went on:

"I have come to ask you to give a lecture to the People's Society in theCasino's big room. "

As the addressee looked about to speak, he continued, drowning everyobjection, "I know what you are going to say. That you are too young. Youth is written in your face. But there is no question of seniorityhere. I am accustomed to accomplish what I determine upon, and I shalltake no notice of objections. I know that you are able to give lectures, you have recently given proof of it. "

At last there was a minute's pause, permitting the younger one tointerpose:

"But you are making a mistake, it is not I you mean. It must be my elderbrother. "

"Oh! very likely. Where does your brother live?"

"Just underneath. "

A minute later there was a knock at the third-storey door beneath; itwas opened, and without even stopping to sit down, the visitor began:

"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann. You recently gave some lectures onRuneberg. Will you kindly repeat one of them before the People's Societyin the Casino's big room?"

"Won't you sit down? I thank you for your offer. But my lecture was notgood enough to be repeated before so large a gathering. I do not knowenough about Runeberg's life, and my voice, moreover, will not carry. Ishould not dare, at my age, to speak in so large a room. "

"I expected you to reply that you are too young. Your youth is writtenin your face. But there is no question of seniority about it. I amaccustomed to carry through anything that I have determined upon, and Itake no notice of objections. What you do not know about Runeberg'slife, you can read up in a literary history. And if you can give asuccessful lecture to a private audience, you can give one in a theatrehall. I am interested in you, I am depending on you, I take your promisewith me. Good-bye!"

This so-called promise became a regular nightmare to me, young andabsolutely untried as I was. It did not even occur to me to work up andimprove my lecture on Runeberg, for the very thought of appearing beforea large audience alarmed me and was utterly intolerable to me. Duringthe whole of my first stay in Paris I was so tormented by the consentthat Orla Lehmann had extorted from me, that it was a shadow over mypleasure. I would go happy to bed and wake up in the middle of the nightwith the terror of a debtor over something far off, but surelythreatening, upon me, seek in my memory for what it was that wastroubling me, and find that this far-off, threatening thing was mypromise to Lehmann. It was only after my return home that I summoned upcourage to write to him, pleading my youth and unfitness, and begging tobe released from the honourable but distasteful duty. Orla Lehmann, inthe meantime, had in all probability not bestowed a thought on the wholematter and long since forgotten all about it. 

In any case he never referred to the subject again in after years, whenwe frequently met. 

Among Bröchner's private pupils was a young student. Kristian Möller, byname, who devoted himself exclusively to philosophy, and of whomBröchner was particularly fond. He had an unusually keen intelligence, inclined to critical and disintegrating research. His abilities werevery promising, inasmuch as it seemed that he might be able to establishdestructive verdicts upon much that was confused, or self-contradicting, but nevertheless respected; in other respects he had astrangely infertile brain. He had no sudden inspirations, noimagination. It could not be expected that he would ever bring forwardany specially new thoughts, only that he would penetrate confusion, think out errors to the bottom, and, with the years, carry out a processof thorough cleansing. 

But before he had accomplished any independent work his lungs becameaffected. It was not at once perceived how serious the affection was, and Orla Lehmann, who, with the large-mindedness and open-handedness ofa patriot, had taken him up, as well as sundry other young men whopromised well or were merely poor, not only invited him to his weeklydinner-parties at Frederiksberg, but sent him to Upsala, that he mightstudy Swedish philosophy there. Möller himself was much inclined tostudy Boströmianism and write a criticism of this philosophy, which wasat that time predominant in Sweden. 

He ought to have been sent South, or rather to a sanatorium; OrlaLehmann's Scandinavian sympathies, however, determined his stay in theNorth, which proved fatal to his health. 

In 1868 he returned to Copenhagen, pale, with hollow cheeks, and astern, grave face, that of a marked man, his health thoroughlyundermined. His friends soon learnt, and doubtless he understoodhimself, that his condition was hopeless. The quite extraordinarystrength of character with which he submitted, good-temperedly andwithout a murmur, to his fate, had for effect that all who knew him viedwith each other in trying to lessen the bitterness of his lot and at anyrate show him how much they cared for him. As he could not go out, andas he soon grew incapable of connected work, his room became anafternoon and evening meeting-place for many of his comrades, who wentthere to distract him with whatever they could think of to narrate, ordiscuss. If you found him alone, it was rarely long before a second anda third visitor came, and the room filled up. 

Orla Lehmann, his patron, was also one of Kristian Möller's frequentvisitors. But whenever he arrived, generally late and the last, theresult was always the same. The students and graduates, who had beensitting in the room in lively converse, were struck dumb, awed by thepresence of the great man; after the lapse of a few minutes, one wouldget up and say good-bye; immediately afterwards the next would rememberthat he was engaged elsewhere just at that particular time; a momentlater the third would slip noiselessly out of the room, and it would beempty. 

There was one, however, who, under such circumstances, found it simplyimpossible to go. I stayed, even if I had just been thinking of takingmy leave. 

Under the autocracy, Orla Lehmann had been the lyrical figure ofPolitics; he had voiced the popular hopes and the beauty of the people'swill, much more than the political poets did. They wrote poetry; hisnature was living poetry. The swing of his eloquence, which so soon grewout of date, was the very swing of youth in men's souls then. At thetime I first knew him, he had long left the period of his greatnessbehind him, but he was still a handsome, well set-up man, and, at 58years of age, had lost nothing of his intellectual vivacity. He had losthis teeth and spoke indistinctly, but he was fond of telling tales andtold them well, and his enemies declared that as soon as a witty thoughtstruck him, he took a cab and drove round from house to house to relateit. 

Passionately patriotic though Orla Lehmann was, he was very far fromfalling into the then usual error of overestimating Denmark's historicalexploits and present importance. He related one day that when he was inParis, as a young man, speaking under an impression very frequent amonghis travelled compatriots, he had, in a conversation with Sainte-Beuve, reproached the French with knowing so shamefully little of the Danes. The great critic, as was his habit, laid his head a little on one side, and with roguish impertinence replied: "_Eh! bien, faites quelquechose! on parlera de vous_. " He approved of the reply. We youngerones looked upon him as belonging to another period and living inanother plane of ideas, although, being a liberal-minded man, he was notfar removed from us. He was supposed to be a freethinker, and it wastold of him that when his old housekeeper repeatedly, and withincreasing impatience, requested him to come to table, he would reply, in the presence of students--a rallying allusion to the lady's Christiandisposition:

"Get help from Religion, little Bech, get help from Religion!"--a remarkthat in those days would be regarded as wantonly irreligious!

People felt sorry for Lehmann because his politics had so whollymiscarried, and somewhat sore against him because he wanted to lay allthe blame on the old despotism and the unfavourable circumstances of thetime. Take him altogether, to those who were not intimately associatedwith him, and did not share the strong dislike felt against him incertain circles, he was chiefly a handsome and attractive antiquity. 

Kristian Möller died in 1869, and his death was deeply lamented. He wasone of the few comrades admired by the younger ones alike for his giftsand his stoicism. With his death my opportunities of frequently meetingOrla Lehmann ceased. But that the latter had not quite lost sight of me, he proved by appearing, at the end of February, 1870, at my examinationupon my doctor's thesis at the University. As on this occasion Lehmannarrived a little late, he was placed on a chair in front of all theother auditors, and very imposing he looked, in a mighty fur coat whichshowed off his stately figure. He listened very attentively toeverything, and several times during the discussion showed by a shortlaugh that some parrying reply had amused him. 

Six months afterwards he was no more. 

XVII. 

During those years I came into very curious relations with anothercelebrity of the time. This was M. Goldschmidt, the author, whose greattalent I had considerable difficulty in properly appreciating, sorepelled was I by his uncertain and calculating personality. 

I saw Goldschmidt for the first time, when I was a young man, at a largeball at a club in Copenhagen. 

A man who had emigrated to England as a poor boy returned to Copenhagenin the sixties at the age of fifty, after having acquired a considerablefortune. He was uneducated, kind, impeccably honourable, and was anxiousto secure acquaintances and associates for his adopted daughter, adelicate young girl, who was strange to Copenhagen. With this object inview, he invited a large number of young people to a ball in the roomsof the King's Club, provided good music and luxurious refreshments. Thisman was a cousin of Goldschmidt's, and as he himself was unable to makemore of a speech than a short welcome to table, he begged "his cousin, the poet, " to be his spokesman on this occasion. 

One would have thought that so polished a writer, such a master oflanguage, as Goldschmidt, would be able, with the greatest ease, to makean after-dinner speech, especially when he had had plenty of time toprepare himself; but the gift of speaking is, as everyone knows, a giftin itself. And a more unfortunate speaker than Goldschmidt could not be. He had not even the art of compelling silence while he spoke. 

That evening he began rather tactlessly by telling the company thattheir host, who was a rich man, had earned his money in a strictlyhonourable manner; it was always a good thing to know "that one hadclear ground to dance upon"; then he dwelt on the Jewish origin of thegiver of the feast, and, starting from the assumption that the greaternumber of the invited guests were young Jews and Jewesses, he formulatedhis toast in praise of "the Jewish woman, who lights the Sabbathcandles. " The young Jewesses called out all at once: "The Danish woman IThe Danish woman! We are Danish!" They were irritated at the deadRomanticism into which Goldschmidt was trying to push them back. Theylighted no Sabbath candles! they did not feel themselves Jewish eitherby religion or nationality. The day of Antisemitism had not arrived. Consequently there was still no Zionist Movement. They had also oftenfelt vexed at the descriptions that Goldschmidt in his novels frequentlygave of modern Jews, whose manners and mode of expression he screwedback fifty years. 

These cries, which really had nothing offensive about them, madeGoldschmidt lose his temper to such an extent that he shouted, in greatexasperation: "Will you keep silence while I speak! What manners arethese! I will teach you to keep silence!" and so forth, --which evoked astorm of laughter. He continued for some time to rebuke their exuberantmirth in severe terms, but was so unsuccessful that he broke off hisspeech and, very much out of humour, sat down. 

Not long afterwards, perhaps in the year 1865, I came into contact withGoldschmidt once only, when walking one evening with Magdalene Thoresen. On meeting this lady, whom he knew, he turned round, walking with her asfar as her house on the shores of the Lakes, after which his way ledtowards the town, as did mine. As long as Mrs. Thoresen was present, henaturally addressed his conversation to her and expressed himself, ashis habit was, without much ceremony. For instance, he said: "I don't asa rule care for women writers, not even for those we have; but I willconcede that, of all the ladies who write, you are the freshest. " WhenMrs. Thoresen brought the conversation round to her favourite subject, love, he said, banteringly: "My heart is like the flags of the ZouaveRegiments, so pierced with holes that it is almost impossible to tellwhat the material originally looked like. "

On the whole, he was animated and polite, but his glance was somewhatstinging. 

Goldschmidt had greater difficulty in hitting on the right manner toadopt towards a much younger man. He used expressions which showed thathe was standing on his dignity, and was all the time conscious of hisown superiority. "People have spoken about you to me, " he said, "and Iknow you by name. " The word here rendered _people_ had a strangelyforeign sound, as though translated, or affected. 

"Have you read Taine's History of English Literature?" he asked. 

"No, I don't know it. "

"Ah, perhaps you are one of those who regard it as superfluous to learnabout anything foreign. We have enough of our own, is it not so? It is avery widespread opinion, but it is a mistake. "

"You judge too hastily; that is not my opinion. "

"Oh, --ah. Yes. Good-bye. "

And our ways parted. 

I did not like Goldschmidt. He had dared to profane the great SörenKierkegaard, had pilloried him for the benefit of a second-rate public. I disliked him on Kierkegaard's account. But I disliked him much moreactively on my master, Professor Bröchner's account. 

Bröchner had an intense contempt for Goldschmidt; intellectually hethought him of no weight, as a man he thought him conceited, andconsequently ridiculous. He had not the slightest perception of theliterary artist in him. The valuable and unusual qualities of hisdescriptive talent he overlooked. But the ignorance Goldschmidt hadsometimes shown about philosophy, and the incapacity he had displayedwith regard to art, his change of political opinion, his sentimentalityas a wit, all the weaknesses that one Danish critic had mercilesslydragged into the light, had inspired Bröchner with the strongestaversion to Goldschmidt. Add to this the personal collisions between thetwo men. At some public meeting Bröchner had gazed at Goldschmidt withsuch an ironic smile that the latter had passionately called him toaccount. 

"Don't make a scene now!" replied Bröchner. 

"I am ready to make a scene anywhere, " the answer is reported to havebeen. 

"That I can believe; but keep calm now!"

Shortly afterwards, in _North and South_, Goldschmidt, on theoccasion of Bröchner's candidature for parliament, had written that thewell-known atheist, H. Bröchner, naturally, as contributor to _TheFatherland_, was supported by the "Party. " Now, there was nothingthat annoyed Bröchner so much as when anyone called him an atheist, andtried to make him hated for that reason, --the word, it is true, had ahundred times a worse sound then than now, --he always maintaining thathe and other so-called atheists were far more religious than theirassailants. And although Goldschmidt's sins against Bröchner were intruth but small, although the latter, moreover--possibly unjustifiably--had challenged him to the attack, Bröchner nevertheless imbued me withsuch a dislike of Goldschmidt that I could not regard him with quiteunprejudiced eyes. 

Goldschmidt tried to make personal advances to me during my first stayin Paris in 1866. 

Besides the maternal uncle settled in France, of whom I have alreadyspoken, I had still another uncle, my father's brother, who had gone toFrance as a boy, had become naturalised, and had settled in Paris. Hewas a little older than my father, a somewhat restless and fantasticcharacter, whom Goldschmidt frequently met at the houses of mutualfriends. He let me know through this man that he would like to make myacquaintance, gave him his address and mentioned his receiving hours. AsI held back, he repeated the invitation, but in vain. Bröchner'sinfluence was too strong. A few years later, in some dramatic articles, I had expressed myself in a somewhat satirical, offhand manner aboutGoldschmidt, when one day an attempt was made to bring the poet andmyself into exceedingly close connection. 

One Spring morning in 1869, a little man with blue spectacles came intomy room and introduced himself as Goldschmidt's publisher, BooksellerSteen. He had come on a confidential errand from Goldschmidt, regardingwhich he begged me to observe strict silence, whatever the outcome ofthe matter might be. 

Goldschmidt knew that, as a critic, I was not in sympathy with him, butbeing very difficultly placed, he appealed to my chivalry. For reasonswhich he did not wish to enter into, he would be obliged, that sameyear, to sever his connection with Denmark and settle down permanentlyin England. For the future he should write in English. But before heleft he wished to terminate his literary activity in his native countryby an edition of his collected works, or at any rate a very exhaustiveselection from them. He would not and could not direct so great anundertaking himself, from another country; he only knew one man who wascapable of doing so, and him he requested to undertake the matter. Hehad drawn up a plan of the edition, a sketch of the order in which thewritings were to come out, and what the volume was to contain, and heplaced it before me for approval or criticism. The edition was to bepreceded by an account of Goldschmidt as an author and of his artisticdevelopment; if I would undertake to write this, I was asked to go tosee Goldschmidt, in order to hear what he himself regarded as the mainfeatures and chief points of his literary career. 

The draft of what the projected edition was to include made quite alittle parcel of papers; besides these, Steen gave me to read the actualrequest to me to undertake the task, which was cautiously worded as aletter, not to me, but to Bookseller Steen, and which Steen had beenexpressly enjoined to bring back with him. Although I did not at alllike this last-mentioned item, and although this evidence of distrustwas in very conspicuous variance with the excessive and unmeritedconfidence that was at the same time being shown me, this sameconfidence impressed me greatly. 

The information that Goldschmidt, undoubtedly the first prose writer inthe country, was about to break off his literary activity andpermanently leave Denmark, was in itself overwhelming and at once set myimagination actively at work. What could the reason be? A crime? Thatwas out of the question. What else could there be but a love affair, andthat had my entire sympathy. It was well known that Goldschmidt admireda very beautiful woman, who was watched the more jealously by herhusband, because the latter had for a great number of years beenparalysed. He would not allow her to go to the theatre to sit anywherebut in the mirror box [Footnote: The mirror box was a box in the firstRoyal Theatre, surrounded by mirrors and with a grating in front, wherethe stage could be seen, reflected in the mirrors, but the occupantswere invisible. It was originally constructed to utilise a space whencethe performance could not otherwise be seen, and was generally occupiedby actresses, etc. ], where she could not be seen by the public. Thehusband met with no sympathy from the public; he had always been acharacterless and sterile writer, had published only two books, writtenin a diametrically opposite spirit, flatly contradicting one another. Aslong as he was able to go out he had dyed his red hair black. He was aninsignificant man in every way, and by his first marriage with an uglyold maid had acquired the fortune which alone had enabled him to paycourt to the beautiful woman he subsequently won. 

It had leaked out that she was the original of the beautiful woman inThe Inheritance, and that some of the letters that occur in it werereally notes from Goldschmidt to her. 

What more likely than the assumption that the position of affairs had atlast become unbearable to Goldschmidt, and that he had determined on anelopement to London? In a romantic purpose of the sort Goldschmidt couldcount upon the sympathy of a hot-blooded young man. I consequentlydeclared myself quite willing to talk the matter over with the poet andlearn more particulars as to what was expected of me; meanwhile, Ithought I might promise my assistance. It was Easter week, I believeMaunday Thursday; I promised to call upon Goldschmidt on one of theholidays at a prearranged time. 

Good Friday and Easter Sunday I was prevented from going to him, and Ihad already made up my mind to pay my visit on Easter Monday when onMonday morning I received a letter from Bookseller Steen which made meexceedingly indignant. The letter, which exhibited, as I considered, (incorrectly, as it turned out), unmistakably signs of having beendictated to him, bore witness to the utmost impatience. Steen wrote thatafter undertaking to pay a visit to Goldschmidt I had now let two dayselapse without fulfilling my promise. There was "no sense in keeping aman waiting" day after day, on such important business; in Steen's"personal opinion, " it had not been at all polite of me, as the youngerauthor, not to inform Goldschmidt which day I would go to see him. 

I was very much cooled by reading this letter. I saw that I had woundedGoldschmidt's vanity deeply by not going to him immediately upon receiptof his communication; but my chief impression was one of surprise thatGoldschmidt should reveal himself such a poor psychologist in my case. How could he believe that I would allow myself to be terrified by roughtreatment or won by tactless reprimands? How could he think that Iregarded the task he wished to allot me as such an honour that for thatreason I had not refused it? Could not Goldschmidt understand that itwas solely the appeal to my better feelings from an opponent, struck byan untoward fate, that had determined my attitude?

Simultaneously, though at first very faintly, a suspicion crossed mymind. Was it possible that the whole touching story which had beenconfided to me was a hoax calculated to disarm my antagonism, arouse mysympathy and secure Goldschmidt a trumpeting herald? Was it possiblethat the mysterious information about the flight to London was only anuntruth, the sole purpose of which was to get me into Goldschmidt'sservice?

I dismissed the thought at once as too improbable, but it recurred, forI had learnt from experience that even distinguished authors sometimesdid not shrink from very daring means of securing the services of acritic. A critic is like the rich heiress, who is always afraid of notbeing loved for herself alone. Even then, I was very loth to believethat any recognised author, much less a writer whose position was avexed question, would make advances to me from pure benevolence, for thesake of my beautiful eyes, as they say in French. 

At any rate, I had now made up my mind not to have anything whatever todo with the matter. I replied emphatically:

"Lessons in politeness I take from no one, consequently return you theenclosed papers. Be kind enough to appeal to some one else. "

This reply was evidently not the one the letter had been intended toevoke. Steen rushed up to me at once to apologise, but I did not seehim. Twice afterwards he came with humble messages from Goldschmidtasking me to "do him the honour" of paying him a visit. But my pride wastouchy, and my determination unwavering. Undoubtedly Steen's letter wassent at Goldschmidt's wish, but it is equally undoubted that its formhad not been approved by him. That the alliance so cleverly led up tocame to nothing was evidently as unexpected by the poet as unpalatableto him. 

Not long afterwards, I accidentally had strong confirmation of mysuspicion that the story of a flight from Denmark was merely aninvention calculated to trap me, and after the lapse of some time Icould no longer harbour a doubt that Goldschmidt had merely wished todisarm a critic and secure himself a public crier. 

This did not make me feel any the more tenderly disposed towardsGoldschmidt, and my feeling lent a sharper tone than it would otherwisehave had to an essay I wrote shortly afterwards about him on theproduction of his play _Rabbi and Knight_ at the Royal Theatre. 

Three years passed before our paths crossed again and a short-livedassociation came about between us. 

XVIII. 

In my public capacity about this time, I had many against me and no onewholly for me, except my old protector Bröchner, who, for one thing, wasvery ill, and for another, by reason of his ponderous language, wasunknown to the reading world at large. Among my personal friends therewas not one who shared my fundamental views; if they were fond of me, itwas in spite of my views. That in itself was a sufficient reason why Icould not expect them, in the intellectual feud in which I was stillengaged, to enter the lists on my behalf. I did not need any longexperience to perceive that complete and unmixed sympathy with myendeavours was a thing I should not find. Such a sympathy I only metwith in reality from one of my comrades, Emil Petersen, a young privateindividual with no connection whatever with literature, and withoutinfluence in other directions. 

Moreover, I had learnt long ago that, as a literary beginner in acountry on a Liliputian scale, I encountered prompt opposition at everystep, and that ill-will against me was always expressed much moreforcibly than good-will, was quickly, so to say, organised. 

I had against me at once every literary or artistic critic who alreadyheld an assured position, from the influential men who wrote in _TheFatherland_ or the _Berlin Times_ to the small fry who snappedin the lesser papers, and if they mentioned me at all it was with theutmost contempt, or in some specially disparaging manner. It was therival that they fought against. Thus it has continued to be all my life. Certain "critics, " such as Falkman in Denmark and Wirsen in Sweden, hardly ever put pen to paper for some forty years without bestowing anaffectionate thought upon me. (Later, in Norway, I became Collin's_idée fixe_. )

Add to these all who feared and hated a train of thought which in theiropinion was dangerous to good old-fashioned faith and morality. 

Definite as were the limits of my articles and longer contributions tothe dispute concerning Faith and Science, and although, strictlyspeaking, they only hinged upon an obscure point in Rasmus Nielsen'sphilosophy, they alarmed and excited a large section of theecclesiastics of the country. I had carefully avoided saying anythingagainst faith or piety; I knew that Orthodoxy was all-powerful inDenmark. However, I did not meet with refutations, only with theindignation of fanaticism. As far back as 1867 Björnson had come forwardin print against me, had reproached the Daily Paper with giving mycontributions a place in their columns, and reported their contents tothe Editor, who was away travelling, on the supposition that they musthave been accepted against his wishes; and although the article did notbear Björnson's name, this attack was not without weight. The innocentremark that Sören Kierkegaard was the Tycho Brahe of our philosophy, asgreat as Tycho Brahe, but, like him, failing to place the centre of oursolar system in its Sun, gave Björnson an opportunity for thestatement, --a very dangerous one for a young author of foreign origin tomake, --that the man who could write like that "had no views in commonwith other Danes, no Danish mind. "

The year after I was astonished by inflammatory outbursts on the part ofthe clergy. One day in 1868 the much-respected Pastor Hohlenberg walkedinto my friend Benny Spang's house, reprimanded her severely forreceiving such an undoubted heretic and heathen under her roof, anddemanded that she should break off all association with me. As sherefused to do so and turned a deaf ear to his arguments, losing allself-control, he flung his felt hat on the floor, continued to rage andrail against me, and, no result coming of it, dashed at last, in atowering passion, out through the door, which he slammed behind him. There was a farcical ending to the scene, since he was obliged to ringat the door again for his hat, which, in his exasperation, he hadforgotten. This was a kind of private prologue to the ecclesiasticaldrama which from the year 1871 upwards was enacted in most of thepulpits of the country. Only the parsons instead of flinging their hatsupon the floor, beat their hands against the pulpit. 

But what surprised me, a literary beginner, still more, was the gift Idiscovered in myself of hypnotising, by my mere existence, an ever-increasing number of my contemporaries till they became as thoughpossessed by a hatred which lasted, sometimes a number of years, sometimes a whole life long, and was the essential determining factor intheir careers and actions. By degrees, in this negative manner, Isucceeded in engaging the attentions of more than a score of persons. For the time being, I encountered the phenomenon in the person of onesolitary genius-mad individual. For a failure of a poet and philosopher, with whom I had nothing to do, and who did not interest me in the least, I became the one enemy it was his business to attack. 

Rudolf Schmidt, who was a passionate admirer of Rasmus Nielsen, in whoseexamination lectures he coached freshmen, was enraged beyond measure bythe objections, perfectly respectful, for that matter, in form, which Ihad raised against one of the main points in Nielsen's philosophy. In1866 he published a pamphlet on the subject; in 1867 a second, which, sopossessed was he by his fury against his opponent, he signed with thelatter's own initials, Gb. And from this time forth, for at least ageneration, it became this wretch's task in life to persecute me underevery possible pseudonym, and when his own powers were not sufficient, to get up conspiracies against me. In particular, he did all he couldagainst me in Germany. 

Meanwhile, he started a magazine in order to bring before the publichimself and the ideas he was more immediately serving, viz. : those of R. Nielsen; and since this latter had of late drawn very much nearer to theGrundtvigian way of thinking, partly also those of Grundtvig. Themagazine had three editors, amongst them R. Nielsen himself, and whenone of them, who was the critic of the _Fatherland_, suddenly leftthe country, Björnstjerne Björnson took his place. The three names, R. Nielsen, B. Björnson, and Rudolph Schmidt, formed a trinity whosesupremacy did not augur well for the success of a beginner in the pathsof literature, who had attacked the thinker among them for idealreasons, and who had been the object of violent attacks from the twoothers. The magazine _Idea and Reality_, was, as might be expected, sufficiently unfavourable to my cause. 

The sudden disappearance of the critic of _The Fatherland_ from theliterary arena was, under the conditions of the time, an event. He hadno little talent, attracted by ideas and fancies that were sometimesvery telling, repelled by mannerisms and a curious, far-fetched style, laid chief emphasis, in the spirit of the most modern Danish philosophy, on the will, and always defended ethical standpoints. From the time ofBjörnson's first appearance he had attached himself so enthusiasticallyand inviolably to him that by the general public he was almost regardedas Björnson's herald. At every opportunity he emphatically laid downBjörnson's importance and as a set-off fell upon those who might besupposed to be his rivals. Ibsen, in particular, received severehandling. His departure was thus a very hard blow for Björnson, but forthat matter, was also felt as a painful loss by those he opposed. 

XIX. 

Not long after this departure, and immediately after the publication ofmy long article on Goldschmidt, I received one day, to my surprise, aletter of eight closely written pages from Björnstjerne Björnson, datedApril 15th, 1869. 

What had called it forth was my remark, in that article, that Björnson, like Goldschmidt, sometimes, when talent failed, pretended to haveattained the highest, pretended that obscurity was the equivalent ofprofundity. When writing this, I was thinking of the obscure finalspeech about God in Heaven in Björnson's _Mary Stuart_, which Istill regard as quite vague, pretentious though it be as it standsthere; however, it was an exaggeration to generalise the grievance, as Ihad done, and Björnson was right to reply. He considered that I hadaccused him of insincerity, though in this he was wrong; but for thatmatter, with hot-tempered eloquence, he also denied my real contention. His letter began:

 Although I seldom read your writings, so that possibly I risk speaking of something you have elsewhere developed more clearly, and thus making a mistake, I nevertheless wish to make a determined protest against its being called a characteristic of mine, in contrast to Oehlenschläger (and Hauch!!), to strain my powers to reach what I myself only perceive unclearly, and then intentionally to state it as though it were clear. I am quite sure that I resemble Oehlenschläger in one thing, namely, that the defects of my book are open to all, and are not glossed over with any sort or kind of lie; anything unclear must for the moment have seemed clear to me, as in his case. My motto has always been: "Be faithful in _small_ things, and God shall make you ruler over great things. " And never, no, never, have I snatched after great material in order to seem great, or played with words in order to seem clever, or been silent, in order to appear deep. Never. The examples around me have been appalling to me, and I am sure that they have been so because I have from the very beginning been on my guard against lies. There are passages in every work which will not yield immediately what one impatiently demands of them;--and then I have always waited, never tried; the thing has had to come itself unforced, and it is possible that what I have received has been a deception; but I have believed in it; to me it has been no deception. Before I finally conclude, I always, it is true, go over again what I have written (as in the case of _Synnöve_, and _A Happy Boy, Between the Fights_, etc). I wish to have the advantage of a better perception. Thus far, in what I have gone through, I have seen weak places which I can no longer correct. Lies I have never found. 

 Unfortunately one is often exposed to the danger of being untrue; but it is in moments of surprise and absolute passion, when something happens to one's eye or one's tongue, that one feels is half mad, but when the beast of prey within one, which shrinks at nothing, is the stronger. Untrue in one's beautiful, poetic calm, one's confessional silence, at one's work, I think very few are. 

This summing up, which does honour to Björnson and is not only astriking self-verdict, but a valuable contribution to poetic psychologyin general, in its indication of the strength of the creativeimagination and its possibilities of error, was followed by a co-ordinate attempt at a characterisation and appreciation of Goldschmidt:

 You are likewise unjust to Goldschmidt on this point, that I know with certainty. Goldschmidt is of a naïve disposition, susceptible of every noble emotion. It is true that he often stages these in a comic manner, and what you say about that is true; he does the same in private life, but you have not recognised the source of this. In the last instance, it is not a question of what we think, but of what we do. Just as this, on the whole, is an error that you fall persistently into, it is in particular an error here, where, for instance, his two brothers, with the same qualifications and with the same dual nature, have both developed into characters, the one indeed into a remarkable personality. But Goldschmidt began as a corsair captain at seventeen; his courage was the courage behind a pen that he fancied was feared, his happiness that of the flatterer, his dread that of being vapid; and there were many other unfavourable circumstances, for that matter.... He is now striving hard towards what he feels has, during his life, been wasted in his ability, both moral and intellectual qualities, and for my part, I respect this endeavour more than his decisive success within narrow limits. 

In this passage the distinction and contrast between contemplative lifeand actual existence was quite in the Rasmus Nielsen spirit; the usethat was made of it here was strange. One would suppose that the exampleadduced established that similar natural qualifications, similar familyand other conditions, in other words, the actual essential conditions oflife, were of small importance compared with one's mode of thought, since the brothers could be so different; Björnson wished to establish, hereby, that the mode of life was more important than the mode ofthought, although the former must depend on the latter. For the rest, healluded to Goldschmidt's weak points, even if in somewhat too superior amanner, and without laying stress upon his great artistic importance, with leniency and good-will. 

But if, in other things he touched upon, he had an eye for essentials, this failed him sadly when the letter proceeded to a characterisation ofthe addressee, in which he mixed up true and false in inextricableconfusion. Amongst other things, he wrote:

 Here, I doubtless touch upon a point that is distinctive of your criticism. It is an absolute beauty worship. With that you can quickly traverse our little literature and benefit no one greatly; for the poet is only benefited by the man who approaches him with affection and from his own standpoint; the other he does not understand, and the public will, likely enough, pass with you through this unravelling of the thousand threads, and believe they are growing; but no man or woman who is sound and good lays down a criticism of this nature without a feeling of emptiness. 

 I chanced to read one of your travel descriptions which really became a pronouncement upon some of the greatest painters. It was their nature in their works (not their history or their lives so much as their natural dispositions) that you pointed out, --also the influence of their time upon them, but this only in passing; and you compared these painters, one with another. In itself, much of this mode of procedure is correct, but the result is merely racy. A single one of them, seized largely and affectionately, shown in such manner that the different paintings and figures became a description of himself, but were simultaneously the unfolding of a culture, would have been five times as understandable. A contrast can be drawn in when opportunity arises, but that is not the essential task. Yes, this is an illustration of the form of your criticism. It is an everlasting, and often very painful, juxtaposition of things appertaining and contrasting, but just as poetry itself is an absorption in the one thing that it has extracted from the many, so comprehension of it is dependent on the same conditions. The individual work or the individual author whom you have treated of, you have in the same way not brought together, but disintegrated, and the whole has become merely a piquant piece of effectiveness. Hitherto one might have said that it was at least good-natured; but of late there have supervened flippant expressions, paradoxical sentences, crude definitions, a definite contumacy and disgust, which is now and again succeeded by an outburst of delight over the thing that is peculiarly Danish, or peculiarly beautiful. I cannot help thinking of P. L. Möller, as I knew him in Paris. 

 There are a thousand things between Heaven and Earth that you understand better than I. But for that very reason you can listen to me. It seems to me now as if the one half of your powers were undoing what the other half accomplishes. I, too, am a man with intellectual interests, but I feel no cooperation. Might there not be other tasks that you were more fitted for than that of criticism? I mean, that would be less of a temptation to you, and would _build_ up on your personality, at the same time as you yourself were building? It strikes me that even if you do choose criticism, it should be more strongly in the direction of our educating responsibilities and less as the arranger of technicalities, the spyer out of small things, the dragger together of all and everything which can be brought forward as a witness for or against the author, which is all frightfully welcome in a contemporary critical epidemic in Copenhagen, but, God help me, is nothing and accomplishes nothing. 

This part of the letter irritated me intensely, partly by the mentor'stone assumed in it, partly by a summing up of my critical methods whichwas founded simply and solely on the reading of three or four articles, more especially those on Rubens and Goldschmidt, and which quite missedthe point. I was far from feeling that I had been understood, and forthat reason warned against extremes; on the contrary, I saw myself onlycaricatured, without even wit or humour, and could not forget that theman who had sketched this picture of me had done his utmost to injureme. And he compared me with P. L. Möller!

The fact that the conclusion of the letter contained much that wasconciliatory and beautiful consequently did not help matters. Björnsonwrote:

 When you write about the Jews, although I am not in agreement with you, _altogether_ in agreement, you yet seem to me to touch upon a domain where you might have much to offer us, many beautiful prospects to open to us. In the same way, when you interpret Shakespeare (not when you make poetry by the side of him), when you tranquilly expound, I seem to see the beginnings of greater works, in any case of powers which I could imagine essentially contributing to the introduction into our culture of greater breadth of view, greater moral responsibility, more affection. 

When I now read these words, I am obliged to transport myself violentlyback, into the feelings and to the intellectual standpoint that weremine at the time, in order to understand how they could to such a pitchincense me. It was not only that, like all young people of any account, I was irritable, sensitive and proud, and unwilling to be treated as apupil; but more than that, as the way of youth is, I confused what Iknew myself capable of accomplishing with what I had alreadyaccomplished; felt myself rich, exuberantly rich, already, and wasindignant at perceiving myself deemed still so small. 

But the last straw was a sentence which followed:

 I should often have liked to talk all this over with you, when last I was in Copenhagen, but I noticed I was so pried after by gossips that I gave it up. 

The last time Björnson was in Copenhagen he had written that articleagainst me. Besides, I had been told that some few times he had read myfirst articles aloud in public in friends' houses, and made fun of theirforced and tyro-like wording. And now he wanted me to believe that hehad at that time been thinking of visiting me, in order to come to anunderstanding with me. And worse still, the fear of gossip hadrestrained him! This hero of will-power so afraid of a little gossip! Hemight go on as he liked now, I had done with him. He did go on, bothcordially and gracefully, but condescendingly, quite incapable of seeinghow wounding the manner of his advances was. He wished to make advancesto me and yet maintain a humiliating attitude of condescension:

 There are not many of us in literature who are in earnest; the few who are ought not to be daunted by the accidental separation that opposed opinions can produce, when there is a large field for mutual understanding and co-operation. I sometimes get violently irate for a moment; if this in lesser men, in whom there really is something base, brings about a lifelong separation, it does not greatly afflict me. But I should be very sorry if it should influence the individuals in whom I feel there are both ability and will. And as far as you are concerned, I have such a strong feeling that you must be standing at a parting of the ways, that, by continuing your path further, you will go astray, that I want to talk to you, and consequently am speaking from my heart to you now. If you do not understand, I am sorry; that is all I can say. 

 In the Summer I am going to Finmark, and involuntarily, as I write this, the thought occurs to me what a journey it would be for you; away from everything petty and artificial to a scenery which in its magnificent loneliness is without parallel in the world, and where the wealth of birds above us and fish beneath us (whales, and shoals of herrings, cod and capelans often so close together that you can take them up in your hands, or they press against the sides of the boat) are marvel upon marvel, in the light of a Sun that does not set, while human beings up there live quiet and cowed by Nature. If you will come with me, and meet me, say, at Trondhjem, I know that you would not regret it. And then I should get conversation again; here there are not many who hit upon just that which I should like them to. Think about it. 

A paragraph relating to Magdalene Thoresen followed. But what is herecited is the essential part of the letter. Had its recipient knownBjörnson better, he would in this have found a foundation to build upon. But as things were, I altogether overlooked the honestly meantfriendliness in it and merely seized upon the no small portion of itthat could not do other than wound. My reply, icy, sharp and in thedeeper sense of the word, worthless, was a refusal. I did not believe inBjörnson, saw in the letter nothing but an attempt to use me as acritic, now that he had lost his former advocate in the Press. Theprospect of the journey to the North did not tempt me; in Björnson'seyes it would have been Thor's journey with Loki, and I neither was Lokinor wished to be. 

But even had I been capable of rising to a more correct and a fullerestimate of Björnson's character, there was too much dividing us at thistime for any real friendship to have been established. Björnson was thenstill an Orthodox Protestant, and in many ways hampered by his youthfulimpressions; I myself was still too brusque to be able to adapt myselfto so difficult and masterful a personality. 

Eight years elapsed before the much that separated me from Björnsoncrumbled away. But then, when of his own accord he expressed his regreton a public occasion at the rupture between us, and spoke of me withunprejudiced comprehension and good-will, I seized with warmth andgratitude the hand stretched out to me. A hearty friendship, bringingwith it an active and confidential correspondence, was establishedbetween us and remained unshaken for the next ten years, when it brokedown, this time through no fault of mine, but through distrust onBjörnson's part, just as our intimacy had been hindered the first timethrough distrust on mine. 

The year 1869 passed in steady hard work. Among the many smallerarticles I wrote, one with the title of _The Infinitely Small and theInfinitely Great in Poetry_, starting with a representment ofShakespeare's Harry Percy, contained a criticism of the hithertorecognised tendency of Danish dramatic poetry and pointed out into thefuture. The paper on H. C. Andersen, which came into being towardsmidsummer, and was read aloud in a clover field to a solitary listener, was representative of my critical abilities and aims at that date. I hadthen known Andersen socially for a considerable time. My cordialrecognition of his genius drew us more closely together; he often cameto see me and was very ready to read his new works aloud to me. It ishardly saying too much to declare that this paper secured me hisfriendship. 

The fundamental principles of the essay were influenced by Taine, theart philosopher I had studied most deeply, and upon whom I had written abook that was to be my doctor's thesis. Lightly and rapidly though myshorter articles came into being, this larger task was very long inhand. Not that I had little heart for my work; on the contrary, noquestion interested me more than those on which my book hinged; butthere were only certain of them with which, as yet, I was equal todealing. 

First and foremost came the question of the nature of the producingmind, the possibility of showing a connection between its faculties andderiving them from one solitary dominating faculty, which would thusnecessarily reveal itself in every aspect of the mind. It puzzled me, for example, how I was to find the source whence Pascal's taste, bothfor mathematics and religious philosophy, sprang. Next came the questionof the possibility of a universally applicable scientific method ofcriticism, regarded as intellectual optics. If one were to define thecritic's task as that of understanding, through the discovery andelucidation of the dependent and conditional contingencies that occur inthe intellectual world, then there was a danger that he might approveeverything, not only every form and tendency of art that had arisenhistorically, but each separate work within each artistic section. If itwere no less the critic's task to distinguish between the genuine andthe spurious, he must at any rate possess a technical standard by whichto determine greater or lesser value, or he must be so specially andextraordinarily gifted that his instinct and tact estimate infallibly. 

