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by George Brandes

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Title: Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth

Author: George Brandes

Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8160]
[This file was first posted on June 23, 2003]

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[Etext producer's note: Chapter sub-headings in SECOND LONGER STAY
ABROAD are misnumbered in the original hard copy, skipping from VII
to 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--The
King--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--Inimical
Forces--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--Contempt
for the Masters--My Mother--The Mystery of Life--My First Glimpse 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


TRANSITIONAL YEARS

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


ADOLESCENCE

Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University Prize
Competition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of Scandinavian
Students--The Paludan-Muellers--Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson--Magdalene
Thoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The Political
Situation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--_Admissus cum laude
praecipua_--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A Walking
Tour--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_--A
Journey--Impressions of Paris--Lessons in French--Mademoiselle Mathilde
--Taine


EARLY MANHOOD

Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--My
First Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of Modern
Coercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Trip
to 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 Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson--
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--
Philarete Chasles' Reminiscences--_Le Theatre Francais_--Coquelin
--Bernhardt--Beginnings of _Main Currents_--The Tuileries--John
Stuart Mill--London--Philosophical Studies--London and Paris Compared--
Antonio Gallenga and His Wife--Don Juan Prim--Napoleon III--London
Theatres--Gladstone and Disraeli in Debate--Paris on the Eve of War--
First Reverses--Flight from Paris--Geneva, Switzerland--Italy--Pasquale
Villari--Vinnie Ream's Friendship--Roman Fever--Henrik Ibsen's
Influence--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 Giuseppe
Saredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--Georges
Noufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael's
Loggias--A Radiant Spring




RECOLLECTIONS OF

MY CHILDHOOD

AND YOUTH




DISCOVERING THE WORLD

First Impressions--Going to Bed--My Name--Fresh Elements--School--The
King--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--Inimical
Forces--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 their
own height or above it. It might so happen that suddenly, without
preamble, as he lay on the floor, rummaging and playing about and
thinking of nothing at all, his father or a visitor would exclaim:
"Would you like to see the fowls of Kjoege?" And with the same he would
feel two large hands placed over his ears and the arms belonging to them
would shoot straight up into the air. That was delightful. Still, there
was some disappointment mingled with it. "Can you see Kjoege now?" was a
question he could make nothing of. What could Kjoege be? But at the other
question: "Do you see the fowls?" he vainly tried to see something or
other. By degrees he understood that it was only a phrase, and that
there 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 be
flung 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 climb
valiantly several steps higher, get his legs round his shoulders, and
behold! be up on the giddy height! Then the man would take him round the
waist, swing him over, and after a mighty somersault in the air, he
would land unscathed on his feet upon the floor. It was a composite kind
of treat, of three successive stages: first came the lofty and
comfortable seat, then the more interesting moment, with a feeling,
nevertheless, of being on the verge of a fall, and then finally the
jump, during which everything was upside down to him.

But, too, he could take up attitudes down on the floor that added to his
importance, 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 draw
himself up, bring one foot a little forward, and cross his arms like the
little 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, having
asked his parents about the little fellow's accomplishments, placed
himself in position with his arms crossed and asked: "Who am I like?" he
replied: "You are like Napoleon's lackey." To his surprise, but no small
delight, this reply elicited a loud exclamation of pleasure from his
mother, usually so superior and so strict, and was rewarded by her, who
seldom caressed, with a kiss.


II.

The trying moment of the day was when he had to go to bed. His parents
were extraordinarily prejudiced about bedtime, just when he was enjoying
himself most. When visitors had arrived and conversation was well
started--none the less interesting to him because he understood
scarcely half of what was said--it was: "Now, to bed!"

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

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


III.

I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small. That was the
impression I made on everyone. Nearly thirty years afterwards an
observant person remarked to me: "The peculiarity about your face is its
intense paleness." Consequently I looked darker than I was; my brown
hair was called black.

Pale and thin, with thick brown hair, difficult hair. That was what the
hairdresser said--Mr. [Footnote: Danish _Herre_.] Alibert, who
called Father Erre: "Good-morning, Erre," "Good-bye, Erre." And all his
assistants, though as Danish as they could be, tried to say the same.
Difficult hair! "There is a little round place on his crown where the
hair 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 remarked
in joke: "He looks rather green in the face." And so soon as they began
talking 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. No
boy 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. My
mother was alone and had no help. When the midwife came I had arrived
already. I was so feeble that the first few years great care had to be
taken 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 when
a 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 high
jumper, to climb and run well, was no contemptible wrestler, and by
degrees became an expert fighter. But I was not muscularly strong, and
never 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 thing
often satisfied one's feeling of honour.

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

I undressed in the bathing establishment; the old sailor fastened a cork
belt round my waist. It was odiously wet, as another boy had just taken
it 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 pole
fastened to the cork belt and held by the bathing-man, but my
familiarity with the salt element dated from the day I was flung out
into it like a little parcel. Without by any means distinguishing myself
in swimming, any more than in any other athletic exercise, I became a
very fair swimmer, and developed a fondness for the water and for
bathing which has made me very loth, all my life, to miss my bath a
single day.

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

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

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


V.

I was too delicate to be sent to school at five years old, like other
boys. 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 I
should have a tutor of my own.

So a tutor was engaged who quickly won my unreserved affection and made
me very happy. The tutor came every morning and taught me all I had to
learn. He was a tutor whom one could ask about anything under the sun
and he would always know. First, there was the ABC. That was mastered in
a few lessons. I could read before I knew how to spell. Then came
writing and arithmetic and still more things. I was soon so far advanced
that the tutor could read _Frithiof's Saga_ aloud to me in Swedish
and be tolerably well understood; and, indeed, he could even take a
short 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 the
conversation of my elders what a pleasure and advantage it was to him to
get a cup of coffee extra and fine white bread and fresh butter with it
every day. On the stroke of half-past ten the maid brought it in on a
tray. Lessons were stopped, and the tutor ate and drank with a relish
that I had never seen anyone show over eating and drinking before. The
very way in which he took his sugar--more sugar than Father or Mother
took--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 people
said they were afraid he could not live. There was a report that a rich
benefactor, named Nobel, had offered to send him to Italy, that he might
recover in the warmer climate of the South. It was generous of Mr.
Nobel, and Mr. Voltelen was thinking of starting. Then he caught another
complaint. 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 dirty
comb at a bathing establishment. And when he came again I hardly
recognised him. He wore a little dark wig. He had lost every hair on his
head, even his eyebrows had disappeared. His face was of a chalky
pallor, and he coughed badly too.

Why did not God protect him from consumption? And how could God find it
in 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 take
care of Mr. Voltelen, who was so good and so clever, and so poor that he
needed help more than anyone else. Mr. Nobel was kinder to Mr. Voltelen
than God was. God was strange, too, in other ways; He was present
everywhere, and yet Mother was cross and angry if you asked whether He
was in the new moderator lamp, which burnt in the drawing-room with a
much brighter light than the two wax candles used to give. God knew
everything, which was very uncomfortable, since it was impossible to
hide the least thing from Him. Strangest of all was it when one
reflected that, if one knew what God thought one was going to say, one
could say something else and His omniscience would be foiled. But of
course one did not know what He thought would come next. The worst of
all, though, was that He left Mr. Voltelen in the lurch so.


VI.

Some flashes of terrestrial majesty and magnificence shone on my modest
existence. Next after God came the King. As I was walking along the
street one day with my father, he exclaimed: "There is the King!" I
looked at the open carriage, but saw nothing noticeable there, so fixed
my attention upon the coachman, dressed in red, and the footman's plumed
hat. "The King wasn't there!" "Yes, indeed he was--he was in the
carriage." "Was that the King? He didn't look at all remarkable--he had
no crown on." "The King is a handsome man," said Father. "But he only
puts 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 crowd
of people were standing waiting at the Naval Church. Then came the
procession. How splendid it was! There were runners in front of the
horses, with white silk stockings and regular flower-pots on their
heads; I had never seen anything like it; and there were postillions
riding on the horses in front of the carriage. I quite forgot to look
inside the carriage and barely caught a glimpse of the King. And that
glimpse made no impression upon me. That he was Christian VIII. I did
not know; he was only "the King."

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


VII.

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

We lived in the country ourselves, for that matter, out in the western
suburb, near the Black Horse (as later during the cholera Summer), or
along the old King's Road, where there were beautiful large gardens. In
one such a huge garden I stood one Summer day by my mother's side in
front of a large oblong bed with many kinds of flowers. "This bed shall
be yours," said Mother, and happy was I. I was to rake the paths round
it myself and tend and water the plants in it. I was particularly
interested to notice that a fresh set of flowers came out for every
season of the year. When the asters and dahlias sprang into bloom the
Summer was over. Still the garden was not the real country. The real
country was at Inger's, my dear old nurse's. She was called my nurse
because she had looked after me when I was small. But she had not fed
me, my mother had done that.

Inger lived in a house with fields round it near High Taastrup. There
was no railway there then, and you drove out with a pair of horses. It
was 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 to
Valby and back. Their father took them. Many people thought that it was
too dangerous. But the children cared little for the danger. And it went
off all right and they returned alive.

Inger had a husband whose name was Peer. He was nice, but had not much
to say. Inger talked far more and looked after everything. They had a
baby 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. There
was a curious smell in the rooms, with their chests of drawers and
benches, not exactly disagreeable, but unforgettable. They had much
larger dishes of curds and porridge than you saw in Copenhagen. They did
not put the porridge or the curds on plates. Inger and Peer and their
little visitor sat round the milk bowl or the porridge dish and put
their 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 to
himself.

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


VIII.

In the wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by wooden
bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir
sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged
heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate
expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment of
being incarcerated there.

Several times already his anxious mother has sent the housemaid to ask
whether he will beg pardon yet, and he has only shaken his head. He is
hungry; for he was brought up here immediately after school. But he will
not 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 is
suffering now is nothing to what he has had to suffer. It is true that
he would not go with the nurse and his little brother into the King's
Gardens. But what do Father and Mother know of the ignominy of hearing
all day from the other schoolboys: "Oh! so you are fetched by the
nurse!" or "Here comes your nurse to fetch you!" He is overwhelmed with
shame 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, but
how can he explain to the other boys that his parents will not trust him
with the little one yet, and so send for them both at the same time! Now
there shall be an end to it; he will not go to the King's Gardens with
the nurse again.

It is the housemaid, once more, come to ask if he will not beg pardon
now. In vain. Everything has been tried with him, scolding, and even a
box on the ear; but he has not been humbled. Now he stands here; he will
not 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 the
easier to hold out. And some hours later he is brought down and put to
bed without having apologised.

Before I had so painfully become aware of the ignominy of going with the
maid 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! What
splendid alleys for playing Paradise, with Heaven and Hell! To say
nothing of playing at horses! A long piece of tape was passed over and
under the shoulders of two playfellows, and you drove them with a tight
rein and a whip in your hand. And if it were fun in the old days when I
only had tape for reins, it was ever so much greater fun now that I had
had a present from my father of splendid broad reins of striped wool,
with bells, that you could hear from far enough when the pair came
tearing down the wide avenues.