Further, there was the question of genius, the point on which Taine'stheory roused decisive opposition in me. He regarded genius as a summingup, not as a new starting-point; according to him it was the assemblageof the original aptitudes of a race and of the peculiarities of a periodin which these aptitudes were properly able to display themselves. Heoverlooked the originality of the man of genius, which could not beexplained from his surroundings, the new element which, in genius, wascombined with the summarising of surrounding particles. Before, whenstudying Hegel, I had been repelled by the suggestion that what spoke tous through the artist was only the universally valid, the universalmind, which, as it were, burnt out the originality of the individual. InTaine's teaching, nation and period were the new (although moreconcrete) abstractions in the place of the universally valid; but here, too, the particularity of the individual was immaterial. The kernel ofmy work was a protest against this theory. 

I was even more actively interested in the fundamental question raisedby a scientific view of history. For some years I had been eagerlysearching Comte and Littré, Buckle, Mill and Taine for their opinions onthe philosophy of History. Here, too, though in another form, thequestion of the importance of the individual versus the masses presenteditself. Statistics had proved to what extent conscious actions weresubordinated to uniform laws. We could foresee from one year to anotherhow many murders would be committed and how many with each kind ofinstrument. The differences between men and men neutralised each other, if we took the average of a very large number. But this did not provethat the individual was not of considerable importance. If the victoryof Salamis depended on Themistocles, then the entire civilisation ofEurope henceforth depended on him. 

Another aspect of the question was: Did the consistent determinism ofmodern Science, the discovery of an unalterable interdependency in theintellectual, as in the physical worlds, allow scope for actionsproceeding otherwise than merely illusorily from the free purpose ordetermination of the individual? Very difficult the question was, and Idid not feel confident of solving it; but it was some consolation toreflect that the doubt as to the possibility of demonstrating a fullapplication of the law in the domain in which chance has sway, andEthics its sphere, was comparatively infinitesimal in the case of thosedomains in which men make themselves felt by virtue of genius or talentas producers of literary and artistic works. Here, where natural giftsand their necessary deployment were of such extraordinary weight, theprobability of a demonstration of natural laws was, of course, muchgreater. 

The general fundamental question was: Given a literature, a philosophy, an art, or a branch of art, what is the attitude of mind that producesit? What are its sufficing and necessary conditions? What, for instance, causes England in the sixteenth century to acquire a dramatic poetry ofthe first rank, or Holland in the seventeenth century a painting art ofthe first rank, without any of the other branches of art simultaneouslybearing equally fine fruit in the same country?

My deliberations resulted, for the time being, in the conviction thatall profound historical research was psychical research. 

That old piece of work, revised, as it now is, has certainly none buthistoric interest; but for a doctor's thesis, it is still a tolerablyreadable book and may, at any rate, introduce a beginner to reflectionupon great problems. 

After the fundamental scientific questions that engaged my attention, Iwas most interested in artistic style. There was, in modern Danishprose, no author who unreservedly appealed to me; in German HeinrichKleist, and in French Mérimée, were the stylists whom I esteemed most. The latter, in fact, it seemed to me was a stylist who, in unerringsureness, terseness and plasticism, excelled all others. He hadcertainly not much warmth or colour, but he had a sureness of line equalto that of the greatest draughtsmen of Italian art. His aridity wascertainly not winning, and, in reading him, I frequently felt a lack ofbreadth of view and horizon, but the compelling power of his line-drawing captivated me. When my doctor's thesis was finished, towards themiddle of December, 1869, both it and the collection of articles bearingthe name _Criticisms and Portraits_ were placed in the printer'shands. In the beginning of 1870 two hitherto unprinted pieces wereadded, of which one was a paper written some time before on KammaRahbek, which had been revised, the other, a new one on Mérimée, whichin general shows what at that time I admired in style. 

It had long been settled that as soon as I had replied to the critics ofmy thesis I should start on prolonged travels, the real educationaltravels of a young man's life. I had a little money lying ready, a smallbursary, and a promise of a travelling allowance from the State, whichpromise, however, was not kept. This journey had for a long time beenhaunting my fancy. I cherished an ardent wish to see France again, buteven more especially to go to Italy and countries still farther South. My hope of catching a glimpse of Northern Africa was only fulfilledthirty-five years later; but I got as far as Italy, which was the actualgoal of my desires. I knew enough of the country, its history fromancient days until then, and was sufficiently acquainted with its Artfrom Roman times upwards and during the Renaissance, to be regarded aspassed for intellectual consecration in the South. 

When the thesis was done with and the printing of the second book wasnearing completion, not anxiety to travel, but melancholy and heavy-heartedness at the thought of my departure, gained the upper hand. Ithad been decided that I was to remain away at least a year, and it wasless to myself than to others whom I must necessarily leave behind, thatthe time seemed immeasurably long. Professor Schiödte advised me ratherto take several short journeys than one long one; but that wasimpracticable. I wanted to get quite away from the home atmosphere. As, however, there were some who thought of my journey with disquiet anddread, and from whom it was difficult for me to tear myself, I put offmy departure as long as I could. At last the remnant of work that stillbound me to Copenhagen was finished, and then all the new and enrichingprospects my stay in foreign countries was to bring me shone in a goldenlight. Full of undaunted hope, I set out on my travels at the beginningof April, 1870. 

SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD

Hamburg--My Second Fatherland--Ernest Hello--_Le Docteur Noir_--Taine--Renan--Marcelin--Gleyre--Taine's Friendship--Renan at Home--Philarète Chasles' Reminiscences--_Le Théâtre Français_--Coquelin--Bernhardt--Beginnings of _Main Currents_--The Tuileries--JohnStuart Mill--London--Philosophical Studies--London and Paris Compared--Antonio Gallenga and His Wife--Don Juan Prim--Napoleon III--LondonTheatres--Gladstone and Disraeli in Debate--Paris on the Eve of War--First Reverses--Flight from Paris--Geneva, Switzerland--Italy--PasqualeVillari--Vinnie Ream's Friendship--Roman Fever--Henrik Ibsen'sInfluence--Scandinavians in Rome. 

I. 

The first thing that impressed me was Hamburg, and by that I mean theEuropean views prevalent there. At that time, doubtless mainly fornational reasons, Denmark hated Hamburg. Different Danish authors hadrecently written about the town, and in as depreciatory a strain as theycould. The description of one amounted to an assertion that in Hamburgpeople only talked of two things, money and women; that of anothercommenced: "Of all the places I have ever seen in my life, Hamburg isthe most hideous. "

The situation of the town could not be compared with that of Copenhagen, but the Alster quarter was attractive, the architecture and the streetlife not uninteresting. What decided me, however, was not the externalsof the town, but the spirit I noticed pervading the conversation. Theidea underlying things was that a young man must first and foremostlearn to keep himself well and comfortably; if he could not do this inHamburg, then as soon as possible he must set off to some place acrossthe sea, to Rio, or New York, to the Argentine, or Cape Colony, andthere make his way and earn a fortune. The sons of the families I wasinvited to visit, or heard talked about, had long been away; in thehouses I went to, the head of the family had seen other parts of theworld. The contrast with Copenhagen was obvious; there the young sons ofthe middle classes were a burden on their families sometimes until theywere thirty, had no enterprise, no money of their own to dispose of, were often glued, as it were, to the one town, where there was nopromotion to look forward to and no wide prospect of any sort. 

It was a long time since I had been so much struck by anything as by anexpression that a Hamburg lady, who had been to Copenhagen and hadstayed there some time, used about the young Danish men, namely, thatthey had _l'apparence chétive_. I tried to persuade her that lifein Copenhagen had only accidentally appeared so wretched to her; but Idid not convince her in the least. She demonstrated to me, by numerousexamples, to what an extent enterprise was lacking in Denmark, and I wasobliged to restrict myself to explaining that the tremendous pressure ofpolitical pettiness and weakness had brought a general slackness withit, without people feeling or suspecting it, and had robbed nearly everyone of daring and success. The result of the conversation was thatDenmark was shown to me in a fresh light. 

A Hamburg merchant who had lived for a long time in Mexico invited me todinner, and at his house I had the same impression of apparenthappiness, comfort, enterprise and wide outlook, in contrast to thecares and the narrowness at home, where only the few had travelled faror collected material which might by comparison offer new points of viewand give one a comprehensive experience of life. My psychologicaleducation in Danish literature, with its idolising of "thoroughness" hadimprinted on my mind that whoever thoroughly understood how to observe aman, woman and child in a Copenhagen backyard had quite sufficientmaterial whence to brew a knowledge of human nature. It now dawned uponme that comparative observation of a Mexican and a North German family, together with their opinions and prejudices, might neverthelessconsiderably advance one's knowledge of human nature, should suchcomparisons constantly obtrude themselves upon one. 

The same man let fall an observation which set me thinking. When theconversation turned upon the strained relations between France andPrussia since the battle of Königgratz, and I expressed myself confidentthat, in the event of a war, France would be victorious, as shegenerally was victorious everywhere, he expressed well-supported doubts. Prussia was a comparatively young state, extremely well organised andcarefully prepared for war; antiquated routine held great sway in theFrench army; the Emperor himself, the esteem in which he was held, andhis management were on the down grade. These were words that I had neverheard in Denmark. The possibility of France being defeated in a war withPrussia was not even entertained there. This merchant showed me anoriginal photograph of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian, taken onthe spot a moment before the word to fire was given, and a second takenimmediately afterwards. The calm bearing of the Emperor and the twogenerals compelled admiration. This was the first time I had seenphotography taken into the service of history. 

In the Hamburg Zoological Gardens I was fascinated by the aquarium, withits multitudes of aquatic animals and fish. There, for the first time inmy life, I saw an elephant, and did not tire of gazing at the mightybeast. I was struck by the strange caprice with which the great Being wecall Nature goes to work, or, more correctly, by the contrast betweenthe human point of view and Nature's mode of operations. To us, theelephant's trunk was burlesque, its walk risibly clumsy; the eagle andthe kite seemed to us, as they sat, to have a severe appearance and ahaughty glance; the apes, picking lice from one another and eating thevermin, were, to our eyes, contemptible and ridiculous at the same time;but Nature took everything equally seriously, neither sought nor avoidedbeauty, and to her one being was not more central than another. Thatmust be deemed Nature's central point which is equidistant from thelowest and from the highest being; it was not impossible, for instance, that the _harefish_, a great, thick, odd-looking creature, was thereal centre of terrestrial existence, in the same way as our celestialsphere has its centre, through which a line reaches the pole of thezodiac in the constellation of the Dragon. And I smiled as I thought ofR. Nielsen and his pupils always speaking as if they stood on the mostintimate footing with the "central point" of existence, and pouringcontempt on others who, it was to be supposed, could not approach it. 

I was very unfavourably impressed in Hamburg by German drama and Germandramatic art. 

At the town theatre, Hebbel's _Judith_ was being performed, withClara Ziegler in the leading part. At that time this lady enjoyed aconsiderable reputation in Germany, and was, too, a tall, splendid-looking female, with a powerful voice, a good mimic, and all the rest ofit, but a mere word-machine. The acting showed up the want of taste inthe piece. Holofernes weltered knee-deep in gore and braggedincessantly; Judith fell in love with his "virility, " and when he hadmade her "the guardian of his slumbers" murdered him, from a longdisremembered loyalty to the God of Israel. 

At the Thalia Theatre, Raupach's _The School of Life_ was beingproduced, a lot of silly stuff, the theme of it, for that matter, alliedto the one dealt with later by Drachmann in _Once upon a Time_. APrincess is hard-hearted and capricious. To punish her, the King, herfather, shuts a man into her bedroom, makes a feigned accusation againsther, and actually drives her out of the castle. She becomes a waiting-maid, and passes through various stages of civil life. The King ofNavarra, whose suit she had haughtily rejected, disguised as agoldsmith, marries her, then arrays himself in silks and velvets, totempt her to infidelity. When she refuses, he allows every possibleinjustice to be heaped upon her, to try her, makes her believe that theKing, on a false accusation, has had her husband's eyes put out, andthen himself goes about with a bandage before his eyes, and lets herbeg. She believes everything and agrees to everything, until at last, arrived at honour and glory, she learns that it has all been only play-acting, trial, and education. 

This nonsense was exactly on a par with taste in Germany at the time, which was undeniably considerably below the level of that in France andDenmark, and it was acted by a group of actors, some very competent, atthe chief theatre of Hamburg. Slowly though business life pulsated inDenmark, we were superior to Germany in artistic perception. 

The low stage of artistic development at which Hamburg had then arrivedcould not, however, efface the impression its superiority overCopenhagen in other respects had made upon me. Take it all together, myfew days in Hamburg were well spent. 

II. 

And then I set foot once more in the country which I regarded as mysecond fatherland, and the overflowing happiness of once more feelingFrench ground under my feet returned undiminished and unchanged. I hadhad all my letters sent to Mlle. Louise's address, so fetched themshortly after my arrival and saw the girl again. Her family invited meto dinner several times during the very first week, and I was associatedwith French men and women immediately upon my arrival. 

They were well-brought-up, good-natured, hospitable bourgeois, verynarrow in their views. Not in the sense that they took no interest inpolitics and literature, but in that questions for them were decidedonce and for all in the clerical spirit. They did not regard this as aparty standpoint, did not look upon themselves as adherents of a party;their way of thinking was the right one; those who did not agree withthem held opinions they ought to be ashamed of, and which they probably, in private, were ashamed of holding and expressing. 

Mlle. Louise had a cousin whom she used to speak of as a warm-heartedman with peculiar opinions, eager and impetuous, who would like to makethe acquaintance of her friend from the North. The aunts called him apassionate Catholic, and an energetic writer in the service of theChurch Militant. Shortly after my arrival, I met him at dinner. He was amiddle-aged, pale, carelessly dressed man with ugly, irregular features, and a very excitable manner. With him came his wife, who though pale andenthusiastic like himself, yet looked quite terrestrial. He introducedhimself as Ernest Hello, contributor to Veuillot's then much talked ofRomish paper, _L'Univers_, which, edited with no small talent by anoted stylist, adopted all sorts of abusive methods as weapons in everyfeud in which the honour of the Church was involved. It was againstVeuillot that Augier had just aimed the introduction to his excellentcomedy, _Le Fils de Giboyer_, and he made no secret of the factthat in the Déodat mentioned in the piece he had had this writer of holyabuse in his mind. Hello was in everything Veuillot's vassal. 

He was one of the martial believers who despised and hated the best freeresearch men, and who knew himself in a position to confute them. Hepossessed some elements of culture, and had early had thoroughly drilledinto him what, in comparison with the views of later times on Historyand Religion, was narrow and antiquated in Voltaire's education, and forthis reason regarded, not only Voltaire's attack on the Church, but allsubsequent philosophy inimical to the Church, as belonging to a bygoneage. He was a fanatic, and there was a sacristy odour about all that hesaid. But there was in his disposition an enthusiastic admiration forweakness in fighting against external strength, and for courage thatexpressed itself in sheer defiance of worldly prudence, that made himfeel kindly towards the young Dane. Denmark's taking up arms, with itstwo million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused hisenthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It mustcertainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominentcharacteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over allthose whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed and admired inFrance. 

As an instance of the paradoxicalness to which Huysmans many years laterbecame addicted, the latter tried to puff up Hello as being a man ofremarkable intellect; and an instance of the want of independence withwhich the new Catholic movement was carried on in Denmark is to be foundin the fact that the organ of Young Denmark, _The Tower_, coulddeclare: "Hello is one of the few whom all men of the future are agreedto bow before.... Hello was, --not only a Catholic burning with religiousardour, --but a genius; these two things explain everything. "

When Hello invited me to his house, I regarded it as my duty to go, thatI might learn as much as possible, and although his circle wasexceedingly antipathetic to me, I did not regret it; the spectacle washighly instructive. 

Next to Hello himself, who, despite his fanaticism and restlessness, impressed one as very inoffensive at bottom, and not mischievous if onesteered clear of such names as Voltaire or Renan, the chief member ofhis circle was the black doctor, (_le Docteur noir_, ) so muchtalked of in the last years of the Empire, and who is even alluded to inTaine's _Graindorge_. His real name was Vries. He was a negro fromthe Dutch West Indies, a veritable bull, with a huge body and a black, bald physiognomy, made to stand outside a tent at a fair, and be his owncrier to the public. His conversation was one incessant brag, inatrocious French. Although he had lived seventeen years in France, hespoke almost unintelligibly. 

He persuaded himself, or at least others, that he had discoveredperpetual motion, vowed that he had made a machine which, "by a simplemechanism, " could replace steam power and had been declared practicableby the first engineers in Paris; but of course he declined to speakfreely about it. Columbus and Fulton only were his equals; he knew allthe secrets of Nature. He had been persecuted--in 1859 he had beenimprisoned for eleven months, on a charge of quackery--because all greatmen were persecuted; remember our Lord Jesus Christ! He himself was thegreatest man living. _Moi vous dire le plus grand homme d'universe_. Hello and the ladies smiled admiringly at him, and never grew tired oflistening to him. This encouraged him to monopolise the conversation:He, Vries, was a man possessed of courage and wisdom; he understoodPhrenology, Allopathy, Homoeopathy, Engineering Science, Metereology--like Molière's doctors and Holberg's Oldfux. His greatest and mostspecial gift was that of curing cancer. Like writing-masters, who hangout specimens of how people wrote when they came to them, and of theircaligraphy after they had benefited by their instruction, he had hiscancer patients photographed before and after his treatment, lookingghastly the first time, and as fresh as a flower the second, and thesepictures hung on view in his house. No wonder, therefore, that NapoleonIII--so Vries said--had his portrait in an album containing, besides, only portraits of European sovereigns. 

He pretended that he had made many important prophecies. This was a bondbetween him and Hello, who claimed the same extraordinary power, and hadforetold all sorts of singular events. He performed miraculous cures;this appealed to Hello, who was suspicious of all rational Science andready to believe any mortal thing. He could read everybody's charactersin their faces. This was a pretext for the most barefaced flattery ofHello, his wife, and their friends of both sexes, and of courseeverything was swallowed with alacrity. To me he said: "Monsieur isgentle, very calm, very indulgent, and readily forgives an injury. "

Hideous though he was, his powerful brutality had a great effect on theladies of the circle. They literally hung upon his words. He seized themby the wrists, and slid his black paws up their bare arms. The marriedwomen whispered languishingly: "You have a marvellous power over women. "The husbands looked on smilingly. 

Now when Hello and he and their friends and the ladies began to talkabout religious matters and got steam up, it was a veritable witches'Sabbath, and no mistake, every voice being raised in virulent cheap Jackdenunciation of freedom, and common sense. Satan himself had dictatedVoltaire's works; now Voltaire was burning in everlasting fire. Unbelievers ought to be exterminated; it would serve them right. Renanought to be hanged on the first tree that would bear him; the BlackDoctor even maintained that in Manila he would have been shot long ago. It was always the Doctor who started the subject of the persecution ofheretics. Hello himself persecuted heretics with patronising scorn, butwas already ready to drop into a hymn of praise to the Madonna. 

I had then read two of Hello's books, _Le Style_ and _M. Renan, L'Allemagne et l'Athéisme au 19me Siècle_. Such productions arecalled books, because there is no other name for them. As a matter offact, idle talk and galimatias of the sort are in no wise literature. Hello never wrote anything but Roman Catholic sermons, full oftheological sophistries and abuse of thinking men. In those years hisbooks, with their odour of incense, made the small, flat inhabitants ofthe sacristy wainscotting venture out of their chinks in the wall indelight; but they obtained no applause elsewhere. 

It was only after his death that it could occur to a morbid seeker afteroriginality, with a bitter almond in place of a heart, like Huysmans, tomake his half-mad hero, Des Esseintes, who is terrified of the light, find satisfaction in the challenges to common sense that Hello wrote. Hello was a poor wretch who, in the insane conviction that he himselfwas a genius, filled his writings with assertions concerning themarvellous, incomprehensible nature of genius, and always took up thecudgels on its behalf. During the Empire, his voice was drowned. It wasonly a score of years later that the new Catholic reaction found it totheir advantage to take him at his word and see in him the genius thathe had given himself out to be. He was as much a genius as the madman inthe asylum is the Emperor. 

III. 

A few days after my arrival, I called upon Taine and was cordiallyreceived. He presented me with one of his books and promised me hisgreat work, _De l'Intelligence_, which was to come out in a fewdays, conversed with me for an hour, and invited me to tea the followingevening. He had been married since I had last been at his house, and hiswife, a young, clear-skinned lady with black plaits, brown eyes and anextremely graceful figure, was as fresh as a rose, and talked with theoutspoken freedom of youth, though expressing herself in carefullyselected words. 

After a few days, Taine, who was generally very formal with strangers, treated me with conspicuous friendliness. He offered at once tointroduce me to Renan, and urgently advised me to remain six months inParis, in order to master the language thoroughly, so that I mightenlighten Frenchmen on the state of things in the North, as well aspicture the French to my fellow-countrymen. Why should I not make Frenchmy auxiliary language, like Turgenieff and Hillebrandt!

Taine knew nothing of German belles lettres. As far as philosophy wasconcerned, he despised German Aesthetics altogether, and laughed at mefor believing in "Aesthetics" at all, even one day introducing me to astranger as "A young Dane who does not believe in much, but is weakenough to believe in Aesthetics. " I was not precisely overburdened bythe belief. But a German Aesthetic, according to Taine's definition, wasa man absolutely devoid of artistic perception and sense of style, wholived only in definitions. If you took him to the theatre to see a sadpiece, he would tear his hair with delight, and exclaim: "_Voilà dasTragische!_"

Of the more modern German authors, Taine knew only Heine, of whom he wasa passionate admirer and whom, by reason of his intensity of feeling, hecompared with Dante. A poem like the _Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_ rousedhis enthusiasm. Goethe's shorter poems, on the other hand, he could notappreciate, chiefly no doubt because he did not know German sufficientlywell. He was not even acquainted with the very best of Goethe's shortthings, and one day that I asked him to read one poem aloud, the wordsin his mouth rang very French. 

_Lieber dur Laydénn möcht ee mee schlag'e, als so feel Frödenn desLaybengs airtrah'ge_, was intended to be--

 Lieber durch Leiden, Möcht ich mich schlagen Als so viel Freuden Des Lebens ertragen. 

Goethe's prose he did not consider good, but heavy and prolix, andlacking in descriptive power. He would praise Voltaire's prose at hisexpense. "You perceive the figure and its movements far more clearly, "he said. The German romanticists disgusted him; their style, also, wastoo inartistic for him (_ils ne savent pas écrire, cela me dégoûted'eux_). 

I frequently met friends at his house, amongst others, Marcelin, who hadbeen his friend from boyhood, and upon whom, many years later, he wrotea melancholy obituary. This man, the proprietor of that supremelyworldly paper, _La Vie Parisienne_, was a powerful, broad-shouldered, ruddy-cheeked man, who looked the incarnation of health andvery unlike one's preconception of the editor of the most frivolous andfashionable weekly in Paris. He was a draughtsman and an author, hadstudied the history of the last few centuries in engravings, and himselfowned a collection of no fewer than 300, 000. What Taine had most admiredin him was the iron will with which, left, at nineteen years of age, penniless, and defectively educated, as head of his family, he had kepthis mother and brothers and sisters by his work. Next to that Taineadmired his earnestness. Marcelin, who was generally looked upon asbelonging to gay Paris, was a solitary-minded man, an imaginativerecreator of the peoples of the past, as they were and went about, oftheir ways and customs. He it was who opened Taine's eyes to the wealthof contributions to history locked up in collections of engravings, moreespecially perhaps as regarded people's external appearance, and whatthe exterior revealed. Another friend who came to Taine at all sorts oftimes was Gleyre, the old painter, who had been born in FrenchSwitzerland, but was otherwise a Parisian. And he was not the onlydeeply idealistic artist with whom Taine was connected in the bonds offriendship. Although a fundamental element of Taine's nature drew himmagnetically to the art that was the expression of strength, tragic orcarnal strength, a swelling exuberance of life, there was yet room inhis soul for sympathy with all artistic endeavour, even the purelyemotional. That which drew him to the idealistic painters was, atbottom, the same quality as drew him to Beethoven and Chopin. 

Gleyre's best-known picture is the painting in the Louvre, somewhat weakin colouring, but showing much feeling, a Nile subject representing aman sitting on the banks of the river and watching the dreams of hisyouth, represented as beautiful women, fleeing from him on a decorateddahabeah, which is disappearing. The title is _Lost Illusions_. There is more strength in the painting, much reproduced in engraving, ofa Roman army, conquered by Divico the Helvetian, passing under the yoke--a picture which, as an expression of the national pride of the Swiss, has been placed in the Museum at Lausanne. 

Still, it was the man himself, rather than his pictures, that Tainethought so much of. Intellectually, Taine was in his inmost heart anadmirer of the Italian and the English Renaissance, when most pagan andmost unrestrained; his intellectual home was the Venice of the sixteenthcentury; he would have been in his right place at one of the festivalspainted by Veronese, and should have worn the rich and tasteful costumeof that period. But socially, and as a citizen, he was quite different, was affectionate and subdued and calm, excessively conventional;temperate in all his judgments, as in his life. 

If I succeeded in winning his good-will, it was most emphatically notbecause I had written a book about him, which, for that matter, he couldnot understand; he barely glanced through it; he read, at most, theappreciative little review that Gaston Paris did me the honour to writeupon it in the _Revue Critique_. But it appealed to him that I hadcome to France from pure love of knowledge, that I might becomeacquainted with men and women and intellectual life, and that I hadspent my youth in study. 

He grew fond of me, advised me as a father or an elder brother mighthave done, and smiled at my imprudences--as for instance when I almostkilled myself by taking too strong a sleeping draught--(_vous êtesimprudent, c'est de votre âge_). He sometimes reproached me with notjotting down every day, as he did, whatever had struck me; he talked tome about his work, about the projected Essay on Schiller that came tonothing on account of the war, of his _Notes sur l'Angleterre_, which he wrote in a little out-of-the-way summer-house containingnothing save the four bare whitewashed walls, but a little table and achair. He introduced into the book a few details that I had mentioned tohim after my stay in England. 

When we walked in the garden at his country-house at Châtenay, hesometimes flung his arm round my neck--an act which roused greatastonishment in the Frenchmen present, who could scarcely believe theireyes. They knew how reserved he usually was. 

It quite irritated Taine that the Danish Minister did nothing for me, and introduced me nowhere, although he had had to procure me a free passto the theatre. Again and again he reverted to this, though I had nevermentioned either the Minister or the Legation to him. But therevolutionary blood in him was excited at what he regarded as a slightto intellectual aristocracy. "What do you call a man like that? AJunker?" I said no. "Never mind! it is all the same. One feels that inyour country you have had no revolution like ours, and know nothingabout equality. A fellow like that, who has not made himself known inany way whatever, looks down on you as unworthy to sit at his table anddoes not move a finger on your behalf, although that is what he is therefor. When I am abroad, they come at once from the French Embassy tovisit me, and open to me every house to which they have admittance. I ama person of very small importance in comparison with Benedetti, butBenedetti comes to see me as often as I will receive him. We have nolording of it here. "

These outbursts startled me, first, because I had never in the leastexpected or even wished either to be received by the Danish Minister orto be helped by him; secondly, because it revealed to me a widedifference between the point of view in the Romance countries, in Franceespecially, and that in the North. In Denmark, I had never had theentrée to Court or to aristocratic circles, nor have I ever acquired itsince, though, for that matter, I have not missed it in the least. Butin the Romance countries, where the aristocratic world stilloccasionally possesses some wit and education, it is taken as a matterof course that talent is a patent of nobility, and, to the man who haswon himself a name, all doors are open, indeed, people vie with oneanother to secure him. That a caste division like that in the North wasquite unknown there, I thus learnt for the first time. 

IV. 

Through Taine, I very soon made the acquaintance of Renan, whosepersonality impressed me very much, grand and free of mind as he was, without a trace of the unctuousness that one occasionally meets in hisbooks, yet superior to the verge of paradox. 

He was very inaccessible, and obstinately refused to see people. But ifhe were expecting you, he would spare you several hours of his valuabletime. 

His house was furnished with exceeding simplicity. On one wall of hisstudy hung two Chinese water-colours and a photograph of Gérôme's_Cleopatra before Caesar_; on the opposite wall, a very beautifulphotograph of what was doubtless an Italian picture of the Last Day. That was all the ornamentation. On his table, there always lay a Virgiland a Horace in a pocket edition, and for a long time a Frenchtranslation of Sir Walter Scott. 

What surprised me most in Renan's bearing was that there was nothingsolemn about it and absolutely nothing sentimental. He impressed one asbeing exceptionally clever and a man that the opposition he had met withhad left as it found him. He enquired about the state of things in theNorth. When I spoke, without reserve, of the slight prospect thatexisted of my coming to the front with my opinions, he maintained thatvictory was sure. (_Vous l'emporterez! vous l'emporterez_!) Likeall foreigners, he marvelled that the three Scandinavian countries didnot try to unite, or at any rate to form an indissoluble Union. In thetime of Gustavus Adolphus, he said, they had been of some politicalimportance; since then they had retired completely from the historicalstage. The reason for it must very probably be sought for in theirinsane internecine feuds. 

Renan used to live, at that time, from the Spring onwards, at his housein the country, at Sèvres. So utterly unaffected was the world-renownedman, then already forty-seven years of age, that he often walked fromhis house to the station with me, and wandered up and down the platformtill the train came. 

His wife, who shared his thoughts and worshipped him, had chosen herhusband herself, and, being of German family, had not been married afterthe French manner; still, she did not criticise it, as she thought itwas perhaps adapted to the French people, and she had seen among herintimate acquaintances many happy marriages entered into for reasons ofconvenience. They had two children, a son, Ary, who died in 1900 afterhaving made a name for himself as a painter, and written beautiful poems(which, however, were only published after his death), and a daughter, Noémi (Madame Psichari) who, faithfully preserving the intellectualheritage she has received from her great father, has become one of thecentres of highest Paris, a soul of fire, who fights for Justice andTruth and social ideas with burning enthusiasm. 

V. 

A source of very much pleasure to me was my acquaintance with the oldauthor and Collège de France Professor, Philarète Chasles. Grégoireintroduced me to him and I gradually became at home, as it were, in hishouse, was always a welcome visitor, and was constantly invited there. In his old age he was not a man to be taken very seriously, beingdiffusive, vague and vain. But there was no one else so communicative, few so entertaining, and for the space of fifty years he had knowneverybody who had been of any mark in France. He was born in 1798; hisfather, who was a Jacobin and had been a member of the Convention, didnot have him baptised, but brought him up to believe in Truth, (hencethe name Philarète, ) and apprenticed him to a printer. At theRestoration of the Royal Family, he was imprisoned, together with hisfather, but released through the influence of Chateaubriand; he thenwent to England, where he remained for full seven years (1819-1826), working as a typographer, and made a careful study of Englishliterature, then almost unknown in France. After having spent somefurther time in Germany, he returned to Paris and published a number ofhistorical and critical writings. 

Philarète Chasles, as librarian to the Mazarin Library, had hisapartments in the building itself, that is, in the very centre of Paris;in the Summer he lived in the country at Meudon, where he had had hisveranda decorated with pictures of Pompeian mosaic. He was having ahandsome new house with a tower built near by. He needed room, for hehad a library of 40, 000 volumes. 

His niece kept house for him; she was married to a German from Cologne, Schulz by name, who was a painter on glass. The pair lived apart. MadameSchulz was pretty, caustic, spiteful, and blunt. Her daughter, thefourteen-year-old Nanni, was enchantingly lovely, as developed andmischievous as a girl of eighteen. Everyone who came to the house wascharmed with her, and it was always full of guests, young students fromAlsace and Provence, young negroes from Hayti, young ladies fromJerusalem, and poetesses who would have liked to read their poems aloudand would have liked still better to induce Chasles to make them knownby an article. 

Chasles chatted with everyone, frequently addressing his conversation tome, talking incessantly about the very men and women that I most caredto hear about, of those still living whom I most admired, such as GeorgeSand, and Mérimée, and, in fact, of all the many celebrities he hadknown. As a young man, he had been taken to the house of MadameRécamier, and had there seen Chateaubriand, an honoured and adored oldman, and Sainte-Beuve an eager and attentive listener, somewhatoverlooked on account of his ugliness, in whom there was developing thatlurking envy of the great, and of those women clustered round, which heought to have combatted, to produce just criticism. 

Chasles had known personally Michelet and Guizot, the elder Dumas andBeyle, Cousin and Villemain, Musset and Balzac; he knew the Comtessed'Agoult, for so many years the friend of Liszt, and Madame Colet, themistress, first of Cousin, then of Musset, and finally of Flaubert, ofwhom my French uncle, who had met her on his travels, had drawn me avery unattractive picture. Chasles was on terms of daily intimacy withJules Sandeau; even as an old man he could not forget George Sand, whohad filched the greater part of his name and made it more illustriousthan the whole became. Sandeau loved her still, forty years after shehad left him. 

Chasles was able, in a few words, to conjure up very vividly the imagesof the persons he was describing to his listener, and his anecdotesabout them were inexhaustible. He took me behind the scenes ofliterature and I saw the stage from all its sides. The personal historyof his contemporaries was, it is quite true, more particularly itschronicle of scandals, but his information completed for me the severeand graceful restraint of all Taine said. And side by side with hisinclination for gay and malicious gossip, Chasles had a way of sketchingout great synopses of intellectual history, which made one realise, asone reflected, ' the progress of development of the literatures withwhich one was familiar. Those were pleasant evenings, those moonlightSpring evenings in the open veranda out there at Meudon, when the oldman with the sharp-pointed beard and the little skull-cap on one side ofhis head, was spokesman. He had the aptest and most amusing way ofputting things. For instance, to my question as to whether Guizot hadreally been as austere by nature as he was in manner, he replied: "It ishard to say; when one wishes to impress, one cannot behave like aharlequin. "

Although I had a keen enough eye for Philarète Chasles' weaknesses, Ifelt exceedingly happy in his house. There I could obtain withoutdifficulty the information I wished for, and have the feeling of beingthoroughly "in Paris. " Paris was and still is the only city in the worldthat is and wishes to be the capital not only of its own country but ofEurope; the only one that takes upon itself as a duty, not merely tomeet the visitor half-way by opening museums, collections, buildings, tohim, but the only one where people habitually, in conversation, initiatethe foreigner in search of knowledge into the ancient, deep culture ofthe nation, so that its position with regard to that of other races andcountries is made clear to one. 

VI. 

I had not let a single day elapse before I took my seat again in the_Théâtre Français_, to which I had free admission for an indefiniteperiod. The first time I arrived, the doorkeeper at the theatre merelycalled the sub-officials together; they looked at me, noted myappearance, and for the future I might take my seat wherever I liked, when the man at the entrance had called out his _Entrée_. They wereanything but particular, and in the middle of the Summer, after a visitof a month to London, I found my seat reserved for me as before. 

The first evening after my arrival, I sat, quietly enjoying_Hernani_ (the lyric beauty of which always rejoiced my heart), with Mounet-Sully in the leading rôle, Bressant as Charles V, and asDoña Sol, Mlle. Lloyd, a minor actress, who, however, at the conclusionof the piece, rose to the level of the poetry. The audience were so muchin sympathy with the spirit of the piece that a voice from the galleryshouted indignantly: "_Le roi est un lâche!_" Afterwards, duringthe same evening, I saw, in a transport of delight, Mme. De Girardin'scharming little piece, _La Joie fait Peur_. A certain familybelieve that their son, who is a young naval officer, fallen in the farEast, has been cruelly put to death. He comes back, unannounced, to hisbroken-hearted mother, his despairing bride, his sister, and an old man-servant. This old, bent, faithful retainer, a stock dramatic part, wasplayed by Régnier with the consummate art that is Nature itself staged. He has hidden the returned son behind a curtain for fear that hismother, seeing him unexpectedly, should die of joy. The sister comes in. Humming, the servant begins to dust, to prevent her going near thecurtain; but unconsciously, in his delight, his humming grows louder andlouder, until, in a hymn of jubilation, tratara-tratara! he flings thebroom up over his head, then stops short suddenly, noticing that thepoor child is standing there, mute with astonishment, not knowing whatto think. Capital, too, was the acting of a now forgotten actress, Mlle. Dubois, who played the young girl. Her exclamation, as she suddenly seesher brother, "_Je n'ai pas peur, va_!" was uttered so lightly andgaily, that all the people round me, and I myself, too, burst intotears. 

I was much impressed by Edmond Thierry, then director of the _ThéâtreFrançais_. I thought him the most refined man I had so far met, possessed of all the old French courtesy, which seemed to have died outin Paris. A conversation with him was a regular course in Dramaturgy, and although a young foreigner like myself must necessarily have beentroublesome to him, he let nothing of this be perceptible. I was socharmed by him that nearly two years later I introduced a fewunimportant words of his about Molière's _Misanthrope_ into mylectures on the first part of _Main Currents in EuropeanLiterature_, simply for the pleasure of mentioning his name. 

It was, moreover, a very pleasant thing to pay him a visit, even when hewas interrupted. For actors streamed in and out of his house. One day, for instance, the lovely Agar burst into the room to tell her tale ofwoe, being dissatisfied with the dress that she was to wear in a newpart. I saw her frequently again when war had been declared, for she itwas who, every evening, with overpowering force and art, sang the_Marseillaise_ from before the footlights. 

The theatrical performances were a delight to me. I had been charmed asmuch only by Michael Wiehe and Johanne Luise Heiberg in my salad dayswhen they played together in Hertz's _Ninon_. But my artisticenjoyment went deeper here, for the character portrayal was very muchmore true to life. The best impressions I had brought with me of Danishart were supremely romantic, Michael Wiehe as Henrik in _TheFairies_, as the Chevalier in _Ninon_, as Mortimer in Schiller's_Mary Stuart_. But this was the real, living thing. 

One evening I saw _Ristori_ play the sleep-walking scene in Macbethwith thrilling earnestness and supreme virtuosity. You felt horror tothe very marrow of your bones, and your eyes filled with tears ofemotion and anxiety. Masterly was the regular breathing that indicatedslumber, and the stiff fingers when she washed her hands and smelt themto see if there were blood upon them. But Mme. Favart, who with artisticself-restraint co-ordinated herself into the whole, without anyvirtuosity at all, produced no less an effect upon me. As the leadingcharacter in Feuillet's _Julie_, she was perfection itself; when Isaw her, it seemed to me as though no one at home in Denmark had anyidea of what feminine characterisation was. What had been taken for such(Heiberg's art, for instance, ) only seemed like a graceful and brilliantconvention, that fell to pieces by the side of this. 

The performances at the _Théâtre Français_ lasted longer than theydo now. In one evening you could see Gozlan's _Tempête dans un verred'Eau_, Augier's _Gabrielle_, and Banville's _Gringoire_. When I had seen Mme. Favart and Régnier in _Gabrielle_, Lafontaineas Louis XI, his wife as Loyse, Mlle. Ponsin as Nicole, and Coquelin, atthat time still young and fresh, as Gringoire, I felt that I had enjoyedone of the greatest and most elevating pleasures the world had to offer. I went home, enraptured and enthusiastic, as much edified as thebeliever returning from his church. I could see _Gringoire_ a dozentimes in succession and find only one expression for what I felt: "Thisis holy. "

The piece appealed to me so much, no doubt, because it was more inagreement than the rest with what in Denmark was considered true poetry. But during the three years since I had last seen him, Coquelin had madeimmense strides in this rôle. He rendered it now with an individuality, a heartfelt sincerity and charm, that he had not previously attained; incontrast to harsh King Louis and unfeeling Loyse, was so poor, andhungry, and ill and merry and tender and such a hero and such a genius--that I said to myself: "Who, ever has seen this, has lived. "

Quite a short while after my arrival--April 12, 1870--I saw for thefirst time Sarah Bernhardt, who had just begun to make a name at theOdéon. She was playing in George Sand's beautiful and mutinous drama_L'autre_, from which the great-grandmother in Björnson's_Leonarda_ is derived. The piece is a plea for the freedom of love, or rather, for indulgence with regard to what are branded by society asthe sins of love. Sarah Bernhardt was the young girl who, in herinnocence, judges all moral irregularities with the utmost severity, until her eyes are opened to what the world really is. She is, withoutknowing it, the child of unlawful love, and the father's curse is thatof not daring to be anything to his child--whom he has educated and overwhom he watches--not daring to claim his right to her affection, as hewould otherwise stain her mother's memory. In his presence, the younggirl utters all the hard words that society has for those who break herlaws; she calls her unknown father false and forsworn. George Sand hascollected all the justified protests and every prejudice for this younggirl to utter, because in her they inspire most respect, and are totheir best advantage. --So far her father has not revealed himself. Thenat last it dawns upon her that it is he, her benefactor, who is the_other one_ whom she has just condemned, and as the curtain fallsshe flings herself, melted, into his arms. 

Sarah played the part with great modesty, with what one might assume tobe the natural melancholy of the orphan, and the enthusiasm of the youngvirgin for strict justice, and yet in such wise that, through all thecoldness, through the expressive uncertainty of her words, andespecially through the lovely, rich ring of her voice, one suspectedtenderness and mildness long held back. 

VII. 

I tried, while I was in Paris, to understand something of thedevelopment of French literature since the beginning of the century, toarrange it in stages, and note the order of their succession; I wanted, at the same time, to form for myself a similar general view of Danishliterature, and institute parallels between the two, being convincedbeforehand that the spirit of the age must be approximately the same intwo European countries that were, so to speak, intellectually allied. This was my first naïve attempt to trace The Main Currents in NineteenthCentury Literature. 

The French poetry of the nineteenth century seemed to me to fall intothree groups: Romanticism, the School of Common Sense, the RealisticArt. I defined them as follows:

I. What the French call _Romanticism_ has many distinguishingmarks. It is, firstly, a _break with Graeco-Roman antiquity_. Ittherefore harks back to the Gallic, and to the Middle Ages. It is aresurrection of the poets of the sixteenth century. But the attempt is afailure, for Ronsard and the Pleiad [Footnote: The poets who formed thefirst and greater Pleiad were, besides Ronsard, Dubellay, Remi, Belleau, Jodelle, Dorat, Baif and Pontus de Thiard. ] are also Greek-taught, areAnacreontics. If we except the _Chanson de Roland_, there is nooriginal mediaeval literature that can be compared with the Icelandic. For that reason the choice of subjects is extended from the Middle Agesin France to the Middle Ages in other countries, for instance, Germany, whence Victor Hugo derives his drama _Les Burgraves_. The poetsselect foreign matter, Alfred de Vigny treats Chatterton and MussetItalian and Spanish themes. Mérimée harks back to the French Middle Ages(The Peasant Rising), but as he there finds too little originality, heflees, as a poet, to less civilised nationalities, Spaniards, SouthAmericans, Corsicans, Russians, etc. Romanticism becomes ethnographical. 

Its second distinguishing mark is _tempestuous violence_. It isconnected with the 1830 revolution. It attacks society and theconditions of property (Saint Simon, Fourier, Proudhon), attacksmarriage and the official verdict upon sexual relations (Dumas)Antony Rousseau's old doctrine that Nature is good, the natural statethe right one, and that society alone has spoilt everything. George Sandin particular worships Rousseau, and writes in essential agreement withhim. 

In the later French literature the influence of Voltaire and that ofRousseau are alternately supreme. Voltaire rules until 1820, Rousseauagain until 1850, then Voltaire takes the reins once more with About, Taine, and Sarcey. In Renan Voltaire is merged with Rousseau, and now, later still, Diderot has taken the place of both. 

II. The _School of Common Sense_ (_l'école de bon sens_) follows uponRomanticism. As the latter worshipped passion, so the School of CommonSense pays homage to sound human intelligence. In certain individuals itis possible to trace the transition--Musset's _Un Caprice_ incontrast with the wanton works of his youth. George Sand's villagenovels, in contrast with her novels on Marriage. The popular tone andthe landscape drawing here, which, for that matter, are all derived fromRousseau, lead on into a tranquil idyl. Works like Ponsard's_Lucrèce_ and Augier's _Gabrielle_ show the reaction fromRomanticism. In the tragedy it is Lucrèce, in the modern play, Gabrielle, upon whom the action hinges. In Ponsard and Augier commonsense, strict justice, and a conventional feeling of honour, areacclaimed. Marriage is glorified in all of Ponsard, Augier and OctaveFeuillet's dramas. Literature has no doubt been influenced in somedegree by the ruling orders of the monarchy of July. Louis Philippe wasthe bourgeois King. An author like Scribe, who dominates the stages ofEurope, is animated by the all-powerful bourgeois spirit, educated andcircumscribed as it was. Cousin, in his first manner, revolutionarySchellingism, corresponded to romanticism; his eclecticism as amoralising philosopher corresponds to the School of Common Sense. Thedistinctive feature which they have in common becomes a so-calledIdealism. Ponsard revives the classical traditions of the seventeenthcentury. In criticism this endeavour in the direction of the sensibleand the classical, is represented by Nisard, Planche, and Sainte-Beuvein his second manner. 

III. The third tendency of the century Is _Realistic Art_, withphysiological characteristics. It finds its support in positivistphilosophy; Herbart in Germany, Bentham and Mill in England, Comte andLittré in France. In criticism, Sainte-Beuve's third manner. On thestage, the younger Dumas. In novels, the brothers Goncourt, andFlaubert. In Art, a certain brutality in the choice of subject, _Gérôme and Régnault_. In politics, the accomplished fact (_lefait accompli_), the Empire, the brutal pressure from above andgeneral levelling by universal suffrage from below. In lyric poetry, thestrictly technical artists of form of the _Parnasse_, Coppée, whodescribes unvarnished reality, and the master workmen (_les maîtres dela facture_), Leconte Delisle, Gautier and his pupils, who writebetter verse than Lamartine and Hugo, but have no new thoughts orfeelings--the poetic language materialists. 

In conclusion, a great many indistinct beginnings, of which it is as yetimpossible to say whither they are tending. 

This, my first attempt to formulate for myself a general survey of oneof the great literatures of the nineteenth century, contained much thatwas true enough, but revealed very plainly the beginner's lack ofability to estimate the importance of phenomena, an inclination to over-estimate purely evanescent apparitions, and a tendency to include thatwhich was merely externally similar, under one heading. Theinsignificant School of Common Sense could not by any means be regardedas marking an epoch. Neither, with any justice, could men like Augierand Dumas be placed in different groups. The attempt to point outrealism in the lyric art was likewise exceedingly audacious. 

However, this division and grouping seemed to me at that time to be agreat discovery, and great was my disappointment when one day Iconsulted Chasles on the subject and he thought it too forced, andanother day submitted it to Renan, who restricted himself to the reply:

"No! no! Things do not proceed so systematically!"

As this survey of the literature of France was also intended to guide mewith regard to the Danish, I groped my way forward in the followingmanner:

I. _Romanticism_. Oehlenschläger's attitude towards the pastcorresponds exactly to Victor Hugo's; only that the resurrection of theMiddle Ages in poetry is much more successful (_Earl Hakon, The Godsof the North_), by reason of the fresh originality in Snorre and the_Edda_. Grundtvig's _Scenes from the Lives of the Warriors of theNorth_ likewise owes all its value to the Edda and the Sagas. Oehlenschläger's _Aladdin_ is the Northern pendant to Hugo's _LesOrientales_. Gautier, as a poet, Delacroix as a painter, affect theEast, as Oehlenschläger does in _Ali and Gulhyndi_. Steffens andSibbern, as influenced by Schelling, correspond to Cousin. Hauch notinfrequently seeks his poetic themes in Germany, as do Nodier and Gérardde Nerval. Ingemann's weak historical novels correspond to the Frenchimitations of Sir Walter Scott (Alfred de Vigny's _Cinq-Mars_, Dumas' _Musketeers_). Oehlenschläger's tragedies correspond to thedramas of Victor Hugo. With the Danes, as with the French, hatred ofintelligence, as cold; only that the Danes glorify imagination andenthusiasm, the French, passion. Romanticism lasts in Denmark (withoutRevolutions and Restorations) until about 1848, as in France. 

II. The _School of Common Sense_ is in Denmark partly a worship ofthe sound sense of the people, partly a moralising tendency. Grundtvig, with his popular manner, his appreciation of the unsophisticated peasantnature, had points of contact with the pupils of Rousseau. Moralisingworks are Heiberg's _A Soul after Death_, Paludan-Müller's _AdamHomo_, and Kierkegaard's _Either-Or_. The funny thing about thedefence of marriage contained in this last book is that it defends whatno one in Denmark attacks. It can only be understood from thecontemporary movement in the intellectual life of Europe, which is nowasserting the universal validity of morality, as it formerly did theright of passion. Its defence of Protestantism corresponds to OctaveFeuillet's defence of Catholicism, only that Feuillet is conciliatory, Kierkegaard vehement. Björnson's peasant novels, which are acontinuation of Grundtvig and Blicher, are, by their harmony and theirpeaceable relations to all that is, an outcome of love of common sense;they have the same anti-Byronic stamp as the School of Common Sense. Themovement comes to us ten years later. But Björnson has simultaneouslysomething of Romanticism and something of Realism. We have not men toplace separately in the various frames. 

III. _Realistic Art_. There is so far only an attempt at arealistic art. 

Thus, in Björnson's _Arne_ and _Sigurd Slembe_. Note also anattempt in Bergsöe's clumsy use of realistic features, and in hisseeking after effect. Richardt corresponds in our lyric art as an artistin language to the poets of the _Parnasse_, while Heiberg'sphilosophy and most of his poetry may be included in the School ofCommon Sense. Bröchner's _Ideal Realism_ forms the transitionalstage to the philosophy of Reality. Ibsen's attack upon the existingstate of things corresponds to realism in the French drama. He is Dumason Northern soil. In the _Love Comedy_, as a scoffer he isinharmonious. In _Peer Gynt_, he continues in the moralisingtendency with an inclination to coarse and brutal realistic effects(relations with Anitra). 

In Germany we find ourselves at the second stage still, sinking deeperand deeper into dialect and popular subjects (from Auerbach to ClausGroth and Fritz Reuter). 

It is unnecessary to point out to readers of the present day howincomplete and arbitrary this attempt at a dissection of Danishliterature was. I started from the conviction that modern intellectuallife in Europe, in different countries, must necessarily in allessentials traverse the same stages, and as I was able to find variousunimportant points of similarity in support of this view, I quiteoverlooked the fact that the counterbalancing weight of dissimilaritiesrendered the whole comparison futile. 

IX. 

As, during my first stay in Paris, I had frequently visited MadameVictorine, the widow of my deceased uncle, and her children, verycordial relations had since existed between us, especially after myuncle's faithless friend had been compelled to disgorge the sums sentfrom Denmark for her support, which he had so high-handedly kept back. There were only faint traces left of the great beauty that had once beenhers; life had dealt hardly with her. She was good and tender-hearted, an affectionate mother, but without other education than was usual inthe Parisian small bourgeois class to which she belonged. All heropinions, her ideas of honour, of propriety, of comfort and happiness, were typical of her class. 

Partly from economy, partly from a desire not to waste the precioustime, I often, in those days, restricted my midday meal. I would buymyself, at a provision dealer's, a large veal or ham pie and eat it inmy room, instead of going out to a restaurant. One day Victorinesurprised me at a meal of this sort, and exclaimed horrified:_"Comment? vous vous nourrissez si mal!"_ To her, it was about thesame as if I had not had any dinner at all. To sit at home without acloth on the table, and cut a pie in pieces with a paper knife, was tosink one's dignity and drop to poor man's fare. 

Her thoughts, like those of most poor people in France and elsewhere, centred mostly on money and money anxieties, on getting on well in theworld, or meeting with adversity, and on how much this man or the othercould earn, or not earn, in the year. Her eldest son was in St. Petersburg, and he was doing right well; he was good and kind and senthis mother help when he had a little to spare. He had promised, too, totake charge of his next brother. But she had much anxiety about thelittle ones. One of them was not turning out all that he should be, andthere were the two youngest to educate. 

There was a charming celebration in the poor home when little Emma wentto her first communion, dressed all in white, from head to foot, with along white veil and white shoes, and several other little girls and boyscame just as smartly dressed, and presents were given and good wishesoffered. Little Henri looked more innocent than any of the little girls. 

Victorine had a friend whom she deemed most happy; this was JulesClarétie's mother, for, young though her son was, he wrote in thepapers, wrote books, too, and earned money, so that he was able tomaintain his mother altogether. He was a young man who ought to be heldin high estimation, an author who was all that he should be. There wasanother author whom she detested, and that was P. L. Möller, the Dane:

"Jacques, as you know, was always a faithful friend of Monsieur Möller;he copied out a whole book for him, [Footnote: _The Modern Drama inFrance and Denmark_, which won the University Gold Medal for Möller. ]when he himself was very busy. But then when Jacques died--_pauvrehomme!_--he came and paid visits much too often and always at more andmore extraordinary times, so that I was obliged to forbid him the house. "

X. 

In a students' hotel near the Odéon, where a few Scandinavians lived, Ibecame acquainted with two or three young lawyers and more young abbésand priests. If you went in when the company were at table in the diningroom, the place rang again with their noisy altercations. The advocatesdiscussed politics, literature and religion with such ardour that theair positively crackled. They were apparently practising to speak oneday at the Bar or in the Chamber. It was from surroundings such as thesethat Gambetta emerged. 

The young abbés and priests were very good fellows, earnest believers, but so simple that conversations with them were only interesting becauseof their ignorance and lack of understanding. Scandinavians in Paris whoknew only Roman Catholic priests from _Tartufe_ at the theatre, hadvery incorrect conceptions regarding them. Bressant was the cold, elegant hypocrite, Lafontaine the base, coarse, but powerful cleric, Leroux the full-blooded, red-faced, voluptuary with fat cheeks andshaking hands, whose expression was now angry, now sickly sweet. Northern Protestants were very apt to classify the black-coated men whomthey saw in the streets and in the churches, as belonging to one ofthese three types. But my ecclesiastical acquaintances were as free fromhypocrisy as from fanaticism. They were good, honest children of thecommonalty, with, not the cunning, but the stupidity, of peasants. 

Many a day I spent exploring the surroundings of Paris in their company. We went to St. Cloud and Sèvres, to Versailles and St. Germain, to SaintDenis, to Montmorency and Enghien, or to Monthléry, a village with anold tower from the thirteenth century, and then breakfasted atLongjumeau, celebrated for its postillion. There Abbé Leboulleuxdeclared himself opposed to cremation, for the reason that it renderedthe resurrection impossible, since God himself could not collect thebones again when the body had been burnt. It was all so amiable that onedid not like to contradict him. At the same meal another was giving asketch of the youth of Martin Luther; he left the church--_on sedemande encore pourquoi_. In the innocence of his heart this abbéregarded the rebellion of Luther less as an unpermissible than as aninexplicable act. 

XI. 

The society of the Italian friends of my first visit gave me muchpleasure. My first call at the Pagellas' was a blank; at the next, I wasreceived like a son of the house and heaped with reproaches for nothaving left my address; they had tried to find me at my former hotel, and endeavoured in vain to learn where I was staying from Scandinavianswhom they knew by name; now I was to spend all the time I could withthem, as I used to do in the old days. They were delighted to see meagain, and when I wished to leave, drove me home in their carriage. Iresumed my former habit of spending the greater part of my spare timewith Southerners; once more I was transported to Southern Europe andSouth America. The very first day I dined at their house I met a jovialold Spaniard, a young Italian, who was settled in Egypt, and a verycoquettish young Brazilian girl. The Spaniard, who had been born inVenezuela, was an engineer who had studied conditions in Panama foreleven years, and had a plan for the cutting of the isthmus. He talked agreat deal about the project, which Lesseps took up many yearsafterwards. 

Pagella, too, was busy with practical plans, setting himself technicalproblems, and solving them. Thus he had discovered a new method ofconstructing railway carriages on springs, with a mechanism to preventcollisions. He christened this the _Virginie-ressort_, after hiswife, and had had offers for it from the Russian government. 

An Italian engineer, named Casellini, who had carried out theconstruction for him, was one of the many bold adventurers that one metwith among the Southerners in Paris. He had been sent to Spain the yearbefore by Napoleon III to direct the counter-revolution there. Being anengineer, he knew the whole country, and had been in constantcommunication with Queen Isabella and the Spanish Court in Paris. Hegave illuminating accounts of Spanish corruptibility. He had bribed thetelegraph officials in the South of Spain, where he was, and saw allpolitical telegrams before the Governor of the place. In Malaga, wherehe was leading the movement against the Government, he very narrowlyescaped being shot; he had been arrested, his despatches intercepted and1, 500 rifles seized, but he bribed the officials to allow him to makeselection from the despatches and destroy those that committed him. InMadrid he had had an audience of Serrano, after this latter hadforbidden the transmission from the town of any telegrams that were notgovernment telegrams; he had taken with him a telegram drawn up by theFrench party, which sounded like an ordinary business letter, andsecured its being sent off together with the government despatches. Casellini had wished to pay for the telegram, but Serrano had dismissedthe suggestion with a wave of his hand, rung a bell and given thetelegram to a servant. It was just as in Scribe's _Queen Marguerite'sNovels_, the commission was executed by the enemy himself. 

Such romantic adventures did not seem to be rare in Spain. Prim himselfhad told the Pagellas how at the time of the failure of the firstinsurrection he had always, in his flight, (in spite of his defectiveeducation, he was more magnanimous and noble-minded than any king), provided for the soldiers who were sent out after him, ordered food anddrink for them in every inn he vacated, and paid for everythingbeforehand, whereas the Government let their poor soldiers starve assoon as they were eight or ten miles from Madrid. 

I often met a very queer, distinguished looking old Spaniard named DonJosé Guell y Rente, who had been married to a sister of King Francis, the husband of King Isabella, but had been separated from her after, ashe declared, she had tried to cut his throat. As witness to hisconnubial difficulties, he showed a large scar across his throat. He waswell-read and, amongst other things, enthusiastically admiredScandinavian literature because it had produced the world's greatestpoet, Ossian, with whom he had become acquainted in Cesarotti's Italiantranslation. It was useless to attempt to explain to him the differencebetween Scandinavia and Scotland. They are both in the North, he wouldreply. 

XII. 

A young American named Olcott, who visited Chasles and occasionallylooked me up, brought with him a breath from the universities of thegreat North American Republic. A young German, Dr. Goldschmidt, adistinguished Sanscrit scholar, a man of more means than I, who had apretty flat with a view over the Place du Châtelet, and dined at goodrestaurants, came, as it were, athwart the many impressions I hadreceived of Romance nature and Romance intellectual life, with hisviolent German national feeling and his thorough knowledge. As early asthe Spring, he believed there would be war between Germany and Franceand wished in that event to be a soldier, as all other German students, so he declared, passionately wished. He was a powerfully built, energetic, well-informed man of the world, with something of the richman's habit of command. He seemed destined to long life and quite ableto stand fatigue. Nevertheless, his life was short. He went through thewhole of the war in France without a scratch, after the conclusion ofpeace was appointed professor of Sanscrit at the University of conqueredStrasburg, but died of illness shortly afterwards. 

A striking contrast to his reticent nature was afforded by the youngFrenchmen of the same age whom I often met. A very rich and veryenthusiastic young man, Marc de Rossiény, was a kind of leader to them;he had 200, 000 francs a year, and with this money had founded a weeklypublication called "_L'Impartial_, " as a common organ for thestudents of Brussels and Paris. The paper's name, _L'Impartial_, must be understood in the sense that it admitted the expression of everyopinion with the exception of defence of so-called revealed religion. The editorial staff was positivist, Michelet and Chasles were patrons ofthe paper, and behind the whole stood Victor Hugo as a kind of honorarydirector. The weekly preached hatred of the Empire and of theology, andseemed firmly established, yet was only one of the hundred ephemeralpapers that are born and die every day in the Latin quarter. When it hadbeen in existence a month, the war broke out and swept it away, like somany other and greater things. 

XIII. 

Of course I witnessed all that was accessible to me of Parisian publiclife. I fairly often found my way, as I had done in 1866, to the Palaisde Justice to hear the great advocates plead. The man I enjoyedlistening to most was Jules Favre, whose name was soon to be on everyone's lips. The younger generation admired in him the high-principledand steadfast opponent of the Empire in the Chamber, and he was regardedas well-nigh the most eloquent man in France. As an advocate, he wasincomparable. His unusual handsomeness, --his beautiful face under ahelmet of grey hair, and his upright carriage, --were great points in hisfavour. His eloquence was real, penetrating, convincing, inasmuch as hepiled up fact upon fact, and was at the same time, as the French manneris, dramatic, with large gesticulations that made his gown flutterrestlessly about him like the wings of a bat. It was a depressing factthat afterwards, as the Minister opposed to Bismarck, he was so unequalto his position. 

I was present at the _Théâtre Français_ on the occasion of theunveiling of Ponsard's bust. To the Romanticists, Ponsard was nothingless than the ass's jawbone with which the Philistines attempted to slayHugo. But Émile Chasles, a son of my old friend, gave a lecture uponhim, and afterwards _Le lion amoureux_ was played, a very tolerablelittle piece from the Revolutionary period, in which, for one thing, Napoleon appears as a young man. There are some very fine revolutionarytirades in it, of which Princess Mathilde, after its firstrepresentation, said that they made her _Republican_ heartpalpitate. The ceremony in honor of this little anti-pope to Victor Hugowas quite a pretty one. 

Once, too, I received a ticket for a reception at the French Academy. The poet Auguste Barbier was being inaugurated and Silvestre de Sacywelcomed him, in academic fashion, in a fairly indiscreet speech. Barbier's _Jamber_ was one of the books of poems that I had lovedfor years, and I knew many of the strophes by heart, for instance, thecelebrated ones on Freedom and on Napoleon; I had also noticed howBarbier's vigour had subsided in subsequent collections of poems; inreality, he was still living on his reputation from the year 1831, andwithout a doubt most people believed him to be dead. And now there hestood, a shrivelled old man in his Palm uniform, his speech revealingneither satiric power nor lofty intellect. It was undoubtedly owing tohis detestation of Napoleon (_vide_ his poem _L'Idole_) thatthe Academy, who were always agitating against the Empire, had now, solate in the day, cast their eyes upon him. Bald little Silvestre deSacy, the tiny son of an important father, reproached him for his verseson Freedom, as the bold woman of the people who was not afraid to shedblood. 

"That is not Freedom as I understand it, " piped the little man, --and onebelieved him, --but could not refrain from murmuring with the poet:

 C'est que la Liberté n'est pas une comtesse Du noble Faubourg St. Germain, Une femme qu'un cri fait tomber en faiblesse, Qui met du blanc et du carmin; C'est une forte femme. 

XIV. 

A very instructive resort, even for a layman, was the Record Office, forthere one could run through the whole history of France in the mostentertaining manner with the help of the manuscripts placed on view, from the most ancient papyrus rolls to the days of parchment and paper. You saw the documents of the Feudal Lords' and Priests' Conspiraciesunder the Merovingians and the Capets, the decree of divorce betweenPhilip Augustus and Ingeborg, and letters from the most notablepersonages of the Middle Ages and the autocracy. The period of theRevolution and the First Empire came before one with especial vividness. There was Charlemagne's monogram stencilled in tin, and that of Robertof Paris, reproduced in the same manner, those of Louis XIV. AndMolière, of Francis the Catholic and Mary Stuart. There were lettersfrom Robespierre and Danton, requests for money and death-warrants fromthe Reign of Terror, Charlotte Corday's last letters from prison and theoriginal letters of Napoleon from St. Helena. 

In June I saw the annual races at Longchamps for the first time. Greatwas the splendour. From two o'clock in the afternoon to six there was anuninterrupted stream of carriages, five or six abreast, along the ChampsElysées; there were thousands of _lorettes_ (as they were called atthat time) in light silk gowns, covered with diamonds and preciousstones, in carriages decorated with flowers. Coachmen and footmen worepowdered wigs, white or grey, silk stockings and knee-breeches and aflower in the buttonhole matching the colour of their livery and theflowers which hung about the horses' ears. Some of the carriages had nocoachman's box or driver, but were harnessed to four horses ridden bypostillions in green satin or scarlet velvet, with white feathers intheir caps. 

The only great _demi-mondaine_ of whom I had hitherto caught aglimpse was the renowned Madame de Païva, who had a little palace by theside of the house in which Frölich the painter lived, in the ChampsElysées. Her connection with Count Henckel v. Donnersmark permitted herto surround herself with regal magnificence, and, to the indignation ofPrincess Mathilde, men like Gautier and Renan, Sainte-Beuve andGoncourt, Saint-Victor and Taine, sat at her table. The ladies here wereyounger and prettier, but socially of lower rank. The gentlemen wentabout among the carriages, said _tu_ without any preamble to thewomen, and squeezed their hands, while their men-servants sat stolid, like wood, seeming neither to hear nor see. 

This race-day was the last under the Empire. It is the one described inZola's _Nana_. The prize for the third race was 100, 000 francs. After English horses had been victorious for several years insuccession, the prize was carried off in 1870--as in _Nana_--by anative-born horse, and the jubilation was great; it was a serioussatisfaction to national vanity. 

At that time, the Tuileries were still standing, and I was fond ofwalking about the gardens near closing time, when the guard beat thedrums to turn the people out. It was pleasant to hear the rolling of thedrums, which were beaten by two of the Grenadier Guard drummers and aTurco. Goldschmidt had already written his clever and linguisticallyvery fine piece of prose about this rolling of the drums and what itpossibly presaged: Napoleon's own expulsion from the Tuileries and thehumiliation of French grandeur before the Prussians, who might one daycome and drum this grandeur out. But Goldschmidt had disfigured thepretty little piece somewhat by relating that one day when, for anexperiment, he had tried to make his way into the gardens after thesignal for closing had sounded, the Zouave had carelessly levelled hisbayonet at him with the words: _"Ne faites pas des bêtises!"_ Thislevelling of the bayonet on such trivial provocation was too tremendous, so I made up my mind one evening to try myself. The soldier on guardmerely remarked politely: "_Fermé, monsieur, on va sortir. _"

I little dreamed that only a few months later the Empress would stealsecretly out of the palace, having lost her crown, and still less thatonly six months afterwards, during the civil war, the Tuileries would bereduced to ashes, never to rise again. 

XV. 

At that time the eyes of the Danes were fixed upon France in hope andexpectation that their national resuscitation would come from thatquarter, and they made no distinction between France and the Empire. Although the shortest visit to Paris was sufficient to convince aforeigner not only that the personal popularity of the Emperor was longsince at an end, but that the whole government was despised, in Denmarkpeople did not, and would not, know it. In the Danish paper with thewidest circulation, the Daily Paper, foreign affairs were dealt with bya man of the name of Prahl, a wildly enthusiastic admirer of the Empire, a pleasant man and a brainy, but who, on this vital point, seemed tohave blinkers on. From all his numerous foreign papers, he deduced onlythe opinions that he held before, and his opinions were solelyinfluenced by his wishes. He had never had any opportunity of procuringinformation at first hand. He said to me one day:

"I am accused of allowing my views to be influenced by the foreigndiplomatists here, I, who have never spoken to one of them. I canhonestly boast of being unacquainted with even the youngest attaché ofthe Portuguese Ministry. " His remarks, which sufficiently revealed thisfact, unfortunately struck the keynote of the talk of the politicalwiseacres in Denmark. 

Though the Danes were so full of the French, it would be a pity to saythat the latter returned the compliment. It struck me then, as it musthave struck many others, how difficult it was to make people in Franceunderstand that Danes and Norsemen were not Germans. From the roughestto the most highly educated, they all looked upon it as an understoodthing, and you could not persuade them of anything else. As soon as theyhad heard Northerners exchange a few words with each other and hadpicked up the frequently recurring _Ja_, they were sufficientlyedified. Even many years after, I caught the most highly culturedFrenchmen (such as Edmond de Concourt), believing that, at any rate onthe stage, people spoke German in Copenhagen. 

One day in June I began chatting on an omnibus with a corporal ofGrenadiers. When he heard that I was Danish, he remarked: "German, then. " I said: "No. " He persisted in his assertion, and asked, cunningly, what _oui_ was in Danish. When I told him he merelyreplied, philosophically, "Ah! then German is the mother tongue. " It istrue that when Danes, Norwegians and Swedes met abroad they felt eachother to be compatriots; but this did not prevent them all being classedtogether as Germans; that they were not Englishmen, you saw at a glance. Even when there were several of them together, they had difficulty inasserting themselves as different and independent; they were a Germanicrace all the same, and people often added, "of second-class importance, "since the race had other more pronounced representatives. 

The only strong expression of political opinion that was engineered inFrance then was the so-called plebiscite of May, 1870; the governmentchallenged the verdict of the entire male population of France upon thepolicy of Napoleon III. During the past eighteen years, and did so withthe intention, strangely enough not perceived by Prime MinisterOllivier, of re-converting the so-called constitutional Empire which hadbeen in existence since January 1, 1870, into an autocracy. Sensiblepeople saw that the plebiscite was only an objectionable comedy; afavourable reply would be obtained all over the country by means ofpressure on the voters and falsification of votes; the oppositionistpapers showed this up boldly in articles that were sheer gems of wit. Disturbances were expected in Paris on the 9th of May, and here andthere troops were collected. But the Parisians, who saw through thefarce, remained perfectly indifferent. 

The decision turned out as had been expected; the huge majority in Pariswas _against_, the provincial population voted _for_, the Emperor. 

XVI. 

On July 5th I saw John Stuart Mill for the first time. He had arrived inParis the night before, passing through from Avignon, and paid a visitto me, unannounced, in my room in the Rue Mazarine; he stayed two hoursand won my affections completely. I was a little ashamed to receive sogreat a man in so poor a place, but more proud of his thinking it worthhis while to make my acquaintance. None of the French savants had everhad an opportunity of conversing with him; a few days before, Renan hadlamented to me that he had never seen him. As Mill had no personalacquaintances in Paris, I was the only person he called upon. 

To talk to him was a new experience. The first characteristic thatstruck me was that whereas the French writers were all assertive, helistened attentively to counter-arguments; it was only when his attitudein the woman question was broached that he would not brook contradictionand overwhelmed his adversaries with contempt. 

At that time Mill was without any doubt, among Europe's distinguishedmen, the greatest admirer of French history and French intellectual lifeto be found outside of France; but he was of quite a different type fromthe French, even from those I esteemed most highly. The latter werecomprehensive-minded men, bold and weighty, like Taine, or cold andagile like Renan, but they were men of intellect and thought, onlyhaving no connection with the practical side of life. They were notadapted to personal action, felt no inclination to direct interference. 

Mill was different. Although he was more of a thinker than any of them, his boldness was not of the merely theoretic kind. He wished tointerfere and re-model. None of those Frenchmen lacked firmness; if, from any consideration, they modified their utterances somewhat, theirfundamental views, at any rate, were formed independently; but theirfirmness lay in defence, not in attack; they wished neither to rebukenor to instigate; their place was the lecturer's platform, rather thanthe tribune. Mill's firmness was of another kind, hard as steel; both incharacter and expression he was relentless, and he went to workaggressively. He was armed, not with a cuirass, but a glaive. 

Thus in him I met, for the first time in my life, a figure who was theincarnation of the ideal I had drawn for myself of the great man. Thisideal had two sides; talent and character: great capacities andinflexibility. The men of great reputation whom I had met hitherto, artists and scientists, were certainly men richly endowed with talents;but I had never hitherto encountered a personality combining talentswith gifts of character. Shortly before leaving home, I had concludedthe preface to a collection of criticisms with these words: "Mywatchword has been: As flexible as possible, when it is a question ofunderstanding, as inflexible as possible, when it is a question ofspeaking, " and I had regarded this watchword as more than the motto of alittle literary criticism. Now I had met a grand inflexibility of ideasin human form, and was impressed for my whole life long. 

Unadapted though I was by nature to practical politics, or in fact toany activity save that of ideas, I was far from regarding myself as merematerial for a scholar, an entertaining author, a literary historian, orthe like. I thought myself naturally fitted to be a man of action. Butthe men of action I had hitherto met had repelled me by their lack of aleading principle. The so-called practical men at home, lawyers andparliamentarians, were not men who had made themselves masters of anyfund of new thoughts that they wished to reduce to practical effect;they were dexterous people, well-informed of conditions at their elbow, not thinkers, and they only placed an immediate goal in front ofthemselves. In Mill I learnt at last to know a man in whom the power ofaction, disturbance, and accomplishment were devoted to the service ofmodern sociological thought. 

He was then sixty-four years old, but his skin was as fresh and clear asa child's, his deep blue eyes young. He stammered a little, and nervoustwitches frequently shot over his face; but there was a sublime nobilityabout him. 

To prolong the conversation, I offered to accompany him to the WindsorHotel, where he was staying, and we walked the distance. As I really hadintended to go over to England at about that time, Mill proposed mycrossing with him. I refused, being afraid of abusing his kindness, butwas invited to visit him frequently when I was in England, which I didnot fail to do. A few days afterwards I was in London. 

XVII. 

My French acquaintances all said the same thing, when I told them Iwanted to go over to England: "What on earth do you want there?" Thoughonly a few hours' journey from England, they had never felt the leastcuriosity to see the country. "And London! It was said to be a very dullcity; it was certainly not worth putting one's self out to go there. " Orelse it was: "If you are going to London, be careful! London is full ofthieves and rascals; look well to your pockets!"

Only a few days later, the Parisians were shaken out of their calm, without, however, being shaken out of their self-satisfaction. The Ducde Grammont's speech on the 6th of July, which amounted to the statementthat France was not going to stand any Hohenzollern on the throne ofSpain, made the people fancy themselves deeply offended by the King ofPrussia, and a current of martial exasperation ran through the irritableand misled people, who for four years had felt themselves humiliated byPrussia's strong position. All said and believed that in a week therewould be war, and on both sides everything was so ordered that theremight be. There was still hope that common sense might get the better ofwarlike madness in the French Government; but this much was clear, therewas going to be a sudden downfall of everything. 

Between Dover and Calais the waves beat over the ship. From Dover, thetrain went at a speed of sixty miles an hour, and made one think him agreat man who invented the locomotive, as great as Aristotle and Platotogether. It seemed to me that John Stuart Mill was that kind of man. Heopened, not roads, but railroads; his books were like iron rails, unadorned, but useful, leading to their goal. And what will there was inthe English locomotive that drew our train, --like the driving instinctof England's character!

Two things struck me on my journey across, a type of mechanicalProtestant religiosity which was new to me, and the knowledge of the twolanguages along the coasts. A pleasant English doctor with whom I gotinto conversation sat reading steadily in a little Gospel of St. Johnthat he carried with him, yawning as he read. The seamen on the ship andthe coast dwellers both in England and France spoke English and Frenchwith about equal ease. It is probably the same in all border countries, but it occurred to me that what came about here quite naturally will intime be a possibility all over the world, namely, the mastery of asecond and common language, in addition to a people's own. 

I drove into London through a sea of houses. When I had engaged a room, changed my clothes, and written a letter that I wanted to send off atonce, the eighteen-year-old girl who waited on me informed me that noletters were accepted on Sundays. As I had some little difficulty inmaking out what she said, I supposed she had misunderstood my questionand thought I wanted to speak to the post-official. For I could not helplaughing at the idea that even the letterboxes had to enjoy theirSabbath rest. But I found she was right. At the post-office, even theletter-box was shut, as it was Sunday; I was obliged to put my letter ina pillar-box in the street. 

In Paris the Summer heat had been oppressive. In London, to my surprise, the weather was fresh and cool, the air as light as it is in Denmark inAutumn. My first visit was to the Greek and Assyrian collections in theBritish Museum. In the Kensington Museum and the Crystal Palace atSydenham, I added to my knowledge of Michael Angelo, to whom I feltdrawn by a mighty affection. The admiration for his art which was toendure undiminished all my life was even then profound. I early feltthat although Michael Angelo had his human weaknesses and limitations, intellectually and as an artist he is one of the five or six elect theworld has produced, and scarcely any other great man has made such animpression on my inner life as he. 

In the British Museum I was accosted by a young Dane with whom I hadsometimes ridden out in the days of my riding lessons; this was CarlBech, now a landed proprietor, and in his company I saw many of thesights of London and its environs. He knew more English than I, andcould find his way anywhere. That the English are rigid in theirconventions, he learnt one day to his discomfort; he had put on a pairof white trousers, and as this was opposed to the usual precedent anddispleased, we were stared at by every man, woman and child we met, asif the young man had gone out in his underclothing. I had a similarexperience one day as I was walking about the National Gallery with ayoung German lady whose acquaintance I had made. An Englishwoman stoppedher in one of the rooms to ask:

"Was it you who gave up a check parasol downstairs?" and receiving ananswer in the affirmative, she burst out laughing in her face and wentoff. 

On July 16th came the great daily-expected news. War was declared, andin face of this astounding fact and all the possibilities it presented, people were struck dumb. The effect it had upon me personally was that Imade up my mind to return as soon as possible to France, to watch themovement there. In London, where Napoleon III. Was hated, and in ameasure despised, France was included in the aversion felt for him. Everywhere, when I was asked on which side my sympathies were, theybroke in at once: "We are all for Prussia. "

XVIII. 

As often as I could, I took the train to Blackheath to visit John StuartMill. He was good and great, and I felt myself exceedingly attracted byhis greatness. There were fundamental features of his thought and modeof feeling that coincided with inclinations of my own; for instance, theUtilitarian theory, as founded by Bentham and his father and developedby him. I had written in 1868: "What we crave is no longer to flee fromsociety and reality with our thoughts and desires. On the contrary, wewish to put our ideas into practice in society and life. That we may notbecome a nation of poetasters, we will simply strive towards actuality, the definite goal of Utility, which the past generation mocked at. Whowould not be glad to be even so little useful?"

Thus I found myself mentally in a direction that led me towards Mill, and through many years' study of Comte and Littré, through anacquaintance with Mill's correspondence with Comte, I was prepared forphilosophical conversations concerning the fundamental thoughts ofempiric philosophy as opposed to speculative philosophy, conversationswhich, on Mill's part, tended to represent my entire Universityphilosophical education at Copenhagen as valueless and wrong. 

But what drew me the most strongly to Mill was not similarity ofthought, but the feeling of an opposed relationship. All my life I hadbeen afraid of going further in a direction towards which I inclined. Ihad always had a passionate desire to perfect my nature--to make good mydefects. Julius Lange was so much to me because he was so unlike me. NowI endeavoured to understand Mill's nature and make it my own, because itwas foreign to mine. By so doing I was only obeying an inner voice thatperpetually urged me. When others about me had plunged into a subject, alanguage, a period, they continued to wrestle with it to all eternity, made the thing their speciality. That I had a horror of. I knew Frenchwell; but for fear of losing myself in French literature, which I couldeasily illustrate, I was always wrestling with English or German, whichpresented greater difficulties to me, but made it impossible for me togrow narrow. I had the advantage over the European reading world that Iknew the Northern languages, but nothing was further from my thoughtsthan to limit myself to opening up Northern literature to Europe. Thusit came about that when the time in my life arrived that I feltcompelled to settle outside Denmark I chose for my place of residenceBerlin, the city with which I had fewest points in common, and where Icould consequently learn most and develop myself without one-sidedness. 

Mill's verbally expressed conviction that empiric philosophy was theonly true philosophy, made a stronger impression upon me than anyassertion of the kind that I had met with in printed books. The resultsof empiric philosophy seemed to me much more firmly based than those ofthe newer German philosophy. At variance with my teachers, I had come tosee that Hume had been right rather than Kant. But I could not conformto the principle of empiric philosophy. After all, our knowledge is notultimately based merely on experience, but on that which, prior toexperience, alone renders experience possible. Otherwise not even thepropositions of Mathematics can be universally applicable. In spite ofmy admiration for Mill's philosophical works, I was obliged to hold tothe rationalistic theory of cognition; Mill obstinately held to theempiric. "Is not a reconciliation between the two possible?" I said. "Ithink that one must _choose_ between the theories, " replied Mill. Idid not then know Herbert Spencer's profoundly thoughtful reconciliationof the teachings of the two opposing schools. He certainly maintains, asdoes the English school, that all our ideas have their root inexperience, but he urges at the same time, with the Germans, that thereare innate ideas. The conscious life of the individual, that cannot beunderstood from the experience of the individual, becomes explicablefrom the inherited experience of the race. Even the intellectual formwhich is the condition of the individual's apprehension is graduallymade up out of the experience of the race, and consequently innatewithout for that reason being independent of foregoing experiences. ButI determined at once, incited thereto by conversations with Mill, tostudy, not only his own works, but the writings of James Mill, Bain, andHerbert Spencer; I would endeavour to find out how much truth theycontained, and introduce this truth into Denmark. 