I was fond of the gardens, which were large and at that time much larger
than they are now; and of the trees, which were many, at that time many
more than now. And every part of the park had its own attraction. The
Hercules pavilion was mysterious; Hercules with the lion, instructive
and 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 felt
particularly happy there. I had been able for a long time to read
correctly 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 from
that moment forth my ambition was set upon reading _writing_, an
idea which had never occurred to me before. When my tutor first showed
me _writing_, it had looked to me much as cuneiform inscriptions
and hieroglyphics would do to ordinary grown-up people, but by degrees I
managed to recognize the letters I was accustomed to in this their
freer, more frivolous disguise, running into one another and with their
regularity broken up. In the first main avenue of the King's Gardens I
had paced up and down, in my hand the thin exercise-book, folded over in
the middle,--the first book of writing I had ever seen,--and had already
spelt out the title, "Little Red Riding-Hood." The story was certainly
not very long; still, it filled several of the narrow pages, and it was
exciting to spell out the subject, for it was new to me. In triumphant
delight at having conquered some difficulties and being on the verge of
conquering 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 young
man, once more with a book of manuscript, that I was reading, in my
hand. I was fixing my first lecture in my mind, and I repeated it over
and over again to myself until I knew it almost by heart, only to
discover, to my disquiet, a few minutes later, that I had forgotten the
whole, and that was bad enough; for what I wished to say in my lecture
were 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 to
the town, and pined for trees and the scent of flowers, I used to go to
the park, cross it obliquely to the beds near the beautiful copper
beeches, by the entrance from the ramparts, where there were always
flowers, 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 fetched
by the nurse from school to the Gardens. It was horrid, too, to be
obliged to walk so slowly with the girl, even though no longer obliged
to take hold of her skirt. How I envied the boys contemptuously called
street boys! They could run in and out of the courtyard, shout and make
as much noise as they liked, quarrel and fight out in the street, and
move about freely. I knew plenty of streets. If sent into the town on an
errand I should be able to find my way quite easily.

And at last I obtained permission. Happy, happy day! I flew off like an
arrow. I could not possibly have walked. And I ran home again at full
galop. 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 could
walk. I tried a few steps to see, but impatience got the better of me
and off I flew. It was fine fun to run till you positively felt the
hurry you were in, because you hit your back with your heels at every
step.

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


IX.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one
were good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain and
Father and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, of
course, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, more
hard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired any
terror. 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 his
face and said: "Bo!" and you jumped. If the towel were taken away there
soon emerged a laughing face from behind it. That at once made the
bogey-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, so
cold-bloodedly shaken off, that at a later stage a personality with whom
there was no jesting developed, one who was not to be thrust aside in
the 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 he
who succeeded first to the bogey-man. It was--the police. The police was
the strange and dreadful power from which there was no refuge for a
little boy. The police came and took him away from his parents, away
from 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 his
hand. Woe to the one who made the acquaintance of that cane!

My maternal grandfather was having his warehouse done up, a large
warehouse, three stories high. Through doors at the top, just under the
gable in the middle, there issued a crane, and from it hung down a
tremendously thick rope at the end of which was a strong iron hook. By
means of it the large barrels of sky-blue indigo, which were brought on
waggons, were hoisted. Inside the warehouse the ropes passed through
every storey, through holes in the floors. If you pulled from the inside
at the one or the other of the ropes, the rope outside with the iron
crook 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 his
fingers 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 the
empty barrels about, and--which was the greatest treat of all--pull the
ropes. This last was a delight that kept all one's faculties at extreme
tension. The marvellous thing about it was that you yourself stood
inside the house and pulled, and yet at the same time you could watch
through 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 refreshing
consciousness of having accomplished something--saw the results of your
efforts before your eyes.

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

It was, of course, very alarming to think that I might destroy such a
valuable thing. Not that I had any definite ideas of money and numbers.
I was well up in the multiplication table and was constantly wrestling
with large numbers, but they did not correspond to any actual conception
in my mind. When I reckoned up what one number of several digits came to
multiplied by another of much about the same value, I had not the least
idea whether Father or Grandfather had so many Rigsdaler, or less, or
more. There was only one of the uncles who took an interest in my gift
for multiplication, and that was my stout, rich uncle with the crooked
mouth, of whom it was said that he owned a million, and who was always
thinking of figures. He was hardly at the door of Mother's drawing-room
before he called out: "If you are a sharp boy and can tell me what
27,374 times 580,208 are, you shall have four skilling;" and quickly
slate and pencil appeared and the sum was finished in a moment and the
four skilling pocketed. [Footnote: Four skilling would be a sum equal to
1-1/2d. 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 90
Rigsdaler seemed to be. But might it not be that Jens only said so? He
surely 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 sternly
could not deny my guilt. "I saw it," said Jens; "the rope is nearly cut
in two, and now you will catch it, now the policeman will come and fetch
you."

For weeks after that I did not have one easy hour. Wherever I went, or
whatever I did, the fear of the police followed me. I dared not speak to
anyone of what I had done and of what was awaiting me. I was too much
ashamed, and I noticed, too, that my parents knew nothing. But if a door
opened suddenly I would look anxiously at the incomer. When I was
walking with the nurse and my little brother I looked all round on every
side, and frequently peeped behind me, to see whether the police were
after me. Even when I lay in my bed, shut in on all four sides by its
trellis-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 I
perceived that Jens did not even know what I was talking about. Jens had
evidently forgotten all about it. Jens had been making fun of me. If my
relief was immense, my indignation was no less. So much torture for
nothing at all! Older people, who had noticed how the word "police" was
to me an epitome of all that was terrible, sometimes made use of it as
an 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. I
did 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 Danes
to go there, and that they will beat them if they stay there." That I
could understand, but afterwards I heard them talking about soldiers.
"Are there soldiers as well?" I asked. "Police and soldiers," was the
answer. But that confused me altogether, for the two things belonged in
my mind to wholly different categories. Soldiers were beautiful, gay-
coloured men with shakos, who kept guard and marched in step to the
sound 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 your
birthday in boxes. But police went by themselves, without music, without
beautiful colours on their uniforms, looked stern and threatening, and
had a stick in their hands. Nobody dreamt of copying them in tin. I was
very much annoyed to find out, as I soon did, that I had been misled by
the 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 the
battles at Bov, Nybboel, etc. The Danes always won. At bottom, war was a
cheerful thing.

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

"Can it be possible?" said Mother. And she leaned over the sewing-table
and burst into tears, positively sobbed. It impressed me as nothing had
ever done before. I had never seen Mother cry. Grown-up people did not
cry. I did not even know that they could. And now Mother was crying till
the tears streamed down her face. I did not know what either the
_Christian VIII_. or the _Gefion_ were, and it was only now
that the maid explained to me that they were ships. But I understood
that a great misfortune had happened, and soon, too, how people were
blown up with gunpowder, and what a good thing it was that one of our
acquaintances, an active young man who was liked by everyone and always
got on well, had escaped with a whole skin, and had reached Copenhagen
in civilian's dress.


X.

About this time it dawned upon me in a measure what birth and death
were. Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards
there was one child more in the house. One day, when I was sitting on
the sofa between Grandmamma and Grandpapa at their dining-table in
Klareboderne, having dinner with a fairly large company, the door at the
back of the room just opposite to me opened. My father stood in the
doorway, and, without a good-morning, said: "You have got a little
brother"--and there really was a little one in a cradle when I went
home.

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


XI.

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

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

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


XII.

Other inimical forces in the world cropped up by degrees. When you had
been put to bed early the maids often sat down at the nursery table, and
talked in an undertone until far on into the evening. And then they
would tell stories that were enough to make your hair stand on end. They
talked of ghosts that went about dressed in white, quite noiselessly, or
rattling their chains through the rooms of houses, appeared to people
lying in bed, frightened guilty persons; of figures that stepped out of
their picture-frames and moved across the floor; of the horror of
spending a night in the dark in a church--no one dared do that; of what
dreadful places churchyards were, how the dead in long grave-clothes
rose up from their graves at night and frightened the life out of
people, while the Devil himself ran about the churchyard in the shape of
a black cat. In fact, you could never be sure, when you saw a black cat
towards evening, that the Devil was not inside it. And as easily as
winking the Devil could transform himself into a man and come up behind
the person he had a grudge against.

It was a terrifying excitement to lie awake and listen to all this. And
there was no doubt about it. Both Maren and Karoline had seen things of
the sort themselves and could produce witnesses by the score. It caused
a revolution in my consciousness. I learnt to know the realm of Darkness
and the Prince of Darkness. For a time I hardly ventured to pass through
a dark room. I dared not sit at my book with an open door behind me. Who
might not step noiselessly in! And if there were a mirror on the wall in
front 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 devil
stories passed away, I retained a strong repugnance to all darkness
terror, and to all who take advantage of the defenceless fear of the
ignorant for the powers of darkness.


XIII.

The world was widening out. It was not only home and the houses of my
different 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 merged
together: garlands on the houses and across the streets, the dense
throng of people, the flower-decked soldiers, marching in step to the
music under a constant shower of flowers from every window, and looking
up smiling. The second time, long afterwards, I took things in in much
greater detail. The wounded, who went in front and were greeted with a
sort of tenderness; the officers on horseback, saluting with their
swords, on which were piled wreath over wreath; the bearded soldiers,
with tiny wreaths round their bayonets, while big boys carried their
rifles for them. And all the time the music of _Den tapre
Landsoldat_, when not the turn of _Danmark dejligst_ or _Vift
stolt!_ [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 was
tormented by remorse. My aunt had presented me the day before with three
little 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 had
promised faithfully to do so. And I had kept them all three, intending
to throw them all myself. I knew it was wrong and deceitful; I was
suffering for it, but the delight of throwing all the wreaths myself was
too great. I flung them down. A soldier caught one on his bayonet; the
others fell to the ground. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself, and have
never forgotten my shame.


XIV.

I knew that the theatre (where I had never been) was the place where
Mother and Father enjoyed themselves most. They often talked of it, and
were most delighted if the actors had "acted well," words which conveyed
no meaning to me.

Children were not at that time debarred from the Royal Theatre, and I
had no more ardent wish than to get inside. I was still a very small
child when one day they took me with them in the carriage in which
Father and Mother and Aunt were driving to the theatre. I had my seat
with the others in the pit, and sat speechless with admiration when the
curtain went up. The play was called _Adventures on a Walking
Tour_. I could not understand anything. Men came on the stage and
talked together. One crept forward under a bush and sang. I could not
grasp 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 be
carried 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. My
excitement, my delight, my attention to the unintelligible were too
overwhelming. I nearly fainted, and at the close of the first act had to
leave the theatre. After that, it was a very long time before I was
regarded as old enough to stand the excitement.

Once, though, I was allowed to go to see a comedy. Mr. Voltelen gave me
a ticket for some students' theatricals at the Court Theatre, in which
he 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 in
it who used to throw gold coins out of the window, and there was an ugly
old hag, and a young, beautiful girl as well. I sat and kept a sharp
lookout for when my master should come on, but I was disappointed; there
was no Mr. Voltelen to be seen.

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


XV.

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

I mounted it and oh, happiness! I began to ride, and rode on with
passionate delight till I nearly went over the horse's head. "When I was
a little boy the hobby-horse amused me, but it does not now." Every time
I climbed a fresh rung of the ladder, no matter how low an one, the same
feeling possessed me, and the same train of thought. Mother often joked
about it, up to the time when I was a full grown man. If I quickly
outgrew my fancies, if I had quite done with anything or anybody that
had 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 pretty
blouses, one especially, grey, with brown worsted lace upon it, that I
was fond of wearing; now I had plain, flat blouses with a leather belt
round the waist. Later on, I was ambitious to have a jacket, like big
boys, and when this wish had been gratified there awoke in me, as
happens 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 to
fit me. I looked thin and lank in it, but the dress was honourable. Then
it occurred to me that everybody would see I was wearing a frock coat
for the first time. I did not dare to go out into the streets with it
on, but went out of my way round the ramparts for fear of meeting
anyone.