I was very much surprised when Mill informed me that he had not read aline of Hegel, either in the original or in translation, and regardedthe entire Hegelian philosophy as sterile and empty sophistry. Imentally confronted this with the opinion of the man at the CopenhagenUniversity who knew the history of philosophy best, my teacher, HansBröchner, who knew, so to speak, nothing of contemporary English andFrench philosophy, and did not think them worth studying. I came to theconclusion that here was a task for one who understood the thinkers ofthe two directions, who did not mutually understand one another. 

I thought that in philosophy, too, I knew what I wanted, and saw a roadopen in front of me. 

However, I never travelled it. The gift for abstract philosophicalthought which I had possessed as a youth was never developed, but muchlike the tendency to verse-making which manifested itself even earlier, superseded by the historio-critical capacity, which grew strong in me. At that time I believed in my natural bent for philosophy, and did soeven in July, 1872, when I sketched out and began a large book: "_TheAssociation of Ideas, conceived and put forward as the fundamentalprinciple of human knowledge_, " but the book was never completed. Thecapacity for abstraction was too weak in me. 

Still, if the capacity had no independent development, it had asubservient effect on all my criticism, and the conversations with Millhad a fertilising and helpful influence on my subsequent intellectuallife. 

XIX. 

Some weeks passed in seeing the most important public buildings inLondon, revelling in the treasures of her museums and collections, andin making excursions to places in the neighbourhood and to Oxford. I wasabsorbed by St. Paul's, saw it from end to end, and from top to bottom, stood in the crypt, where Sir Christopher Wren lies buried, --_Simonumentum requiris, circumspice_--mentally compared Wellington'sburial-place here with that of Napoleon on the other side of theChannel, then went up to the top of the building and looked out to everyside over London, which I was already so well acquainted with that Icould find my way everywhere alone, take the right omnibuses, and theright trains by the underground, without once asking my way. I spentblissful hours in the National Gallery. This choice collection ofpaintings, especially the Italian ones, afforded me the intense, overwhelming delight which poetry, the masterpieces of which I knewalready, could no longer offer me. At the Crystal Palace I wasfascinated by the tree-ferns, as tall as fruit-trees with us, and by thereproductions of the show buildings of the different countries, anEgyptian temple, a house from Pompeii, the Lions' den from the Alhambra. Here, as everywhere, I sought out the Zoological Gardens, where Ilingered longest near the hippopotami, who were as curious to watch whenswimming as when they were on dry land. Their clumsiness was almostcaptivating. They reminded me of some of my enemies at home. 

Oxford, with the moss-grown, ivy-covered walls, with all the poetry ofconservatism, fascinated me by its dignity and its country freshness;there the flower of the English nature was expressed in buildings andtrees. The antiquated and non-popular instruction, however, repelled me. And the old classics were almost unrecognisable in English guise, forinstance, the anglicised _veni, vidi, vici_, which was quoted by astudent. 

The contrast between the English and the French mind was presented to mein all its force when I compared Windsor Castle with Versailles. Theformer was an old Northern Hall, in which the last act ofOehlenschläger's _Palnatoke_ would have been well staged. 

I saw all that I could: the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hall andAbbey, the Tower and the theatres, the Picture Gallery at Dulwich withRembrandt's _Girl at the Window_, the one at Hampton Court, withthe portrait of Loyola ascribed to Titian, sailed down the river toGreenwich and lingered in the lovely Gardens at Kew, which gave me aluxuriant impression of English scenery. I also saw the Queen's modelfarm. Every animal was as splendid a specimen as if it had been intendedfor an agricultural show, the dairy walls were tiled all over. Thebailiff regretted that Prince Albert, who had himself made the drawingsfor a special kind of milk containers, had not lived to see them made. It was not without its comic aspect to hear him inform you sadly, concerning an old bullock, that the Queen herself had given it the nameof _Prince Albert_. 

For me, accustomed to the gay and grotesque life deployed in an eveningat the dancing-place of the Parisian students in the _Closerie deslilas_, it was instructive to compare this with a low Englishdancing-house, the Holborn Casino, which was merely sad, stiff, andrepulsive. 

Poverty in London was very much more conspicuous than in Paris; itspread itself out in side streets in the vicinity of the main arteriesin its most pitiable form. Great troops, regular mobs of poor men, womenand children in rags, dispersed like ghosts at dawn, fled away hurriedlyand vanished, as soon as a policeman approached and made sign to them topass on. There was nothing corresponding to it to be seen in Paris. Crime, too, bore a very different aspect here. In Paris, it was deckedout and audacious, but retained a certain dignity; here, in the evening, in thickly frequented streets, whole swarms of ugly, wretchedly dressed, half or wholly drunken women could be seen reeling about, falling, andoften lying in the street. 

Both the tendency of the English to isolate themselves and their socialinstincts were quite different from those of the French. I was permittedto see the comfortably furnished Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall, membershipof which was so much desired that people of high standing would havetheir names on the list for years beforehand, and these clubscorresponded to the cafés in Paris, which were open to every passer-by. I noticed that in the restaurants the tables were often hidden behindhigh screens, that the different parties who were dining might not beable to see one another. 

XX. 

The house in London where I was happiest was Antonio Gallenga's. Aletter from the Hauchs was my introduction there, and I was received andtaken up by them as if they had known me and liked me for years. 

Antonio Gallenga, then a man of seventy, who nevertheless gave one animpression of youthfulness, had a most eventful life behind him. He hadbeen born at Parma, was flung into prison at the age of twenty as aconspirator under Mazzini, was banished from Piedmont, spent some timeat Malta, in the United States and in England, where he earned hisliving as a journalist and teacher of languages, and in 1848 returned toItaly, where he was active as a liberal politician. After the battle ofNovara, he was again obliged to take refuge in London; but he wasrecalled to Piedmont by Cavour, who had him elected deputy forCastellamonte. He wrote an Italian Grammar in English, and, likewise inEnglish, the _History of Piedmont_, quarrelled with Mazzini'sadherents, withdrew from parliamentary life, and in preference tosettling down permanently in Italy elected to be war correspondent tothe _Times_. In that capacity he took part from 1859 onwards in thecampaigns in Italy, in the North American States, in Denmark, and inSpain. His little boy was still wearing the Spanish national costume. Now he had settled down in London, on the staff of the _Times_, andhad just come into town from the country, as the paper wished him to benear, on account of the approaching war. Napoleon III. , to whom Gallengahad vowed an inextinguishable hatred, had been studied so closely by himthat the Emperor might be regarded as his specialty. He used theenergetic, violent language of the old revolutionary, was with all hisheart and soul an Italian patriot, but had, through a twenty years'connection with England, acquired the practical English view ofpolitical affairs. Towards Denmark, where he had been during the mostcritical period of the country's history, he felt kindly; but our warmethods had of course not been able to excite his admiration; neitherhad our diplomatic negotiations during the war. 

Gallenga was a well-to-do man; he owned a house in the best part ofLondon and a house in the country as well. He was a powerful man, withpassionate feelings, devoid of vanity. It suited him well that the_Times_, as the English custom is, printed his articles unsigned;he was pleased at the increased influence they won thereby, inasmuch asthey appeared as the expression of the universal paper's verdict. Hiswife was an Englishwoman, pleasant and well-bred, of cosmopolitaneducation and really erudite. Not only did she know the Europeanlanguages, but she wrote and spoke Hindustani. She was a splendidspecimen of the English housekeeper, and devoted herselfenthusiastically to her two exceedingly beautiful children, a boy ofeleven and a little girl of nine. The children spoke English, Italian, French, and German with equal facility and correctness. 

Mrs. Gallenga had a more composite and a deeper nature than her husband, who doubted neither the truth of his ideas, nor their salutary power. She shared his and my opinions without sharing our confidence in them. When she heard me say that I intended to assert my ideas in Denmark, andwage war against existing prejudices, she would say, in our longconversations:

"I am very fond of Denmark; the people there seem to me to be happy, despite everything, and the country not to be over-populated. In anycase, the population finds ample means of outlet in sea-life andemigration. Denmark is an idyllic little country. Now you want todeclare war there. My thoughts seek down in dark places, and I askmyself whether I really believe that truth does any good, whether in mysecret heart I am convinced that strife is better than stagnation? Iadmire Oliver Cromwell, but I sympathise with Falkland, who died with'Peace! Peace!' [Footnote: Sir Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, who fell at Newbury, Sept. 20, 1643. ] on his lips. I am afraid that youwill have to bear a great deal. You will learn that the accoutrements oftruth are a grievously heavy coat of mail. You will call forth reaction. Even that is the least. But reaction will come about in your own mind;after a long time, I mean. Still, you are strong; it will be a reactionof the kind that keeps aloof in order to spring farther and better. Yourunity will not go to pieces. You are a kind of cosmos. "

When the conversation turned upon England and English conditions, sheprotested against the opinion prevalent on the continent since Byron'sday, that English society was infested with hypocrisy. 

"I do not think that hypocrisy is characteristic of English thought. Wehave, of course, like every serious people, our share of hypocrites; ina frivolous nation hypocrisy has no pretext for existence. But itssupremacy amongst us is over. Apathetic orthodoxy, and superficial ideasof the correct thing, ruled England during the first half of thecentury. The intellectual position of the country is different now. Noone who has not lived in England has any idea how serious and real thebelief here is in the tough doctrine of the Trinity, who, in human form, walked about in Galilee. Good men, noble men, live and work for thisdogma, perform acts of love for it. We, you and I, have drunk from othersources; but for these people it is the fountain of life. Only it isdepressing to see this doctrine in its Roman Catholic form winninggreater power everywhere every day. In Denmark, intellectual stagnationhas hindered it hitherto; you have political, but not yet religious, freedom. Belgium has both, and Belgium is at the present time the mostfiery Catholic power there is. France is divided between extremematerialism and Madonna worship. When European thought--between 1820 and1860, let us say--rebelled against every kind of orthodoxy, and, asalways happens with rebellion, made mistakes and went too far, Franceplayed a wretched rôle. It is a Celtic land, and Celtic it will remain;it desires, not personal freedom, but a despotic levelling, not equalitybefore the law, but the base equality which is inimical to excellence, not the brotherhood that is brotherly love, but that which gives the badthe right to share with the good. That is why the Empire could bevictorious in France, and that is why the Roman Catholic Church, even inits most modern, Byzantine form, is triumphant there. "

So thoroughly English was Anna Gallenga's way of looking at things, inspite of an education which had included the chief countries in Europe. So blindly did she share the prejudice that the French are essentiallyCeltic. And so harshly did she judge, in spite of a scepticism, femininethough it was, that was surprising in a woman. 

XXI. 

Don Juan Prim, Count of Reus, Marques de los Castillejos, would now beforgotten outside Spain were it not that Régnault's splendid equestrianpicture of him, as he is receiving the homage of the people (on a fierysteed, reminding one of Velasquez), keeps his memory green in everyonewho visits the Gallery of the Louvre. At that time his name was on everytongue. The victorious general and revolutionary of many years' standinghad since 1869 been Prime Minister of Spain, and had eagerly endeavouredto get a foreign prince for the throne who would be dependent upon himand under whom he would be able to keep the power in his own hands. Hehad now offered the throne of Spain to Leopold of Hohenzollern, butwithout having assured himself of the consent of the Powers. That ofPrussia was of course safe enough, and for six weeks Napoleon had lookedon benevolently at the negotiations, and acted as though the arrangementhad his approval, which Prim had the more reason to suppose sinceLeopold was related to the Murat family, and the Emperor had raised noobjection to a Hohenzollern ascending the throne of Roumania. Consequently, Prim was thunderstruck when France suddenly turned roundand seized upon this trivial pretext for a breach of the peace. 

He was in regular correspondence with the Gallengas, whom he had seen agood deal of during the years, after the unsuccessful rebellion againstQueen Isabella, that he had spent in London. At that time he had been aman of fifty, and, with his little body and large head, had looked verystrange among Englishmen. He was of modest birth, but denied the fact. He was now a Spanish grandee of the first class, but this was through apatent bestowed on him for courage in the war with Morocco; he hadlittle education, did not know a word of English, wrote French with apurely fantastic orthography, but had excellent qualities as a Liberal, an army chief, and a popular leader. Still, he was not pleased thatRégnault had painted him greeted by the enthusiastic cheers of anuntidy, ragged mob of rebels; he would have preferred to be receivingthe acclamations of regular troops, and of the highest men and women inthe nation, as now, at the conclusion of his career, he really was. Onlya few months later (in December, 1870), he was shot by an assassin inthe streets of Madrid. 

In Prim's communications to Gallenga, the attitude of the Frenchgovernment appeared to me in a most unfavourable light. Ollivier, thePremier, I had long despised; it did not need much political acumen tosee that he was an ambitious and conceited phrase-monger, who would lethimself be led by the nose by those who had disarmed him. The Emperorhimself was a wreck. I had had no doubt of that since I had one day seenhim at very close quarters in the Louvre, where he was inspecting somerecently hung, decorative paintings. It was quite evident that he couldnot walk alone, but advanced, half-sliding, supported by two tallchamberlains, who each gave him an arm. His eyes were half-closed andhis gaze absolutely dulled. The dressed and waxed moustache, which ranto a needle-like point, looked doubly tasteless against his wax mask ofa face. He was the incarnation of walking decrepitude, vapid and slack. Quite evidently he had committed the blunder of trusting to a split inGermany. In his blindness he explained that he had come to free theGermans, who had, against their will, been incorporated into Prussia, and all Germany rose like one man against him. And in his foolishproclamation he declared that he was waging this war for the sake of thecivilising ideals of the first Republic, as if Germany were now going tobe civilised for the first time, and as if he, who had made an end ofthe second Republic by a _coup d'état_, could speak in the name ofRepublican freedom. His whole attitude was mendacious and mean, and thewretched pretext under which he declared war could not but prejudiceEurope against him. In addition to this, as they knew very well inEngland, from the earlier wars of the Empire, he had no generals; hisvictories had been soldier victories. 

I was very deeply impressed, in the next place, by the suicide ofPrévost-Paradol. I had studied most carefully his book, _La FranceNouvelle_; I had seen in this friend and comrade of Taine and ofRenan the political leader of the future in France. No one was so wellacquainted with its resources as he; no one knew better than he whatpolicy ought to be followed. If he had despaired, it was because heforesaw that the situation was hopeless. He had certainly made mistakes;first, in believing that in January it had been Napoleon's seriousintention to abrogate personal control of the state, then that ofretaining, despite the long hesitation so well known to me, his positionas French Envoy to North America, after the plebiscite. That he shouldnow have turned his pistol against his own forehead told me that heregarded the battle as lost, foresaw inevitable collapse as the outcomeof the war. When at first all the rumours and all the papers announcedthe extreme probability of Denmark's taking part in the war as France'sally, I was seized with a kind of despair at the thought of the follyshe seemed to be on the verge of committing. I wrote to my friends, would have liked, had I been permitted, to write in every Danish paper awarning against the martial madness that had seized upon people. It wasonly apparently shared by the French. Even now, only a week after thedeclaration of war, and before a single collision had taken place, itwas clear to everyone who carefully followed the course of events thatin spite of the light-hearted bragging of the Parisians and the Press, there was deep-rooted aversion to war. And I, who had always countedVoltaire's _Micromégas_ as one of my favourite tales, thought ofwhere Sirius, the giant, voices his supposition that the people on theearth are happy beings who pass their time in love and thought, and ofthe philosopher's reply to him: "At this moment there are a hundredthousand animals of our species, who wear hats, engaged in killing ahundred thousand more, who wear turbans, or in being killed by them. Andso it has been all over the earth from time immemorial. " Only that thistime not a hundred thousand, but some two million men were being held inreadiness to exterminate each other. 

What I saw in London of the scenic art at the Adelphi Theatre, thePrince of Wales' Theatre and the Royal Strand Theatre was disheartening. Molière was produced as the lowest kind of farce, Sheridan was actedworse than would be permitted in Denmark at a second-class theatre; butthe scenic decorations, a greensward, shifting lights, and the like, surpassed anything that I had ever seen before. 

More instructive and more fascinating than the theatres were theparliamentary debates and the trials in the Law Courts. I enjoyed inparticular a sitting of the Commons with a long debate between Gladstoneand Disraeli, who were like representatives of two races and two opposedviews of life. Gladstone was in himself handsomer, clearer, and moreopen, Disraeli spoke with a finer point, and more elegantly, had alarger oratorical compass, more often made a witty hit, and evoked morevigorous response and applause. Their point of disagreement was theforthcoming war; Disraeli wished all the documents regarding it to belaid before parliament; Gladstone declared that he could not producethem. In England, as elsewhere, the war that was just breaking outdominated every thought. 

XXII. 

The Paris I saw again was changed. Even on my way from Calais I heard, to my astonishment, the hitherto strictly forbidden _Marseillaise_hummed and muttered. In Paris, people went arm in arm about the streetssinging, and the _Marseillaise_ was heard everywhere. The voiceswere generally harsh, and it was painful to hear the song that hadbecome sacred through having been silenced so long, profaned in thiswise, in the bawling and shouting of half-drunken men at night. But thefollowing days, as well, it was hummed, hooted, whistled and sungeverywhere, and as the French are one of the most unmusical nations onearth, it sounded for the most part anything but agreeable. 

In those days, while no collision between the masses of troops had asyet taken place, there was a certain cheerfulness over Paris; it couldbe detected in every conversation; people were more lively, raised theirvoices more, chatted more than at other times; the cabmen growled moreloudly, and cracked their whips more incessantly than usual. 

Assurance of coming victory was expressed everywhere, even among thehotel servants in the Rue Racine and on the lips of the waiters at everyrestaurant. Everybody related how many had already volunteered; thenumber grew from day to day; first it was ten thousand, then seventy-five thousand, then a hundred thousand. In the Quartier Latin, thestudents sat in their cafés, many of them in uniform, surrounded bytheir comrades, who were bidding them good-bye. It was characteristicthat they no longer had their womenfolk with them; they had flung themaside, now that the matter was serious. Every afternoon a long stream ofcarriages, filled with departing young soldiers, could be seen movingout towards the Gare du Nord. From every carriage large flags waved. Women, their old mothers, workwomen, who sat in the carriages with them, held enormous bouquets on long poles. The dense mass of people throughwhich one drove were grave; but the soldiers for the most part retainedtheir gaiety, made grimaces, smoked and drank. 

Nevertheless, the Emperor's proclamation had made a very poorimpression. It was with the intention of producing an effect ofsincerity that he foretold the war would be long and grievous, (_longue et pénible_); with a people of the French nationalcharacter it would have been better had he been able to write "terrible, but short. " Even now, when people had grown accustomed to the situation, this proclamation hung like a nightmare over them. I was all the moreastonished when an old copy of the _Daily Paper_ for the 30th ofJuly fell into my hands, and I read that their correspondent (Topsöe, recently arrived in Paris) had seen a bloused workman tear off his hat, after reading the proclamation, and heard him shout, "_Vive laFrance_!" So thoughtlessly did people continue to feed the Danishpublic with the food to which it was accustomed. 

Towards the 8th or 9th of August I met repeatedly the author of thearticle. He told me that the Duc de Cadore had appeared in Copenhagen ona very indefinite errand, but without achieving the slightest result. Topsöe, for that matter, was extraordinarily ignorant of French affairs, had only been four weeks in France altogether, and openly admitted thathe had touched up his correspondence as well as he could. He had neveryet been admitted to the _Corps législatif_, nevertheless he hadrelated how the tears had come into the eyes of the members and thetribunes the day when the Duc de Grammont "again lifted the flag ofFrance on high. " He said: "I have been as unsophisticated as a childover this war, " and added that Bille had been more so than himself. 

XXIII. 

One could hardly praise the attitude of the French papers between thedeclaration of war and the first battles. Their boasting and exultationover what they were going to do was barely decent, they could talk ofnothing but the victories they were registering beforehand, and, firstand last, the entry into Berlin. The insignificant encounter atSaarbrücken was termed everywhere the _première victoire!_ Thecaricatures in the shop-windows likewise betrayed terrible arrogance. One was painfully reminded of the behaviour of the French before thebattle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's _Henry V. _

It was no matter for surprise that a populace thus excited should paradethrough the streets in an evening, shouting _"A Berlin! A Berlin!"_

National enthusiasm could vent itself in the theatres, in a mostconvenient manner, without making any sacrifice. As soon as the audiencehad seen the first piece at the Théâtre Français, the public clamouredfor _La Marseillaise_, and brooked no denial. A few minutes laterthe lovely Mlle. 

Agar came in, in a Greek costume. Two French flags were held over herhead. She then sang, quietly, sublimely, with expression at the sametime restrained and inspiring, the _Marseillaise_. The countlessvariations of her voice were in admirable keeping with her animated andyet sculptural gesticulation, and the effect was thrilling, althoughcertain passages in the song were hardly suitable to the circumstancesof the moment, for instance, the invocation of Freedom, the prayer toher to fight for her defenders. When the last verse came, she seized theflag and knelt down; the audience shouted, "_Debout_!" All rose andlistened standing to the conclusion, which was followed by mad applause. 

People seized upon every opportunity of obtruding their patriotism. Oneevening _Le lion amoureux_ was given. In the long speech whichconcludes the second act, a young Republican describes the army which, during the Revolution, crossed the frontier for the first time andutterly destroyed the Prussian armies. The whole theatre foamed like thesea. 

XXIV. 

Those were Summer days, and in spite of the political and martialexcitement, the peaceful woods and parks in the environs of Paris weretempting. From the Quartier Latin many a couple secretly found their wayto the forests of St. Germain, or the lovely wood at Chantilly. In themorning one bought a roast fowl and a bottle of wine, then spent thegreater part of the day under the beautiful oak-trees, and sat down toone's meal in the pleasant green shade. Now and again one of the youngwomen would make a wreath of oak leaves and twine it round hercompanion's straw hat, while he, bareheaded, lay gazing up at the tree-tops. For a long time I kept just such a wreath as a remembrance, andits withered leaves roused melancholy reflections some years later, forduring the war every tree of the Chantilly wood had been felled; thewreath was all that remained of the magnificent oak forest. 

XXV. 

The news of the battle of Weissenburg on August 4th was a trouble, butthis chiefly manifested itself in profound astonishment. What? They hadsuffered a defeat? But one did not begin to be victorious at once;victory would soon follow now. And, indeed, next morning, the news of avictory ran like lightning about the town. It had been so confidentlyexpected that people quite neglected to make enquiries as to how and towhat extent it was authenticated. There was bunting everywhere; all thehorses had flags on their heads, people went about with little flags intheir hats. As the day wore on it turned out to be all a false report, and the depression was great. 

Next evening, as I came out of the _Théâtre Français_, there stoodthe Emperor's awful telegram to read, several copies of it posted up onthe columns of the porch: "Macmahon has lost a battle. Frossard isretreating. Put Paris in a condition of defence as expeditiously aspossible!" Then, like everyone else, I understood the extent of themisfortune. Napoleon had apparently lost his head; it was veryunnecessary to publish the conclusion of the telegram. 

Immediately afterwards was issued the Empress' proclamation, which wasalmost silly. "I am with you, " it ran--a charming consolation for theParisians. 

Astonishment produced a kind of paralysis; anger looked round for anobject on which to vent itself, but hardly knew whom to select. Besides, people had really insufficient information as to what had happened. The_Siècle_ printed a fairly turbulent article at once, but noexciting language in the papers was required. Even a foreigner couldperceive that if it became necessary to defend Paris after a seconddefeat, the Empire would be at an end. 

The exasperation which had to vent itself was directed at first againstthe Ministers, and ridiculously enough the silence imposed on the Pressconcerning the movements of the troops (_le mutisme_) was blamedfor the defeat at Weissenburg; then the exasperation swung back and wasdirected against the generals, who were dubbed negligent and incapable, until, ponderously and slowly, it turned against the Emperor himself. 

But with the haste that characterises French emotion, and the rapiditywith which events succeeded one another, even this exasperation was ofshort duration. It raged for a few days, and then subsided for want ofcontradiction of its own accord, for the conviction spread that theEmperor's day was irrevocably over and that he continued to exist onlyin name. A witness to the rapidity of this _volte face_ were threeconsecutive articles by Edmond About in _Le Soir_. The first, written from his estate in Saverne, near Strassburg. Was extremelybitter against the Emperor; it began: "_Napoleone tertio feliciterregnante_, as people said in the olden days, I have seen with my owneyes, what I never thought to see: Alsace overrun by the enemy'stroops. " The next article, written some days later, in the middle ofAugust, when About had come to Paris, called the Emperor, without moreado, "The last Bonaparte, " and began: "I see that I have been writinglike a true provincial; in the provinces at the moment people have twocurses on their lips, one for the Prussians, and one for those who beganthe war; in Paris, they have got much farther; there they have only onecurse on their lips, one thought, and one wish; there are names that areno more mentioned in Paris than if they belonged to the twelfthcentury. "

What he wrote was, at the moment, true and correct. I was frequentlyasked in letters what the French now said about the government and theEmperor. The only answer was that all that side of the question wasantiquated in Paris. If I were to say to one of my acquaintances:_"Eh! bien, que dites-vous de l'empereur_?" the reply would be:_"Mais, mon cher, je ne dis rien de lui. Vous voyez si bien que moi, qu'il ne compte plus. C'est un homme par terre. Tout le monde le sait;la gauche même ne l'attaque plus. "_ Even General Trochu, the Governorof the capital, did not mention Napoleon's name in his proclamation toParis. He himself hardly dared to send any messages. After having beenobliged to surrender the supreme command, he followed the army, like amock emperor, a kind of onlooker, a superfluous piece on the board. People said of him: "_On croit qu'il se promène un peu aux environs deChâlons. _"

As can be seen from this, the deposition of the Emperor had taken placein people's consciousness, and was, so to speak, publicly settled, several weeks before the battle of Sedan brought with it his surrenderto the King of Prussia and the proclamation of the French Republic. TheRevolution of September 4th was not an overturning of things; it wasmerely the ratification of a state of affairs that people were alreadyagreed upon in the capital, and had been even before the battle ofGravelotte. 

In Paris preparations were being made with the utmost energy for thedefence of the city. All men liable to bear arms were called up, andhuge numbers of volunteers were drilled. It was an affecting sight tosee the poor workmen drilling on the Place du Carrousel for enrolment inthe volunteer corps. Really, most of them looked so bloodless andwretched that one was tempted to think they went with the rest for thesake of the franc a day and uniform. 

XXVI. 

Anyone whose way led him daily past the fortifications could see, however technically ignorant he might be, that they were exceedinglyinsignificant. Constantly, too, one heard quoted Trochu's words: "Idon't delude myself into supposing that I can stop the Prussians withthe matchsticks that are being planted on the ramparts. " Strangelyenough, Paris shut herself in with such a wall of masonry that indriving through it in the Bois de Boulogne, there was barely room for acarriage with two horses. They bored loop-holes in these walls andramparts, but few doubted that the German artillery would be able todestroy all their defences with the greatest ease. 

Distribute arms to the civil population, as the papers unanimouslydemanded, from readily comprehensible reasons, no one dared to do. TheEmpress' Government had to hold out for the existing state of things;nevertheless, in Paris, --certainly from about the 8th August, --peoplewere under the impression that what had been lost was lost irrevocably. 

I considered it would be incumbent upon my honour to return to Denmark, if we were drawn into the war, and I lived with this thought before myeyes. I contemplated with certainty an approaching revolution in France;I was vexed to think that there was not one conspicuously great andenergetic man among the leaders of the Opposition, and that such a poorwretch as Rochefort was once more daily mentioned and dragged to thefront. Of Gambetta no one as yet thought, although his name wasrespected, since he had made himself felt the last season as the mostvehement speaker in the Chamber. But it was not speakers who werewanted, and people did not know that he was a man of action. 

The Ministry that followed Ollivier's inspired me with no confidence. Palikao, the Prime Minister, was termed in the papers an _iron man_(the usual set phrase). It was said that he "would not scruple to clearthe boulevards with grape"; but the genius needed for such a performancewas not overwhelming. What he had to do was to clear France of theGermans, and that was more difficult. 

Renan had had to interrupt the journey to Spitzbergen which he hadundertaken in Prince Napoleon's company; the Prince and his party hadonly reached Tromsöe, when they were called back on account of the war, and Renan was in a state of the most violent excitement. He said: "Nopunishment could be too great for that brainless scoundrel Ollivier, andthe Ministry that has followed his is worse. Every thinking man couldsee for himself that the declaration of this war was madness. (_A-t-onjamais vu pareille folie, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, c'est navrant. Nous sommesun peuple désarçonné. _)" In his eyes, Palikao was no better than arobber, Jérôme David than a murderer. He considered the fall ofStrasburg imminent. He was less surprised than I at the unboundedincapacity shown by the French fleet under the difficult conditions; allplans for a descent on Northern Germany had already been given up, andthe French fleet was unable to set about even so much as a blockade ofthe ports, such as the Danes had successfully carried out six yearsbefore. 

Taine was as depressed as Renan. He had returned from Germany, where hehad gone to prepare a treatise on Schiller, on account of the suddendeath of Madame Taine's mother. As early as August 2d, when no battlehad as yet been fought, he felt exceedingly anxious, and he was thefirst Frenchman whom I heard take into consideration the possibility ofthe defeat of France; he expressed great sorrow that two nations such asFrance and Germany should wage national war against each other as theywere doing. "I have just come from Germany, " he remarked, "where I havetalked with many brave working-men. When I think of what it means for aman to be born into the world, nursed, brought up, instructed, andequipped; when I think what struggling and difficulties he must gothrough himself to be fit for the battle of life, and then reflect howall that is to be flung into the grave as a lump of bleeding flesh, howcan I do other than grieve! With two such statesmen as Louis Philippe, war could certainly have been averted, but with two quarrelsome men likeBismarck and Napoleon at the head of affairs, it was, of course, inevitable. "

Philarète Chasles saw in the defeats a confirmation of the theory thathe proclaimed, day in, day out, namely: that the Latin races were on therapid down-grade; Spain and Portugal, Italy, Roumania, the SouthAmerican republics, were, in his opinion, in a state of moralputrefaction, France a sheer Byzantium. It had been a piece offoolhardiness without parallel to try to make this war a decisive racialstruggle between the nation that, as Protestant, brought free researchin its train and one which had not yet been able to get rid of the Popeand political despotism. Now France was paying the penalty. 

Out in the country at Meudon, where he was, there had--probably fromcarelessness--occurred repeated explosions, the last time on August20th. Twenty cases of cartridges had just been sent to Bazaine; ahundred still remained, which were to start the day that they wereurgently required. They blew up, and no one in the town doubted that theexplosion was the work of Prussian spies. For things had come to such apass that people saw Prussian spies everywhere. (During the first monthof the war all Germans were called Prussians. ) Importance was attachedto the fact that General Frossard's nephew, a young lieutenant who laywounded in Chasles' tower-house, from a sword-thrust in the chest, andwas usually delirious, at the crash had jumped up and come to hissenses, crying out: "It is treachery! It is Chamber No. 6 blowing up!"As a matter of fact, that was where the cartridges were. It was saidthat at Meudon traces had been found of the same explosive as had beenused in bombs against the Emperor during the first days of May (a plotthat had probably been hatched by the police). The perpetrator, however, --doubtless for good reasons--was not discovered. 

Whatever vanity there was about old Philarète Chasles left himaltogether during this critical time, which seemed to make good menbetter still. His niece, too, who used to be loud-voiced and conceited, was quite a different person. One day that I was at their house atMeudon, she sat in a corner for a long time crying quietly. Out there, they were all feverishly anxious, could not rest, craved, partly to hearthe latest news, partly to feel the pulse of Paris. One day afterdinner, Chasles invited me to go into town with him, and when we arrivedhe took a carriage and drove about with me for two hours observing theprevailing mood. We heard countless anecdotes, most of them apocryphal, but reflecting the beliefs of the moment: The Empress had sent threemilliards (!) in French gold to the Bank of England. The Emperor, whowas jealous of Macmahon since the latter had rescued him at Magenta, hadtaken the command of the Turcos from the Marshal, although the latterhad said in the Council of War: "The Turcos must be given to me, theywill not obey anyone else. " And true it was that no one else had anycontrol over them. If one had committed theft, or misbehaved himself inany other way, and Macmahon. Whom they called only "Our Marshal, " rodedown the front of their lines and scolded them, they began to cry, rushed up and kissed his feet, and hung to his horse, like childrenasking for forgiveness. And now someone had made the great mistake ofgiving them to another general. And, the commander being anxious todazzle the Germans with them, they and the Zouaves had been sent firstinto the fire, in spite of Bazaine's very sensible observation: "Whenyou drive, you do not begin at a galop. " And so these picked troops werebroken up in their first engagement. It was said that of 2, 500 Turcos, only 29 were left. 

An anecdote like the following, which was told to us, will serve to showhow popular legends grow up, in virtue of the tendency there is toreduce a whole battle to a collision between two generals, just as inthe Homeric age, or in Shakespeare: The Crown Prince of Prussia wasfighting very bravely at Wörth, in the front ranks. That he threw theTurcos into confusion was the result of a ray of sunlight falling on thesilver eagle on his helmet. The Arabs thought it a sign from Heaven. Macmahon, who was shooting in the ranks, was so near the Crown Princethat the latter shouted to him in French: "_Voilà un homme!_" butthe Frenchman surpassed him in chivalrous politeness, for he saluted, and replied: "_Voilà un héros!_"

XXVII. 

After my return to Paris, I had taken lessons from an excellent languageteacher, Mademoiselle Guémain, an old maid who had for many years taughtFrench to Scandinavians, and for whom I wrote descriptions and remarkson what I saw, to acquire practise in written expression. She had knownmost of the principal Northerners who had visited Paris during the lasttwenty years, had taught Magdalene Thoresen, amongst others, when thislatter as a young woman had stayed in Paris. She was an excellentcreature, an unusual woman, intellectual, sensitive, and innocent, whomade an unforgettable impression upon one. Besides the appointed lesson-times, we sometimes talked for hours together. How sad that the lives ofsuch good and exceptional women should vanish and disappear, without anyspecial thanks given to them in their life-times, and with no one of themany whom they have benefitted to tell publicly of their value. Shepossessed all the refinement of the French, together with the modesty ofan old maid, was both personally inexperienced, and by virtue of themuch that she had seen, very experienced in worldly things. I visitedher again in 1889, after the lapse of nineteen years, having learned heraddress through Jonas Lie and his wife, who knew her. I found her older, but still more charming, and touchingly humble. It cut me to the heartto hear her say: _"C'est une vraie charité que vous me faites de venirme voir. "_

Mlle. Guémain was profoundly affected, like everyone else, by what wewere daily passing through during this time of heavy strain. As a woman, she was impressed most by the seriousness which had seized even the mostfrivolous people, and by the patriotic enthusiasm which was spreading inever wider circles. She regarded it as deeper and stronger than as arule it was. 

XXVIII. 

The temper prevailing among my Italian friends was very different. TheItalians, as their way was, were just like children, laughed at thewhole thing, were glad that the Prussians were "drubbing" the French, towhom, as good patriots, they wished every misfortune possible. TheFrench had behaved like tyrants in Italy; now they were being paid out. Besides which, the Prussians would not come to Paris. But if they didcome, they would be nice to them, and invite them to dinner, likefriends. Sometimes I attempted to reply, but came off badly. One daythat I had ventured a remark to a large and ponderous Roman lady, on theingratitude of the Italians towards the French, the good lady jumped asif a knife had been stuck into her, and expatiated passionately on theinfamy of the French. The Romans were, --as everyone knew, --the firstnation on earth. The French had outraged them, had dared to prevent themmaking their town the capital of Italy, by garrisoning it with Frenchsoldiers who had no business there, so that they had themselves askedfor the Nemesis which was now overtaking them, and which the Italianswere watching with flashing eyes. She said this, in spite of her anger, with such dignity, and such a bearing, that one could not but feel that, if she were one day called upon to adorn a throne, she would seatherself upon it as naturally, and as free from embarrassment, as thoughit were nothing but a Roman woman's birthright. 

XXIX. 

In the meantime, defeats and humiliations were beginning to confuse thegood sense of the French, and to lead their instincts astray. The crowdcould not conceive that such things could come about naturally. ThePrussians could not possibly have won by honourable means, but must havebeen spying in France for years. Why else were so many Germans settledin Paris! The French were paying now, not for their faults, but fortheir virtues, the good faith, the hospitality, the innocent welcomethey had given to treacherous immigrants. They had not understood thatthe foreigner from the North was a crafty and deceitful enemy. 

It gradually became uncomfortable for a foreigner in Paris. I never wentout without my passport. But even a passport was no safeguard. It wasenough for someone to make some utterly unfounded accusation, expresssome foolish, chance suspicion, for the non-Frenchman to be maltreatedas a "spy. " Both in Metz and in Paris, in the month of August, peoplewho were taken for "Prussians" were hanged or dismembered. In the latterpart of August the papers reported from the Dordogne that a mob therehad seized a young man, a M. De Moneys, of whom a gang had asserted thathe had shouted _"Vive la Prusse!"_ had stripped him, bound him withropes, carried him out into a field, laid him on a pile of damp wood, and as this would not take fire quick enough, had pushed trusses ofstraw underneath all round him, and burnt him alive. From the_Quartier La Vilette_ in Paris, one heard every day of similarslaughter of innocent persons who the people fancied were Prussianspies. Under such circumstances, a trifle might become fatal. Oneevening at the end of August I had been hearing _L'Africaine_ at thegrand opera, and at the same time Marie Sass' delivery of the_Marseillaise_--she sang as though she had a hundred fine bells inher voice, but she sang the national anthem like an aria. Outside theopera-house I hailed a cab. The coachman was asleep; a man jogged him towake him, and he started to drive. I noticed that during the drive helooked at his watch and then drove on for all that he was worth, as fastas the harness and reins would stand. When I got to the hotel I handedhim his fare and a four sous' tip. He bawled out that it was not enough;he had been _de remise_; he had taken me for someone else, beingwaked so suddenly; he had been bespoken by another gentleman. I laughedand replied that that was his affair, not mine; what had it got to do withme? But as all he could demand, if he had really been _de remise_, was two sous more, and as, under the ordinances prevailing, it wasimpossible to tell whether he was or not, I gave him the two sous; but notip with it, since he had no right to claim it, and I had not theslightest doubt that he was lying. Then he began to croak that it was ashame not to give a _pourboire_, and, seeing that did not helpmatters, as I simply walked up the hotel steps, he shouted in hisill-temper, first _"Vous n'êtes pas Français!"_ and then _"Vousêtes Prussien!"_ No sooner had he said it than all the hotel servantswho were standing in the doorway disappeared, and the people in the streetlistened, stopped, and turned round. I grasped the danger, and flew into apassion. In one bound I was in the road, I rushed at the cabman, seizedhim by the throat and shook my hand, with its knuckle-duster upon it, threateningly at his head. Then he forgot to abuse me and suddenly whined:_"Ne frappez pas, monsieur!"_ mounted his box, and drove very tamelyaway. In my exasperation I called the hotel waiters together and pouredscorn on them for their cowardice. 

In spite of the season, it was uncomfortable weather, and the temper ofthe town was as uncomfortable as the weather. As time went on, fewpeople were to be seen about the streets, but there was a run on thegunmakers' and sword-smiths'. By day no cheerful shouts or songs rangout, but children of six or seven years of age would go hand in hand inrows down the street in the evenings, singing _"Mourir pour lapatrie, "_ to its own beautiful, affecting melody. But these were theonly gentle sounds one heard. Gradually, the very air seemed to bereeking with terror and frenzy. Exasperation rolled up once more, like athick, black stream, against the Emperor, against the ministers andgenerals, and against the Prussians, whom people thought they saweverywhere. 

XXX. 

Foreigners were requested to leave Paris, so that, in the event of asiege, the city might have no unnecessary mouths to feed. Simultaneously, in Trochu's proclamation, it was announced that theenemy might be outside the walls in three days. Under suchcircumstances, the town was no longer a place for anyone who did notwish to be shut up in it. 

One night at the end of August, I travelled from Paris to Geneva. At thedeparture station the thousands of German workmen who had been expelledfrom Paris were drawn up, waiting, herded together like cattle, --apainful sight. These workmen were innocent of the war, the defeats, andthe spying service of which they were accused; now they were beingdriven off in hordes, torn from their work, deprived of their bread, andsurrounded by inimical lookers-on. 

As it had been said that trains to the South would cease next day, theGeneva train was overfilled, and one had to be well satisfied to securea seat at all. My travelling companions of the masculine gender werevery unattractive: an impertinent and vulgar old Swiss who, as it was acold night, and he had no travelling-rug, wrapped himself up in four orfive of his dirty shirts--a most repulsive sight; a very precise youngFrenchman who, without a vestige of feeling for the fate of his countryand nation, explained to us that he had long had a wish to see Italy, and had thought that now, business being in any case at a standstill, the right moment had arrived. 

The female travellers in the compartment were a Parisian, still young, and her bright and charming fifteen-year-old daughter, whose beauty wasnot unlike that of Mlle. Massin, the lovely actress at the _Théâtre duGymnase_. The mother was all fire and flame, and raved, almost totears, over the present pass, cried shame on the cowardice of theofficers for not having turned out the Emperor; her one brother was aprisoner at Königsberg; all her male relations were in the field. Thedaughter was terror-struck at the thought that the train might bestopped by the enemy--which was regarded as very likely--but laughed attimes, and was divided between fear of the Prussians and exceedinganxiety to see them: _"J'aimerais bien pouvoir dire que j'aie vu desPrussiens!"_

At one station some soldiers in rout, with torn and dusty clothes, gotinto our carriage; they looked repulsive, bespattered with mud and clay;they were in absolute despair, and you could hear from theirconversation how disorganised discipline was, for they abused theirofficers right and left, called them incapable and treacherous, yetthemselves gave one the impression of being very indifferent soldiers. The young sergeant major who was leading them was the only one who wasin anything like spirits, and even he was not much to boast of. It wascurious what things he believed: Marshal Leboeuf had had a Prussianofficer behind his chair, disguised as a waiter, at Metz, and it hadonly just been discovered. Russia had lent troops to Prussia, and putthem into Prussian uniforms; otherwise there could not possibly be somany of them. But Rome, too, was responsible for the misfortunes ofFrance; the Jesuits had planned it all, because the country was soeducated; they never liked anybody to learn anything. 

After Culoz commenced the journey through the lovely Jura mountains. Onboth sides an immense panorama of high, wooded mountain ridges, withpoverty-stricken little villages along the mountain sides. At Bellegardeour passports were demanded; no one was allowed to cross the frontierwithout them--a stupid arrangement. The Alps began to bound our view. The train went on, now through long tunnels, now between precipices, nowagain over a rocky ridge, whence you looked down into the valley wherethe blue-green Rhone wound and twined its way between the rocks like anarrow ribbon. The speed seemed to be accelerating more and more. Thefirst maize-field. Slender poplars, without side-branches, but whollycovered with foliage, stood bent almost into spirals by the strong windfrom the chinks of the rocks. The first Swiss house. 

XXXI. 

There was Geneva, between the Alps, divided by the southern extremity ofLake Leman, which was spanned by many handsome bridges. In the centre, alittle isle, with Rousseau's statue. A little beyond, the Rhone rushedfrothing and foaming out of the lake. From my window I could see in thedistance the dazzling snow peak of Mont Blanc. 

After Paris, Geneva looked like a provincial town. The cafés were likeservants' quarters or corners of cafés. There were no people in thestreets, where the sand blew up in clouds of dust till you could hardlysee out of your eyes, and the roads were not watered. In the hotel, infront of the mirror, the New Testament in French, bound in leather; youfelt that you had come to the capital of Calvinism. 

The streets in the old part of the town were all up and down hill. Inthe windows of the booksellers' shops there were French verses againstFrance, violent diatribes against Napoleon III. And outbursts ofcontempt for the nation that had lost its virility and let itself becowed by a tyrant. By the side of these, portraits of the Freethinkersand Liberals who had been driven from other countries and found a refugein Switzerland. 

I sailed the lake in every direction, enraptured by its beauty and thebeauty of the surrounding country. Its blueness, to which I had neverseen a parallel, altogether charmed me in the changing lights of nightand day. On the lake I made the acquaintance of a very pleasant Greekfamily, the first I had encountered anywhere. The eldest daughter, agirl of fourteen, lost her hat. I had a new silk handkerchief packedamongst my things, and offered it to her. She accepted it and bound itround her hair. Her name was Maria Kumelas. I saw for the first time anabsolutely pure Greek profile, such as I had been acquainted withhitherto only from statues. One perfect, uninterrupted line ran from thetip of her nose to her hair. 

XXXII. 

I went for excursions into Savoy, ascended La Grande Salève on donkey-back, and from the top looked down at the full length of the Leman. 

I drove to the valley of Chamounix, sixty-eight miles, in a diligenceand four; about every other hour we had relays of horses and a newdriver. Whenever possible, we went at a rattling galop. Half-way I heardthe first Italian. It was only the word _quattro_; but it filled mewith delight. Above the high, wooded mountains, the bare rock projectedout of the earth, at the very top. The wide slopes up which the woodascended, until it looked like moss on stone, afforded a view miles inextent. The river Arve, twisting itself in curves, was frequentlyspanned by the roadway; it was of a greyish white, and very rapid, butugly. Splendid wooden bridges were thrown over it, with abysms on bothsides. Midway, after having for some time been hidden behind themountains, Mont Blanc suddenly appeared in its gleaming splendour, positively tiring and paining the eye. It was a new and strange feelingto be altogether hemmed in by mountains. It was oppressive to a plain-dweller to be shut in thus, and not to be able to get away from theimmutable sheet of snow, with its jagged summits. Along the valley ofthe stream, the road ran between marvellously fresh walnut-trees, plane-trees, and avenues of apple trees; but sometimes we drove throughvalleys so narrow that the sun only shone on them two or three hours ofthe day, and there it was cold and damp. Savoy was plainly enough a poorcountry. The grapes were small and not sweet; soil there was little of, but every patch was utilised to the best advantage. In one place amountain stream rushed down the rocks; at a sharp corner, which juttedout like the edge of a sloping roof, the stream was split up andtransformed into such fine spray that one could perceive no water atall; afterwards the stream united again at the foot of the mountain, andemptied itself with frantic haste into the river, foaming greyish white, spreading an icy cold around. The changes of temperature were striking. Under shelter, hot Summer, two steps further, stern, inclement Autumn, air that penetrated to the very marrow of your bones. You ran throughevery season of the year in a quarter of an hour. 

The other travellers were English people, all of one pattern, unchangeable, immovable. If one of them had buttoned up his coat at thebeginning of the drive, he did not unbutton it on the way, were he neverso warm, and if he had put leather gloves on, for ten hours they wouldnot be off his hands. The men yawned for the most part; the young ladiesjabbered. The English had made the whole country subservient to them, and at the hotels one Englishman in this French country was paid moreattention to than a dozen Frenchmen. 

Here I understood two widely different poems: Hauch's Swiss Peasant, andBjörnson's Over the Hills and Far Away. Hauch had felt this scenery andthe nature of these people, by virtue of his Norwegian birth and hisgift of entering into other people's thought; Björnson had givenunforgettable expression to the feeling of imprisoned longing. But forthe man who had been breathing street dust and street sweepings for fourmonths, it was good to breathe the strong, pure air, and at last seeonce more the clouds floating about and beating against the mountainsides, leaning, exhausted, against a declivity and resting on theirjourney. Little children of eight or ten were guarding cattle, childrensuch as we know so well in the North, when they come with their marmots;they looked, without exception, like tiny rascals, charming though theywere. 

I rode on a mule to Montanvert, and thence on foot over the Mer deGlace, clambered up the steep mountain side to Chapeau, went down to thecrystal Grotto and rode from there back to Chamounix. The ride up in theearly hours of the morning was perfect, the mountain air so light; themists parted; the pine-trees round the fresh mountain path exhaled apenetrating fragrance. An American family with whom I had becomeacquainted took three guides with them for four persons. One worthy oldgentleman who was travelling with his young daughter, would not ventureupon this feat of daring, but his daughter was so anxious to accompanyus that when I offered to look after her she was entrusted to my care. Itook two mules and a guide, thinking that sufficient. From Montanvertand down to the glacier, the road was bad, a steep, rocky path, withloose, rolling stones. When we came to the Ice Sea, the young lady, aswas natural, took the guide's hand, and I, the last of the caravan, strode cautiously along, my alpenstock in my hand, over the slippery, billow-like ice. But soon it began to split up into deep crevasses, andfarther on we came to places where the path you had to follow was nowider than a few hands' breadth, with yawning precipices in the ice onboth sides. I grew hot to the roots of my hair, and occasionally myheart stood still. It was not that I was actually afraid. The guideshouted to me: "Look neither to right nor left; look at your feet, andturn out your toes!" I had only one thought--not to slip!--and out onthe ice I grew burningly hot. When at last I was across, I noticed thatI was shaking. Strangely enough, I was trembling at the _thought_of the blue, gaping crevasses on both sides of me, down which I hadbarely glanced, and yet I had passed them without a shudder. Thebeginning of the crossing had been comparatively easy; it was only thatat times it was very slippery. But in the middle of the glacier, progress was very uncomfortable; moraines, and heaps of gigantic blockslay in your path, and all sorts of stone and gravel, which meltedglaciers had brought down with them, and these were nasty to negotiate. When at last you had them behind you, came le _Mauvais Pas_, whichcorresponded to its name. You climbed up the precipitous side of therock with the help of an iron railing drilled into it. But foothold wasnarrow and the stone damp, from the number of rivulets that rippled andtrickled down. Finally it was necessary at every step to let go therailing for a few seconds. The ascent then, and now, was supposed to bequite free from danger, and the view over the glaciers which one gainedby it, was a fitting reward for the inconvenience. Even more beautifulthan the summit of Mont Blanc itself, with its rounded contours, werethe steep, gray, rocky peaks, with ice in every furrow, that are called_l'Aiguille du Dru_. These mountains, which as far as the eye couldrange seemed to be all the same height, although they varied from 7, 000to 14, 800 feet, stretched for miles around the horizon. 

The ice grotto here was very different from the sky-blue glacier grottointo which I had wandered two years earlier at Grindelwald. Here the icemass was so immensely high that not the slightest peep of daylightpenetrated through it into the excavated archway that led into the ice. It was half-dark inside, and the only light proceeded from a row oflittle candles stuck into the crevices of the rock. The ice was jetblack in colour, the light gleaming with a golden sheen from all therounded projections and jagged points. It was like the giltornamentation on a velvet pall. 

When I returned from Chamounix to Geneva, the proprietor of the hotelwas standing in the doorway and shouted to me: "The whole of the Frencharmy, with the Emperor, has been taken prisoner at Sedan!"--"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "It is quite certain, " he replied; "it was inthe German telegrams, and so far there has not come a single unveracioustelegram from the Germans. "

The next day a Genevese paper published the news of the proclamation ofthe Republic in France. 

Simultaneously arrived a letter from Julius Lange, attacking me for my"miserly city politics, " seriously complaining that "our declaration ofwar against Prussia had come to nothing, " and hoping that my stay inFrance had by now made me alter my views. 

In his opinion, we had neglected "an opportunity of rebellion, thatwould never recur. "

XXXIII. 

Lake Leman fascinated me. All the scenery round looked fairy-like to me, a dream land, in which mighty mountains cast their blue-black shadowsdown on the turquoise water, beneath a brilliant, sparkling sunshinethat saturated the air with its colouring. My impressions of Lausanne, Chillon, Vevey, Montreux, were recorded in the first of my lectures atthe University the following year. The instruments of torture atChillon, barbaric and fearsome as they were, made me think of the stillworse murderous instruments being used in the war between France andGermany. It seemed to me that if one could see war at close quarters, one would come to regard the earth as peopled by dangerous lunatics. Political indifference to human life and human suffering had taken theplace of the premeditated cruelty of the Middle Ages. Still, if noprevious war had ever been so frightful, neither had there ever been somuch done to mitigate suffering. While fanatic Frenchwomen on thebattlefields cut the noses off wounded Germans, and mutilated them whenthey could, and while the Germans were burning villages and killingtheir peaceful inhabitants, if one of them had so much as fired a shot, in all quietness the great societies for the care of the wounded weredoing their work. And in this Switzerland especially bore the palm. There were two currents then, one inhuman and one humane, and of thetwo, the latter will one day prove itself the stronger. Under Louis XIV. War was still synonymous with unlimited plundering, murder, rape, thievery and robbery. Under Napoleon I. There were still no such thingsas ambulances. The wounded were carted away now and again in waggons, piled one on the top of each other, if any waggons were to be had; ifnot, they were left as they lay, or were flung into a ditch, there todie in peace. Things were certainly a little better. 

XXXIV. 

In Geneva, the news reached me that--in spite of a promise Hall, asMinister, had given to Hauch, when the latter asked for it for me--I wasto receive no allowance from the Educational Department. To a repetitionof the request, Hall had replied: "I have made so many promises andhalf-promises, that it has been impossible to remember or to keep them. "This disappointment hit me rather hard; I had in all only about £50left, and could not remain away more than nine weeks longer withoutgetting into debt, I, who had calculated upon staying a whole yearabroad. Circumstances over which I had no control later obliged me, however, to remain away almost another year. But that I could notforesee, and I had no means whatever to enable me to do so. Several ofmy acquaintances had had liberal allowances from the Ministry; Kriegerand Martensen had procured Heegaard £225 at once, when he had beenanxious to get away from Rasmus Nielsen's influence. It seemed to methat this refusal to give me anything augured badly for the appointmentI was hoping for in Denmark. I could only earn a very little with mypen: about 11_s_. 3_d_. For ten folio pages, and as I did notfeel able, while travelling, to write anything of any value, I did notattempt it. It was with a sort of horror that, after preparing for longtravels that were to get me out of the old folds, I thought of theearlier, narrow life I had led in Copenhagen. All the old folds seemed, at this distance, to have been the folds of a strait-waistcoat. 

XXXV. 

With abominable slowness, and very late, "on account of the war, " thetrain crawled from Geneva, southwards. Among the travellers was arhetorical Italian master-mason, from Lyons, an old Garibaldist, thegreat event of whose life was that Garibaldi had once taken lunch alonewith him at Varese. He preserved in his home as a relic the glass fromwhich the general had drunk. He was talkative, and ready to helpeveryone; he gave us all food and drink from his provisions. Othertravellers told that they had had to stand in queue for fully twelvehours in front of the ticket office in Paris, to get away from the town. 

The train passed the place where Rousseau had lived, at Madame deWarens'. In an official work on Savoy, written by a priest, I hadrecently read a summary dismissal of Rousseau, as a calumniator of hisbenefactress. According to this author, it certainly looked as though, to say the least of it, Rousseau's memory had failed him amazinglysometimes. The book asserted, for instance, that the Claude of whom hespeaks was no longer alive at the time when he was supposed to beenjoying Madame de Warens' favours. 

We passed French volunteers in blouses bearing a red cross; they shoutedand were in high good humour; passed ten districts, where numbers ofcretins, with their hideous excrescences, sat by the wayside. At last wearrived, --several hours behind time, --at St. Michel, at the foot of MontCenis; it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feeltired, for I had been up since four in the morning. At five o'clock wecommenced the ascent, to the accompaniment of frightful groanings fromthe engine; all the travellers were crowded together in three wretchedlittle carriages, the small engine not being able to pull more. Gayyoung French girls exulted at the idea of seeing "Italy's fair skies. "They were not particularly fair here; the weather was rough and cloudy, in keeping with abysms and mountain precipices. But late at night thejourney over Mont Cenis was wonderful. High up on the mountain themoonlight gleamed on the mountain lake. And the way was dominated, fromone rocky summit, by the castle of Bramans with its seven imposingforts. 

The locomotive stopped for an hour, for want of water. We were thusobliged to sleep at the little Italian town of Susa (in a gloriousvalley under Mont Cenis), the train to Turin having left three hoursbefore. Susa was the first Italian town I saw. When the train came innext morning to the station at Turin, a crowd of Italian soldiers, whowere standing there, shouted: "The Prussians for ever!" and winked atme. "What are they shouting for?" I asked a young Turin fellow with whomI had had some long conversations. "It is an ovation to you, " hereplied. "People are delighted at the victory of the Prussians, and theythink you are a Prussian, because of your fair moustache and beard. "

XXXVI. 

An overwhelming impression was produced upon me by the monuments ofTurin, the River Po, and the lovely glee-singing in the streets. For thefirst time, I saw colonnades, with heavy curtains to the street, serveas pavements, with balconies above them. Officers in uniforms gleamingwith gold, ladies with handkerchiefs over their heads instead of hats, the mild warmth, the brown eyes, brought it home to me at every stepthat I was in a new country. 

I hurried up to Costanza Blanchetti. _Madame la comtesse est à lacampagne. Monsieur le comte est sorti. _ Next morning, as I wassitting in my room in the Hotel Trombetta, Blanchetti rushed in, pressedme to his bosom, kissed me on both cheeks, would not let me go, butinsisted on carrying me off with him to the country. 

We drove round the town first, then went by rail to Alpignano, whereCostanza was staying with a relative of the family, Count Buglioni diMonale. Here I was received like a son, and shown straight to my room, where there stood a little bed with silk hangings, and where, on thepillow, there lay a little, folded-up thing, likewise of white silk, which was an enigma to me till, on unfolding it, I found it was a night-cap, the classical night-cap, tapering to a point, which you see at thetheatre in old comedies. The Buglionis were gentle, good-natured people, rugged and yet refined, an old, aristocratic country gentleman and hiswife. Nowhere have I thought grapes so heavy and sweet and aromatic asthere. The perfume from the garden was so strong and fragrant. Impossible to think of a book or a sheet of paper at Alpignano. Wewalked under the trees, lay among the flowers, enjoyed the sight and theflavour of the apricots and grapes, and chatted, expressing by smilesour mutual quiet, deep-reaching sympathy. 

One evening I went into Turin with Blanchetti to see the play. The loverin _La Dame aux Camélias_ was played by a young Italian namedLavaggi, as handsome as an Antinous, a type which I often encountered inPiedmont. With his innate charm, restful calm, animation of movement andthe fire of his beauty, he surpassed the acting of all the young loversI had seen on the boards of the French theatres. The very play of hisfingers was all grace and expression. 

XXXVII. 

On my journey from Turin to Milan, I had the mighty Mont Rosa, with itspowerful snow mass, and the St. Bernard, over which Buonaparte led histattered troops, before my eyes. We went across maize fields, throughthickets, over the battlefield of Magenta. From reading Beyle, I hadpictured Milan as a beautiful town, full of free delight in life. Onlyto see it would be happiness. And it was, --the cupola gallery, the dome, from the roof of which, immediately after my arrival, I looked out overthe town, shining under a pure, dark-blue sky. In the evening, in thepublic gardens, I revelled in the beauty of the Milanese women. Italianladies at that time still wore black lace over their heads instead ofhats. Their dresses were open in front, the neck being bare half-waydown the chest. I was struck by the feminine type. Upright, slender-waisted women; delicate, generally bare hands; oval faces, the eyebrowsof an absolutely perfect regularity; narrow noses, well formed, thenostrils curving slightly upwards and outwards--the models of Leonardoand Luini. 

The _Last Supper_, in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, and thedrawings in the Ambrose Library, brought me closer to Leonardo than Ihad ever been able to get before, through reproductions; I saw the trueexpression in the face of the Christ in the _Last Supper_, whichcopies cannot avoid distorting. 

XXXVIII. 

A violent affection for Correggio, and a longing to see his works wherethey are to be found in greatest number, sent me to Parma. 

I reached the town at night; no gas, no omnibus from any hotel. An out-porter trotted with my portmanteau on his back through wide, pitch-dark, deserted, colonnaded streets, past huge palaces, until, after half anhour's rapid walk, we arrived at the hotel. The day before my arrivaldall'Ongaro had unveiled the beautiful and beautifully situated statueof Correggio in the Market Square. I first investigated the two domes inthe Cathedral and San Giovanni Evangelista, then the ingratiatingpictorial decoration of the convent of San Paolo. In the Museum, where Iwas pretty well the only visitor, I was so eagerly absorbed in studyingCorreggio and jotting down my impressions, that, in order to waste notime, I got the attendant to buy my lunch, and devoured it, --bread, cheese, and grapes, --in the family's private apartments. They werepleasant, obliging people, and as I bought photographs for aconsiderable amount from them, they were very hospitable. They talkedpolitics to me and made no secret of their burning hatred for France. 

There were other things to see at Parma besides Correggio, although forme he dominated the town. There was a large exhibition of modern Italianpaintings and statuary, and the life of the people in the town and roundabout. In the streets stood carts full of grapes. Four or five fellowswith bare feet would stamp on the grapes in one of these carts; a troughled from the cart down to a vat, into which the juice ran, flinging offall dirt in fermentation. 

It was pleasant to walk round the old ramparts of the town in theevening glow, and it was lively in the ducal park. One evening littleknots of Italian soldiers were sitting there. One of them sang in asuperb voice, another accompanied him very nicely on the lute; theothers listened with profound and eager attention. 

XXXIX. 

After this came rich days in Florence. Everything was a delight to methere, from the granite paving of the streets, to palaces, churches, galleries, and parks. I stood in reverence before the Medici monumentsin Michael Angelo's sanctuary. The people attracted me less; the womenseemed to me to have no type at all, compared with the lovely faces andforms at Milan and Parma. The fleas attracted me least of all. 

Dall 'Ongaro received every Sunday evening quite an internationalcompany, and conversation consequently dragged. With the charmingJapanese wife of the English consul, who spoke only English andJapanese, neither of her hosts could exchange a word. There wereDutchmen and Swiss there with their ladies; sugar-sweet and utterlyaffected young Italian men; handsome young painters and a few prominentItalian scientists, one of whom, in the future, was to become my friend. 

I had a double recommendation to the Danish Minister at Florence, fromthe Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from an old and intimate friend ofhis in Copenhagen. When I presented my letters, he exclaimed, inannoyance: "These special recommendations again! How often must Iexplain that they are unnecessary, that all Danes, as such, are welcometo my house!"--This was the delicate manner in which he let meunderstand that he was not inclined to do anything whatever for me. Moreover, he began at once with regrets that his family were absent, sothat he was not in housekeeping, and could not entertain anyone. 

At a production of Émile Augier's _Le Fils de Giboyer_, at whichall the foreign diplomatists were present, he, too, turned up. While theother diplomatists greeted each other silently with a nod, he made moreof the meeting than any one else did, went from place to place in thestalls, shook hands, spoke French, German, English and Italian by turns, was all things to all men, then came and sat down by me, made himselfcomfortable, and in a moment was fast asleep. When he began to snore, one after another of his colleagues turned their heads, and smiledfaintly. He slept through two acts and the intervals between them, inspite of the voices from the stage and the loud talking between theacts, and woke up in the middle of the third act, to mumble in my ear, "It is not much pleasure to see the piece played like this. "

At my favourite restaurant, _Trattoria dell'antiche carrozze_, Iwas one day witness to a violent dispute between a Polish noble who, forpolitical reasons, had fled from Russian Poland, and Hans Semper, aPrussian, author of a book on Donatello. The latter naturally worshippedBismarck, the former warmly espoused the cause of Denmark. When I left, I said politely to him:

"I thank you for having so warmly defended my country; I am a Dane. " Thenext day the Pole came to look for me at the restaurant, and a closeracquaintance resulted. We went for many walks together along theriverside; he talking like a typical Polish patriot, I listening to hisdreams of the resuscitated Poland that the future was to see. I mentionthis only because it affords an example of the remarkable coincidenceslife brings about, which make one so easily exclaim: "How small theworld is!" This Pole became engaged several years afterwards to a youngPolish girl and left her, without any explanation, having got entangledwith a Russian ballet dancer. I made her acquaintance at Warsaw fifteenyears after I had met him at Florence. She was then twenty-six years ofage, and is one of the women who have taught me most; she told me thestory of her early youth and of the unengaging part my acquaintance of1870 had played in it. 

At Florence I saw Rossi as Hamlet. The performance was a disappointmentto me, inasmuch as Rossi, with his purely Italian nature, had done awaywith the essentially English element in Hamlet. The keen English humour, in his hands, became absurd and ridiculous. Hamlet's hesitation to act, he overlooked altogether. Hamlet, to him, was a noble young man who wasgrieved at his mother's ill-behaviour. The details he acted like avirtuoso. For instance, it was very effective during the mimic play, when, lying at Ophelia's feet, he crushes her fan in his hands at themoment when the King turns pale. I derived my chief enjoyment, not fromthe acting, but from the play. It suddenly revealed itself to me fromother aspects, and I fell prostrate in such an exceeding admiration forShakespeare that I felt I should never rise again. It was touching tohear the Italians' remarks on _Hamlet_. The piece was new to them. You frequently heard the observation: "It is a very philosophicalpiece. " As people changed from place to place, and sat wherever theyliked, I overheard many different people's opinions of the drama. Thesuicide monologue affected these fresh and alert minds very powerfully. 

That evening, moreover, I had occasion to observe human cowardice, whichis never accounted so great as it really is. There was a noise behindthe scene during the performance, and immediately afterwards a shout of_Fuoco!_ The audience were overmastered by terror. More than halfof them rushed to the doors, pulled each other down, and trampled on thefallen, in their endeavours to get out quickly enough; others rushed upon the stage itself. As there was not the least sign of fire visible, Iof course remained in my seat. A few minutes later one of the actorscame forward and explained that there had been no fire; a fight betweentwo of the scene-shifters had been the cause of all the alarm. The good-humoured Italians did not even resent the fellows having thus disturbedand interrupted the performance. 

John Stuart Mill had given me an introduction to Pasquale Villari, who, even at that time, was _commendatore professore_, and held a highposition on the Board of Education, but was still far from havingattained the zenith of his fame and influence. When the reserve of thefirst few days had worn off, he was simply splendid to me. When anythingI said struck him as being to the point, he pressed my hands with allthe ardour of youth, and he applauded every joke I attempted withuproarious laughter. 

Some twenty years were to elapse before I saw him again. Then he calledupon me in Copenhagen, wishing to make my acquaintance, without in theleast suspecting that I was the young man who, so long before, had cometo him from Mill. He looked with amazement at books in which he hadwritten with his own hand, and at old letters from himself which Iproduced. I visited him again in 1898. His books on Machiavelli andSavonarola entitle him to rank among the foremost students and exponentsof Italy. 

I went one day to the great annual fair at Fiesole. Shouting andshrieking, the people drove down the unspeakably dusty road with suchhaste, carelessness and high spirits that conveyances struck againsteach other at every moment. It was the life represented in Marstrand'sold-time pictures. In crowded Fiesole, I saw the regular Tuscan countrytype, brown eyes, yellow or clear, white skin, thin, longish face, brownor fair, but never black hair, strong, healthy bodies. The masculinetype with which I was acquainted from the soldiers, was undeniablyhandsomer than our own, in particular, was more intelligent; the youngwomen were modest, reserved in their manner, seldom entered intoconversation with the men, and despite the fire in their eyes, manifested a certain peasant bashfulness, which seems to be the sameeverywhere. 

XL. 

Vines twine round the fruit-trees; black pigs and their families maketheir appearance in tribes; the lake of Thrasymene, near which Hannibaldefeated the Romans, spreads itself out before us. The train is goingfrom Florence to Rome. Towards mid-day a girl enters the carriage, apparently English or North American, with brown eyes and brown hair, that curls naturally about her head; she has her guitar-case in herhand, and flings it up into the net. Her parents follow her. As there isroom in the compartment for forty-eight persons without crowding, shearranges places for her parents, and after much laughter and joking thelatter settle off to sleep. The Italians stare at her; but not I. I sitwith my back to her. She sits down, back to back with me, then turns herhead and asks me, in Italian, some question about time, place, or thelike. I reply as best I can. She (in English): "You are Italian?" On myreply, she tells me: "I hardly know twenty words in Italian; I onlyspeak English, although I have been living in Rome for two years. "

She then went on to relate that she was an American, born of poorparents out on the Indian frontier; she was twenty-six years old, asculptor, and was on her way from Carrara, where she had beensuperintending the shipment of one of her works, a statue of Lincoln, which the Congress at Washington had done her the honour of orderingfrom her. It was only when she was almost grown up that her talent hadbeen discovered by an old sculptor who happened to pay a visit and who, when he saw her drawing, had, half in jest, given her a lump of clay andsaid: "Do a portrait of me!" She had then never seen a statue or apainting, but she evinced such talent that before long severaldistinguished men asked her to do busts of them, amongst others, Lincoln. She was staying at his house that 14th April, 1865, when he wasmurdered, and was consequently selected to execute the monument afterhis death. She hesitated for a long time before giving up the modest, but certain, position she held at the time in a post-office; but, asothers believed in her talent, she came to Europe, stayed first inParis, where, to her delight, she made the acquaintance of Gustave Doré, and where she modelled a really excellent bust of Père Hyacinthe, visited London, Berlin, Munich, Florence, and settled down in Rome. There she received plenty of orders, had, moreover, obtained permissionto execute a bust of Cardinal Antonelli, was already much looked up to, and well-to-do. In a few weeks she was returning to America. 

As she found pleasure in talking to me, she exclaimed without more ado:"I will stay with you, " said a few polite things to me, and made mepromise that I would travel with her to Rome from the place where wewere obliged to leave the train, the railway having been broken up toprevent the Italian troops entering the Papal States. At Treni a Danishcouple got into the train, a mediocre artist and his wife, and withnational astonishment and curiosity watched the evident intimacy betweenthe young foreigner and myself, concerning which every Scandinavian inRome was informed a few days later. 

From Monte Rotondo, where the bridge had been blown up, we had to walk along distance, over bad roads, and were separated in the throng, but shekept a place for me by her side. Thus I drove for the first time overthe Roman Campagna, by moonlight, with two brown eyes gazing into mine. I felt as though I had met one of Sir Walter Scott's heroines, and wonher confidence at our first meeting. 

XLI. 

Vinnie Ream was by no means a Scott heroine, however, but a genuineAmerican, and doubly remarkable to me as being the first specimen of ayoung woman from the United States with whom I became acquainted. Evenafter I had seen a good deal of her work, I could not feel whollyattracted by her talent, which sometimes expressed itself rather in apictorial than a plastic form, and had a fondness for emotional effects. But she was a true artist, and a true woman, and I have never, in anywoman, encountered a will like hers. She was uninterruptedly busy. Although, now that the time of her departure was so near, a few boxeswere steadily being packed every day at her home, she received every dayvisits from between sixteen and twenty-five people, and she had so manyletters by post that I often found three or four unopened ones amongstthe visiting cards that had been left. Those were what she hadforgotten, and if she had read them, she had no time to reply to them. Every day she sat for a few hours to the clever American painter Healy, who was an admirer of her talent, and called her abilities genius. Everyday she worked at Antonelli's bust. To obtain permission to execute it, she had merely, dressed in her most beautiful white gown, asked for anaudience of the dreaded cardinal, and had at once obtained permission. Her intrepid manner had impressed the hated statesman of the politicaland ecclesiastical reaction, and in her representation of him heappeared, too, in many respects nobler and more refined than he was. Butbesides modelling the cardinal's bust, she put the finishing touches totwo others, saw to her parents' household affairs and expenses, andfound time every day to spend a few hours with me, either in a walk orwandering about the different picture-galleries. 

She maintained the family, for her parents had nothing at all. But whenthe statue of Lincoln had been ordered from her, Congress hadimmediately advanced ten thousand dollars. So she was able to live freefrom care, though for that matter she troubled not at all about money. She was very ignorant of things outside her own field, and the words_my work_ were the only ones that she spoke with passion. What sheknew, she had acquired practically, through travel and association witha multiplicity of people. She hardly knew a dozen words of any languagebesides English, and was only acquainted with English and Americanwriters; of poets, she knew Shakespeare and Byron best; from life andbooks she had extracted but few general opinions, but on the other hand, very individual personal views. These were based upon the theory thatthe lesser mind must always subordinate itself to the higher, and thatthe higher has a right to utilise freely the time and strength of thelesser, without being called to account for doing so. She herself wasabjectly modest towards the artists she looked up to. Other people mightall wait, come again, go away without a reply. 

Rather small of stature, strong and healthy, --she had never been ill, never taken medicine, --with white teeth and red cheeks, quick ineverything, when several people were present she spoke only little andabsently, was as cold, deliberate and composed as a man of strongcharacter; but at the same time she was unsuspecting and generous, andin spite of her restlessness and her ambitious industry, ingratiatinglycoquettish towards anyone whose affection she wished to win. It wasamusing to watch the manner in which she despatched the dutifullysighing Italians who scarcely crossed the threshold of her studio beforethey declared themselves. She replied to them with a superabundance ofsound sense and dismissed them with a jest. 

One day that I went to fetch her to the Casino Borghese, I found herdissolved in tears. One of the two beautiful doves who flew about thehouse and perched on her shoulders, and which she had brought with herfrom Washington, had disappeared in the night. At first I thought thather distress was half jest, but nothing could have been more real; shewas beside herself with grief. I realised that if philologians havedisputed as to how far Catullus' poem of the girl's grief over the deadsparrow were jest or earnest, it was because they had never seen a girlweep over a bird. Catullus, perhaps, makes fun a little of the grief, but the grief itself, in his poem too, is serious enough. 

In the lovely gardens of the Villa Borghese, Vinnie Ream's melancholyframe of mind was dispersed, and we sat for a long time by one of thehandsome fountains and talked, among other things, of our pleasure inbeing together, which pleasure was not obscured by the prospect ofapproaching parting, because based only on good-fellowship, and with noerotic element about it. Later in the evening, she had forgotten hersorrow altogether in the feverish eagerness with which she worked, andshe kept on, by candle-light, until three o'clock in the morning. 

A poor man, an Italian, who kept a little hotel, came in that eveningfor a few minutes; he sometimes translated letters for Vinnie Ream. Ashe had no business with me, I did not address any of my remarks to him;she, on the contrary, treated him with extreme kindness and the greatestrespect, and whispered to me: "Talk nicely to him, as you would to agentleman, for that he is; he knows four languages splendidly; he is atalented man. Take no notice of his plain dress. We Americans do notregard the position, but the man, and he does honour to his position. " Ihad not been actuated by the prejudices she attributed to me, nevertheless entered into conversation with the man, as she wished, andlistened with pleasure to his sensible opinions. (He spoke, among otherthings, of Northern art, and warmly praised Carl Bloch's_Prometheus_. )

XLII. 

Vinnie Ream's opinion of me was that I was the most impolitic man thatshe had ever known. She meant, by that, that I was always falling outwith people (for instance, I had at once offended the Danes in Rome bysome sharp words about the wretched Danish papers), and in general madefewer friends and more enemies all the time. She herself won theaffection of everyone she wished, and made everyone ready to spring todo her bidding. She pointed out to me how politic she had had to be overher art. When she had wished to become a sculptor, everyone in hernative place had been shocked at the un-femininity of it, and peoplefabled behind her back about her depraved instincts. She, for her part, exerted no more strength than just enough to carry her point, let peopletalk as much as they liked, took no revenge on those who spreadcalumnies about her, showed the greatest kindliness even towards theevil-disposed, and so, she said, had not an enemy. There was in her amarvellous commingling of determination to progress rapidly, of self-restraint and of real good-heartedness. 

On October 20th there was a great festival in Rome to celebrate thefirst monthly anniversary of the entry of the Italians into the town. Young men went in the evening with flags and music through the streets. Everybody rushed to the windows, and the ladies held out lamps andcandles. In the time of the popes this was only done when the Host wasbeing carried in solemn procession to the dying; it was regardedtherefore as the greatest honour that could be paid. Everyone clappedhands and uttered shouts of delight at the improvised illumination, while the many beautiful women looked lovely in the flickeringlamplight. The 23d again was a gala day, being the anniversary of thedeath of Enrico Cairoli--one of the celebrated brothers; he fell atMentana;--and I had promised Vinnie Ream to go to see the fête with her;but she as usual having twenty callers just when we ought to havestarted, we arrived too late. Vinnie begged of me to go with her insteadto the American chapel; she must and would sing hymns, and really didsing them very well. 

The chapel was bare. On the walls the ten commandments and a few otherquotations from Holy Writ, and above a small altar, "Do this inremembrance of me, " in Gothic lettering. I had to endure the hymns, thesermon (awful), and the reading aloud of the ten commandments, withmuttered protestations and Amens after each one from the reverentAmericans. When we went out I said nothing, as I did not know whetherVinnie might not be somewhat moved, for she sang at the end with greatemotion. However, she merely took my arm and exclaimed: "That ministerwas the most stupid donkey I have ever heard in my life; but it is niceto sing. " Then she began a refutation of the sermon, which had hingedchiefly on the words: "_Thy sins are forgiven thee_, " and of theunspeakable delight it should be to hear this. Vinnie thought that norational being would give a fig for forgiveness, unless there followedwith it a complete reinstatement of previous condition. What am Ibenefitted if ever so many heavenly beings say to me: "I _pretend_you have not done it" if I know that I have!

The last week in October we saw marvellous Northern Lights in Rome. Thenorthern half of the heavens, about nine o'clock in the evening, turneda flaming crimson, and white streaks traversed the red, against whichthe stars shone yellow, while every moment bluish flashes shot acrossthe whole. When I discovered it I went up to the Reams' and fetchedVinnie down into the street to see it. It was an incredibly beautifulatmospheric phenomenon. Next evening it manifested itself again, on abackground of black clouds, and that was the last beautiful sight uponwhich Vinnie and I looked together. 

Next evening I wrote:

 Vinnie Ream leaves to-morrow morning; I said good-bye to her this evening. Unfortunately a great many people were there. She took my hand and said: "I wish you everything good in the world, and I know that you wish me the same. " And then: Good-bye. A door opens, and a door closes, and people never meet again on this earth, never again, never--and human language has never been able to discover any distinction between good-bye for an hour, and good-bye forever. People sit and chat, smile and jest. Then you get up, and the story is finished. Over! over! And that is the end of all stories, says Andersen. 

 All one's life one quarrels with people as dear to one as Ploug is to me. I have a well-founded hope that I may see Rudolph Schmidt's profile again soon, and a hundred times again after that; but Vinnie I shall never see again. 

 I did not understand her at first; I had a few unpleasant conjectures ready. I had to have many conversations with her before I understood her ingenuousness, her ignorance, her thorough goodness, in short, all her simple healthiness of soul. Over!

 When I was teasing her the other day about all the time I had wasted in her company, she replied: "_People do not waste time with their friends_, " and when I exclaimed: "What do I get from you?" she answered, laughing:

 "_Inspiration_. " And that was the truth. Those great brown eyes, the firm eyebrows, the ringleted mass of chestnut brown hair and the fresh mouth--all this that I still remember, but perhaps in three months shall no longer be able to recall, the quick little figure, now commanding, now deprecating, is to me a kind of inspiration. I have never been in love with Vinnie; but most people would think so, to hear the expressions I am now using. But I love her as a friend, as a mind akin to my own. There were thoughts of our brains and strings of our hearts, which always beat in unison. Peace be with her! May the cursed world neither rend her nor devour her; may she die at last with the clear forehead she has now! I am grateful to her. She has communicated to me a something good and simple that one cannot see too much of and that one scarcely ever sees at all. Finally, she has shown me again the spectacle of a human being entirely happy, and good because happy, a soul without a trace of bitterness, an intellect whose work is not a labour. 

 It is not that Vinnie is--or rather was, since she is dead for me--an educated girl in the Copenhagen sense of the word. The verdict of the Danish educational establishments upon her would be that she was a deplorably uneducated girl. She was incomprehensibly dull at languages. She would be childishly amused at a jest or joke or compliment as old as the hills (such as the Italians were fond of using), and think it new, for she knew nothing of the European storehouse of stereotyped remarks and salted drivel. Her own conversation was new; a breath of the independence of the great Republic swept through it. She was no fine lady, she was _an American girl_, who had not attained her rank by birth, or through inherited riches, but had fought for it herself with a talent that had made its way to the surface without early training, through days and nights of industry, and a mixture of enthusiasm and determination. 

 She was vain; she certainly was that. But again like a child, delighted at verses in her honour in the American papers, pleased at homage and marks of distinction, but far more ambitious than vain of personal advantages. She laughed when we read in the papers of Vinnie Ream, that, in spite of the ill-fame creative lady artists enjoy, far from being a monster with green eyes, she ventured to be beautiful. 

 She was a good girl. There was a certain deep note about all that her heart uttered. She had a mind of many colours. And there was the very devil of a rush and Forward! March! about her, _always in a hurry_. 