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

The visit to Schaetzig 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 was
pretty. Just as we were going in, my aunt said: "You will catch cold
inside," and in spite of my protests tied a little silk handkerchief
round my neck. That handkerchief spoilt all my pleasure in being
immortalised. 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. After
the rocking-horse, more and more military appurtenances followed. A
shining helmet to buckle firmly under the chin, in which one looked
quite imposing; a cuirass of real metal like the Horseguards', and a
short rapier in a leather scabbard, which went by the foreign name of
Hirschfaenger, and was a very awe-inspiring weapon in the eyes of one's
small brothers, when they were mercilessly massacred with it. Sitting on
the rocking-horse, arrayed in all this splendour, wild dreams of
military greatness filled the soul, dreams which grew wilder and more
ambitious from year to year until between the age of 8 and 9 they
received a fresh and unwholesome stimulus from Ingemann's novels.
[Footnote: B.S. Ingemann (1789-1862), a Danish writer celebrated chiefly
as the author of many historical novels, now only read by very young
children.]

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


XVII.

Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I
had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to
school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two
years my junior. The start from home was pleasant enough. Lunch boxes of
tin with the Danish greeting after meals in gold letters upon them,
stood open on the table. Mother, at one end of the table, spread each
child six pieces of bread and butter, which were then placed together,
two and two, white bread on brown bread, a mixture which, was uncommonly
nice. 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 the
same way. But those were days when the journey was much impeded. Every
minute you met boys who called you names and tried to hit the little
one, and you had to fight at every street corner you turned. And those
were days when, even in the school itself, despite the humanity of the
age (not since attained to), terms of abuse, buffets and choice insults
were one's daily bread, and I can see myself now, as I sprang up one day
in a fight with a much bigger boy and bit him in the neck, till a master
was obliged to get me away from him, and the other had to have his neck
bathed under the pump.

I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself. There was in the
class one big, stout, squarely built, inexpressibly good-natured boy,
for whom no one was a match in fighting. He was from Lolland, and his
name was Ludvig; he was not particularly bright, but robust and as
strong as a giant. Then one day there arrived at the school a West
Indian of the name of Muddie, dark of hue, with curly hair, as strong
and slim as a savage, and with all the finesse and feints which he had
at his command, irresistible, whether wrestling or when fighting with
his fists. He beat all the strongest boys in the school. Only Ludvig and
he had not challenged each other. But the boys were very anxious to see
a bout between the two, and a wrestling match between them was arranged
for a free quarter of an hour. For the boys, who were all judges, it was
a fine sight to see two such fighters wrestle, especially when the
Lollander flung himself down on the other and the West Indian struggled
vainly, 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, was
small and sallow, extraordinarily withered, looking like a cripple,
without, however, being one; the somewhat younger brother, Sofus, was
splendidly made and amazed us in the very first lesson in which the new
arrivals took part--a gymnastic class--by his unusual agility in
swarming and walking up the sloping bar. He seemed to be as strong as he
was dexterous, and in a little boy with a reverence for those who were
strong, he naturally aroused positive enthusiasm. This was even
augmented next day, when a big, malicious boy, who had scoffed at Adam
for being puny, was, in a trice, so well thrashed by Sofus that he lost
both his breath and his courage.

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

And then by reason of the exaggerated admiration of which he was the
object, Sofus, who hitherto had been so straightforward, began to grow
capricious. It was a settled rule that he and I went home from school
together. But one day a difficulty cropped up; Sofus had promised
Valdemar, a horrid boy, who cheated at lessons, to go home with him. And
next day something else prevented him. But when, suddenly having learnt
to know all the pangs of neglect and despised affection, I met him the
third day, after having waited vainly for him, crossing Our Lady's
Square with Valdemar, in my anger I seized my quondam friend roughly by
the 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 have
done. But I was too passionate to behave sensibly. Valdemar spread the
account of my conduct all through the class, and next day, in our
quarter of an hour's playtime, I heard on every side from the laughing
boys: "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 learnt
to see how things looked in comparison with one another, how they hid
one another and revealed themselves, in perspective; from my music
mistress, 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 more
than mediocre. I never attained, either in drawing or piano-playing, to
more than a soulless accuracy. And I hardly showed much greater aptitude
when, on bright Sunday mornings, which invited not at all to the
delights of dancing, with many another tiny lad and lass I was
marshalled up to dance in the dancing saloon of Mr. Hoppe, the royal
dancer, and learnt to take up the first to the fifth positions and swing
the girls round in the polka mazurka. I became an ardent, but never a
specially 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 which
were pushed with cues. Father had travelled from Paris with it five days
and six nights. It was inexpressibly fascinating; no one else in
Copenhagen had a game like it. And next year, when Father came home from
Paris again, he brought a large, flat, polished box, in which there were
a dozen different games, French games with balls, and battledores and
shuttlecocks, games which grown-up people liked playing, too; and there
were carriages which went round and round by clockwork, and a tumbler
who turned somersaults backwards down a flight of steps as soon as he
was placed on the top step. Those were things that the people in France
could do.

The world was widening out more and more. Relations often came over from
Goeteborg. They spoke Swedish, but if you paid great attention you could
understand 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 brother
had known; he had come as a sailor on a French man-o'-war, and he came
and stayed to dinner and sang the Marseillaise. It was from him that I
heard 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--my
mother's brother Jacob and my father's brother Julius, who had both
become Frenchmen long ago and lived in Paris. Uncle Jacob often came for
a few weeks or more at a time. He was small and broad-shouldered and
good-looking. Everybody was fond of Uncle Jacob; all the ladies wanted
to be asked to the house when Uncle Jacob came. He had a wife and four
children in Paris. But I had pieced together from the conversation of
the grown-up people that Aunt Victorine was his wife and yet not his
wife. Grandmother would have nothing to do with her. And Uncle Jacob had
gone all the way to the Pope in Rome and asked for her to remain his
wife. But the Pope had said No. Why? Because Aunt Victorine had had
another husband before, who had been cruel to her and beaten her, and
the man came sometimes, when Uncle was away, and took her furniture away
from her. It was incomprehensible that he should be allowed to, and that
the 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 his
smile was sad. He had acted thoughtlessly, they said, and was not happy.
One morning, while he was visiting Father and Mother and was lying
asleep in the big room, there was a great commotion in the house; a
messenger was sent for the doctor and the word _morphia_ was
spoken. He was ill, but was very soon well again. When he asked his
sister next day: "What has become of my case of pistols?" she replied
with 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 and
children. And yet it so happened that I did. Many years afterwards, when
I was a young man and went to Paris, after my uncle's death, I sought
out Victorine and her children. I wished to bring her personally the
monthly allowance that her relatives used to send her from Denmark. I
found her prematurely old, humbled by poverty, worn out by privation.
How was it possible that she should be so badly off? Did she not receive
the help that was sent from Copenhagen every month to uncle's best
friend, M. Fontane, in the Rue Vivienne? Alas, no! M. Fontane gave her a
little assistance once in a while, and at other times sent her and her
children away with hard words.

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





BOYHOOD'S YEARS

Our House--Its Inmates--My Paternal Grandfather--My Maternal
Grandfather--School and Home--Farum--My Instructors--A Foretaste of Life
--Contempt for the Masters--My Mother--The Mystery of Life--My First
Glimpse 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 possession
some twenty years. My parents lived on the second floor. It was situated
in the busy part of the town, right in the heart of Copenhagen. On the
first floor lived a West Indian gentleman who spoke Danish with a
foreign accent; sometimes there came to see him a Danish man of French
descent, Mr. Lafontaine, who, it was said, was so strong that he could
take two rifles and bayonets and hold them out horizontally without
bending his arm. I never saw Mr. Lafontaine, much less his marvellous
feat of strength, but when I went down the stairs I used to stare hard at
the door behind which these wonderful doings went on.

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

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


II.

On the ground floor was the shop, which occupied the entire breadth and
nearly 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 and
grandfather together until my eleventh year, when Father began to deal
wholesale on his own account. It was nice in the shop, because when you
went down the assistants would take you round the waist and lift you
over to the other side of the semi-circular counter which divided them
from the customers. The assistants were pleasant, dignified gentlemen,
of fine appearance and behaviour, friendly without wounding
condescension.

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 once
more accessible I stood amazed at the change. A long, glass-covered
gallery had been added, in which the wares lay stored on new shelves.
The extension of the premises was by no means inconsiderable, and
simultaneously an extension had been made in the staff. Among the new
arrivals was an apprentice named Gerhard, who was as tall as a grown
man, but must have been very young, for he talked to me, a six-year-old
child, like a companion. He was very nice-looking, and knew it. "You
don't want harness when you have good hips," he would say, pointing to
his mightily projecting loins. This remark made a great impression upon
me, because it was the first time I had heard anyone praise his own
appearance. I knew that one ought not to praise one's self and that
self-praise was no recommendation. So I was astonished to find that
self-praise in Gerhard's mouth was not objectionable; in fact, it
actually suited him. Gerhard often talked of what a pleasure it was to
go out in the evenings and enjoy one's self--what the devil did it
matter what old people said?--and listen to women singing--amusements
which his hearer could not manage to picture very clearly to himself.

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


III.

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

The glory vanished, because from the start he had worked his way up
without capital. The Hamburg firm that financed the business lent money
at too high a rate of interest and on too hard conditions for it to
continue to support two families.

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

The old man was an ardent Buonapartist, and, strangely enough, an even
more ardent admirer of the Third Napoleon than of the First, because he
regarded him as shrewder, and was convinced that he would bequeath the
Empire to his son. But he and I came into collision on this point from
the 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 used
to write secretly in impossible French, and in a still more impossible
metre (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 not
possibly agree. But this was the only subject on which we ever had any
dispute.


IV.

My maternal grandfather was quite different, entirely devoid of
impetuosity, even-tempered, amiable, very handsome. He too had worked
his way up from straightened circumstances; in fact, it was only when he
was 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 been
apprentice to the widow of Moeller the dyer, when Oehlenschlaeger and the
Oersteds used to dine at the house. After the patriarchal fashion of the
day, he had sat daily at the same table as these great, much-admired
men, and he often told how he had clapped his hands till they almost
bled at Oehlenschlaeger's plays, in the years when, by reason of
Baggesen's attack, opinions about them at the theatre were divided.

My great-grandfather, the father of my mother's stepmother, who wore
high boots with a little tassel in front, belonged to an even older
generation. 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; the
English are the most disgraceful pack of robbers in the world." He was
so old that he had still a vivid recollection of the battle in the
roadstead and of the bombardment of Copenhagen.


V.

School and Home were two different worlds, and it often struck me that I
led a double life. Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in
active 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 with
relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at
school.

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 a
kindly man, the arithmetic master, who made me feel at my ease. I
noticed at once that when the master asked a boy anything which another
knew, this other had a right to publish his knowledge by holding up a
finger--a right of which I myself made an excessive use in the first
lessons, until I perceived the sense of not trying, in season and out of
season, to attract attention to my knowledge or superiority, and kept my
hands on the table in front of me.


VI.

Suddenly, with surprising vividness, a little incident of my childhood
rises up before me. I was ten years old. I had been ill in the Winter
and my parents had boarded me out in the country for the Summer
holidays; all the love of adventure in me surged up. At the Straw Market
a fat, greasy, grinning peasant promised to take me in his cart as far
as 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 to
me. I was allowed to drive the brown horses, that is to say, to hold the
reins, and I was in high glee. Where Farum was, I did not know and did
not care, but it was a new world. Until now I, who was a town child, had
seen nothing of the country except my nurse's house and land at
Glostrup,--but what lay in front of me was a village, a schoolhouse, a
large farm, in short an adventure in grand style.

I had my shirts and blouses and stockings in a portmanteau, and amongst
them a magnificent garment, never yet worn, a blue cloth jacket, and a
white waistcoat belonging to it, with gold buttons, which my mother had
given 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, and
regretted profoundly that it was still only Monday.