 And now--no Roman elegy--I will hide her away in my memory:

 Here lies VINNIE REAM Sculptor of Washington, U. S. A. Six-and-twenty years of age This recollection of her is retained by One who knew her for seventeen days and will never forget her. 

I have really never seen Vinnie Ream since. We exchanged a few lettersafter her departure, and the rest was silence. 

Her statue of Abraham Lincoln stands now in a rotunda on the Capitol, for which it was ordered. Later, a Congress Committee ordered from her astatue of Admiral Farragut, which is likewise erected in Washington. These are the only two statues that the government of the United Stateshas ever ordered from a woman. Other statues of hers which I have seenmentioned bear the names of _Miriam, The West, Sappho, The Spirit ofCarnival_, etc. Further than this, I only know that she marriedRichard L. Hoxie, an engineer, and only a few years ago was living inWashington. 

XLIII. 

It was a real trouble to me that the Pope, in his exasperation over theconquest of Rome--in order to make the accomplished revolution recoilalso on the heads of the foreigners whom he perhaps suspected ofsympathy with the new order of things--had closed the Vatican and allits collections. Rome was to me first and foremost Michael Angelo'sSistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanzas and Loggias, and now all thismagnificent array, which I had travelled so far to see, was closed to meby an old man's bad temper. 

But there was still enough to linger over in Rome. The two palaces thatseemed to me most deserving of admiration were the Farnese and theCancellaria, the former Michael Angelo's, the latter Bramante's work, the first a perpetuation in stone of beauty and power, the second, ofgrace and lightness. I felt that if one were to take a person with noidea of architecture and set him in front of these buildings, therewould fall like scales from his eyes, and he would say: "Now I know whatthe building art means. "

Luini's exquisite painting, _Vanity and Modesty_, in the GalleriaSciarra, impressed me profoundly. It represented two women, one nun-like, the other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well-known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essentialfeature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figureis seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though avery slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavensthemselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the darkblue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown hair and the lovely hands. "It would be terrible to meet in real life a woman who looked likethat, " I wrote; "for a man would grow desperate at his inability to winher and desperate because the years must destroy such a marvel. That iswhy the gracious gods have willed it otherwise; that is why she does notexist. That is why she is only a vision, a revelation, a painting, andthat is why she was conceived in the brain of Leonardo, the place onearth most favoured by the gods, and executed by Luini, that allgenerations might gaze at her without jealousy, and without dread of themolestations of Time. "

One day, at the Museo Kircheriano, where I was looking at the admirableantiquities, I made acquaintance with a Jesuit priest, who turned out tobe exceedingly pleasant and refined, a very decent fellow, in fact. Hespoke Latin to me, and showed me round; at an enquiry of mine, hefetched from his quarters in the Collegio Romano a book withreproductions from the pagan section of the Lateran Museum, andexplained to me some bas-reliefs which I had not understood. Hisobligingness touched me, his whole attitude made me think. Hitherto Ihad only spoken to one solitary embryo Jesuit, --a young Englishman whowas going to Rome to place himself at the service of the Pope, and whowas actuated by the purest enthusiasm; I was struck by the fact thatthis second Jesuit, too, seemed to be a worthy man. It taught me howindependent individual worth is of the nature of one's convictions. 

Most of the Italians I had so far been acquainted with were simplepeople, my landlord and his family, and those who visited them, and Isometimes heard fragments of conversation which revealed the commonpeople's mode of thought to me. In one house that I visited, themistress discovered that her maid was not married to her so-calledhusband, a matter in which, for that matter, she was very blameless, since her parents had refused their consent, and she had afterwardsallowed herself to be abducted. Her mistress reproached her for theillegal relations existing. She replied, "If God wishes to plunge anyoneinto misery, that person is excused. "--"We must not put the blame ofeverything upon God, " said the mistress. --"Yes, yes, " replied the girlunabashed; "then if the Devil wishes to plunge a person into misery, theperson is excused. "--"Nor may we put the blame of our wrongdoing on theDevil, " said the mistress. --"Good gracious, " said the girl, "it must bethe fault of one or other of them, everybody knows that. If it is notthe one, it is the other. "

At the house of the Blanchettis, who had come to Rome, I met many Turinand Roman gentlemen. They were all very much taken up by an old Sicilianchemist of the name of Muratori, who claimed that he had discovered amaterial which looked like linen, but was impervious to bullets, sword-cuts, bayonet-thrusts, etc. Blanchetti himself had fired his revolver athim at two paces, and the ball had fallen flat to the ground. Therecould be no question of juggling; Muratori was an honourable oldGaribaldist who had been wounded in his youth, and now went about oncrutches, but, since we have never heard of its being made practical useof, it would seem that there was nothing in it. 

I did not care to look up all the Italians to whom I had introductionsfrom Villari. But I tried my luck with a few of them. The first was Dr. Pantaleoni, who had formerly been banished from the Papal States and wholeft the country as a radical politician, but now held almostconservative views. He had just come back, and complained bitterly ofall the licentiousness. "Alas!" he said, "we have freedom enough now, but order, order!" Pantaleoni was a little, eager, animated man offifty, very much occupied, a politician and doctor, and he promised tointroduce me to all the scholars whose interests I shared. As I feltscruples at taking up these gentlemen's time, he exclaimed wittily: "Mydear fellow, take up their time! To take his time is the greatestservice you can render to a Roman; he never knows what to do to killit!"

The next man I went to was Prince Odescalchi, one of the men who hadthen recently risen to the surface, officially termed the hero of theYoung Liberals. Pantaleoni had dubbed him a blockhead, and he had notlied. He turned out to be a very conceited and frothy young man with aparting all over his head, fair to whiteness, of strikingly Northerntype, with exactly the same expressionless type of face as certain ofthe milksops closely connected with the Court in Denmark. 

XLIV. 

There were a great many Scandinavians in Rome; they foregathered at thevarious eating-houses and on a Saturday evening at the ScandinavianClub. Some of them were painters, sculptors and architects, with theirladies, there were some literary and scientific men and everydescription of tourists on longer or shorter visits to the Eternal City. I held myself aloof from them. Most of them had their good qualities, but they could not stand the test of any association which brought theminto too close contact with one another, as life in a small town does. They were divided up into camps or hives, and in every hive ruled a ladywho detested the queen bee of the next one. So it came about that theScandinavians lived in perpetual squabbles, could not bear one another, slandered one another, intrigued against one another. When men got drunkon the good Roman wine at the _osterie_, they abused one anotherand very nearly came to blows. Moreover, they frequently got drunk, formost of them lost their self-control after a few glasses. Strangelyenough, in the grand surroundings, too much of the Northern pettinesscame to the surface in them. One was continually tempted to call out tothe ladies, in Holberg's words: "Hold your peace, you good women!" andto the men: "Go away, you rapscallions, and make up your quarrels!"

There were splendid young fellows among the artists, but the painters, who were in the majority, readily admitted that technically they couldlearn nothing at all in Rome, where they never saw a modern painting;they said themselves that they ought to be in Paris, but the authoritiesin Christiania and Copenhagen were afraid of Paris: thence all bad anddangerous influences proceeded, and so the painters still journey toRome, as their fathers did before them. 

XLV. 

Towards the middle of November the Pope opened the Vatican. But in faceof the enormous conflux of people, it was not easy to get a_permesso_ from the consul, and that could not be dispensed with. Ihad just made use of one for the Vatican sculpture collection, one day, when I felt very unwell. I ascribed my sensations at first to theinsufferable weather of that month, alternately sirocco and cold sleet, or both at once; then I was seized with a dread of the climate, of Rome, of all these strange surroundings, and I made up my mind to go home asquickly as possible. The illness that was upon me was, without myknowing it, the cause of my fear. The next day I was carried downstairsby two vile-smelling labourers and taken by Vilhelm Rosenstand thepainter, who was one of the few who had made friends with me and shownme kindness, to the Prussian hospital on the Tarpeian Rock, near theCapitol. 

Here a bad attack of typhoid fever held me prisoner in my bed for somefew months, after a compatriot, who had no connection whatever with me, had been so inconsiderate as to inform my parents by telegraph how ill Iwas, and that there was little hope for me. 

The first month I was not fully conscious; I suffered from a delusion ofcoercion. Thus it seemed to me that the left side of my bed did notbelong to me, but to another man, who sometimes took the place; and thatI myself was divided into several persons, of which one, for instance, asked my legs to turn a little to the one side or the other. One ofthese persons was Imperialist, and for that reason disliked by theothers, who were Republicans; nevertheless, he performed greatkindnesses for them, making them more comfortable, when it was in hispower. Another strangely fantastic idea that held sway for a long timewas that on my head, the hair of which had been shorn by the hospitalattendant rather less artistically than one cuts a dog's, there was aclasp of pearls and precious stones, which I felt but could not see. 

Afterwards, all my delusions centred on food. 

I was very much neglected at the hospital. The attendance was wretched. The highly respected German doctor, who was appointed to the place, hadhimself an immense practice, and moreover was absolutely taken up by theFranco-Prussian war. Consequently, he hardly ever came, sometimes stayedaway as long as thirteen days at a stretch, during all which time apatient who might happen to be suffering, say, from constipation, mustlie there without any means of relief. My bed was as hard as a stone, and I was waked in the night by pains in my body and limbs; the pillowwas so hard that the skin of my right ear was rubbed off from thepressure. There were no nurses. There was only one custodian for thewhole hospital, a Russian fellow who spoke German, and who sometimes hadas many as fourteen patients at a time to look after, but frequentlywent out to buy stores, or visit his sweetheart, and then all thepatients could ring at once without any one coming. After I had passedthe crisis of my illness, and consequently began to suffer terribly fromhunger, I was ordered an egg for my breakfast; I sometimes had to liefor an hour and a half, pining for this egg. Once, for three days insuccession, there were no fresh eggs to be had. So he would bring for mybreakfast nothing but a small piece of dry bread. One day that I waspositively ill with hunger, I begged repeatedly for another piece ofbread, but he refused it me. It was not malice on his part, but purestupidity, for he was absolutely incapable of understanding how I felt. And to save fuel, he let me suffer from cold, as well as from hunger;would never put more than one wretched little stick at a time into thestove. Everything was pinched to an incredible extent. Thus it wasimpossible for me to get a candle in the evening before it wasabsolutely dark, and then never more than one, although it made my eyeswater to try to read. Candles and firing, it appears, were not put downin the bill. And yet this hospital is kept up on subscriptions from allthe great Powers, so there must be someone into whose pockets the moneygoes. Most of us survived it; a few died who possibly might have beenkept alive; one was preserved for whom the Danish newspapers havebeautiful obituaries ready. 

Over my head, in the same building, there lived a well-known Germanarchaeologist, who was married to a Russian princess of such colossalphysical proportions that Roman popular wits asserted that when shewished to go for a drive she had to divide herself between two cabs. This lady had a great talent for music. I never saw her, but I becameaware of her in more ways than one: whenever she crossed the floor onthe third story, the ceiling shook, and the boards creaked, in a mannerunbearable to an invalid. And just when I had settled myself off, andbadly wanted to sleep, towards eleven o'clock at night, the heavy ladyabove would sit down at her grand piano, and make music that would havefilled a concert hall resound through the place. 

After a month had passed, the doctor declared that I had "turned thecorner, " and might begin to take a little food besides the broth that uptill then had been my only nourishment. A little later, I was allowed totry to get up. I was so weak that I had to begin to learn to walk again;I could not support myself on my legs, but dragged myself, with the helpof the custodian, the four or five steps from the bed to a sofa. 

Just at this time I received two letters from Copenhagen, containingliterary enquiries and offers. The first was from the editor of the_Illustrated Times_, and enquired whether on my return home I wouldresume the theatrical criticisms in the paper; in that case they wouldkeep the position open for me. I gave a negative reply, as I was tiredof giving my opinion on a Danish drama. The second letter, whichsurprised me more, was from the editor of the, at that time, powerful_Daily Paper_, Steen Bille, offering me the entire management ofthe paper after the retirement of Molbech, except so far as politicswere concerned, the editor naturally himself retaining the latter. AsDanish things go, it was a very important offer to a young man. Itpromised both influence and income, and it was only my profound andever-increasing determination not to give myself up to journalism thatmade me without hesitation dictate a polite refusal. I was still to weakto write. My motive was simply and solely that I wished to devote mylife to knowledge. But Bille, who knew what power in a little countrylike Denmark his offer would have placed in my hands, hardly understoodit in this way, and was exceedingly annoyed at my refusal. It gave thefirst impulse to his altered feeling toward me. I have sometimeswondered since whether my fate in Denmark might not have been differenthad I accepted the charge. It is true that the divergence between whatthe paper and I, in the course of the great year 1871, came torepresent, would soon have brought about a split. The Commune in Pariscaused a complete _volte face_ of the liberal bourgeoisie inDenmark, as elsewhere. 

XLVI. 

While I was still too weak to write, I received a letter from HenrikIbsen (dated December 20, 1870), which impressed me greatly. HenrikIbsen and I had been on friendly terms with one another since April, 1866, but it was only about this time that our intimacy began to emitsparks, an intimacy which was destined to have a very widening influenceupon me, and which is perhaps not without traces on the stages of hispoetical progress. 

Ibsen thought I had already recovered, and wrote to me as to aconvalescent. He complained bitterly of the conquest of Rome by theItalians: Rome was now taken from "us men" and given over to the"politicians"; it had been a spot sacred to peace, and was so nolonger. --This assertion was at variance with my religion. It seemed tome unpermissible to desire, for aesthetic reasons, to see therestoration of an ecclesiastical régime, with its remorseless system ofoppression. Human happiness and intellectual progress were worth morethan the retention of the idylls of naiveté. I replied to him bydeclaring my faith in freedom and soon he outdid me in this, as in otherdomains. 

But there was one other part of the letter that went to my heart andrejoiced me. It was where Ibsen wrote that what was wanted was a revoltin the human mind, and in that I ought to be one of the leaders. Thesewords, which were in exact agreement with my own secret hope, fired myimagination, ill though I was. It seemed to me that after having feltmyself isolated so long, I had at last met with the mind that understoodme and felt as I did, a real fellow-fighter. As soon as I was once morefit to use my pen, I wrote a flaming reply in verse (headed, TheHospital in Rome, the night of January 9, 1871). In it I described howsolitary I had been, in my intellectual fight and endeavour, andexpressed my contentment at having found a brother in him. 

XLVII. 

Among the Danes, and there were not many of them, who frequently came tosee me at the hospital, I must mention the kind and tactful musicianNiels Ravnkilde, whom I had known when I was a child. He had been livingin Rome now for some twenty years. He was gentle and quiet, good-looking, short of stature, modest and unpretending, too weak ofcharacter not to be friends with everyone, but equipped with a naturaldignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in lovewith a young, wealthy girl, whose affections he succeeded in winning inreturn, but he was turned out of the house by her harsh, purse-proudfather, and in desperation had left Denmark to settle down in Rome. Ashis lady-love married soon after and became a contented wife and mother, he remained where he was. He succeeded in making his way. 

He gradually became a favourite teacher of music among the ladies of theRoman aristocracy, who sometimes invited him to their country-houses inthe Summer. He was on a good footing with the native maestros most inrequest, who quickly understood that the modest Dane was no dangerousrival. Graceful as Ravnkilde was in his person, so he was in his art;there was nothing grand about him. But he was clever, and had a natural, unaffected wit. His difficult position as a master had taught himprudence and reserve. He was obligingness personified to travellingScandinavians, and was proud of having, as he thought, made theacquaintance in Rome of the flower of the good society of the Northerncountries. Even long after he had come to the front, he continued tolive in the fourth storey apartment of the Via Ripetta, where he hadtaken up his abode on his arrival in Rome, waited upon by the samesimple couple. His circumstances could not improve, if only for thereason that he sent what he had to spare to relatives of his inCopenhagen, who had a son who was turning out badly, and lived bywasting poor Ravnkilde's savings. After having been the providence ofall Danish travellers to Rome for thirty years, certain individuals whohad influence with the government succeeded in obtaining a distinctionfor him. The government then gave him, not even the poor littledecoration that he ought to have had twenty years before, but--brilliantidea!--awarded him the title of _Professor_, which in Italian, ofcourse, he had always been, and which was a much more insignificanttitle than _Maestro_, by which he was regularly called. 

Ravnkilde wrote my letters at the hospital for me, and the day I cameout we drove away together to the French restaurant to celebrate theoccasion by a dinner. 

I went from there up to Monte Pincio in a glorious sunshine, rejoiced tosee the trees again, and the people in their Sunday finery, and thelovely women's faces, as well as at being able to talk to people oncemore. It was all like new life in a new world. I met a good manyScandinavians, who congratulated me, and a young savant, GiuseppeSaredo, who, as professor of law, had been removed from Siena to Rome, and with whom, at the house of dall'Ongaro at Florence, I had had somedelightful talks. We decided that we would keep in touch with oneanother. 

XLVIII. 

It was only this one day, however, that happiness and the sun shone uponme. On the morrow pains in my right leg, in which there was a veinswollen, made me feel very unwell. So ignorant was the doctor that hedeclared this to be of no importance, and gave me a little ointment withwhich to rub my leg. But I grew worse from day to day, and after a veryshort time my leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once more forsome months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since veryheroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a violentattack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole of thefoot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be without itseffect on my general health. 

Still, I kept up my spirits finely. Among the Scandinavians who showedme kindness at this time I gratefully remember the Danish paintersRosenstand and Mackeprang, who visited me regularly and patiently, andmy friend Walter Runeberg, the Finnish sculptor, whose cheerfulness didme good. 

Other Scandinavians with whom I was less well acquainted came to see menow and again, but they had one very annoying habit. It was customary atthat time for all letters to be addressed, for greater security, to theDanish consulate, which served the purpose of a general Scandinavianconsulate. Anyone who thought of coming to see me would fetch whatletters had arrived for me that day and put them in his pocket to bringme. The letters I ought to have had at ten o'clock in the morning Igenerally received at seven in the evening. But these gentlemen oftenforgot to pay their visit at all, or did not get time, and then it wouldhappen that after having gone about with the letters in their pocketsfor a few days, they took them back to the consulate, whence they weresent to me, once, three days late. As my whole life on my sick-bed wasone constant, painful longing for letters from home, the more so as mymother, all the time I was in bed, was lying dangerously ill, I feltvexed at the thoughtless behaviour of my compatriots. 

However, I had not travelled so far to meet Northmen, and I learnt farmore from the one Italian who sat by my bedside day after day, GiuseppeSaredo. It was amusing to note the difference between his ways and theNorthmen's. He did not come in; he exploded. At six o'clock in theevening, he would rush in without knocking at the door, shouting at oneand the same time Italian to the people of the house, and French to me. He talked at a furious rate, and so loudly that people who did not knowmight have fancied we were quarrelling, and he changed his seat once aminute, jumped up from the easy chair and seated himself half in thewindow, began a sentence there and finished it sitting on my bed. Andevery second or third day he either himself brought books to entertainme or sent large parcels by a messenger. 

He had risen to be professor at the University of the the capital, without ever having been either student or graduate. His family were toopoor for him to study. For many years, when a lad, he had never eatendinner. His occupation, when at last he began to get on, was that ofproof-reader in a printing establishment, but he tried to add to hisincome by writing melodramas for the boulevard theatres in Turin. 

He thought he had written over fifty. He told me: "The manager generallycame to me on a Sunday, when we were at liberty, and said: 'We must havea new play for next Sunday. ' On Monday the first act was finished, onTuesday the second, etc. ; and every act was delivered as it was written, and the parts allotted. Sometimes the last act was only finished onSaturday morning, which, however, would not prevent the piece beingplayed on Sunday evening. " In a number of the _Revue des deuxMondes_ for 1857 we found Saredo mentioned among the melodramatistsof Italy. This must have been ferreted out privately, since he alwayswrote these melodramas anonymously, he having determined, with naïveconceit, "not to stain his future reputation. " When he was twenty-one, he tried to raise himself from this rank to that of a journalist, andsucceeded; he sent all sorts of articles to three newspapers. From histwenty-first to his twenty-fourth year he wrote for the daily papers, and wrote gay accounts of the volatile lives of young Italianjournalists with the ladies of the theatres. Then he fell in love withthe lady who later became his wife (known as a novelist under thepseudonym of Ludovico de Rosa), and from that time forth never looked atanother woman. All his life he cherished a great admiration for his wifeand gratitude towards her. 

When he had commenced his legal work, he strained every nerve to theutmost, and obtained his professorships in the various towns throughcompetition, without having followed the usual University path. "I havealways had the most unshaken faith in my star, " he said one day, "evenwhen, from hunger or despair, thoughts of suicide occurred to me. When Ibroke my black bread, I said to myself: 'The day will come when I shalleat white. '"

Like all Italians at that time, Saredo detested and despised modernFrance. As far as reconquered Rome was concerned, he regarded her withsorrowful eyes. "There are only nobility, ecclesiastics, and workmenhere, " he said; "no middle classes, no industry and no trade. Absurdtariff laws have up till now shut off the Papal States from thesurrounding world. And what a government! A doctor, who after his secondvisit did not make his patient confess to a priest, lost his officialpost, if he happened to hold one, and was in any case sent to prison forfive months. A doctor who did not go to Mass a certain number of timesduring the week was prohibited practising. The huge number of tied-upestates made buying and selling very difficult. The new government hasstruck the nobility a fatal blow by abolishing entailed property andlands. The calling in of the ecclesiastical property by the State isgiving the towns a chance to breathe. "

Whenever I revisited Italy, I saw Saredo. His heroism during theinquiries into the irregularities in Naples in 1900-1901 made his namebeloved and himself admired in his native country. He died in 1902, thehighest life official in Italy; since 1897 he had been President of theCouncil. 

XLIX. 

I came under an even greater debt of gratitude than to Saredo, to thegood-natured people in whose house I lay ill. I was as splendidly lookedafter as if I had made it a specified condition that I should be nursedin case of illness. 

My landlady, Maria, especially, was the most careful nurse, and the bestcreature in the world, although she had the physiognomy of a regularItalian criminal, when her face was in repose. The moment she spoke, however, her features beamed with maternal benevolence. After thehospital, it was a decided change for the better. I was under no one'styranny and did not feel as though I were in prison; I could complain ifmy food was bad, and change _trattoria_, when I myself chose. Everything was good. 

As long as I was well, I had taken hardly any notice of the people inthe house, hardly exchanged a word with them; I was out all day, andeither hastily asked them to do my room, or to put a little on the fire. It was only when I fell ill that I made their acquaintance. 

Let me quote from my notes at the time:

Maria is forty, but looks nearly sixty. Her husband is a joiner, astout, good-looking man, who works all day for his living, and has ashop. Then there is Maria's niece, the nineteen-year-old Filomena, atall, handsome girl. Every evening they have fine times, laugh, sing, and play cards. On Sunday evening they go out to the fair (_allafiera_) and look at the things without buying. Others have to pay alire to go in, but they go in free, as they know some of the people. Onfestival occasions Maria wears a silk dress. 

There is a crucifix over my bed, an oleograph of the Madonna and childand a heart, embroidered with gold on white, horribly pierced by theseven swords of pain, which were supposed to be nails; on the centre ofthe heart, you read, partly in Latin, partly in Greek letters:

JESU XPI PASSIO. 

All the same, Maria is very sceptical. Yesterday, on the evening of mybirthday, we had the following conversation:

_Myself_: "Here you celebrate your saints' day; not your birthday;but, you know, up in the North we have not any saints"--and, thinking itnecessary to add a deep-drawn religious sigh, I continued: "We think itenough to believe in God. " "Oh! yes, " she said slowly, and then, alittle while after: "That, too, is His own business. " "How?" "Well, " shesaid, "You know that I am dreadfully ignorant; I know nothing at all, but I think a great deal. There are these people now who are alwaystalking about the Lord. I think it is all stuff. When I married, theysaid to me: 'May it please the Lord that your husband be good to you. ' Ithought: If I had not been sensible enough to choose a good husband, itwould not help me much what should please the Lord. Later on they said:'May it please the Lord to give you sons. ' I had some, but they diedwhen they were little ones. Then I thought to myself: 'If my husband andI do not do something in the matter, it won't be much use for the Lordto be pleased to give them to us. Nature, too, has something to say toit. (_Anche la natura è una piccola cosa_. ) You have no idea, sir, how we have suffered from priests here in the Papal State. Everyone hadto go to Confession, and as of course they did not wish to confess theirown sins, they confessed other people's, --and told lies, too, --and inthat way the priests knew everything. If the priest had heard anythingabout a person, he or she would get a little ticket from him: 'Come tome at such and such a time! 'Then, when the person went, he would say:'Are you mad to live with such and such a person without beingmarried!'--and all the while he himself had a woman and a nest full ofchildren. Then he would say: 'I won't have you in my parish, ' and hewould publish the poor thing's secret to the whole world. Or, if he weremore exasperated, he would say: 'Out of the Pope's country!' and sendfor a few carabineers; they would take one to a cart and drive one tothe frontier; there, there were fresh carabineers, who took one farther--and all without trial, or any enquiry. Often the accusation was false. But we were ruled by spies, and all their power was based on theconfessional, which is nothing but spying. Shortly before Easter, apriest came and counted how many there were in the house. If afterwardsthere were one who did not go to mass, then his name was stuck up on thechurch door as an infidel, in disgrace. It is many years now since Ihave been to any confessor. When I die, I shall say: 'God, forgive me mysins and my mistakes, ' and shall die in peace without any priest. "

Whatever we talk about, Maria always comes back to her hatred of thepriests. The other day, we were speaking of the annoyance I had beensubjected to by a compatriot of mine, K. B. , who came to see me, butlooked more particularly at a large _fiasco_ I had standing there, containing four bottles of Chianti. He tasted the wine, which was veryinferior, declared it 'nice, ' and began to drink, ten glasses straightoff. At first he was very polite to me, and explained that it wasimpossible to spend a morning in a more delightful manner than byvisiting the Sistine Chapel first, and me in my sick-room afterwards, but by degrees he became ruder and ruder, and as his drunkennessincreased I sank in his estimation. At last he told me that I wasintolerably conceited, and started abusing me thoroughly. Lyingdefenceless in bed, and unable to move, I was obliged to ring for Maria, and whisper to her to fetch a few gentlemen from the Scandinavian Club, who could take the drunken man home, after he had wasted fully six hoursof my day. I managed in this way to get him out of the door. He washardly gone than Maria burst out: "_Che porcheria!_" and thenadded, laughing, to show me her knowledge of languages: "_Cochonnerie, Schweinerei!_" She has a remarkable memory for the words she hasheard foreigners use. She knows a number of French words, which shepronounces half like Italian, and she also knows a little Russian and alittle German, having, when a young girl, kept house for a Russianprince and his family. 

"I feel, " she said to me, "that I could have learnt both French andGerman easily, if I could have _compared_ them in a book. But I canneither read nor write. These wretched priests have kept us inignorance. And now I am old and good for nothing. I was forty a littlewhile ago, and that is too old to learn the alphabet. Do you know, signore, how it originally came about that I did not believe, anddespised the priests? I was twelve years old, and a tall girl, and avery good-looking girl, too, though you cannot see that, now that I amold and ugly. " (You can see it very plainly, for her features are haughtyand perfectly pure of line; it is only that her expression, when shesits alone, is sinister. ) "I lost my father when I was five years old. About that time my mother married again, and did not trouble herself anymore about me, as she had children with her new husband. So I was leftto myself, and ran about the streets, and became absolutelyungovernable, from vivacity, life, and mischief, for I was naturally avery lively child. Then one day I met a mule, alone; the man had leftit; I climbed up, and seated myself upon it, and rode about, up and downthe street, until a dog came that frightened the mule and it kicked andthrew me over its head. There I lay, with a broken collar-bone, and someof the bone stuck out through the skin. Then a doctor came and wanted tobind it up for me, but I was ashamed for him to see my breast, and wouldnot let him. He said: 'Rubbish! I have seen plenty of girls. ' So I wasbound up and for six weeks had to lie quite still. In the meantime apriest, whom they all called Don Carlo--I do not know why they said Don--came to see me, and when I was a little better and only could not movemy left arm, he said to me one day, would I go and weed in his garden, and he would give me money for it. So I went every day into the garden, where I could very well do the work with one arm. He came down to me, brought me sweets and other things, and asked me to be his friend. Ipretended not to understand. He said, too, how pretty I was, and suchthings. Then at last one day, he called me into his bedroom, and firstgave me sweets, and then set me on his knee. I did not know how to getaway. Then I said to him: 'It is wrong, the Madonna would not like it. 'Do you know, sir, what he replied? He said: 'Child! there is no Madonna(_non c'è Madonna_) she is only a bridle for the common people'(_è un freno per il populo basso_). Then I was anxious to runaway, and just then my mother passed by the garden, and as she did notsee me there, called, 'Anna Maria! Anna Maria!' I said: 'Mother iscalling me, ' and ran out of the room. Then mother said to me: 'What didthe priest say to you, and what did he do to you? You were in hisbedroom. ' I said: 'Nothing'; but when my mother went to confession, instead of confessing her sins, she said over and over again to him:'What have you done to my daughter? I will have my daughter examined, tosee what sort of a man you are. ' He declared: 'I will have you shot ifyou do' (_una buona schioppettata_). So mother did not dare to gofarther in the matter. But she would not believe me. "

Here we were interrupted by the Russian woman from next door coming in;she is married, more or less, to a waiter, and she complained of hisvolatility, and cried with jealousy. "Once I was just as weak, " saidMaria. "When I was newly married I was so jealous of my husband, that Icould neither eat nor drink if any one came to me and said: 'Thisevening he is with such and such a one. ' If I tried to eat, I was sickat once. I am just as fond of him as I was then, but I am cured now. IfI saw his infidelity with my own eyes, I should not feel the least bithurt about it. Then, I could have strangled him. "

FILOMENA

Italian Landladies--The Carnival--The Moccoli Feast--Filomena's Views

Filomena sings lustily from early morning till late at night, and hername suits her. The Greek Philomela has acquired this popular form, andin use is often shortened to Filomé. 

The other day I made her a present of a bag of English biscuits. Herface beamed as I have never besides seen anything beam but the face ofmy _cafetière_--he is a boy of twelve--when now and again he gets afew _soldi_ for bringing me my coffee or tea. Anyone who has onlyseen the lighting up of Northern faces has no conception, --as evenpainters admit, --of such transfiguration. Yes, indeed! Filomena's tallfigure and fresh mountain blood would freshen up the Goldschmidtianhuman race to such an extent that they would become better men and womenin his next books. 

I have seen a little of the Carnival. This morning Filomena came to myroom, to fetch a large Italian flag which belongs there. "I am going towave it on Thursday, " she said, and added, with blushing cheeks, "then Ishall have a mask on. " But this evening she could not restrain herself. For the first time during the five months I have lived here, and for thefirst time during the month I have been ill, she came in without myhaving called or rung for her. She had a red silk cap on, with a goldborder. "What do you say to that, sir!" she said, and her clear laughterrang through the room. It revived my sick self to gaze at ease at somuch youth, strength and happiness; then I said a few kind words to her, and encouraged by them she burst into a stream of eloquence about allthe enjoyment she was promising herself. This would be the firstcarnival she had seen; she came from the mountains and was going backthere this Spring. She was in the seventh heaven over her cap. Shealways reminds me, with her powerful frame, of the young giantess in thefairy tale who takes up a peasant and his plough in the hollow of herhand. 

Filomena is as tall as a moderately tall man, slenderly built, but withbroad shoulders. She impresses one as enjoying life thoroughly. She hasherself made all she wears--a poor little grey woollen skirt with anedging of the Italian colours, which has been lengthened some nineinches at the top by letting in a piece of shirting. A thin red-and-black-striped jacket that she wears, a kind of loose Garibaldi, issupposed to hide this addition, which it only very imperfectly does. Herhead is small and piquant; her hair heavy, blue-black; her eyes lightbrown, of exquisite shape, smiling and kind. She has small, red lips, and the most beautiful teeth that I remember seeing. Her complexion isbrown, unless she blushes; then it grows darker brown. Her figure isunusually beautiful, but her movements are heavy, so that one sees atonce she is quite uneducated. Still, she has a shrug of the shoulders, ways of turning and twisting her pretty head about, that are absolutelycharming. 

I have sent Filomena into the town to buy a pound of figs for me and onefor herself. While she is away, I reflect that I cannot sufficientlycongratulate myself on my excellent landlady, and the others. As a rule, these Roman lodging-house keepers are, judging by what one hears, perfect bandits. When F. , the Norwegian sculptor, lay dangerously ill, the woman in whose house he was did not even speak to him; she went outand left him alone in the house. When the Danish dilettante S. Was atdeath's door, his landlady did not enter his room once a day, or givehim a drink of water, and he was obliged to keep a servant. V. 'slandlady stole an opera-glass, a frock-coat, and a great deal of moneyfrom him. Most foreigners are swindled in a hundred different ways; ifthey make a stain on the carpet, they must pay for a new one. Marialooks after me like a mother. Every morning she rubs me with theointment the doctor has prescribed. When I have to have a bath, shetakes me in her arms, without any false shame, and puts me in the water;then takes me up and puts me to bed again; after my sojourn in thehospital, I am not very heavy. What I am most astonished at is theindulgent delicacy of these people. For instance, Maria has forbiddenher good-natured husband, whom, like Filomena, I like to call _Zio_(uncle), to eat garlic (the favourite food of the Romans) while I amill, that I may not be annoyed in my room by the smell. I have only tosay a word, and she and her niece run all my errands for me. Indeed, theother day, Maria exclaimed, quite indignantly: "Sir, do not say'_when_ you go into the town, will you buy me this or that?' Are werobbers, are we scoundrels? Only say, 'go, ' and I will go. " I never sayto her: "Will you do me a favour?" without her replying: "Two, sir. "Yes, and she heaps presents upon me; she and Filomena bring me, now abundle of firewood, now a glass of good wine, now macaroni, etc. All theDanes who come here are astonished, and say: "You have got deucedly goodpeople to look after you. "

Maria's greatest pleasure is talking. She has no time for it in the day. In the evening, however, she tidies my room slowly, entertaining me allthe time. When she has quite finished, at the time of day when othersare drowsy or go to bed, she still likes to have just a little moreconversation, and she knows that when I see she has put the last thinginto its place, her task for the day is ended, and I shall dismiss herwith a gracious _Buona sera, bon riposo!_ To put off this moment aslong as possible, she will continue to hold some object in her hand, and, standing in the favourite position of the Romans, with her armsakimbo, and some toilet article under her arm, will hold a longdiscourse. She sometimes looks so indescribably comic that I almostchoke with suppressed laughter as we talk. 

To-day is the first day of the Carnival. So even Filomena has been outthis evening in tri-coloured trousers. 

... I am interrupted by the inmates of all the floors returning from theCarnival, all talking at once, and coming straight in to me to show metheir dress. Amongst them from the Carnival, all talking at once, andcoming straight in to me to show me their dress. Amongst them are guestsfrom the mountains, tall, dark men, in exceedingly fantastic garb. Theytell me how much they have enjoyed themselves. Filomena has naïvely mademe a present of a few burnt almonds with sugar upon them, that she hashad in her trouser pockets, and informs me with impetuous volubility howshe has talked to all the people she met, "who do not know her and whomshe does not know. " She has had one of my white shirts on, which she hadembroidered all over with ribbons till it looked like a real costume. She is beaming with happiness. The tambourine tinkles all the evening inthe street; they are dancing the tarantella to it down below, and it isdifficult to go to sleep. Maria stays behind, when the others have gone, to finish her day's work. It is a sight for the gods to see her doing itwith a gold brocade cap on her head, and in red, white and greentrousers!

None of them guess what a torment it is to me to lie and hear about theCarnival, which is going on a few streets from where I am lying, butwhich I cannot see. When shall I spend a Winter in Rome again? And noother Carnival will be to compare with this one after the Romans for tenyears have held altogether aloof from it, and one hardly even on_Moccoli Eve_ saw more than two carriages full of silly Americanspelting one another with confetti, while the porters and the Frenchsoldiers flung jibes and dirt at each other. Now Rome is free, jubilation breaks out at all the pores of the town, and I, although I amin Rome, must be content to see the reflection of the festival in a fewingenuous faces. 

It is morning. I have slept well and am enjoying the fresh air throughthe open windows. Heavens! what a lovely girl is standing on the balconynearly opposite, in a chemise and skirt! I have never seen her therebefore. Olive complexion, blue-black hair, the most beautiful creature;I cannot see her features distinctly. Now they are throwing somethingacross to her from the house next door to us, on a piece of twine; Ithink they are red flowers. They almost touch her, and yet she cannotcatch them, and laughing stretches out both hands a second, a third andfourth time, equally unsuccessfully. Why, it is our Filomena, visitingthe model the other side the street. She gives up the attempt with alittle grimace, and goes in. 

Loud voices are singing the Bersagliere hymn as a duet under my window. Verily, things are alive in _Purificazione_ to-day. The contagionof example affects a choir of little boys who are always lying outsidethe street door, and they begin to sing the Garibaldi march for all theyare worth. Our singers at the theatre at home would be glad of suchvoices. The whole street is ringing now; all are singing one of Verdi'smelodies. 

I am sitting up in bed. At the side of my bed, Filomena, with her black, heavy hair well dressed, and herself in a kind of transitional toilette;her under-garment fine, the skirt that of a festival gown, on account ofthe preparations for the Carnival; her top garment the usual red jacket. She is standing with her hand on her hip, but this does not make herlook martial or alarming. 

_I_--You ate _magro_ to-day? (It was a fast day. )

_She_--Good gracious! _Magro_ every day just now!

_I_--Do you know, Filomena, that I eat _grasso_?

_She_--Yes, and it is your duty to do so. 

_I_--Why?

_She_--Because you are ill, and you must eat meat; the Pope himselfate meat when he was ill. Religion does not mean that we are to injureour health. 

_I_--How do you know, Filomena, what Religion means?

_She_--From my Confessor. I had a little headache the other day, and he ordered me at once to eat meat. 

_I_--The worst of it is that I have no Confessor and do not go tochurch. Shall I be damned for that?

_She_--Oh! no, sir, that does not follow! Do you think I am sostupid as not to see that you others are far better Christians than we?You are good; the friends who come to see you are good. The Romans, onthe other hand, who go to church one day, kill people the next, and willnot let go about the streets in peace. 

I am quite sorry that she is to go home at Easter; I shall miss her faceabout the house. But I have missed more. 

Late evening. They have come back from the Carnival. Filomena came inand presented me with an object the use of which is an enigma to me. Aroll of silver paper. Now I see what it is, a Carnival cap. My Danishfriend R. Declares she has got it into her head that when I am better Ishall marry her, or rather that Maria has put it into her head. Ithought I would see how matters stood. I began talking to Maria aboutmarriages with foreigners. Maria mentioned how many girls from Rome andCapri had married foreigners, but added afterwards, not withoutsignificance, addressing me: "It is not, as you believe, and as you saidonce before, that a girl born in a warm country would complain of beingtaken to a cold one. If she did, she would be stupid. But a Roman girlwill not do for a foreign gentleman. The Roman girls learn too little. "

Much, the lower classes certainly do not learn. Before I came, Filomenadid not know what ink was. Now I have discovered that she does not knowwhat a watch is. She reckons time by the dinner and the Ave Maria. Notlong ago her uncle spent a week in trying to teach this great child tomake and read figures, but without success. Not long ago she had towrite to her mother in the mountains, so went to a public writer, andhad it done for her. She came in to me very innocently afterwards toknow whether the right name and address were upon it. I told her thatshe could very well have let me write the letter. Since then, all thepeople in the house come to me when there is anything they want written, and ask me to do it for them. 

The news of my skill has spread. Apropos of letters, I have just readthe four letters that I received to-day. Filomena is perpetuallycomplaining of my sweetheart's uncontrollable passion as revealed inthis writing madness. She imagines that all the letters I receive fromDenmark are from one person, and that person, of course, a woman. Sheherself hardly receives one letter a year. 