Half-way there, the peasant pulled up. He explained to me that he could
not very well drive me any farther, so must put me down; he was not
going to Farum himself at all. But a peat cart was coming along the road
yonder, 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 my
money; I had nothing to give the second man, and sadly I exchanged the
quick trot of the brown horses for the walking pace of the jades in the
peat-cart.

My first experience of man's perfidy.

At last I was there. On a high, wide hill--high and wide as it seemed to
me then--towered the huge schoolhouse, a miniature Christiansborg
Castle, with the schoolmaster's apartments on the right and the
schoolroom on the left. And the schoolmaster came out smiling, holding a
pipe which was a good deal taller than I, held out his hand, and asked
me to come in, gave me coffee at once, and expressed the profoundest
contempt for the peasant who had charged two rigsdaler for such a
trifle, and then left me in the road. I asked at once for pen and
paper, and wrote in cipher to a comrade, with whom I had concocted this
mysterious means of communication, asking him to tell my parents that I
had been most kindly received. I felt a kind of shyness at the
schoolmaster seeing what I wrote home from his house. I gave him the
sheet, and begged him to fold it up, as I could not do it myself. There
were no envelopes in those days. But what was my surprise to hear him,
without further ado, read aloud with a smile, from my manufactured
cipher: "I have been most kindly received," etc. I had never thought
such keen-wittedness possible. And my respect for him and his long pipe
rose.

Just then there was a light knock at the door. In walked two girls, one
tall and one short, the former of whom positively bewildered me. She was
fair, her sister as dark as a negro. They were ten and eight years old
respectively, were named Henrietta and Nina K., came from Brazil, where
their home was, and were to spend a few years in Denmark; came as a rule
every day, but had now arrived specially to inspect the strange boy.
After gazing for two minutes at the lovely Henrietta's fair hair and
wonderful grey eyes, I disappeared from the room, and five minutes
afterwards reappeared again, clothed in the dark-blue jacket and the
white waistcoat with gold buttons, which I had been strictly forbidden
to 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 of
conscience!

I can still see lovely fields, rich in corn, along the sides of which we
played; we chased beautiful, gaudy butterflies, which we caught in our
hats and cruelly stuck on pins, and the little girls threw oats at my
new 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 veritable
castle. There lived an old, and exceedingly handsome, white-haired
Chamberlain, called the General, who frequently dined with Frederik VII,
and invariably brought us children goodies from dessert, lovely large
pieces of barley sugar in papers with gay pictures on the outside of
shepherd lovers, and crackers with long paper fringes. His youngest son,
who owned a collection of insects and many other fine things, became my
sworn friend, which means that I was his, for he did not care in the
least about me; but I did not notice that, and I was happy and proud of
his friendship and sailed with him and lots of other boys and girls on
the pretty Farum lake, and every day was more convinced that I was quite
a man. It was a century since I had worn blouses.

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

But Henrietta had ways that I did not understand in the least; she used
to 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, a
downright trick. I was to write a real love-letter to a nine-year-old
little girl named Ingeborg, from an eleven or twelve-year-old boy called
Per, and then Henrietta would sew a fragrant little wreath of flowers
round it. The letter was completed and delivered. But the only result of
it was that next day, as I was walking along the high road with
Henrietta, Per separated himself from his companions, called me a dandy
from Copenhagen, and asked me if I would fight. There was, of course, no
question of drawing back, but I remember very plainly that I was a
little 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 hardly
exchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelmingly
superior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight.
From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks
and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this I
flung him into the ditch like a glove. He sprang up again, but, with
lofty indifference, I threw him a second time, till his head buzzed.
That satisfied me that I had not been shamed before Henrietta, who, for
that matter, took my exploit very coolly and did not fling me so much as
a word for it. However, she asked me if I would meet her the same
evening under the old May-tree. When we met, she had two long straps
with her, and at once asked me, somewhat mockingly and dryly, whether I
had the courage to let myself be bound. Of course I said I had,
whereupon, very carefully and thoroughly, she fastened my hands together
with 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 enjoyed
exerting her strength. Naturally, my boyish ideas of honour would not
permit me to scream or complain; I merely stared at her with the
profoundest 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 we
met once again, at her request, and then she gave me the first and only
kiss, 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 in
Brazil. But two years after this, when I was feeling my first schoolboy
affection for an eleven-year-old girl, she silenced me at a children's
ball 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 my
fair lady been that she had not even denied herself the pleasure of
telling her friends of the ignominious treatment to which she had
subjected a comrade who, from pure feeling of honour, had not struck
back.

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 know
the way there and back, to and from the three different places, all near
together, where my parents lived during the time, as I knew no other. In
that part of the town, all about the Round Tower, I knew, not only every
house, 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 been
living 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 that
very reason, it was dreamland, unreality, which would one day elude me
and vanish; reality was the Round Tower in Copenhagen and all that lay
about 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 in
the neighbourhood of Copenhagen, to be exact, the view over the
Hermitage Meadows down to the Sound, as it appears from the bench
opposite the Slesvig Stone, the first and dearest type of landscape
beauty with which I became acquainted, was endowed to me with an imprint
of actuality which no other landscape since, be it never so lovely or
never 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 some
instances, anything but perfect, even when not lacking in knowledge of
their subject. Nevertheless, the instruction as a whole, especially when
one bears in mind how cheap it was, must be termed good, careful and
comprehensive; as a rule it was given conscientiously. When as a grown
up man I have cast my thoughts back, what has surprised me most is the
variety of subjects that were instilled into a boy in ten years. There
certainly were teachers so lacking in understanding of the proper way to
communicate knowledge that the instruction they gave was altogether
wasted. For instance, I learnt geometry for four or five years without
grasping the simplest elements of the science. The principles of it
remained so foreign to me that I did not even recognise a right-angled
triangle, if the right angle were uppermost. It so happened that the
year before I had to sit for my examinations, a young University student
in his first year, who had been only one class in front of the rest of
us, offered us afternoon instruction in trigonometry and spherical
geometry gratis, and all who appreciated the help that was being offered
to them streamed to his lessons. This young student, later Pastor Joergen
Lund, had a remarkable gift for mathematics, and gave his instruction
with 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 was
very well up in it. As Joergen Lund taught mathematics, so all the other
subjects ought to have been taught. We were obliged to be content with
less.

Lessons might have been a pleasure. They never were, or rather, only the
Danish ones. But in childhood's years, and during the first years of
boyhood they were fertilising. As a boy they hung over me like a dread
compulsion; yet the compulsion was beneficial. It was only when I was
almost fourteen that I began inwardly to rebel against the time which
was wasted, that the stupidest and laziest of the boys might be enabled
to keep up with the industrious and intelligent. There was too much
consideration shown towards those who would not work or could not
understand. And from the time I was sixteen, school was my despair. I
had done with it all, was beyond it all, was too matured to submit to
the routine of lessons; my intellectual pulses no longer beat within the
limits of school. What absorbed my interest was the endeavour to become
master of the Danish language in prose and verse, and musings over the
mystery of existence. In school I most often threw up the sponge
entirely, and laid my head on my arms that I might neither see nor hear
what was going on around me.

There was another reason, besides my weariness of it all, which at this
latter period made my school-going a torture to me. I was by now
sufficiently schooled for my sensible mother to think it would be good
for me to make, if it were but a small beginning, towards earning my own
living. Or rather, she wanted me to earn enough to pay for my amusements
myself. So I tried, with success, to find pupils, and gave them lessons
chiefly on Sunday mornings; but in order to secure them I had called
myself _Studiosus_. Now it was an ever present terror with me lest
I should meet any of my pupils as I went to school in the morning, or
back at midday, with my books in a strap under my arm. Not to betray
myself, 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 till
they burst.


IX.

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

In our quarter of an hour's playtime it was easy to see how cowardice
and meanness met with their reward in the boy commonwealth. There was a
Jewish boy of repulsive appearance, very easy to cow, with a positively
slavish disposition. Every single playtime his schoolfellows would make
him stand up against a wall and jump about with his feet close together
till playtime was over, while the others stood in front of him and
laughed at him. He became later a highly respected Conservative
journalist.

In lesson time it was easy to see that the equality under one
discipline, under the hierarchy of merit, which was expressed in the
boys' places on the forms, from highest to lowest, was not maintained
when opposed to the very different hierarchy of Society. On the lowest
form sat a boy whose gifts were exceedingly mediocre, and who was
ignorant, moreover, from sheer laziness; to him were permitted things
forbidden 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 a
groom on a second horse. He wore a silk hat and, when he came into the
schoolroom, did not hang it up on the peg that belonged to him, where he
was afraid it might be interfered with, but in the school cupboard, in
which only the master was supposed to keep his things; and the tall hat
crowning so noble a head impressed the masters to such an extent that
not one of them asked for it to be removed. And they acquiesced like
lambs in the young lord's departure half-way through the last lesson, if
the groom happened to be there with his horse to fetch him.

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


X.

The reverence with which the boys, as youngsters, had looked up to the
masters, disappeared with striking rapidity. The few teachers in whose
lessons you could do what you liked were despised. The masters who knew
how to make themselves respected, only in exceptional cases inspired
affection. The love of mockery soon broke out. Children had not been at
school long before the only opinion they allowed scope to was that the
masters were the natural enemies of the boys. There was war between
them, and every stratagem was permissible. They were fooled, misled, and
plagued in every conceivable manner. Or they were feared and we
flattered them.

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

From twelve years of age upwards, contempt for the masters was the
keynote of all conversation about them. The Latin master, a little,
insignificant-looking man, but a very good teacher, was said to be so
disgracefully enfeebled by debauchery that an active boy could throw him
without the least difficulty. The Natural History master, a clever,
outspoken young man, who would call out gaily: "Silence there, or you'll
get a dusting on the teapot that will make the spout fly off!" sank
deeply in our estimation when one of the boys told us that he spent his
evenings at music-halls. One morning there spread like wildfire through
the class the report that the reason the Natural History master had not
come that day was because he had got mixed up the night before in a
fight outside a music-pavilion. The contempt and the ridicule that were
heaped upon him in the conversation of the boys were immeasurable. When
he came next morning with a black, extravasated eye, which he bathed at
intervals with a rag, he was regarded by most of us as absolute scum.
The German master, a tall, good-looking man, was treated as utterly
incompetent because, when he asked a question in grammar or syntax, he
walked up and down with the book in front of him, and quite plainly
compared the answer with the book. We boys thought that anyone could be
a master, with a book in his hand. History and Geography were taught by
an old man, overflowing with good-humour, loquacious, but self-
confident, liked for his amiability, but despised for what was deemed
unmanliness in him. The boys pulled faces at him, and imitated his
expressions and mannerisms.

The Danish master, Professor H.P. Holst, was not liked. He evidently
took no interest in his scholastic labours, and did not like the boys.
His coolness was returned. And yet, that which was the sole aim and
object of his instruction he understood to perfection, and drilled into
us well. The unfortunate part of it was that there was hardly more than
one boy in the class who enjoyed learning anything about just that
particular thing. Instruction in Danish was, for Holst, instruction in
the metrical art. He explained every metre and taught the boys to pick
out the feet of which the verses were composed. When we made fun of him
in our playtime, it was for remarks which we had invented and placed in
his mouth ourselves; for instance: "Scan my immortal poem, _The Dying
Gladiator_." The reason of this was simply that, in elucidation of
the composition of the antique distich, he made use of his own poem of
the above name, which he had included in a Danish reading-book edited by
himself. 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, Moeller!"

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


XI.

The French master knew how to command respect; there was never a sound
during his lessons. He was altogether absorbed in his subject, was
absolutely and wholly a Frenchman; he did not even talk Danish with the
same accentuation as others, and he had the impetuous French disposition
of 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 was
fond of stroking: "You speak French _comme un paysan d'Amac_." When
he swore, he swore like a true Frenchman: _"Sacrebleu-Mops-Carot-ten-
Rapee!"_ [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 of
water that always stood in front of him on the desk, and in Gallic
exasperation fling it on the floor, when the glass would be smashed to
atoms and the water run about, whereupon he would quietly, with his
_Grand seigneur_ air, take his purse out of his pocket and lay the
money for the glass on the desk.

For a time I based my ideas of the French mind and manner upon this
master, although my uncle Jacob, who had lived almost all his life in
Paris, was a very different sort of Frenchman. It was only later that I
became acquainted with a word and an idea which it was well I did not
know, as far as the master's capacity for making an impression was
concerned--the word _affected_.

At last, one fine day, a little event occurred which was not without its
effect on the master's prestige, and yet aroused my compassion almost as
much as my surprise. The parents of one of my best friends were
expecting a French business friend for the evening. As they knew
themselves to be very weak in the language, they gave their son a polite
note to the French master, asking him to do them the honour of spending
the next evening at their house, on the occasion of this visit, which
rendered conversational support desirable. The master took the note,
which we two boys had handed to him, grew--superior though he usually
was--rather red and embarrassed, and promised a written reply. To our
astonishment we learnt that this reply was to the effect that he must
unfortunately decline the honour, as he had never been in France, had
never heard anyone speak French, and was not proficient in the language.
Thus this tiger of a savage Frenchman suddenly cast his tiger's skin and
revealed himself in his native wool.

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


XII.

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

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

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

It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to
please than my mother. No one was more chary of praise than she, and she
had a horror of all sentimentality. She met me with superior
intelligence, corrected me, and brought me up by means of satire. It was
possible to impress my aunts, but not her. The profound dread she had of
betraying her feelings or talking about them, the shrewdness that dwelt
behind 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, a
conviction that had a stimulating effect on my character--namely, that
not only had she a mother's affection for me, but that the two shrewd
and scrutinising eyes of a very clever head were looking down upon me.
Rational as she was through and through, she met my visionary
inclinations, both religious and philosophical, with unshaken common
sense, and if I were sometimes tempted, by lesser people's over-
estimating of my abilities, to over-estimate them myself, it was she
who, with inflexible firmness, urged her conviction of the limitations
of my nature. None of my weaknesses throve in my mother's neighbourhood.

This was the reason why, during the transitional years between boyhood
and adolescence, the years in which a boy feels a greater need of
sympathy than of criticism and of indulgence than of superiority, I
looked for and found comprehension as much from a somewhat younger
sister of my mother's as from the latter herself. This aunt was all
heart. She had an ardent, enthusiastic brain, was full of tenderness and
goodness 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 herself
to be carried to imprudent extremes; she had neither Mother's
equilibrium nor her satirical qualities. She was thus admirably adapted
to be the confidant of a big boy whom she gave to understand that she
regarded as extraordinarily gifted. When these transitional years were
over, Mother resumed undisputed sway, and the relations between us
remained in all essentials the same, even after I had become much her
superior in knowledge and she in some things my pupil. So that it
affected me very much when, many years after, my younger brother said to
me 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 the
great problem of the mystery of our coming into the world. I was no
longer satisfied with the explanation that children were brought by the
stork, or with that other, advanced with greater seriousness, that they
drifted up in boxes, which were taken up out of Peblinge Lake. As a
child I tormented my mother with questions as to how you could tell whom
every box was for. That the boxes were numbered, did not make things
much clearer. That they were provided with addresses, sounded very
strange. Who had written the addresses? I then had to be content with
the assurance that it was a thing that I was too small to understand; it
should be explained to me when I was older.

My thoughts were not directed towards the other sex. I had no little
girl playfellows, and as I had no sister, knew very few. When I was
eight or nine years old, it is true, there was one rough and altogether
depraved boy whose talk touched upon the sexual question in expressions
that were coarse and in a spirit coarser still. I was scoffed at for not
knowing how animals propagated themselves, and that human beings
propagated 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 the
most shameless revelations, not only about a morbid development of
natural instincts, but actual crimes against nature and against the
elementary laws of society. In other words, I was shown the most
repulsive, most agitating picture of everything touching the relations
of the sexes and the propagation of the species.

It is probable that most boys in a big school have the great mystery of
Nature sullied for them in their tender years by coarseness and
depravity. Whereas, in ancient Greek times, the mystery was holy, and
with a pious mind men worshipped the Force of Nature without exaggerated
prudery and without shamelessness, such conditions are impossible in a
society where for a thousand years Nature herself has been depreciated
by Religion, associated with sin and the Devil, stamped as unmentionable
and in preference denied, in which, for that very reason, brutality
takes so much more terrible a satisfaction and revenge. As grown-up
people never spoke of the forces of Nature in a pure and simple manner,
it became to the children a concealed thing. Individual children, in
whom the sexual impulse had awakened early, were taught its nature by
bestial dispositions, and the knowledge was interpreted by them with
childish shamelessness. These children then filled the ears of their
comrades with filth.

In my case, the nastiness hit, and rebounded, without making any
impression. I was only infected by the tone of the other scholars in so
far 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 was
standing alone on the stairs, shouting these words out. I was reproved
for it, and did not do it again.


XIV.

I hardly ever met little girls except at children's balls, and in my
early childhood I did not think further of any of them. But when I was
twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the
fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for
life--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 my
brain for many a year.

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

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

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

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

The girl was Danish as far as her speech was concerned, but not really
Danish 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 my
uncle's, though her parents called her by another name. All this
combined to render her more distinctive.

Once a year I met her at a children's ball; then she had a white dress
on, and was, in my eyes, essentially different from all the other little
girls. One morning, after one of these balls, when I was fourteen, I
felt in a most singular frame of mind, and with wonder and reverence at
what 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 so
seldom 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, she
hardly belonged to the world of reality at all. But when I was sixteen
and I met her again, once more at a young people's ball, the glamour
suddenly departed. Her appearance had altered and corresponded no longer
to my imaginary picture of her. When we met in the dance she pressed my
hand, which made me indignant, as though it were an immodest thing. She
was no longer a fairy. She had broad shoulders, a budding bust, warm
hands; there was youthful coquetry about her--something that, to me,
seemed like erotic experience. I soon lost sight of her. But I retained
a sentiment of gratitude towards her for what, as a ten-year-old child,
she had afforded me, this naturally supernatural impression, my first
revelation of Beauty.


XV.

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

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

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

It must be added that there was in his bearing, which was evidently and
with good reason, calculated to impress, something that might justly
appear unnatural to keen-sighted boys. He always arrived with blustering
suddenness; he always shouted in a stentorian voice, and, when he gave
the elder boys a Latin lesson, he always appeared, probably from
indolence, a good deal behind time, but to make up, and as though there
were not a second to waste, began to hurl his questions at them the
moment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic, and was
certainly 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, he
produced more effect at a distance.


XVI.

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

The Head, who had the gift of oratory, communicated to us some idea of
the beauty of Latin poetry, but the rest of the instruction in the dead
languages was purely grammatical, competent and conscientious though the
men who gave it might have been. Madvig's [Translator's note: Johan
Nicolai Madvig (1804-1886), a very celebrated Danish philologist, for
fifty years professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is especially
noted for his editions of the ancient classics, with critical notes on
the 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 of
Virgil or Horace, so that a boy with perception of stylistic emphasis
and metre could not fail to be keenly interested in the poetry of these
two men. Being the boy in the class of whom the Head entertained the
greatest hopes, I began at once secretly to translate them. I made a
Danish version of the second and fourth books of the Aeneid Danicised a
good part of the Songs and Epistles of Horace in imperfect verse.


XVII.

Nothing was ever said at home about any religious creed. Neither of my
parents was in any way associated with the Jewish religion, and neither
of them ever went to the Synagogue. As in my maternal grandmother's
house all the Jewish laws about eating and drinking were observed, and
they had different plates and dishes for meat and butter and a special
service for Easter, orthodox Judaism, to me, seemed to be a collection
of old, whimsical, superstitious prejudices, which specially applied to
food. The poetry of it was a sealed book to me. At school, where I was
present at the religious instruction classes as an auditor only, I
always heard Judaism alluded to as merely a preliminary stage of
Christianity, and the Jews as the remnant of a people who, as a
punishment for slaying the Saviour of the world, had been scattered all
over the earth. The present-day Israelites were represented as people
who, urged by a stiff-necked wilfulness and obstinacy and almost
incomprehensible callousness, clung to the obsolete religious ideal of
the stern God in opposition to the God of Love.

When I attempted to think the matter out for myself, it annoyed me that
the Jews had not sided with Jesus, who yet so clearly betokened progress
within the religion that He widened and unintentionally overthrew. The
supernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible to me. The
demand made by faith, namely, that reason should be fettered, awakened a
latent rebellious opposition, and this opposition was fostered by my
mother's steady rationalism, her unconditional rejection of every
miracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed, in accordance with
the law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on what lay before me
as a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the Rabbi only inspired me
with distaste; his German pronunciation of Danish was repulsive and
ridiculous to me. The abominable Danish in which the lesson-book was
couched offended me, as I had naturally a fine ear for Danish.
Information about ancient Jewish customs and festivals was of no
interest to me, with my modern upbringing. The confirmation, according
to my mocking summary of the impression produced by it, consisted mainly
in the hiring of a tall silk hat from the hat-maker, and the sending of
it back next day, sanctified. The silly custom was at that time
prevalent for boys to wear silk hats for the occasion, idiotic though
they made them look. With these on their heads, they went, after
examination, up the steps to a balustrade where a priest awaited,
whispered a few affecting words in their ear about their parents or
grandparents, and laid his hand in blessing upon the tall hat. When
called upon to make my confession of faith with the others, I certainly
joined my first "yes," this touching a belief in a God, to theirs, but
remained silent at the question as to whether I believed that God had
revealed Himself to Moses and spoken by His prophets. I did not believe
it.

I was, for that matter, in a wavering frame of mind unable to arrive at
any clear understanding. What confused me was the unveracious manner in
which historical instruction, which was wholly theological, was given.
The History masters, for instance, told us that when Julian the Apostate
wanted to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, flames had shot out of the
earth, but they interpreted this as a miracle, expressing the Divine
will. If this were true--and I was unable to refute it then--God had
expressly taken part against Judaism and the Jews as a nation. The
nation, 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 the
Trinity, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in particular, seemed to
me to be remnants of the basest barbarism of antiquity.

Under these circumstances, my young soul, feeling the need of something
it could worship, fled from Asia's to Europe's divinities, from
Palestine to Hellas, and clung with vivid enthusiasm to the Greek world
of beauty and the legends of its Gods. From all the learned education I
had had, I only extracted this one thing: an enthusiasm for ancient
Hellas and her Gods; they were my Gods, as they had been those of
Julian. Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Eros and Aphrodite grew to be
powers that I believed in and rejoiced over in a very different sense
from 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 Hoeyen's lectures, grew to be a place that I
entered with reverence, and Thorwaldsen's Museum my Temple, imperfectly
though it reproduced the religious and heroic life and spirit of the
Greeks. But at that time I knew no other, better door to the world of
the Gods than the Museum offered, and Thorwaldsen and the Greeks, from
fourteen to fifteen, were in my mind merged in one. Thorwaldsen's Museum
was to me a brilliant illustration of Homer. There I found my Church, my
Gods, my soul's true native land.


XVIII.