I have (after careful consideration) committed a great imprudence, andescaped without hurt. I had myself carried down the stairs, drove to theCorso, saw the Carnival, and am back home again. I had thought first ofdriving up and down the Corso in a carriage, but did not care to bewholly smothered with confetti, especially as I had not the strength topelt back. Nor could I afford to have the horses and carriage decorated. So I had a good seat in a first-floor balcony engaged for me, first row. At 3 o'clock I got up, dressed, and was carried down. I was much struckby the mild Summer air out of doors (about the same as our late May), and I enjoyed meeting the masked people in the streets we passedthrough. The few but rather steep stairs up to the balcony were adifficulty. But at last I was seated, and in spite of sickness andweakness, enjoyed the Carnival in Rome on its most brilliant day. I wassitting nearly opposite to the high box of Princess Margharita, fromwhich there was not nearly so good a view as from my seat. This was whatI saw: All the balconies bedecked with flags; red, white and greenpredominating. In the long, straight street, the crowd moving in a tightmass. In between them, an up and a down stream of carriages, drawn at awalking pace by two horses, and forced at every moment to stop. Thestreets re-echoed with the jingle of the horses' bells, and with shoutsof glee at a magnificently decorated carriage, then at some unusuallybeautiful women, then at a brisk confetti fight between two carriages, or a carriage and a balcony. And this air, re-echoing with the ring ofbells, with shouting, and with laughter, was no empty space. Anyonereaching the Corso, as I had done, after the play had only been going onfor an hour and a half, found themselves in the midst of a positivebombardment of tiny little aniseed balls, or of larger plaster balls, thrown by hand, from little tin cornets, or half-bushel measures, andagainst which it is necessary to protect one's self by a steel wire maskbefore the face. For whilst some gentle young ladies almost pour theconfetti down from their carriages, so that it falls like a soft showerof rain, many of the Romans fling it with such force that without a maskthe eyes might suffer considerably. The brim of one's hat, and everyfold in one's clothes, however, are full of little balls. Most people goabout with a huge, full bag by their side, others on the balconies haveimmense baskets standing, which are hardly empty before they are re-filled by eager sellers. All the ladies standing in the windows, whowere disguised as Turkish ladies, or workwomen from the port, had a deepwooden trough, quite full, brought outside their windows, and into thissupply dipped continually--in the street, which had been covered withsoil for the sake of the horse-racing, was a crowd of people in fancydress, many of them having great fun, and being very amusing. One oldwoman in a chemise was amongst the best. A young fellow, dressedentirely in scarlet, more particularly amused himself by putting theofficers of the National Guard, who were walking about to keep order, out of countenance. When they were looking especially stern, he would goup to them and tickle them on the cheeks, and talk baby talk to them, and they had to put the best face they could on it. The street life andthe pedestrians, however, did not attract much attention. All theinterest was centred on the carriages, and the games between them andthe windows and balconies. The people in carriages were all in fancydress. Amongst them one noticed charming groups of Roman ladies in lightcloaks of red silk with a red steel wire mask before their faces, through which one could catch a glimpse of their features; there was aswarm of delightful figures, certainly half of them in men's clothes, armed young sailors, for instance. Fine, happy faces! And the young men, how handsome! Not flashing eyes, as people affectedly say, but happyeyes; a good, healthy physique, an expression which seemed to say thatthey had breathed in sunshine and happiness and all the beatitude oflaziness, all the mild and good-humoured comfort of leisure, all theirlives long. One party had a colossal cart with outriders and postilions, and hung in the yards and stood on the thwarts of a large cutter poisedupon it, in becoming naval officers' dress, flinging magnificentbouquets to all the beautiful ladies who drove past. The bouquets wouldhave cost several lire each, and they flung them by the hundred, so theymust have been young fellows of means. The throwing of confetti ismerely bellicose and ordinary. Infinitely more interesting is thecoquettish, ingratiating, genuinely Italian flinging backwards andforwards of bouquets. The grace and charm of the manner in which theyare flung and caught, nothing can surpass; there may be real passion inthe way in which six or seven bouquets in succession are flung at oneand the same lady, who never omits to repay in similar coin. Onecarriage was especially beautiful; it had a huge square erection uponit, entirely covered with artificial roses and greenery, which reachedalmost to the second storey of the houses, and upon it, in two rows, facing both sides of the streets, stood the loveliest Roman girlsimaginable, flinging bouquets unceasingly. Most of the carriages havetall poles sticking up with a crossway bar at the top, and there arebouquets on every bar, so there is a constant supply to draw from. Beautiful Princess Margharita was, of course, the object of much homage, although her balcony was on the second floor. One form this took wasvery graceful. A few young gentlemen in blue and white drove slowlypast; one of them had a large flat basket filled with lovely whiteroses; he stuck a long halberd through the handle and hoisted the basketup to the Princess, being richly rewarded with bouquets. One wag hitupon an idea that was a brilliant success. At five o'clock he sent abladder, in the shape of a huge turkey, up in the flickering sunlight. It was so fixed up as to move its head about, with an expression ofexceedingly ridiculous sentimentality, now to the right, now caressinglyto the left, as it ascended. The whole Corso rang again with laughterand clapping. The horse-racing at the end was not of much account. Thehorses start excited by the rocket let off at their tails, and by allthe sharp pellets hanging around about them, to say nothing of thehowling of the crowd. At six o'clock I was at home and in bed. 

K. B. Has been here to see me; Filomena hates and despises him from thebottom of her heart since the day that he got drunk on my wine. When hewas gone she said: "_Brutta bestia_, I forgot to look whether hewas clean to-day. " She and Maria declare that he is the only one of allmy acquaintances who does not wear clean linen. This point ofcleanliness is a mild obsession of Filomena's just now. She pridesherself greatly on her cleanliness, and asks me every day whether she isclean or not. She is a new convert to cleanliness, and renegades ornewly initiated people are in all religions the most violent. When Icame to the house, her face was black and she washed her hands aboutonce a day. R--- then remarked about her--which was a slightexaggeration--that if one were to set her up against the wall, she wouldstick fast. She noticed with unfeigned astonishment how many times Iwashed myself, and asked for fresh water, how often I had clean shirts, etc. This made a profound impression on her young mind, and after I cameback from the hospital she began in earnest to rub her face with asponge and to wash herself five or six times a day, likewise to wash thehandkerchiefs she wears round her neck. Maria looks on at all this withsurprise. She says, like the old woman in Tonietta, by Henrik Hertz: "Agreat, strong girl like that does not need to wash and splash herselfall over like an Englishwoman. " The lectures she has given me every timeI have wanted to wash myself, on the harm water does an invalid, aremany and precious. Whenever I ask for water I might be wanting to commitsuicide; it is only after repeated requests that she brings it, and thenwith a quiet, resigned expression, as if to say: "I have done my best toprevent this imprudence: I wash my hands of all responsibility. "Filomena, in her new phase of development, is quite different. She looksat my shirt with the eyes of a connoisseur, and says: "It will do forto-morrow; a clean one the day after to-morrow!" or, "Did you see whatbeautiful cuffs the tall, dark man (M. The painter) had on yesterday?"or, "Excuse my skirt being so marked now, I am going to have a clean onelater in the day, " or, "Is my cheek dirty? I don't think so, for I havewashed myself twice to-day; you must remember that I am very dark-complexioned, almost like a Moor. " Or else there will be a triumphalentry into my room, with a full water-can in her hand, one of the verylarge ones that are used here. "What is that, Filomena? What am I to dowith that?" "Look, sir, it is full. " "Well, what of that?" "It is thewaiter's water-can; it has been standing there full for ten days(scornfully): he is afraid of water; he only uses it for his coffee. "She has forgotten how few months it is since she herself was afraid ofwater. 

She came in while I was eating my supper, and remarked: "You always readat your meals; how can you eat and read at the same time? I do not knowwhat reading is like, but I thought it was more difficult than that. Itis a great misfortune for me that I can neither read nor write. Supposing I were to be ill like you, how should I pass away the time!There was no school at Camarino, where I was born, and I lived in thecountry till I was eighteen, and learnt nothing at all. We were ninebrothers and sisters; there was seldom any food in the house; sometimeswe worked; sometimes we lay on the ground. It is unfortunate that Icannot read, for I am not at all beautiful; if I could only dosomething, I should be able to get a husband. "

"Don't you know any of the letters, Filomena?"

"No, sir. " "Don't trouble about that. You are happier than I, who know agreat deal more than you. You laugh and sing all day long; I neitherlaugh nor sing. " "Dear sir, you will laugh, and sing as well, when youget home. Then your little girl (_ragazza_) who is so _appassionato_that she writes four letters a day, will make _fête_ for you, and Ithink that when you go to the _osteria_ with your friends you laugh. It is enough now for you to be patient. " As she had spoken about gettinga husband, I asked: "Are your sisters married?" "They are all older thanI, and married. " (Saving her pride in the first part of her reply. ) Aftera few minutes' reflection she went on: "I, for my part, will not have ahusband under thirty; the young ones all beat their wives. " Shortlyafterwards, I put an end to the audience. We had had a few shortdiscussions, and I had been vanquished, apparently by her logic, butchiefly by reason of her better mastery of the language, and because Idefended all sorts of things in joke. At last I said: "Have you noticed, Filomena, that when we argue it is always you who silence me? So you cansee, in spite of all my reading, that you have better brains than I. " Thiscompliment pleased her; she blushed and smiled, without being able to finda reply. 

She realises the Northern ideal of the young woman not spoilt by novel-reading. Nor does she lack intelligence, although she literally does notknow what North and South mean; she is modest, refined in her way, andhappy over very little. For the moment she is engaged in making thelittle dog bark like mad by aggravatingly imitating the mewing of a cat. 

Later. The boy from the café brings me my supper. What has become ofFilomena? I wonder if she is out? I cannot hear her having her eveningfight with the boy in the passage. She likes to hit him once a day forexercise. 

Maria comes in. "Do you hear the cannon, sir? What do you think it is?"I reply calmly: "It is war; the Zouaves (papal troops) are coming. "Maria goes out and declares the reply of the oracle in the next room. Some cannon salutes really were being fired. Maria hurries down into thestreet to hear about it and Filomena comes in to me. "I am afraid, " shesays. "Do you mean it?" She was laughing and trembling at the same time. I saw that the fear was quite real. "Is it possible that you can be soafraid? There is not really any war or any Zouaves, it was only a joke. "That pacified her. "I was afraid, if you like, " said she, "when theItalians (the Romans never call themselves Italians) marched into Rome. One shell came after another; one burst on the roof of the houseopposite. " "Who are you for, the Pope or Vittorio?" "For neither. I am astupid girl; I am for the one that will feed and clothe me. But I haveoften laughed at the Zouaves. One of them was standing here one day, taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and he said to me: 'The Italians willnever enter Rome. ' I replied: 'Not if they take snuff, but they will ifthey storm the town. '" "Do you think that the Pope will win?" "No, Ithink his cause is lost. Perhaps there will even come a time when no onegoes to churches here. " _She_: "Who goes to church! The girls tomeet their lovers; the young men to see a pretty shop-girl. We laugh atthe priests. " "Why?" "Because they are ridiculous: if it thunders, theysay at once that it is a sign from God. The sky happens to be flamingred, like it was last October. That was because the Italians enteredRome in September. Everything is a sign from God, a sign of his anger, his exasperation. He is not angry, that is clear enough. If he had notwanted the Italians to come in, they would not have come, but would allhave died at once. " She said this last with great earnestness andpathos, with an upward movement of her hand, and bowed her head, likeone who fears an unknown power. Maria returned, saying people thoughtthe shots meant that Garibaldi had come. Said I: "There, he is a braveman. Try to be like him, Filomena. It is not right for a big strong girlto tremble. " _She_: "I am not strong, but still, I am stronger thanyou, who have been weakened so much by your illness, --and yet, whoknows, you have been much better the last few days. Shall we try?" Iplaced my right hand in hers, first tested her strength a little, andthen found to my surprise that her arm was not much stronger than thatof an ordinary lady; then I bent my fingers a little, and laid her veryneatly on the floor. I was sitting in bed; she was on her knees in frontof the bed, but I let her spring up. It was a pretty sight; the blue-black hair, the laughing mouth with the fine, white teeth, the brown, smiling eyes. As she got up, she said: "You are well now; I am not sorryto have been conquered. "

 * * * * *

Have taken my second flight. I have been at the Moccoli fête, had myselfcarried and driven there and back, like last time. Saredo had taken aroom on the Corso; I saw everything from there, and now I have thedelightful impressions of it all left. What exuberant happiness! Whatjubilation! What childlike gaiety! It is like going into a nursery andwatching the children play, hearing them shout and enjoy themselves likemad, as one can shout and enjoy things one's self no longer. 

I arrived late and only saw the end of the processions; far morecarriages, wilder shouting, more madness, --bacchantic, stormy, --thanlast time. The whole length of the Corso was one shriek of laughter. Andhow many lovely faces at the windows, on the balconies and verandas!Large closed carriages with hidden music inside and graceful ladies onthe top. As _i preti_ (the Catholic papers) had said that all whotook part in the Carnival were paid by the government, a number of menand women, in the handsomest carriages--according to the _NuovaRoma_ for to-day, more than 20, 000--had the word _pagato_ (paid)fastened to their caps, which evoked much amusement. Then the lancerscleared the street at full galop for the horse races (_barberi_), and at once an immense procession of Polichinelli and ridiculousequestrians in Don Quixote armour organised itself and rode down theCorso at a trot in parody. Then came the mad, snorting horses. Then afew minutes, --and night fell over the seven heights of Rome, and theCorso itself lay in darkness. Then the first points of light began tomake their appearance. Here below, one little shimmer of light, and upthere another, and two there, and six here, and ten down there to theleft, and hundreds on the right, and then thousands, and many, manythousands. From one end of the great long street to the other, from thefirst floor to the roof of every house and every palace, there is onesteady twinkling of tiny flames, of torches, of large and small lights;the effect is surprising and peculiar. As soon as the first lightappeared, young men and girls ran and tried to blow each other's candlesout. Even the children took part in the game; I could see into severalhouses, where it was going on briskly. Then, from every side-streetdecorated carriages began to drive on to the Corso again, but this timeevery person held a candle in his hand. Yes, and that was not all! atleast every other of the large waggons--they were like immense boxes offlowers--had, on poles, or made fast, Bengal fire of various colours, which lighted up every house they went past, now with a red, now with agreen flare. And then the thousands of small candles, from every one inthe throng, from carriages, balconies, verandas, sparkled in the greatflame, fighting victoriously with the last glimmer of daylight. Peopleran like mad down the Corso and fanned out the lights in the carriages. But many a Roman beauty found a better way of lighting up her featureswithout exposing herself to the risk of having her light put out. Opposite me, for instance, on the second floor, a lovely girl wasstanding in a window. In the shutter by her side she had fixed one ofthose violent red flares so that she stood in a bright light, likesunlight seen through red glass, and it was impossible not to noticeher. Meanwhile, the people on the balconies held long poles in theirhands, with which they unexpectedly put out the small candles in thecarriages. You heard incessantly, through the confusion, the shouts ofindividuals one to another, and their jubilation when a long-attemptedand cleverly foiled extinguishing was at length successful, and theclapping and shouts of _bravo!_ at an unusually brightly lightedand decorated carriage. The pickpockets meanwhile did splendid business;many of the Danes lost their money. 

At eight o'clock I was in bed again, and shortly afterwards the peopleof the house came home for a moment. Filomena looked splendid, and wasvery talkative. "_Lei é ingrassato_, " she called in through thedoor. It is her great pleasure that the hollows in my cheeks aregradually disappearing. She was now ascribing a special efficacy in thisdirection to Moccoli Eve. 

 * * * * *

At half-past ten in the morning, there is a curious spectacle in thestreet here. At that time Domenico comes and the lottery begins. Lotteries are forbidden in Rome, but Domenico earns his ten lire a dayby them. He goes about this and the neighbouring streets bawling andshouting until he has disposed of his ninety tickets. 

Girls and women lean out through the windows and call out the numbersthey wish to have--in this respect they are boundlessly credulous. Theydo not believe in the Pope; but they believe that there are numberswhich they must become possessed of that day, even at the highest price, which is two soldi. The soldi are thrown out through the window, andeach one remembers her own number. Then Domenico goes through all thenumbers in a loud voice, that there may be no cheating. A child draws anumber out of the bag, and Domenico shouts: "Listen, all Purificazione, No. 34 has won, listen, Purificazione, 34 ... 34. " The disappointedfaces disappear into the houses. All those who have had 33, 35 and 36rail against unjust Fate, in strong terms. 

At the first rattle of the lottery bag, Filomena rushes in here, opensthe window, and calls for a certain number. If anyone else wants it, shemust manage to find two soldi in her pocket. If I fling a few soldi frommy bed towards the window, this facilitates the search. However, wenever win. Filomena declares that I have indescribable ill-luck ingambling, and suggests a reason. 

 * * * * *

She was again singing outside. I called her, wanting to know what it wasshe kept singing all the time. "They are songs from the mountains, " shereplied, "all _canzone d'amore_. " "Say them slowly, Filomena. Iwill write them down. " I began, but was so delighted at the way sherepeated the verses, her excellent declamatory and rhythmic sense, thatI was almost unable to write. And to my surprise, I discovered that theywere all what we call ritornellos. But written down, they are dulllarvae, compared with what they are with the proper pronunciation andexpression. What is it Byron says?:

 I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin. 

I shall really feel a void when Filomena goes away. The unfortunate partof it is that her dialect pronunciation is so difficult to make out, andthat she swallows so many syllables in order to make the metre right, asthere are generally too many feet, and it is only the delicacy of herdeclamation that makes up for the incorrectness of the rhymes and theverses. For instance, she constantly says _lo_ instead of _il_(_lo soldato_), and she can never tell me how many words there arein a line, since neither she nor Maria knows what a single word, asopposed to several, is, and because it is no use spelling the word toher and asking: "Is that right?" since she cannot spell, and does notrecognise the letters. Saredo tells me that a driver who once drove himand his wife about for five days in Tuscany sang all day long likeFilomena, and improvised all the time. This is what she, too, doescontinually; she inserts different words which have about the samemeaning, and says: "It is all the same" (_c'è la stessa cosa_). Onthe other hand, she always keeps to the metre, and that with the mostgraceful intonation; never a faulty verse:

 Fior di giacinto! La donna che per l'uomo piange tanto-- Il pianto delle donne è pianto finto. 

 Amore mio! Non prendite le fiori di nessuno, Se vuoi un garofletto, lo do io. 

 Fior di limone! Limone è agra, e le fronde son' amare, Ma son' più' amare le pene d'amor'. 

 Lo mi' amore che si chiama Peppe, Lo primo giuocatore delle carte Prende 'sto cuore e giuoca a tre-sette. 

[Footnote:

 Flower of the hyacinth! The woman who weeps so much for the man's sake-- Yet, the complaint of women is a feigned one. 

 My love! Do not accept flowers from anyone. If thou wilt have a wall-flower, I will give it thee. 

 Flower of the lemon! The lemon is sharp, and its leaves are bitter; But more bitter are the torments of love. 

 My beloved, whose name is Peppe, He is the first to play cards, He has taken this heart and is playing a game of Three to Seven with it. ]

In this way I wrote out some scores. 

 * * * * *

Spent an hour teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and makingher say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them intothree portions--ABCD--EFG--ILMN. She manages all right, except that shealways jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" "No, I have nothing to confess. " "Did you go to church lastSunday?" "No, I have not been for six weeks now. I have committed nosin. What wrong do I do? I have no love affair, nothing. " "What used youto confess?" "A few bad words, which had slipped out. Now I do nothingwrong. " "But one can go wrong, without committing any sin, when one ishigh-minded, for instance. " "I am not high-minded. If you, on the otherhand, were to imagine yourself better than the friends who come to visityou, that would be quite natural; for you are better. "

 * * * * *

The day has been long. This evening the girl had errands to do for me. She came in here after her Sunday walk in the Campagna. I said: "Shallwe read?" (Just then a band of young people passed along the street witha harmonica and a lot of castanets, and commenced a song in honour ofGaribaldi. With all its simplicity, it sounded unspeakably affecting; Iwas quite softened. ) She replied: "With pleasure. " I thought to myself:"Now to see whether she remembers a word of what I said to heryesterday. " But she went on at once: "Signore, I have been industrious. "She had bought herself an ABC and had taught herself alone not only allthe large letters, but also all the little ones, and had learnt them alloff by heart as well. I was so astonished that I almost fell back in thebed. "But what is this, Filomena? Have you learnt to read from someoneelse?" "No, only from you yesterday. But for five years my only wish hasbeen to learn to read, and I am so glad to be able to. " I wanted toteach her to spell. "I almost think I can a little. " And she was alreadyso far that--without spelling first--she read a whole page of two-letterspellings, almost without a mistake. She certainly very often said: "Da--ad, " or read _fo_ for _of_, but her progress was amazing. When she spells, she takes the words as a living reality, not merely aswords, and adds something to them, for instance, _s--a, sa; l--i, li;r--e, re; salire alle scale_, (jump down the stairs. ) "Filomena, Icould teach you to read in three weeks. " _She_: "I have alwaysthought it the greatest shame for a man or woman not to be able toread. " I told her something about the progress of the human race, thatthe first men and women had been like animals, not at all like Adam andEve. "Do you think I believe that Eve ate an apple and that the serpentcould speak? _Non credo mente_. Such things are like _mal'occhi_(belief in the evil eye). " And without any transition, she begins, _sempre allegra_, as she calls herself--to sing a gay song. Justnow she is exceedingly delighted with a certain large red shawl. Therecame a pedlar to the door; she sighed deeply at the sight of thebrilliant red; so I gave it her. 

She is a great lover and a connoisseur of wine, like myself. We tasteand drink together every dinner-time. As she always waits upon me, Ioften give her a little cake and wine while I am eating. Now we havebegun a new wine, white Roman muscat. But I change my wine almost everyother day. Filomena had taken the one large bottle and stacked upnewspapers round it on the table, so that if K. B. Came he should not seeit. It so happened that he came to-day, whilst I was dining and sheeating with me. There was a ring; she wanted to go. "Stay; perhaps it isnot for me at all; and in any case, I do not ask anyone's permission foryou to be here. " He came in, and said in Danish, as he put his hat down:"Oh, so you let the girl of the house dine with you; I should not carefor that. " Filomena, who noticed his glance in her direction, and hisgesture, said, with as spiteful a look, and in as cutting a voice as shecould muster: "_Il signore prende il suo pranzo con chi lui pare epiace. _" (The gentleman eats with whomsoever he pleases. ) "Does sheunderstand Danish?" he asked, in astonishment. "It looks like it, " Ireplied. When he had gone, her _furia_ broke loose. I saw herexasperated for the first time, and it sat very comically upon her. "Didyou ask him whom _he_ eats with? Did he say I was ugly? Did you askhim whether his _ragazza_ was prettier?" (She meant a Danish lady, a married woman, with whom she had frequently met K. B. In the street. )

She said to me yesterday: "There is one thing I can do, sir, that youcannot. I can carry 200 pounds' weight on my head. I can carry two_conchas_, or, if you like to try me, all that wood lying there. "She has the proud bearing of the Romans. 

Read with Filomena for an hour and a half. She can now spell words withthree letters fairly well. This language has such a sweet ring that herspelling is like music. And to see the innocent reverence with which shesays _g-r-a, gra_, --it is what a poet might envy me. And then theearnest, enquiring glance she gives me at the end of every line. It ismarvellous to see this complete absorption of a grown-up person in thestudy of _a-b, ab_, and yet at the same time there is somethingalmost great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined withincredulity of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poetsshould have had for their naïve characters. In Goethe's _Roman Elegies_, the Roman woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as agenuine woman of the people, she is not naïve. He knew a Faustina, butone feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place. Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of anunspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, but free--how shall Idescribe it? Full, grand, simple. With a _concha_ on her head, she wouldlook like a caryatid. If I compare her mentally with a feminine characterof another poet, Lamartine's Graziella, an Italian girl of the lowerclasses, like herself, I cannot but think Graziella thin and poetised, down to her name. The narrator, if I remember rightly, teaches her toread, too; but Graziella herself does not desire it; it is he whoeducates her. Filomena, on the contrary, with her anxiety to learn, isan example and a symbol of a great historic movement, the poor, oppressedRoman people's craving for light and knowledge. Of Italy's population oftwenty-six millions, according to the latest, most recent statistics, seventeen millions can neither read nor write. She said to me to-day:"What do you really think, sir, do you not believe that the Holy Ghostis _una virtù_ and cannot be father of the child?" "You are right, Filomena. " "That is why I never pray. " "Some day, when you are veryunhappy, perhaps you will pray. " "I have been very unhappy; when I wasa child I used to suffer horribly from hunger. I had to get up at fiveo'clock in the morning to work and got eight _soldi_ for standing all daylong in a vineyard in the sun and digging with a spade, and as corn wasdear and meat dear, we seven children seldom had a proper meal. Last year, too, I was hungry often, for it was as the proverb says: 'If I eat, Icannot dress myself, and if I dress myself I cannot eat. ' (What a sad andilluminating proverb!) Sir, if there were any Paradise, you would gothere, for what you do for me. If I can only read and write, I can earntwice as much as I otherwise could. Then I can be a _cameriera_, and bring my mistress a written account of expenditure every week. "

Filomena knows that Saredo is a professor at the University. But shedoes not know what a professor or a University is. She puts her questionlike this: "Probably my idea of what a university is, may not be quitecorrect?"

No one comes now. An invalid is very interesting at first, and arousessympathy. If he continue ill too long, people unconsciously think itimpossible for him to get well, and stay away. So the only resource leftme all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted thenursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had herfourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion andthe lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mentalstate reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her yesterday, as an experiment, that there were five continents and in each of themmany countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean, as she has noconception of what the earth looks like. She does not even know in whatdirection from Rome her native village, Camerino, lies. I will try toget hold of a map, or a globe. Yesterday, we read the word_inferno_. She said: "There is no hell; things are bad enough onearth; if we are to burn afterwards, there would be two hells. " "Goodgracious! Filomena, is life so bad? Why, you sing all day long. " "I singbecause I am well; that is perfectly natural, but how can I be content?""What do you wish for then?" "So much money (_denari_) that Ishould be sure of never being hungry again. You do not know how ithurts. Then there is one other thing I should like, but it isimpossible. I should like not to die; I am so horribly afraid of death. I should certainly wish there were a Paradise. But who can tell! Still, my grandmother lived to be a hundred all but three years, and she wasnever ill for a day; when she was only three years from being a hundredshe still went to the fields like the rest of us and worked, and waslike a young woman (_giovanotta_). Mother is forty-two, butalthough she is two years older than my aunt, she looks quite young. _Chi lo sa!_ Perhaps I may live to be a hundred too, never be ill--I never have been yet, one single day, --and then go in and lie down onthe bed like she did and be dead at once. "

"She really is sweet!" said R. This evening. The word does not fit. Herlaugh, her little grimaces, her witticisms, quaint conceits and gesturesare certainly very attractive, but her mode of expression, when she istalking freely, is very unreserved, and if I were to repeat some of herremarks to a stranger, he would perhaps think her coarse or loose. "Weshall see what sort of a girl you bring home to us when you are wellagain, and whether you have as good taste as our Frenchman. Or perhapsyou would rather visit her? I know how a fine gentleman behaves, when hevisits his friend. She is often a lady, and rich. He comes, knockssoftly at the door, sits down, and talks about difficult and learnedthings. Then he begs for a kiss, she flings her arms round his neck;_allora, il letto rifatto, va via. "_ She neither blushes nor feelsthe slightest embarrassment when she talks like this. "How do you knowsuch things, when you have no experience?" "People have told me; I knowit from hearsay. I myself have never been in love, but I believe that itis possible to love one person one's whole life long, and never growtired of him, and never love another. You said the other day (for ajoke?) that people ought to marry for a year or six months; but Ibelieve that one can love the same person always. "

In such chat my days pass by. I feel as though I had dropped downsomewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Mariais from Camarino, too, --and were living there hidden from the worldamong these big children. 

Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time. He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well, which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Mariacame home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the_signore_ seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see himagain?"

Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them. Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "Youdo not go to Hell for singing _canzone_; you cannot help what theyare like. " The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, andnot a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy tounderstand. They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. Theyall begin with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educatedgirl's abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural, she thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still, now she understands that there are certain things--impossible things--that I do not like to hear her say. 

I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates. _She_: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put theteeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ. '"Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either ofits beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of whatthe New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-knownquotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles, which are printed in our _Abecedario_, the Creed, the Ave Maria, the various Sacraments, etc. , which they know by heart. These theyreject, but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianityis. If I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it. 

But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven othervirtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing theignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons)have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country. 

Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a_trattoria_, where a gentleman had spoken _tanto bene, tantobene_ against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few_Caccialepri_ present (a derogatory expression for adherents of thepriests), who had just had to come down a peg or two. When she hadfinished, to my astonishment, she said to me, _exactly this_: "Itis Nature that is God, is it not so?"

An expression almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of theRomans is their constant axiom, _Chi lo sa?_ (Who knows?) I said toMaria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in aquarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not tofear God, but to say _Perche_? (why?), instead of _Chi lo sa_?"

Yesterday, while I was eating my dinner, I heard Filomena's story. Shecame to Rome last December: "You think I came because Maria wanted tohelp mother. I came to Rome because there was a man who wanted to marryme. " "What was his name?" "His name was Peppe. " _"Lo mi' amore, che sichiama Peppe. "_... "Ah, I do not love him at all. No, the thing isthat at Camerino all the men beat their wives. My sister, for instance, has always a black eye, and red stripes on her back. My friend Mariettaalways gets beaten by her husband, and the more he beats her, the moreshe loves him: sometimes she goes away from him for a few days to hersister, but she always goes back again. " "What has that to do with ourfriend Peppe?" "Well, you see, mother knew that Peppe's brother beat hiswife all day and all night; so she would not give me to him. " "Yes, itwas bad, if it were a family failing. " "So one evening father said tome: 'Your aunt has written to us from Rome, to ask whether you will payher a visit of a few days. ' And he showed me a false letter. Aunt cannotwrite and knew nothing about any letter. I did not want to, much, said Iwould not, but came here all the same, and found that I was to stayhere, and that mother did not want me to have Peppe. So I began to cry, and for five whole days I cried all the time and would neither eat nordrink. Then I thought to myself: It is all over between Peppe and me. Shall I cry myself to death for a man? So I left off crying, and verysoon forgot all about him. And after a week's time I did not careanything about the whole matter, and sang and was happy, and now I wantto stay in Rome always. "

Last night I got up for a little, read with Filomena, and determined togo in and have supper with the family in their little room. Filomenaopened the door wide, and called out along the corridor:_"Eccolo!"_ and then such a welcome as there was for the invalid, now that he had at last got up! and I was obliged to drink two largebeer-glasses of the home-grown wine. First Maria told how it was that Ihad always had everything so punctually whilst I was ill. It was becauseFilomena had made the little boy from the _café_ believe that I wasgoing to give him my watch when I got well, if he never let anything getcold. So the boy ran as though possessed, and once fell down the stairsand broke everything to atoms. "He is delirious, " said Filomena one day, "and talks of nothing but of giving you his watch. " "How can he be soill, " said the boy suspiciously, "when he eats and drinks?" "Do you wantthe watch or not?" said Filomena, and off the lad ran. I let the othersentertain me. Maria said: "You told Filomena something yesterday aboutsavages; I know something about them, too. Savage people live in China, and the worst of all are called Mandarins. Do you know what one of themdid to an Italian lady? She was with her family over there; suddenlythere came a Mandarin, carried her off, and shut her up in his house. They never found her again. Then he had three children by her; but oneday he went out and forgot to shut the door; she ran quickly out of thehouse, down to the water, and saw a ship far away. Do you know what themandarin did, sir, when he came home and found that his wife was gone?He took the three children, tore them through the middle, and threw thepieces out into the street. " It reminded one of Lucidarius, and othermediaeval legends. Then our good _zio_, the honest uncle, began, and told Maria and Filomena the history of Napoleon I. , fairlycorrectly. He had heard it from his master Leonardo, who taught him histrade; the man had taken part in five of the campaigns. The onlyegregious mistake he made was that he thought the Austrians hadgradually poisoned the Duke of Reichstadt, because he threatened tobecome even more formidable than his father. But that the old grenadiermight easily have believed. The thing that astonished me was that thenarrative did not make the slightest impression upon either Maria orFilomena. I asked Filomena if she did not think it was very remarkable. But she clearly had a suspicion that it was all lies, besides, what hashappened in the world before her day is of as little importance to heras what goes on in another planet; finally, she abominates war. _Zio_ concluded his story with childlike self-satisfaction: "When Ilearnt about all this, I was only an apprentice; now I am _mastroNino_. "

These last few days that I have been able to stumble about the room alittle, I have had a feeling of delight and happiness such as I havehardly experienced before. The very air is a fête. The little black-haired youngsters, running about this picturesquely steep street, are mydelight, whenever I look out of the window. All that is in front of me:the splendours of Rome, the Summer, the art of Italy, Naples in theSouth, Venice in the North, makes my heart beat fast and my head swim. Ionly need to turn round from the window and see Filomena standing behindme, knitting, posed like a living picture by Küchler to feel, withjubilation: I am in Rome. Saredo came to-day at twelve o'clock, and sawme dressed for the first time. I had put on my nicest clothes. I calledFilomena, had three dinners fetched, and seated between him and her, Ihad my banquet. I had just said: "I will not eat any soup to-day, unlessit should happen to be _Zuppa d'herba_. " Filomena took the lid offand cried: _"A punto. "_ This is how all my wishes are fulfillednow. I had a fine, light red wine. It tasted so good that if the godshad known it they would have poured their nectar into the washtub. Filomena poured it out, singing:

 L'acqua fa mare, Il vino fa cantare; Il sugo della gresta Fa gira' la testa. 

 (Water is bad for one; Wine makes one sing; The juice of the grape Makes the head swim. )

To-morrow I may go out. After Sunday, I shall leave off dining at home. On Sunday Filomena goes to Camerino. 

SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD

(_Continued_)

Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with GiuseppeSaredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--GeorgesNoufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael'sLoggias--A Radiant Spring. 

I

Saredo said to me one day: "I am not going to flatter you--I have nointerest in doing so; but I am going to give you a piece of advice, which you ought to think over. Stay in Italy, settle down here, and youwill reach a far higher position than you can possibly attain in yourown country. The intellectual education you possess is exceedingly rarein Italy; what I can say, without exaggeration, is that in this countryit is so extraordinary that it might be termed an active force. Withintwo years you would be a power in Italy, at home, you will never be morethan a professor at a University. Stay here! Villari and I will help youover your first difficulties. Write in French, or Italian, which youlike, and as you are master of the entire range of Germanic culture, which scarcely any man in Italy is, you will acquire an influence ofwhich you have not the least conception. A prophet is never honoured inhis own country. We, on the other hand, need you. So stay here! Take MaxMüller as an example. It is with individuals as with nations; it is onlywhen they change their soil that they attain their full development andrealise their own strength. "

I replied: "I am deaf to that sort of thing. I love the Danish languagetoo well ever to forsake it. Only in the event of my settlement inDenmark meeting with opposition, and being rendered impossible, shall Istrap on my knapsack, gird up my loins, and hie me to France or Italy; Iam glad to hear that the world is not so closed to me as I had formerlybelieved. "

My thoughts were much engaged on my sick-bed by reflections upon thefuture of Denmark. The following entry is dated March 8, 1871:

 What do we mean by _our national future_, which we talk so much about? We do not purpose to extend our borders, to make conquests, or play any part in politics. For that, as is well comprehensible, we know we are too weak. I will leave alone the question as to whether it is possible to live without, in one way or another, growing, and ask: What do we want? _To continue to exist_. How exist? We want to get Slesvig back again, for as it is we are not _existing_; we are sickening, or else we are living like those lower animals who even when they are cut in pieces, are quite nimble; but it is a miserable life. We are in a false position with regard to Germany. The centripetal force that draws the individual members of one nationality together, and which we in Denmark call Danishness, that which, further, draws nationalities of the same family together, and which in Denmark is called _Scandinavianism_, must logically lead to a sympathy for the merging of the entire race, a kind of _Gothogermanism_. If we seek support from France, we shall be behaving like the Poles, turning for help to a foreign race against a nation of our own. I accuse us, not of acting imprudently, but of fighting against a natural force that is stronger than we. We can only retard, we cannot annihilate, the attraction exerted by the greater masses on the lesser. We can only hope that we may not live to feel the agony. 

 Holland and Denmark are both threatened by Germany, for in this geography is the mighty ally of Germany. The most enlightened Dane can only cherish the hope that Denmark, conquered, or not conquered, will brave it out long enough for universal civilisation, by virtue of the level it has reached, to bring our independence with it. As far as the hope which the majority of Danes cherish is concerned (including the noble professors of philosophy), of a time when Nemesis (reminiscence of theology!), shall descend on Prussia, this hope is only an outcome of foolishness. And even a Nemesis upon Prussia will never hurt Germany, and thus will not help us. 

 But the main question is this: If we--either through a peaceable restoration of Slesvig, or after fresh wars, or through the dawning of an era of peace and civilisation--regain our integrity and independence, shall we exist then? Not at all. Then we shall sicken again. A country like Denmark, even including Slesvig, is nowadays no country at all. A tradesman whose whole capital consists of ten rigsdaler is no tradesman. The large capitals swallow up the small. The small must seek their salvation in associations, partnerships, joint-stock companies, etc. 

 Our misfortune lies in the fact that there is no other country with which we can enter into partnership except Sweden and Norway, a little, unimportant state. By means of this association, which for the time being, is our sheet-anchor, and which, by dint of deploying enormous energy, might be of some importance, we can at best retard our destruction by a year or two. But the future! Has Denmark any future?

 It was France who, to her own unspeakable injury, discovered, or rather, first proclaimed, the principle of nationality, a principle which at most could only give her Belgium and French Switzerland, two neutral countries, guaranteed by Europe, but which gave Italy to Piedmont, Germany to Prussia, and which one day will give Russia supremacy over all the Slavs. 

 Even before the war, France was, as it were, squeezed between bucklers; she had no possible chance of gaining anything through her own precious principle, and did not even dare to apply it to the two above-mentioned points. While she fearfully allowed herself to be awarded Savoy and Nice, Prussia grew from nineteen million inhabitants to fifty millions; and probably in a few years the Germans of Austria will fall to Germany as well. Then came the war, and its outcome was in every particular what Prévost-Paradol, with his keen foresight, had predicted: "Afterwards, " he wrote, "France, with Paris, will take up in Europe the same position as Hellas with Athens assumed in the old Roman empire; it will become the city of taste and the noble delights; but it will never be able to regain its power. " It has, in fact, been killed by this very theory of nationality; for the only cognate races, Spain and Italy, are two countries of which the one is rotten, the other just entered upon the convalescent stage. Thus it is clear that Germany will, for a time, exercise the supreme sway in Europe. But the future belongs neither to her nor to Russia, but, if not to England herself, at any rate to the Anglo-Saxon race, which has revealed a power of expansion in comparison with which that of other nations is too small to count. Germans who go to North America, in the next generation speak English. The English have a unique capacity for spreading themselves and introducing their language, and the power which the Anglo-Saxon race will acquire cannot be broken in course of time like that of ancient Rome; for there are no barbarians left, and their power is based, not on conquest, but on assimilation, and the race is being rejuvenated in North America. 

 How characteristic it is of our poor little country that we always hear and read of it as "one of the oldest kingdoms in the world. " That is just the pity of it. If we were only a young country! There is only one way by which we can rejuvenate ourselves. First, to merge ourselves into a Scandinavia; then, when this is well done and well secured, to approach the Anglo-Saxon race to which we are akin. Moral: Become an Anglo-Saxon and study John Stuart Mill!

And I studied Mill with persevering attention, where he was difficult, but instructive, to follow, as in the _Examination of Hamilton'sPhilosophy_, which renews Berkeley's teachings, and I read him withdelight where, accessible and comprehensible, he proclaims withfreshness and vigour the gospel of a new age, as in the book _OnLiberty_ and the one akin to it, _Representative Government_. 