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

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

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

However, childhood so easily adapts itself to a fresh situation that
during the ensuing year, in which I myself advanced right gaily, not
only did I feel no lack, but I forgot my elder comrade. And at the
commencement of the next school year, when the two parallel classes,
through several boys leaving, were once more united, and I again found
myself No. 2 by the side of my one-time friend, the relations between us
were altogether altered, so thoroughly so, in fact, that our roles were
reversed. If formerly the younger had hung upon the elder's words, now
it was the other way about. If formerly Sebastian had shown the interest
in me that the half-grown man feels for a child, now I was too absorbed
by my own interests to wish for anything but a listener in him when I
unfolded the supposed wealth of my ideas and my soaring plans for the
future, which betrayed a boundless ambition. I needed a friend at this
stage only in the same sense as the hero in French tragedies requires a
confidant, and if I attached myself as before, wholly and completely to
him, it was for this reason. It is true that the other was still a good
deal in front of me in actual knowledge, so that there was much I had to
consult him about; otherwise our friendship would hardly have lasted;
but the importance of this superiority was slight, inasmuch as Sebastian
henceforward voluntarily subordinated himself to me altogether; indeed,
by his ready recognition of my powers, contributed more than anyone else
to make me conscious of these powers and to foster a self-esteem which
gradually assumed extraordinary forms.


XIX.

This self-esteem, in its immaturity, was of a twofold character. It was
not primarily a belief that I was endowed with unusual abilities, but a
childish belief that I was one set apart, with whom, for mysterious
reasons, everything must succeed. The belief in a personal God had
gradually faded away from me, and there were times when, with the
conviction of boyhood, I termed myself an atheist to my friend; my
attitude towards the Greek gods had never been anything more than a
personification of the ideal forces upon which I heaped my enthusiasm.
But I believed in my star. And I hypnotised my friend into the same
belief, infected him so that he talked as if he were consecrating his
life to my service, and really, as far as was possible for a schoolboy,
lived and breathed exclusively for me, I, for my part, being gratified
at having, as my unreserved admirer and believer, the one whom, of all
people I knew, I placed highest, the one whose horizon seemed to me the
widest, and whose store of knowledge was the greatest; for in many
subjects it surpassed even that of the masters in no mean degree.

Under such conditions, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I was deeply
impressed by a book that one might think was infinitely beyond the
understanding of my years, Lermontof's _A Hero of Our Time_, in
Xavier Marmier's French translation. The subject of it would seem
utterly unsuited to a schoolboy who had never experienced anything in
the remotest degree resembling the experiences of a man of the world, at
any rate those which produced the sentiments pervading this novel.
Nevertheless, this book brought about a revolution in my ideas. For the
first time I encountered in a book a chief character who was not a
universal hero, a military or naval hero whom one had to admire and if
possible imitate, but one in whom, with extreme emotion, I fancied that
I recognised myself!

I had certainly never acted as Petsjorin did, and never been placed in
such situations as Petsjorin. No woman had ever loved me, still less had
I ever let a woman pay with suffering the penalty of her affection for
me. Never had any old friend of mine come up to me, delighted to see me
again, and been painfully reminded, by my coolness and indifference, how
little he counted for in my life. Petsjorin had done with life; I had
not even begun to live. Petsjorin had drained the cup of enjoyment; I
had never tasted so much as a drop of it. Petsjorin was as blase as a
splendid Russian Officer of the Guards could be; I, as full of
expectation as an insignificant Copenhagen schoolboy could be.
Nevertheless, I had the perplexing feeling of having, for the first time
in my life, seen my inmost nature, hitherto unknown even to myself,
understood, interpreted, reproduced, magnified, in this unharmonious
work of the Russian poet who was snatched away so young.


XX.

The first element whence the imaginary figure which I fancied I
recognized again in Lermontof had its rise was doubtless to be found in
the relations between my older friend and myself (in the reversal of our
roles, and my consequent new feeling of superiority over him). The
essential point, however, was not the comparatively accidental shape in
which I fancied I recognised myself, but that what was at that time
termed _reflection_ had awaked in me, introspection, self-
consciousness, which after all had to awake some day, as all other
impulses awake when their time comes. This introspection was not,
however, by any means a natural or permanent quality in me, but on the
contrary one which made me feel ill at ease and which I soon came to
detest. During these transitional years, as my pondering over myself
grew, I felt more and more unhappy and less and less sure of myself. The
pondering reached its height, as was inevitable, when there arose the
question of choosing a profession and of planning the future rather than
of following a vocation. But as long as this introspection lasted, I had
a torturing feeling that my own eye was watching me, as though I were a
stranger, a feeling of being the spectator of my own actions, the
auditor of my own words, a double personality who must nevertheless one
day become one, should I live long enough. After having, with a friend,
paid a visit to Kaalund, who was prison instructor at Vridsloeselille at
the time and showed us young fellows the prison and the cells, I used to
picture my condition to myself as that of a prisoner enduring the
torture of seeing a watchful eye behind the peep-hole in the door. I had
noticed before, in the Malmoe prison, how the prisoners tried to besmear
this glass, or scratch on it, with a sort of fury, so that it was often
impossible to see through it. My natural inclination was to act naively,
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 it
was consequently no mere chance that my first appearance as a writer was
made in an attack on a division and duality in life's philosophy, and
that 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 with
it the inward cleavage, had at length ceased, that I attained to
quietude 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 my
years; the riper expressions which I here make use of to describe it
always seem on the verge of distorting its character. My faith in my
lucky star barely persisted a few years unassailed. My childish idea had
been very much strengthened when, at fifteen years of age, in the first
part of my finishing examination, I received _Distinction_ in all
my subjects, and received a mighty blow when, at seventeen, I only had
_Very Good_ in five subjects, thus barely securing Distinction for
the whole.

I ceased to preoccupy myself about my likeness to Petsjorin after having
recovered from a half, or quarter, falling in love, an unharmonious
affair, barren of results, which I had hashed up for myself through
fanciful and affected reverie, and which made me realise the fundamental
simplicity of my own nature,--and I then shook off the unnatural
physiognomy like a mask. Belief in my own unbounded superiority and the
absolutely unmeasured ambition in which this belief had vented itself,
collapsed suddenly when at the age of eighteen, feeling my way
independently for the first time, and mentally testing people, I learnt
to recognise the real mental superiority great writers possess. It was
chiefly my first reading of the principal works of Kierkegaard that
marked this epoch in my life. I felt, face to face with the first great
mind that, as it were, had personally confronted me, all my real
insignificance, understood all at once that I had as yet neither lived
nor suffered, felt nor thought, and that nothing was more uncertain than
whether I might one day evince talent. The one certain thing was that my
present status seemed to amount to nothing at all.


XXII.

In those boyhood's years, however, I revelled in ideas of greatness to
come which had not so far received a shock. And I was in no doubt as to
the domain in which when grown up I should distinguish myself. All my
instincts drew me towards Literature. The Danish compositions which were
set at school absorbed all my thoughts from week to week; I took the
greatest pains with them, weighed the questions from as many sides as I
could 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. Although
not acquainted with the word style in any other sense than that it bears
in the expression "style-book," the Danish equivalent for what in
English is termed an "exercise-book," I tried to acquire a certain
style, and was very near falling into mannerism, from sheer
inexperience, when a sarcastic master, to my distress, reminded me one
day of Heiberg's words: "The unguent of expression, smeared thickly over
the thinness of thoughts."


XXIII.

Together with a practical training in the use of the language, the
Danish lessons afforded a presentment of the history of our national
literature, given intelligently and in a very instructive manner by a
master named Driebein, who, though undoubtedly one of the many
Heibergians of the time, did not in any way deviate from what might be
termed the orthodoxy of literary history. Protestantism carried it
against Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschlaeger against Baggesen,
Romanticism against Rationalism; Oehlenschlaeger as the Northern poet of
human nature against a certain Bjoernson, who, it was said, claimed to be
more truly Norse than he. In Mr. Driebein's presentment, no recognised
great name was ever attacked. And in his course, as in Thortsen's
History of Literature, literature which might be regarded as historic
stopped with the year 1814.

The order in which in my private reading I became acquainted with Danish
authors was as follows: Ingemann, Oehlenschlaeger, Grundtvig, Poul
Moeller, many books by these authors having been given me at Christmas
and on birthdays. At my grandfather's, I eagerly devoured Heiberg's
vaudevilles as well. As a child, of course, I read uncritically, merely
accepting and enjoying. But when I heard at school of Baggesen's
treatment of Oehlenschlaeger, thus realising that there had been various
tendencies in literature at that time, and various opinions as to which
was preferable, I read with enthusiasm a volume of selected poems by
Baggesen, which I had had one Christmas, and the treatment of language
in it fascinated me exceedingly, with its gracefulness and light,
conversational tone. Then, when Hertz's [Footnote: Henrik Hertz, a
Danish poet (1797-1870), published "Ghost Letters" anonymously, and
called them thus because in language and spirit they were a kind of
continuation of the long-deceased Baggesen's rhymed contribution to a
literary dispute of his day. Hertz, like the much greater Baggesen, laid
great stress upon precise and elegant form.--[Translator's note.]]
_Ghost Letters_ fell into my hands one day, and the diction of them
appealed to me almost more, I felt myself, first secretly, afterwards
more consciously, drawn towards the school of form in Danish literature,
and rather enjoyed being a heretic on this point. For to entertain
kindly sentiments for the man who had dared to profane Oehlenschlaeger
was like siding with Loki against Thor. Poul Moeller's Collected Works I
had received at my confirmation, and read again and again with such
enthusiasm 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. But
Hertz's Lyrical Poems, which I read in a borrowed copy, gave me as much
pleasure as Poul Moeller's Verses had done. And for a few years, grace
and charm, and the perfect control of language and poetic form, were in
my estimation the supreme thing until, on entering upon my eighteenth
year, a violent reaction took place, and resonance, power and grandeur
alone seemed to have value. From Hertz my sympathies went over to
Christian Winther, from Baggesen to Homer, Aeschylus, the Bible,
Shakespeare, Goethe. One of the first things I did as a student was to
read the Bible through in Danish and the Odyssey in Greek.


XXIV.

The years of approaching maturity were still distant, however, and my
inner life was personal, not real, so that an element of fermentation
was cast into my mind when a copy of Heine's _Buch der Lieder_ was
one day lent to me. What took my fancy in it was, firstly, the
combination of enthusiasm and wit, then its terse, pithy form, and after
that the parts describing how the poet and his lady love, unable to
overcome the shyness which binds their tongues, involuntarily play hide
and seek with one another and lose each other; for I felt that I should
be 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, I
knew nothing; in these love-poems I looked more especially for those
verses in which violent self-esteem and blase superiority to every
situation find expression, because this fell in with the Petsjorin 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 question
for me to buy books that pleased me, I copied out of the _Buch der
Lieder_ all that I liked best, that I might read it again.


XXV.

Of all this life of artistic desire and seeking, of external
impressions, welcomed with all the freshness and impulsiveness of a
boy's mind, but most of self-study and self-discovery, the elder of the
two comrades was a most attentive spectator, more than a spectator. He
made use of expressions and said things which rose to my head and made
me conceited. Sebastian would make such a remark as: "It is not for your
abilities that I appreciate you, it is for your enthusiasm. All other
people I know are machines without souls, at their best full of
affected, set phrases, such as one who has peeped behind the scenes
laughs at; but in you there is a fulness of ideality too great for you
ever to be happy." "Fulness of ideality" was the expression of the time
for the supremest quality of intellectual equipment. No wonder, then,
that I felt flattered.

And my older comrade united a perception of my mental condition, which
unerringly perceived its immaturity, with a steadfast faith in a future
for me which in spite of my arrogance, I thirsted to find in the one of
all others who knew me best and was most plainly my superior in
knowledge. One day, when I had informed him that I felt "more mature and
clearer about myself," he replied, without a trace of indecision, that
this was undoubtedly a very good thing, if it were true, but that he
suspected I was laboring under a delusion. "I am none the less
convinced," he added, "that you will soon reach a crisis, will overcome
all obstacles and attain the nowadays almost giant's goal that you have
set before you." This goal, for that matter, was very indefinite, and
was 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 I
approached the years of manhood which the other, in spite of his modest
position as schoolboy, had already long attained, Sebastian grew utterly
miserable. He had, as he expressed it, made up his mind to be my
_Melanchthon_. But through an inward collapse which I could not
understand he now felt that the time in which he could be anything to me
had gone by; it seemed to him that he had neglected to acquire the
knowledge and the education necessary, and he reproached himself
bitterly. "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 of
jealousy, and thought with vexation and anxiety of the time when a
larger circle would be opened to me in the University, and he himself
would become superfluous.

His fear was thus far unfounded, that, naive in my selfishness, as in my
reliance on him, I still continued to tell him everything, and in return
constantly sought his help when philological or mathematical
difficulties 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 Goeteborg), I had scarcely been a
month a freshman, attending philosophical lectures and taking part in
student life than the dreaded separation between us two so differently
constituted friends came to pass. The provocation was trifling, in fact
paltry. 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 and
asked: "Is it true, what Sebastian says, that he is the person you think
most 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 to
impress perfect strangers, though it might certainly very easily have
escaped him in confidence, I said hastily: "Oh! he's mad!" which
outburst, bearing in mind young people's use of the word "mad," was
decidedly 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, though
in 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 respectful
Sebastian."

The impression this produced upon me was exceedingly painful, but an
early developed mental habit of always accepting a decision, and a
vehement repugnance to renew any connection deliberately severed by
another party, resulted in my never even for a moment thinking of
shaking his resolution, and in my leaving the note unanswered. However,
the matter was not done with, and the next few months brought me many
insufferable moments, indeed hours, for Sebastian, whose existence had
for so long centred round mine that he was evidently incapable of doing
without me altogether, continually crossed my path, planted himself near
me on every possible occasion, and one evening, at a students'
gathering, even got a chair outside the row round the table, sat himself
down just opposite to me, and spent a great part of the evening in
staring fixedly into my face. As may be supposed, I felt exceedingly
irritated.

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

Sebastian wrote: "I felt that it was cheating you to take so much
without being able to give you anything in return; I thought it mean to
associate with you; consequently, I believe that I did perfectly right
to break with you. Still, it is true that I hardly needed to do it. Time
and circumstances would have effected the breach." And feeling that our
ways 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 do
so."

Or he wrote: "Towards the end of the time when we were friends, I was
not quite myself when talking to you; I was unbalanced; for I was
convinced that you wasted your valuable time talking to me, and at the
same 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 the
moon. I had to bring about the severance that I did. That I should be so
childish as to be vexed about a slight from you, you cannot yourself
believe. I cannot really regret it, for I could no longer be of use to
you; 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 throbbed
in mine."

Sometimes the letters ended with an outburst of a sort of despairing
humour, such as: "Vale! (Fanfare! somersaults by Pagliaccio.)" But
whether Sebastian assumed a serious or a desperate tone, the renewal of
our old companionship was equally impossible to me. I could not ignore
what had happened, and I could not have a friend who was jealous if I
talked to others. Since my intellectual entity had awakened, all
jealousy had been an abomination to me, but jealousy in one man of
another man positively revolted me. I recognised Sebastian's great
merits, respected his character, admired his wide range of knowledge,
but I could not associate with him again, could not even so much as walk
down the street by his side. All his affectionate and beautiful letters
glanced off ineffectual from this repugnance. Something in me had
suddenly turned stony, like a plant plunged in petrifying water.

Six years passed before we saw each other again. We met then with simple
and sincere affection. Sebastian's old passion had evaporated without
leaving a trace; he himself could no longer understand it. And, though
far apart, and with nothing to connect us closely, we continued to think
kindly of one another and to exchange reflections, until, after a few
years, Death carried him away, ere he had reached the years of real
manhood, or fulfilled any of the promises of his gifted and industrious
youth.




TRANSITIONAL YEARS

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


I.

My second schoolboy fancy dated from my last few months at school. It
was a natural enough outcome of the attraction towards the other sex
which, never yet encouraged, was lurking in my mind; but it was not
otherwise remarkable for its naturalness. It had its origin partly in my
love of adventure, partly in my propensity for trying my powers, but, as
love, was without root, inasmuch as it was rooted neither in my heart
nor in my senses.

The object of it was again a girl from another country. Her name and
person had been well known to me since I was twelve years old. We had
even exchanged compliments, been curious about one another, gone so far
as to wish for a lock of each other's hair. There was consequently a
romantic background to our first meeting. When I heard that she was
coming 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 very
good-looking and had unusually lovely eyes. I endeavoured to make her
acquaintance through relatives of hers whom I knew, and had no
difficulty in getting into touch with her. An offer to show her the
museums and picture galleries in Copenhagen was accepted. Although I had
very little time, just before my matriculation examination, my new
acquaintance filled my thoughts to such an extent that I did not care
how much of this valuable time I sacrificed to her. In the Summer, when
the girl went out near Charlottenlund, whereas my parents were staying
much nearer to the town, I went backwards and forwards to the woods
nearly every day, in the uncertain but seldom disappointed hope of
seeing her. Sometimes I rowed her about in the Sound.

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

It was, as stated, not my senses that drew me on. Split and divided up
as I was just then, a merely intellectual love seemed to me quite
natural; one might feel an attraction of the senses for an altogether
different woman. I did not wish for a kiss, much less an embrace; in
fact, 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 to
win. She only busied my brain.

In the condition of boyish self-inquisition in which I then found
myself, this acquaintance was a fresh element of fermentation, and the
strongest to which my self-examination had hitherto been subjected. I
instinctively desired to engage her fancy; but my attitude was from
myself through her to myself. I wanted less to please than to dominate
her, and as it was only my head that was filled with her image, I wholly
lacked the voluntary and cheerful self-humiliation which is an element
of real love. I certainly wished with all my heart to fascinate her; but
what 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 greater
than my own, had certainly never, during her short life, come in contact
with so extraordinary a phenomenon; it afforded matter for reflection.
She certainly felt attracted, but, woman-like, was on her guard. She was
of a quiet, amiable disposition, innocently coquettish, naturally
adapted for the advances of sound common sense and affectionate good-
will, not for the volts of passion; she was, moreover, femininely
practical.

She saw at a glance that this grown-up schoolboy, who almost staggered
her 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 love
of power. And first involuntarily, and then consciously, she placed
herself in an attitude of defence. She did not lack intelligence. She
showed a keen interest in me, but met me with the self-control of a
little woman of the world, now and then with coolness, on one occasion
with well-aimed shafts of mockery.

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

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

This early, unsatisfactory and not strictly speaking erotic experience
had the remarkable effect of rendering me for the next seven years
impervious to the tender passion, so that, undisturbed by women or
erotic emotions, I was able to absorb myself in the world of varied
research that was now opening up to me.


II.

A school-friend who was keenly interested in astronomy and had directed
my 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 I
knew and extended my knowledge further.

The same school-friend sometimes took me to the Observatory, to see old
Professor d'Arrest--a refined and sapient man--and there, for the first
time, I saw the stellar heavens through a telescope. I had learnt
astronomy at school, but had lacked talent to attain any real insight
into the subject. Now the constellations and certain of the stars began
to creep into my affections; they became the nightly witnesses of my
joys and sorrows, all through my life; the sight of them sometimes
comforted me when I felt lonely and forsaken in a foreign land. The
Lyre, the Swan, the Eagle, the Crown and Booetes, Auriga, the Hyades and
the Pleiades, and among the Winter constellations, Orion; all these
twinkling groups, that human eyes have sought for thousands of years,
became distant friends of mine, too. And the thoughts which the sight of
the countless globes involuntarily and inevitably evokes, were born in
me, too,--thoughts of the littleness of the earth in our Solar System,
and of our Solar System in the Universe, of immeasurable distances--so
great that the stars whose rays, with the rapidity of light's
travelling, are striking against our eyes now, may have gone out in our
childhood; of immeasurable periods of time, in which a human life, or
even the lifetime of a whole people, disappears like a drop in the
ocean. And whereas at school I had only studied astronomy as a subject,
from its mathematical aspect, I now learnt the results of spectroscopic
analysis, which showed me how the human genius of Bunsen and Kirchhoff
had annihilated the distance between the Earth and the Sun; and at the
same time I perceived the inherent improbability of the culture of our
Earth ever being transmitted to other worlds, even as the Earth had
never yet received communications from the civilisation of any of the
stars.

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

Feeling that all religions built up on a belief in a God were
collapsing, Europe had long inclined towards the religion of Progress as
the last tenable. Now I perceived as I raised my eyes to the starry
expanse and rejoiced in my favourite stars, Sirius in the Great Dog, and
Vega 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 naturally
found few amongst them who could be anything to me. Among the advantages
that the freedom of student life afforded was that of coming in contact
all at once with hundreds of similarly educated young men of one's own
age. Young men made each other's acquaintance at lectures and banquets,
were drawn to one another, or felt themselves repulsed, and elective
affinity or accident associated them in pairs or groups for a longer or
shorter period.

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

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

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

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

"Life altogether is an activity and active process, preceding from an
inner source and working itself out according to an inner impulse,
producing and by an eternal change of matter, reproducing, organising
and individualising, and, since it by a certain material or substratum
constitutes itself a certain exterior, within which it reveals itself,
it simultaneously constitutes itself as the subsisting activity and
endeavour in this, its exterior, of which it may further be inquired how
far 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 barbaric
elucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkenness
were defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks on
earlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one of
the bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could read in the play of
their features: "Forget me not! I, too, was an orator."

Vilsing, who had been studying for some years already, paid a freshman a
compliment by desiring his acquaintance and seeking his society. He
frequented the Students' Union, was on terms of friendship with those
who led the fashion, and was a favourite speaker. It was a species of
condescension on his part to seek out a young fellow just escaped from
school, a fellow who would have sunk into the earth if he had had to
make a speech, and who had no connection with the circle of older
students.

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

He impressed me, his junior, by revealing himself, not precisely as a
man of the world, but as a much sought after society man. He told me how
much he was asked out, and how he went from one party and one ball to
another, which, to me, with my hankering after experiences, seemed to be
an enviable thing. But I was more struck by what Vilsing told me of the
favour he enjoyed with the other sex. One girl--a charming girl!--he was
engaged to, another loved him and he her; but those were the least of
his erotic triumphs; wherever he showed himself, he conquered. And
proofs were to hand. For one day, when he had dragged me up to his room
with him, he bewildered me by shaking out before my eyes a profusion of
embroidered sofa-cushions, fancy pillows, cigar-cases, match-holders,
crocheted purses, worked waistcoats, etc.; presents from every
description of person of the feminine gender. In every drawer he pulled
out 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 after
by the fair sex, although I thought his frankness too great. What first
began 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 of
my comrades, when the first cool stages of acquaintance were passed,
invariably found a favourable opportunity of confidentially informing
me--he could not explain why it was himself, but it was a fact--that
wherever he showed himself women were singularly fascinated by the sight
of him; there must be something about him which vanquished them in spite
of him. When at last one evening the most round-backed of all of them, a
swain whose blond mustache, of irregular growth, resembled an old, worn-
out toothbrush more than anything else, also confided in me that he did
not know how it was, or what could really be the cause of it, but there
must be something about him, etc.,--then my belief in Vilsing's
singularity and my admiration for him broke down. It must not be
supposed that Vilsing regarded himself as a sensual fiend. He did not
pose as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and instinct with feeling.
He was studying theology, and cherished no dearer wish than eventually
to become a priest. He constantly alternated between contrition and
self-satisfaction, arrogance and repentance, enjoyed the consciousness
of being exceptionally clever, an irresistible charmer, and a true
Christian. It seemed to him that, in the freshman whom he had singled
out from the crowd and given a place at his side, he had found an
intellectual equal, or even superior, and this attracted him; he met
with in me an inexperience and unworldliness so great that the
inferiority in ability which he declared he perceived was more than
counterbalanced by the superiority he himself had the advantage of, both
in social accomplishments and in dealing with women.