II

During the months of February and March, my conversations with GiuseppeSaredo had been all I lived for. We discussed all the questions whichone or both of us had at heart, from the causes of the expansion ofChristianity, to the method of proportionate representation which Saredoknew, and correctly traced back to Andrae. When I complained that, byreason of our different nationality, we could hardly have anyrecollections in common, and by reason of our different languages, couldnever cite a familiar adage from childhood, or quote a common sayingfrom a play, that the one could not thoroughly enjoy the harmony ofverses in the language of the other, Saredo replied: "You are no more aDane than I am an Italian; we are compatriots in the great fatherland ofthe mind, that of Shakespeare and Goethe, John Stuart Mill, Andrae, andCavour. This land is the land of humanity. Nationality is milk, humanityis cream. What is there in all the world that we have not in common? Itis true that we cannot enjoy together the harmony of some Northernverses, but we can assimilate together all the great ideas, and we havefor each other the attraction of the relatively unknown, which fellow-countrymen have not. "

He very acutely characterised his Italian compatriots: "Our intelligenceamounts to prudence and common sense. At a distance we may appear self-luminous; in reality we are only passivity and reflected light. Solferino gave us Lombardy, Sadowa gave us Venice, Sedan gave us Rome. We were just active enough to take advantage of fortunate circumstances, and passively clever enough not to wreck our advantage by stupidity. Inforeign novels we are scoundrels of the deepest dye, concocters ofpoisons and wholesale swindlers. In reality we are indifferent andindolent. _Dolce far niente_, these words, which, to our shame, arerepeated in every country in Italian, are our watchword. But thingsshall be different, if it means that the few amongst us who have alittle share of head and heart have to work themselves to death--thingsshall be different. Massimo d'Azeglio said: 'Now we have created anItaly; there remains to create Italians. ' That was a true saying. Now weare creating the new people, and what a future there is before us! Nowit is we who are taking the leadership of the Latin race, and who aregiving back to our history its brilliance of the sixteenth century. Atpresent our Art is poor because we have no popular type; but wait! In afew years Italy will show a profile no less full of character than inthe days of Michael Angelo, and Benvenuto Cellini. "

III

Then the moment arrived when all abstract reflections were thrust asideonce more by convalescence. I was well again, after having been shut upfor over four months. I still felt the traces of the mercury poisoning, but I was no longer tied to my bed, and weak though I was, I could walk. 

And on the very first day, --it was March 25th--armed with a borrowedstick (I possessed none, having never used a stick before), and equippedwith a little camp-stool, I took the train to Frascati, where there wasa Madonna Fête. 

It was life opening out before me again. All that I saw, witnessed toits splendour. First, the scenery on the way, the Campagna with itsproud ruins, and the snow-covered Sabine Mountains, the wholeilluminated by a powerful Summer sun; the villas of old Romans, withfortress-like thick walls, and small windows; then the fertile lavasoil, every inch of which was under vineyard cultivation. At last themountains in the neighborhood of Frascati. A convent crowned the highestpoint; there, in olden days, the first Italian temple to Jupiter hadstood, and there Hannibal had camped. Underneath, in a hollow, like aneagle's nest, lay Rocca di Papa. By the roadside, fruit-trees withviolet clusters of blossoms against a background of stone-pines, cypresses, and olive-groves. 

I reached Frascati station. There was no carriage to be had up to thetown, so I was obliged to ascend the hill slowly on foot, a test whichmy leg stood most creditably. In the pretty market-place of Frascati, with its large fountain which, like Acqua Paola, was divided into threeand flung out a tremendous quantity of water, I went into an_osteria_ and asked for roast goat with salad and Frascati wine, then sat down outside, as it was too close within. Hundreds of people ingay costumes, with artificial flowers and silver feathers in theirheadgear, filled the square in front of me, crowded the space behind me, laughed and shouted. 

The people seemed to be of a grander type, more lively, animated andexuberant, than at the fair at Fiesole. The women were like Junos orVenuses, the men, even when clad in abominable rags, looked likeVulcans, blackened in their forges; they were all of larger proportionsthan Northern men and women. A Roman beau, with a riding-whip under hisarm, was making sheep's eyes at a young local beauty, his courtshipaccompanied by the whines of the surrounding beggars. A _signora_from Albano was lecturing the waiter with the dignity of a queen forhaving brought her meat that was beneath all criticism, yes, she evenlet the word _porcheria_ escape her. A brown-bearded fellow cameout of the inn with a large bottle of the heavenly Frascati wine, whichthe landlords here, even on festival occasions, never mix with water, and gave a whole family, sitting on donkeys, to drink out of one glass;then he went to two little ones, who were holding each other round thewaist, sitting on the same donkey; to two youths who were ridinganother; to a man and wife, who sat on a third, and all drank, like thehorsemen in Wouwerman's pictures, without dismounting. 

I got into an old, local omnibus, pulled by three horses, to drive thetwo miles to Grotta Ferrata, where the fair was. But the vehicle washardly about to start up-hill when, with rare unanimity, the horsesreared, behaved like mad, and whirled it round four or five times. Thedriver, a fellow with one eye and a grey cap with a double red cameliain it, being drunk, thrashed the horses and shouted, while an oldAmerican lady with ringlets shrieked inside the omnibus, and bawled outthat she had paid a franc beforehand, and now wanted to get out. Theroad was thronged with people walking, and there was just as many ridingdonkeys, all of them, even the children, already heated with wine, singing, laughing, and accosting everybody. Many a worthy womansupported her half-drunk husband with her powerful arm. Many asubstantial _signora_ from Rocca di Papa sat astride her mule, showing without the least bashfulness her majestic calves. 

At Grotta Ferrata, the long, long street presented a human throng ofabsolute density without the slightest crush, for no one stuck hiselbows into his neighbour's sides. The eye could only distinguish a massof red, yellow and white patches in the sunlight, and in between them afew donkeys' heads and mules' necks. The patches were the kerchiefs onthe women's heads. Folk stood with whole roast pigs in front of them ona board, cutting off a piece with a knife for anyone who was hungry;there were sold, besides, fruits, knives, ornaments, provisions, andgeneral market wares. One _osteria_, the entrance to which was hungall over with sausages, onions and vegetables, in garlands, had fivehuge archways open to the street. Inside were long tables, at whichpeople sat, not on benches, but on trestles, round bars supported by twolegs, and ate and drank in the best of good spirits, and the blackestfilth, for the floor was the black, sodden, trampled earth. Just overthe way, arbours had been made from trees, by intertwining theirbranches and allowing them to grow into one another; these were quitefull of gay, beautiful girls, amongst them one with fair hair and browneyes, who looked like a Tuscan, and from whom it was difficult to tearone's eyes away. 

After having inspected the courtyard of an old monastery, the lovelypillars of which rejoiced my heart, I sat down a little on one side inthe street where the fair was, on my little camp-stool, which roused thelegitimate curiosity of the peasant girls. They walked round me, lookedat me from behind and before, and examined with grave interest theconstruction of my seat. In front of me sat an olive and lemon seller. Girls bargained with him as best they could in the press, others stoodand looked on. I had an opportunity here of watching their innatestatuesque grace. When they spoke, the right arm kept time with theirspeech. When silent, they generally placed one hand on the hip, bent, but not clenched. There were various types. The little blonde, blue-eyedgirl with the mild Madonna smile, and absolutely straight nose, and thelarge-made, pronounced brunette. But the appearance of them all was suchthat an artist or a poet could, by a slight transformation, haveportrayed from them whatever type of figure or special characteristic herequired. In my opinion, the form Italian beauty took, and the reason ofthe feeling one had in Italy of wading in beauty, whereas one hardlyever saw anything in the strict sense of the word beautiful inCopenhagen, and rarely in Paris, was, that this beauty was the beauty ofthe significant. All these women looked to be unoppressed, fullblown, freely developed. All that makes woman ugly in the North: the cold, thethick, ugly clothes that the peasant women wear, the doublet ofembarrassment and vapidity which they drag about with them, the strait-waistcoat of Christiansfeldt morality in which they are confined by thepriests, by protestantism, by fashion, by custom and convention--none ofthis oppressed, confined or contracted women here. These young peasantgirls looked as if they had never heard such words as "You must not, " or"You shall not, " and as here in Italy there is none of the would-bewitty talk, the grinning behind people's backs, which takes the life outof all intrepidity in the North, no one thought: "What will people say?"Everyone dressed and deported himself with complete originality, as he, or rather as she, liked. Hence eyes were doubly brilliant, blood coursedtwice as red, the women's busts were twice as rounded and full. 

IV

From this time forth I had a strange experience. I saw beautyeverywhere. If I sat at the window of a café on the Corso on a Sundaymorning, as the ladies were going to Mass, it seemed to me that all thebeauty on earth was going past. A mother and her three daughters wentby, a mere grocer's wife from the Corso, but the mother carried herselflike a duchess, had a foot so small that it could have lain in thehollow of my hand, and the youngest of the three daughters was soabsolutely lovely that people turned to look after her; she mightperhaps have been fifteen years of age, but there was a nobility abouther austere profile, and she had a way of twisting her perfect lips intoa smile, that showed her to be susceptible to the sweetest mysteries ofpoetry and music. My long illness had so quickened the susceptibility ofmy senses to impressions of beauty that I lived in a sort ofintoxication. 

In the Scandinavian Club I was received with endless expressions ofsympathy, courteous remarks, and more or less sincerely meantflatteries, as if in compensation for the suffering I had been through. All spoke as though they had themselves been deeply distressed, andespecially as though Copenhagen had been sitting weeping during myillness. I certainly did not believe this for a moment, but all the sameit weighed down a little, the balance of my happiness, and the firstmeetings with the Northern artists in these glorious surroundings werein many respects very enjoyable. The Scandinavian Club was in thebuilding from which you enter the Mausoleum of Augustus, a colossalbuilding in the form of a cross, several storeys in height. A festivalhad been got up on the flat roof for a benevolent object one of thefirst evenings in April. You mounted the many flights of stairs andsuddenly found yourself, apparently, in an immense hall, but with noroof save the stars, and brilliantly illuminated, but with lights thatpaled in the rays of the Italian moon. We took part in the peculiarlyItalian enjoyment of watching balloons go up; they rose by fire, whichexhausted the air inside them and made them light. Round about the moonwe could see red and blue lights, like big stars; one balloon ignited upin the sky, burst into bright flames, and looked very impressive. 

Troops of young women, too, were sitting there, and dazzled anew a youngman who for a second time had given the slip to the old gentleman withthe scythe. There was one young servant girl from the country, inparticular, a child of thirteen or fourteen, to whom I called theattention of the painters, and they went into ecstasies over her. Thetype was the same as that which Raphael has reproduced in his SistineMadonna. Her clear, dark blue eyes had a look of maidenly shyness, andof the most exquisite bashfulness, and yet a look of pride. She wore astring of glass beads round her lovely neck. We ordered two bottles ofwine to drink her health, and, while we were drinking it, the rotundawas lighted up from a dozen directions with changing Bengal fire. Theladies looked even handsomer, the glass lamps dark green in the gleam, the fire-borne balloons rose, the orchestra played, the women smiled atthe homage of their friends and lovers--all on the venerable Mausoleumof Augustus. 

V

I made the acquaintance that evening of a young and exceedingly engagingFrenchman, who was to become my intimate friend and my travellingcompanion. He attracted me from the first by his refined, reserved, andyet cordial manner. 

Although only thirty-five years of age, Georges Noufflard had travelledand seen surprisingly much. He was now in Italy for the second time, knew France and Germany, had travelled through Mexico and the UnitedStates, had visited Syria, Egypt, Tunis, and Algiers to the last oasis. When the conversation touched upon Art and Music, he expressed himselfin a manner that revealed keen perception, unusual knowledge, and a veryindividual taste. 

The following morning, when we met on the Corso, he placed himself at mydisposal, if he could be of use to me; there was nothing he had arrangedto do. He asked where I was thinking of going; as he knew Rome and itsneighbourhood as well as I knew my mother's drawing-room, I placedmyself in his hands. We took a carriage and drove together, first to thebaths of Caracalla, then to the Catacombs, where we very nearly lost ourway, and thought with a thrill of what in olden times must have been thefeelings of the poor wretches who fled there, standing in the dark andhearing footsteps in the distance, knowing that it was their pursuerscoming, and that they were inevitably going to be murdered, where therewas not even room to raise a weapon in their own defence. Next we droveto _San Paolo fuori le mure_, of the burning of which Thorwaldsen'sMuseum possesses a painting by Leopold Robert, but which at that timehad been entirely re-built in the antique style. It was the mostbeautiful basilica I had ever seen. We enjoyed the sight of thecourtyard of the monastery nearly 1, 700 years old, with its finepillars, all different, and so well preserved that we compared, inthought, the impressions produced by the two mighty churches, San Paoloand San Pietro. Then we dined together and plunged into interminablediscussions until darkness fell. From that day forth we wereinseparable. Our companionship lasted several months, until I wasobliged to journey North. But the same cordial relations continued tosubsist between us for more than a quarter of a century, when Deathrobbed me of my friend. 

Georges Noufflard was the son of a rich cloth manufacturer at Roubaix, and at an early age had come into possession of a considerable fortune. This, however, was somewhat diminished through the dishonesty of thosewho, after the death of his father, conducted the works in his name. Hehad wanted to become a painter, but the weakness of his eyes had obligedhim to give up Art; now he was an Art lover, and was anxious to write abook on the memorials and works of art in Rome, too great anundertaking, and for that reason never completed; but at the same time, he pursued with passion the study of music, played Beethoven, Gluck andBerlioz, for me daily, and later on published books on Berlioz andRichard Wagner. 

As a youth he had been an enthusiast such as, in the Germanic countries, they fancy is impossible elsewhere, to such an extent indeed as would beregarded even there as extraordinary. At seventeen years of age he fellin love with a young girl who lived in the same building as himself. Hewas only on terms of sign language with her, had not even secured somuch as a conversation with her. None the less, his infatuation was sogreat that he declared to his father that he wished to marry her. Thefather would not give his consent, and her family would not receive himunless he was presented by his father. The latter sent him to Americawith the words: "Forget your love and learn what a fine thingindustrialism is. " He travelled all over the United States, found allmachinery loathsome, since he had not the most elementary knowledge ofthe principles of mechanics, and no inclination for them, and thoughtall the time of the little girl from whom they wished to separate him. It did not help matters that the travelling companion that had beengiven him lived and breathed in an atmosphere of the lowest debauchery, and did his best to initiate the young man into the same habits. On hisreturn home he declared to his father that he persisted in his choice. "Good, " said his father, "Asia Minor is a delightful country, and so isNorthern Africa; it will also do you good to become acquainted withItaly. " So he set off on his travels again, and this time was charmedwith everything he saw. Then his father died, and he became pretty muchhis own master and free to do as he liked. Then he learned that thefather of the girl had been guilty of a bank fraud. His family would notreceive hers, if, indeed, herself. So he gave up his intention; he didnot wish to expose her to humiliation and did not wish himself to have aman of ill-fame for his father-in-law; he set off again on his travels, and remained a long time away. "The proof that I acted wisely by sodoing, " he said in conclusion, "is that I have completely forgotten thegirl; my infatuation was all fancy. "

When he commenced by telling me that for three years he had loved, anddespite all opposition, wished to marry a girl to whom he had neverspoken, I exclaimed: "Why, you are no Frenchman!" When he concluded bytelling me that after remaining constant for three years he hadabandoned her for a fault that not she, but her father, had committed, Iexclaimed: "How French you are, after all!"

While mutual political, social, and philosophical interests drew me toGiuseppe Saredo, all the artistic side of my nature bound me to GeorgesNoufflard. Saredo was an Italian from a half-French part, --he was bornat Savona, near Chambéry, --and his culture was as much French asItalian; Noufflard was a Frenchman possessed by such a love for Italythat he spoke the purest Florentine, felt himself altogether aSoutherner, and had made up his mind to take up his permanent abode inItaly. He married, too, a few years afterwards, a lovely Florentinewoman, and settled down in Florence. 

What entirely won my heart about him was the femininely delicateconsideration and unselfish devotion of his nature, the charm there wasabout his manner and conversation, which revealed itself in everythinghe did, from the way in which he placed his hat upon his head, to theway in which he admired a work of art. But I could not have associatedwith him day after day, had I not been able to learn something from him. When we met again ten years later, it turned out that we had nothingespecially new to tell each other. I had met him just at the rightmoment. 

It was not only that Noufflard was very well and widely informed aboutthe artistic treasures of Italy and the places where they were to befound, but his opinions enriched my mind, inasmuch as they spurred me onto contradiction or surprised me and won my adherence. Fresh as JuliusLange's artistic sense had been, there was nevertheless somethingdoctrinaire and academic about it. An artist like Bernini was horrible, and nothing else to him; he had no sympathy for the sweet, half-sensualecstasy of some of Bernini's best figures. He was an enemy ofeighteenth-century art in France, saw it through the moral spectacleswhich in the Germanic countries had come into use with the year 1800. Itwas easy for Noufflard to remain unbiased by Northern doctrines, for hedid not know them; he had the free eye of the beauty lover for everyrevelation of beauty, no matter under what form, and had theintellectual kinship of the Italianised Frenchman for many an artistunappreciated in the North. On the other hand, he naturally consideredthat we Northmen very much over-estimated our own. It was impossible torouse any interest in him for Thorwaldsen, whom he considered absolutelyacademic. "You cannot call him a master in any sense, " he exclaimed oneday, when we had been looking at Thorwaldsen bas-reliefs side by sidewith antiques. I learnt from my intimacy with Noufflard how littleimpression Thorwaldsen's spirit makes on the Romance peoples. Thatindifference to him would soon become so widespread in Germany, I didnot yet foresee. 

Noufflard had a very alert appreciation of the early Renaissance, especially in sculpture; he was passionately in love with the naturalbeauties of Italy, from North to South, and he had a kind of national-psychological gift of singling out peculiarly French, Italian or Germantraits. He did not know the German language, but he was at home inGerman music, and had studied a great deal of German literature intranslation; just then he was reading Hegel's "Aesthetics, " theabstractions in which veritably alarmed him, and to which he very muchpreferred modern French Art Philosophy. In English Science, he hadstudied Darwin, and he was the first to give me a real insight into theDarwinian theory and a general summary of it, for in my younger days Ihad only heard it attacked, as erroneous, in lectures by Rasmus Nielsenon teleology. 

Georges Noufflard was the first Frenchman of my own age with whom I hadbeen intimate and whose character I partly understood and entered into, partly absorbed into my own. If many of the various opinions evident inmy first lectures were strikingly emancipated from Danish nationalprejudices which no one hitherto had attempted to disturb, I owed thisin a great measure to him. Our happy, harmonious intimacy in the SabineHills and in Naples was responsible, before a year was past, for wholedeluges of abuse in Danish newspapers. 

VI

One morning, the Consul's man-servant brought me a _permesso_ forthe Collection of Sculpture in the Vatican for the same day, and afuture _permesso_ for the Loggias, Stanzas, and the Sistine Chapel. I laid the last in my pocket-book. It was the key of Paradise. I hadwaited for it so long that I said to myself almost superstitiously: "Iwonder whether anything will prevent again?" The anniversary of the dayI had left Copenhagen the year before, I drove to the Vatican, went atone o'clock mid-day up the handsome staircase, and through immense, inpart magnificently decorated rooms to the Sistine Chapel. I had heard somuch about the disappointment it would be that not the very slightestsuggestion of disappointment crossed my mind. Only a feeling of supremehappiness shot through me: at last I am here. I stood on the spot whichwas the real goal of my pilgrimage. I had so often examinedreproductions of every figure and I had read so much about the whole, that I knew every note of the music beforehand. Now I heard it. 

A voice within me whispered: So here I stand at last, shut in with themind that of all human minds has spoken most deeply home to my soul. Iam outside and above the earth and far from human kind. This is hisearth and these are his men, created in his image to people his world. For this one man's work is a world, which, though that of one man only, can be placed against the productions of a whole nation, even of themost splendid nation that has ever lived, the Greeks. Michael Angelofelt more largely, more lonely, more mightily than any other. He createdout of the wealth of a nature that in its essence was more than earthly. Raphael is more human, people say, and that is true; but Michael Angelois more divine. 

After the lapse of about an hour, the figures detached themselves fromthe throng, to my mental vision, and the whole composition fixed itselfin my brain. I saw the ceiling, not merely as it is to-day, but as itwas when the colours were fresh, for in places there were patches, thebright yellow, for instance, which showed the depth of colouring inwhich the whole had been carried out. It was Michael Angelo's intentionto show us the ceiling pierced and the heavens open above it. Up to thecentral figures, we are to suppose that the walls continue straight upto the ceiling, as though the figures sat upright. Then all confusiondisappears, and all becomes one perfect whole. 

The principal pictures, such as the creation of Adam, Michael Angelo'smost philosophical and most exquisite painting, I had had before my eyesupon my wall every day for ten years. The expression in Adam's face wasnot one of languishing appeal, as I had thought; he smiled faintly, asif calmly confident of the dignity of the life the finger of God isabout to bestow upon him. The small, bronze-painted figures, expressedthe suspension and repose of the ceiling; they were architectonicsymbols. The troops of young heroes round about the central pillars wereMichael Angelo's ideals of Youth, Beauty and Humanity. The one restingsilently and thoughtfully on one knee is perhaps the most splendid. There is hardly any difference between his build and that of Adam. Adamis the more spiritual brother of these young and suffering heroes. 

I felt the injustice of all the talk about the beginnings ofgrotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhatdistorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake, Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm, whatgrandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what imposingcharm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall, " is perhaps the most adorablefigure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture on theleft, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought to have been. 

It sounded almost like a lie that one man had created this in twenty-twomonths. Would the earth ever again produce frescoes of the same order?The 360 years that had passed over it had damaged this, the greatestpictorial work on earth, far less than I had feared. 

A large aristocratic English family came in: man, wife, son, daughter, another daughter, the governess, all expensively and fashionablydressed. They stood silent for a moment at the entrance to the hall. Then they came forward as far as about the middle of the hall, looked upand about a little, said to the custodian: "Will you open the door forus?" and went out again very gracefully. 

VII

I knew Raphael's Loggias from copies in _l'École des Beaux Arts_ inParis. But I was curious to see how they would appear after this, andso, although there was only three-quarters of an hour left of the timeallotted to me on my _permesso_, I went up to look at them. Myfirst impression, as I glanced down the corridor and perceived thesesmall ceiling pictures, barely two feet across, was: "Good gracious!This will be a sorry enjoyment after Michael Angelo!" I looked at thefirst painting, God creating the animals, and was quite affected: Theregoes the good old man, saying paternally: "Come up from the earth, allof you, you have no idea how nice it is up here. " My next impressionwas: "How childish!" But my last was: "What genius!" How charming thepicture of the Fall, and how lovely Eve! And what grandeur of styledespite the smallness of the space. A God a few inches high separateslight from darkness, but there is omnipotence in the movement of Hisarm. Jacob sees the ladder to Heaven in his dream; and this ladder, which altogether has six angels upon it, seems to reach from Earth toHeaven, infinitely long and infinitely peopled; above, we see God theFather, at an immense distance, spread His gigantic embrace (whichcovers a space the length of two fingers). There was the favouritepicture of my childhood, Abraham prostrated before the Angels, even moremarvellous in the original than I had fancied it to myself, although itis true that the effect of the picture is chiefly produced by its beautyof line. And there was Lot, departing from Sodom with his daughters, apicture great because of the perfect illusion of movement. They go onand on, against the wind and storm, with Horror behind them and Hope infront, at the back, to the right, the burning city, to the left, asmiling landscape. How unique the landscapes on all these pictures are, how marvellous, for instance, that in which Moses is found on the Nile!This river, within the narrow limits of the picture, looked like a hugestream, losing itself in the distance. 

It was half-past five. My back was beginning to ache in the place whichhad grown tender from lying so long; without a trace of fatigue I hadbeen looking uninterruptedly at pictures for four hours and a half. 

VIII

Noufflard's best friend in Rome was a young lieutenant of theBersaglieri named Ottavio Cerrotti, with whom we were much together. Although a Roman, he had entered the Italian army very young, and hadconsequently been, as it were, banished. Now, through the breach atPorta Pia, he had come back. He was twenty-four years of age, and thenaïvest Don Juan one could possibly meet. He was beloved by thebeautiful wife of his captain, and Noufflard, who frequented theirhouse, one day surprised the two lovers in tears. Cerrotti was cryingwith his lady-love because he had been faithless to her. He hadconfessed to her his intimacy with four other young ladies; so she wascrying, and the end of it was that he cried to keep her company. 

At meals, he gave us a full account of his principal romance. He had oneday met her by chance in the gardens of the Palazzo Corsini, and sincethat day, they had had secret meetings. But the captain had now beentransferred to Terni, and tragedy had begun. Letters were constantlywithin an ace of being intercepted, they committed imprudences withoutcount. He read aloud to us, without the least embarrassment, the lettersof the lady. The curious thing about them was the moderation sheexercised in the expression of her love, while at the same time herplans for meetings were of the most foolhardy, breakneck description. 

Another fresh acquaintance that I made in those days was with threeFrench painters, Hammon, Sain and Benner, who had studios adjoining oneanother. Hammon and Sain both died long since, but Benner, whom I metagain in Paris in 1904, died, honoured and respected, in 1905. I waslater on at Capri in company with Sain and Benner, but Hammon I saw onlyduring this visit to Rome. His pretty, somewhat sentimental painting, _Ma soeur n'y est pas_, hung, reproduced in engraving, in everyshop-window, even in Copenhagen. He was painting just then at his cleverpicture, _Triste Rivage_. 

Hammon was born in Brittany, of humble, orthodox parents, who sent himto a monastery. The Prior, when he surprised him drawing men and womenout of his head, told him that painting was a sin. The young man himselfthen strongly repented his inclination, but, as he felt he could notlive without following it, he left the monastery, though with manystrong twinges of conscience. 

Now that he was older, he was ruining himself by drink, but hadmanifested true talent and still retained a humorous wit. One day that Iwas with him, a young man came to the studio and asked for his opinionof a painting; the man talked the whole time of nothing but his mother, of how much he loved her and all that he did for her. Hammon's patiencegave out at last. He broke out: "And do you think, sir, that _I_have murdered my mother? I love her very much, I assure you, _notenough to marry her_, I grant, but pretty well, all the same. " Afterthat he always spoke of him as "the young man who loves his mother. "

IX

I felt as though this April, this radiant Spring, were the most glorioustime in my life, I was assimilating fresh impressions of Art and Natureevery hour; the conversations I was enjoying with my Italian and Frenchfriends set me day by day pondering over new thoughts; I saw myselfrestored to life, and a better life. At the beginning of April, moreover, some girls from the North made their triumphal entry into theScandinavian Club. Without being specially beautiful or remarkable, theyabsolutely charmed me. It was a full year since the language of home hadsounded in my ears from the lips of a girl, since I had seen the smilein the blue eyes and encountered the heart-ensnaring charm, in jest, orearnest, of the young women of the North. I had recently heard theentrancing castrato singing at St. Peter's, and, on conquering myaversion, could not but admire it. Now I heard once more simple, butnatural, Danish and Swedish songs. Merely to speak Danish again with ayoung woman, was a delight. And there was one who, delicately andunmistakably and defencelessly, showed me that I was not indifferent toher. That melted me, and from that time forth the beauties of Italy wereenhanced tenfold in my eyes. 

All that I was acquainted with in Rome, all that I saw every day withGeorges Noufflard, I could show her and her party, from the mostaccessible things, which were nevertheless fresh to the newcomers, suchas the Pantheon, Acqua Paola, San Pietro in Montorio, the grave ofCecilia Metella, and the grottoes of Egeria, to the great collections ofArt in the Vatican, or the Capitol, or in the wonderful GalleriaBorghese. All this, that I was accustomed to see alone with Noufflard, acquired new splendour when a blonde girl walked by my side, askingsensible questions, and showing me the gratitude of youth for goodinstruction. With her nineteen years I suppose she thought memarvellously clever. But the works of Art that lay a little outside thebeaten track, I likewise showed to my compatriots. I had never been ableto tolerate Guido Reni; but his playing angels in the chapel of SanGregorio excited my profound admiration, and it was a satisfaction to meto pour this into the receptive ear of a girl compatriot. These angelsdelighted me so that I could hardly tear myself away from them. The finemalice, the mild coquetry, even in the expression of the noblest purityand the loftiest dignity, enchanted us. 

I had been in the habit of going out to the environs of Rome withGeorges Noufflard, for instance, to the large, handsome gardens of theVilla Doria Pamfili, or the Villa Madama, with its beautiful frescoesand stucco-work, executed by Raphael's pupils, Giulio Romano and others, from drawings by that master. But it was a new delight to drive over theCampagna with a girl who spoke Danish by my side, and to see herNorthern complexion in the sun of the South. With my French friend, Igladly joined the excursions of her party to Nemi, Albano, Tivoli. 

Never in my life had I felt so happy as I did then. I was quiterecovered. Only a fortnight after I had risen from a sick-bed that hadclaimed me four months and a half, I was going about, thanks to myyouth, as I did before I was ill. For my excursions, I had a comradeafter my own heart, well-bred, educated, and noble-minded; I fell inlove a little a few times a week; I saw lakes, fields, olive groves, mountains, scenery, exactly to my taste. I had always a _permesso_for the Vatican collections in my pocket. I felt intoxicated withdelight, dizzy with enjoyment. 

It seemed to me that of all I had seen in the world, Tivoli was the mostlovely. The old "temple of the Sibyl" on the hill stood on consecratedground, and consecrated the whole neighbourhood. I loved thosewaterfalls, which impressed me much more than Trollhättan [Footnote:Trollhättan, a celebrated waterfall near Göteborg in Sweden. ], had donein my childhood. In one place the water falls down, black and boiling, into a hollow of the rock, and reminded me of the descent into Tartarus;in another the cataract runs, smiling and twinkling with millions ofshining pearls, in the strong sunlight. In a third place, the greatcascade rushes down over the rocks. There, where it touches the netherrocks, rests the end of the enormous rainbow which, when the sun shines, is always suspended across it. Noufflard told me that Niagara itselfimpressed one less. We scrambled along the cliff until we stood abovethe great waterfall, and could see nothing but the roaring, foamingwhite water, leaping and dashing down; it looked as though the seethingand spraying masses of water were springing over each other's heads in amad race, and there was such power, such natural persuasion in it, thatone seemed drawn with it, and gliding, as it were, dragged into theabyss. It was as though all Nature were disembodied, and flingingherself down. 

Like a Latin, Noufflard personified it all; he saw the dance of nymphsin the waves, and their veils in the clouds of spray. My way ofregarding Nature was diametrically opposite, and pantheistic. I lostconsciousness of my own personality, felt myself one with the fallingwater and merged myself into Nature, instead of gathering it up intofigures. I felt myself an individuality of the North, conscious of mybeing. 

X

One afternoon a large party of us had taken our meal at an inn on thelake of Nemi. The evening was more than earthly. The calm, still, mountain lake, the old, filled-up crater, on the top of the mountain, had a fairy-like effect. I dropped down behind a boulder and lay for along time alone, lost in ecstasy, out of sight of the others. All atonce I saw a blue veil fluttering in the breeze quite near me. It wasthe young Danish girl, who had sat down with me. The red light of theevening, Nemi and she, merged in one. Not far away some people weresetting fire to a blaze of twigs and leaves; one solitary bird warbledacross the lake; the cypresses wept; the pines glowered; the olive treesbathed their foliage in the mild warmth; one cloud sailed across thesky, and its reflection glided over the lake. One could not bear toraise the voice. 

It was like a muffled, muffled concert. Here were life, reality anddreams. Here were sun, warmth and light. Here were colour, form andline, and in this line, outlined by the mountains against the sky, theartistic background of all the beauty. 

Noufflard and I accompanied our Northern friends from Albano to thestation; they were going on as far as Naples, and thence returning home. We said good-bye and walked back to Albano in the mild Summer evening. The stars sparkled and shone bright, Cassiopaeia showed itself in itsmost favourable position, and Charles's Wain stood, as if in sheer highspirits, on its head, which seemed to be its recreation just about thistime. 

It, too, was evidently a little dazed this unique, inimitable Spring. 

INDEX

Aagesen, ProfessorAarestrup, EmilAbout, EdmondAdam_Adam Homo__Adventures on a Walking Tour_Aeneid, TheAeschylusAgar, Mlle. _Aladdin_AlcibiadesAlgreen-Ussing, FrederikAlgreen-Ussing, Otto_Ali and Gulhyndi_Alibert, Mr. Andersen, H. C. _Angelo_Angelo, Michael_Antony_ApelAristotle_Arne_Arrest, Professor d'Art, Danish, French, German dramaticAstronomyAuerbach, BertholdAugierAugustenborg, Duke of

BaagöeBaggesenBainBanvilleBarbier, AugusteBazaineBeaumarchaisBech, CarlBendix, VictorBennerBenthamBergen, Carl vonBergh, RudolpBergsöeBernhardt, SarahBible, TheBilleBismarckBissen, WilhelmBjörnsonBlanchetti, CostanzaBlicherBluhme, GeheimeraadBorupBov_Boy, A Happy__Brand_BrettevilleBröchner, H. Brohan, The SistersBrusselsBruun, Emil_Buch der Lieder__Burgraves, Les_Byron

Caesar_Caprice, Un_CaroCaselliniCatullusCerrotti, OttavioChamounixChanson de RolandChasles, ÉmileChasles, PhilarèteChattertonChoteau, MarieChristian VIII. Christian IX. ChristianityCinq-MarsClarétie, JulesClausenCologneComteCopenhagenCoppéeCoquelinCorday, CharlotteCorreggioCousinCriticisms and PortraitsCrone

Dame aux Camélias, LaDanish LiteratureDanteDarwinDavid, C. N. David, LudvigDelacroixDelisleDevil, TheDichtung und WahrheitDisraeli, Divina CommediaDon JuanDon QuixoteDörr, Dr. DrachmannDrama, GermanDriebeinDualism in Our Modern PhilosophyDubbelsDubois, Mlle. DumasDumas, The Younger

EckernfördeEdda, TheEdward, UncleEither-OrEsselbach, MadamEthicaEuripides

FalkmanFarumFaustFavart, MadameFavre, JulesFeuerbach, LudwigFeuillet, OctaveFights, Between theFilomenaFils de Giboyer, LeFisher Girl, TheFlaubertFlorenceFontane, M. For Self-ExaminationFor Sweden and NorwayFourierFrance Nouvelle, LaFrascatiFrederik VIIFrench LiteratureFrench Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, TheFrench RevolutionFrithiof's SagaFrossard_Gabrielle_Gallenga, AntonioGambettaGautier_Geneva_GerhardGermanyGérôme_Gerusalemme liberata_, Tasso's_Ghost Letters__Ghosts_GirardinGladstoneGleyreGod_Gods of the North, The_GoetheGoldschmidt, Dr. Goldschmidt, M. Goncourt, the brothers; Edmond de_Government, Representative_Gram, ProfessorGrammont, The Duc deGrégoire_Gringoire_Grönbeck, Groth, ClausGrundtvigGuell y Rente, Don JoséGuémain, MademoiselleGuizot

Hage, AlfredHagemeister, Mr. _Hakon, Earl_HallHamburg_Hamilton's Philosophy, Examination of__Hamlet_HammerichHammonHansen, OctaviusHauch; RinnaHebbelHegelHeiberg, Johan LudvigHeiberg, Johanne LouiseHeineHello, ErnestHenriettaHerbart_Hernani__Hero of Our Time, A_Hertz, HenrikHistory, The Philosophy of_History of English Literature, _HobbemaHohlenberg, PastorHolbergHolst, Professor H. P. HomerHoppe, Mr. HoraceHöyenHugo, VictorHumeHuysmannHvasser

Ibsen_Indiana_IngeborgIngemannInger_Inheritance, The__Intelligence, De l'_

Jacob, Uncle_Jacques__Jamber_JanetJens. Jesus. _Jesus, Life of_. Jews. _Joie fait Peur, La_. Judaism. _Judith_. Julius, Uncle. Jutland. 

Kaalund. Kant. Kappers. Karoline. Key, Ellen. Kierkegaard, Sören. _King Svorre_. Krieger. Klareboderne. Kleist, Heinrich. _Knowledge and Faith, On_. 

Lafontaine, Mr. Lamartine. Lange, Julius. _Laocoon_. _Last Supper, Leonardo's_. Lavaggi. Law. _Law, Interpretation of the_. Leconte. Lehmann, Orla. Leman, Lake. Leonardo. Leopold of Hohenzollern. Lermontof. Lessing. Lévêque. _Liberty, On_. _Lion Amoureux, Le_. Literature; Danish; European; French. _Literature, History of_, Thortsen's. Little Red Riding-Hood. Littré. Logic of Fundamental Ideas. Louise, Mademoiselle. _Love Comedy_. _Lucrèce_. Ludvig. Luini. Lund, Jörgen. Lund, Troels. 

M. , Mademoiselle Mathilde. _Macbeth_. Machiavelli. Mackeprang. Macmahon. _Madvig_. Malgren. Manderström, Count. Marat. Marcelin. Maren. Margharita, Princess. Maria. _Mariage de Figaro, Le_. Marmier, Xavier. Martensen, Bishop. Martial. Mary. Mathilde, Princess. Maximilian, Emperor. Mérimée. Meza, General de. Michelet. Micromégas. Milan. Mill, James. Mill, John Stuart_Misanthrope, Le_MöhlMolièreMöller, KristianMöller, PoulMöller, P. L. MonradMounet-SullyMuddie_Musketeers, Les Trois_Musset, Alfred de

_Nana_Napoleon IIINerval, Gérard de_Niebelungenlied, The_NielsNielsen, FrederikNielsen, RasmusNina K. NisardNodierNörregaard_Notes sur l'Angleterre__Notre Dame de Paris_Noufflard, GeorgesNutzhorn, FrederickNybbölNycander

Odescalchi, PrinceOdyssey, TheOehlenschlägerOersted, Anders SandöeOlcottOllivier, Prime Minister_Once upon a Time__Orientales, Les__Over the Hills and Far Away_Ovid

P. P. PagellaPaïva, Madame dePalikaoPaludan-Müller, CasparPaludan-Müller, FrederickPaludan-Müller, JensPantaleoni, Dr. PantheismParisParis, GastonPascalPatti, AdelinaPaulsen, HaraldPeer_Peer Gynt_PerPetersen, EmilPhilippe, LouisPhiloctetesPhilosophyPiedmont, History ofPilgrimage to KevlaarPindarPlanchePlatoPlautusPloug, Carl_Poetry, The Infinitely Small and the Infinitely Great in_PonsardPrahlPrévost-ParadolPrim, Don JuanProse Writings, Heiberg'sProudhon

_Rabbi and Knight_RaphaelRaupachRavnkilde, NielsRealism, IdealReam, VinnieRégnaultRégnierRellingRembrandtRenanRenan, M. , L'Allemagne et l'Athéisme au 19me SiècleReuter, FritzReventlow, CountsRibbingRichardt, ChristianRistoriRochefortRode, GotfredRode, VilhelmRoman ElegiesRomeRosenstand, VilhelmRosette, AuntRosiény, Marc deRossiRothe, ClaraRousseauRubensRuneberg, WalterRuysdael

Sacy, Silvestre deSainSaint SimonSaint-VictorSainte-BeuveSand, GeorgeSarah, AuntSaredo, GiuseppeSavonarolaSavoyScenes from the Lives of the Warriors of the NorthSchandorphSchätzigSchellingSchiödte, J. C. SchleswigSchmidt, RudolfSchool of Life, TheScott, Sir WalterScribeSebastianSerranoShakespeareSheridanSibbernSickness unto DeathSigne's StorySigurd SlembeSlesvigSnoilsky, CarlSnorreSocratesSofusSommer, MajorSophoclesSoul after Death, ASpang, PastorSpang, The SistersSpencer, HerbertSpendthrift, ASpinozaStebbinsSteen, BooksellerStockholmStuart, MaryStudent, TheStudies in AestheticsStyle, LeSubjection of WomenSupplice d'une Femme, LeSwiss PeasantSwitzerlandSynnöve

Taine_Tartuffe_TassoTerenceTesta, CostanzaTheocritusThierry, EdmondThomsen, GrimurThomsen, Wilhelm. Thoresen, MagdaleneThortsenThorwaldsen_Tonietta_Topsöe, V. _Tragic Fate, The Idea of_Trepka, AlmaTrier, ErnstTrochu, GeneralUssing, Dean

Valdemar_Valentine__Vanity and Modesty_, Luini'sVeuillotVictorine, AuntVigny, Alfred deVillari, PasqualeVilsingVirgilVischer, Fr. Th. VoltaireVoltelenVries

Wickseil, KnutWiehe, Michael_Wild Duck_WinckelmannWinther, ChristianWirsen_Without a Center_

Ziegler, ClaraZola