It thus seemed as though many of the essential conditions of a tolerably
permanent union between us were present. But during the first
conversation in which he deigned to be interested in my views, there
occurred in our friendship a little rift which widened to a chasm.
Vilsing sprang back horrified when he heard how I, greenhorn though I
was, regarded life and men and what I considered right. "You are in the
clutches of Evil, and your desire is towards the Evil. I have not time
or inclination to unfold an entire Christology now, but what you reject
is the Ideal, and what you appraise is the Devil himself. God! God! How
distressed I am for you! I would give my life to save you. But enough
about it for the present; I have not time just now; I have to go out to
dinner."

This was our last serious conversation. I was not saved. He did not give
his 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 made
an impression on a youth whose immaturity, in spite of his age, was
greater still. To present it with any degree of clearness is scarcely
possible; it was not sufficiently clear in itself for that. But this was
about what it amounted to:

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

I took advantage of my spare time in Copenhagen, and on the restricted
travels that I was allowed to take, to slake my passionate thirst for
life; firstly, by pondering ever and anon over past sensations, and
secondly, by plunging into eager and careful reading of the light
literature of all different countries and periods that I had heard
about, but did not yet myself know at first hand.

Through all that I experienced and read, observed and made my own, my
attitude towards myself was, that before all, I sought to become clear
as to what manner of man I really, in my inmost being, was. I asked
myself who I was. I endeavoured to discover the mysterious word that
would break the charm of the mists in which I found myself and would
answer my fundamental question, _What_ was I? And then at last, my
ponderings and my readings resulted in my finding the word that seemed
to fit, although nowadays one can hardly hear it without a smile, the
word _Daemonic_.

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

That which I called the _daemonic_ I had encountered for the first
time outside my own mind in Lermontof's hero. Petsjorin was compelled to
act in pursuance of his natural bent, as though possessed by his own
being. I felt myself in a similar manner possessed. I had met with the
word _Daimon_ and _Daimones_ in Plato; Socrates urges that by
_daemons_ the Gods, or the children of the Gods, were meant. I felt
as though I, too, were one of the children of the Gods. In all the great
legendary figures of the middle ages I detected the feature of divine
possession, especially in the two who had completely fascinated the
poets of the nineteenth century, Don Juan and Faust. The first was the
symbol of magic power over women, the second of the thirst for knowledge
giving dominion over humanity and Nature. Among my comrades, in Vilsing,
even in the hunch-backed fellow with the unsuccessful moustache, I had
seen how the Don Juan type which had turned their heads still held sway
over the minds of young people; I myself could quite well understand the
magic which this beautiful ideal of elementary irresistibility must
have; 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 great
and wholly modern poets that I made acquaintance with, Byron and his
intellectual successors, Lermontof and Heine, I recognised again the
very fundamental trait that I termed _daemonic_, the worship of
one's own originality, under the guise of an uncompromising love of
liberty.

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

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


V.

The "daemonic" was also responsible for the mingled attraction that was
exerted over me at this point by a young foreign student, and for the
intercourse which ensued between us. Kappers was born somewhere in the
West Indies, was the son of a well-to-do German manufacturer, and had
been brought up in a North German town. His father, for what reason I do
not know, wished him to study at Copenhagen University, and there take
his law examination. There was coloured blood in his veins, though much
diluted, maybe an eighth or so. He was tall and slender, somewhat loose
in his walk and bearing, pale-complexioned, with dark eyes and negro
hair. His face, though not handsome, looked exceedingly clever, and its
expression was not deceptive, for the young man had an astonishing
intellect.

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

Kappers spent almost all his day idling about the streets, talking to
his companions; he was always ready for a walk; you never saw him work
or heard him talk about his work. Nevertheless, he, a foreigner, who had
barely mastered the language, presented himself after six months--before
he had attended all the lectures, that is,--for the examination in
philosophy and passed it with _Distinction_ in all three subjects;
indeed, Rasmus Nielsen, who examined him in Propaedeutics, was so
delighted 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. When
he turned up in a morning with his Danish fellow-students at the coach's
house it might occasionally happen that he was somewhat tired and slack,
but more often he showed a natural grasp of the handling of legal
questions, and a consummate skill in bringing out every possible aspect
of each question, that were astonishing in a beginner.

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

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

Intellectually interested as he was, he proposed, soon after our first
meeting, that we should start a "literary and scientific" society,
consisting of a very few freshmen, who, at the weekly meetings, should
read a paper one of them had composed, whereupon two members who had
previously read the paper should each submit it to a prepared criticism
and after that, general discussion of the question. All that concerned
the proposed society was carried out with a genuine Kappers-like
mystery, as if it were a conspiracy, and with forms and ceremonies
worthy of a diplomat's action.

Laws were drafted for the society, although it eventually consisted only
of five members, and elaborate minutes were kept of the meetings. Among
the members was V. Topsoee, afterwards well known as an editor and
author, at that time a cautious and impudent freshman, whose motto was:
"It is protection that we people must live by." He read the society a
paper _On the Appearance_, dealing with how one ought to dress,
behave, speak, do one's hair, which revealed powers of observation and a
sarcastic tendency. Amongst those who eagerly sought for admission but
never secured it was a young student, handsome, and with no small love
of study, but stupid and pushing, for whom I, who continued to see
myself in Lermontof's Petsjorin, cherished a hearty contempt, for the
curious reason that he in every way reminded me of Petsjorin's fatuous
and conceited adversary, Gruchnitski. Vilsing was asked to take part in
the society's endeavours, but refused. "What I have against all these
societies," he said, "is the self-satisfaction they give rise to; the
only theme I should be inclined to treat is that of how the modern Don
Juan must be conceived; but that I cannot do, since I should be obliged
to touch on so many incidents of my own life."

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

The regular meetings went on for six months only, the machinery being
too large and heavy in comparison with the results attained. Kappers and
his intimate friends, however, saw none the less of each other. The
brilliant West Indian continued to pursue his legal studies and to carry
on his merry life in Copenhagen for some eighteen months. But his
studies gradually came to a standstill, while his gay life took up more
and more of his time. He was now living alone in a flat which, to begin
with, had been very elegantly furnished, but grew emptier and emptier by
degrees, as his furniture was sold, or went to the pawnbroker's. His
furniture was followed by his books, and when Schou's "_Orders in
Council_" had also been turned into money, his legal studies ceased
of themselves. When the bookshelves were empty it was the turn of the
wardrobe and the linen drawers, till one Autumn day in 1861, an emissary
of his father, who had been sent to Copenhagen to ascertain what the son
was 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 that
things had come to such a pass with him, he replied: "It is the curse
that follows the coloured race."

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


VI.

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

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

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

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

Now, in concert with Bluhme and a few other of the elder politicians, he
had formed a Conservative Fronde, opposed to the policy of the National
Liberals. 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 old
gentleman came through and asked us what we were writing. "Rules for a
society; 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 the
one we have in this country."

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

The son, whose home impressions in politics had been Conservative, was a
happy young man with a somewhat embarrassed manner, who sometimes hid
his uncertainty under the cloak of a carelessness that was not
altogether assumed. Behind him stood his family, to whom he hospitably
introduced those of his companions whom he liked, and though the family
were not gentle of origin, they belonged, nevertheless, to the highest
circles in the country and exercised their attraction through the son.

I, whom Ludvig David was now eagerly cultivating, had known him for many
years, as we had been school-fellows and even classmates, although David
was 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 any
advances to me, having had other more intimate friends. Now, however, he
was very cordial to me, and expressed in strong terms his appreciation
of my industry and abilities; he himself was often teased at home for
his lack of application.

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


VII.

I had hitherto been only mildly interested in politics. I had, of
course, as a boy, attentively followed the course of the Crimean war,
which my French uncle, on one of his visits, had called the fight for
civilisation against barbarism, although it was a fight for Turkey! now,
as a student, I followed with keen interest the Italian campaign and the
revolt against the Austrian Dukes and the Neapolitan Bourbons. But the
internal policy of Denmark had little attraction for me. As soon as I
entered the University I felt myself influenced by the spirit of such
men as Poul Moeller, J.L. Heiberg, Soeren Kierkegaard, and distinctly
removed from the belief in the power of the people which was being
preached everywhere at that time. This, however, was hardly more than a
frame of mind, which did not preclude my feeling myself in sympathy with
what at that time was called broad thought (i.e., Liberalism). Although
I was often indignant at the National Liberal and Scandinavian terrorism
which obtained a hearing at both convivial and serious meetings in the
Students' Union, my feelings in the matter of Denmark's foreign policy
with regard to Sweden and Norway, as well as to Germany, were the same
as those held by all the other students. I felt no intellectual debt to
either Sweden or Norway, but I was drawn by affection towards the Swedes
and the Norsemen, and in Christian Richardt's lovely song at the
Northern Celebration in 1860, _For Sweden and Norway_, I found the
expression of the fraternal feelings that I cherished in my breast for
our two Northern neighbours. On the other hand, small as my store of
knowledge still was, I had already acquired some considerable impression
of German culture. Nevertheless, the increasingly inimical attitude of
the German people towards Denmark, and the threatenings of war with
Germany, 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 an
enemy's country. A violent affection that I felt at sixteen for a
charming little German girl made no difference to this view.


VIII.

The old men, who advocated the greatest caution in dealing with the
impossible demands of the German Federation, and were profoundly
distrustful as to the help that might be expected from Europe, were
vituperated in the press. As _Whole-State Men_, they were regarded
as unpatriotic, and as so-called _Reactionaries_, accused of being
enemies to freedom. When I was introduced into the house of one of these
politically ill-famed leaders, in spite of my ignorance, I knew enough
of politics, as of other subjects, to draw a sharp distinction between
that which I could in a measure grasp, and that which I did not
understand; I was sufficiently educated to place Danish constitutional
questions in the latter category, and consequently I crossed, devoid of
prejudice, the threshold of a house whence proceeded, according to the
opinion of the politically orthodox, a pernicious, though fortunately
powerless, political heterodoxy.

It must not be supposed that I came into close touch with anything of
the sort. The old Minister never opened his mouth on political matters
in the bosom of his family. But the impression of superior intelligence
and knowledge of men that he conveyed was enough to place him in a
different light from that in which he was depicted in _The
Fatherland_, the paper whose opinions were swallowed blindly by the
student body. And my faith in the infallibility of the paper was shaken
even more one day, when I saw the Leader of the Reactionary Party
himself, Privy Councillor Bluhme, at the house, and sat unnoticed in a
corner, listening to his conversation. He talked a great deal, although,
like the master of the house, he did not allude to his public work. Like
a statesman of the old school, he expressed himself with exquisite
politeness and a certain ceremony. But of the affectation of which
_The Fatherland_ accused him, there was not a trace. What
profoundly impressed me was the Danish the old gentleman spoke, the most
perfect Danish. He told of his travels in India--once upon a time he had
been Governor of Trankebar--and you saw before you the banks of the
Ganges and the white troops of women, streaming down to bathe in the
river, as their religion prescribed.

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


IX.

Young David had once asked me to read Ovid's Elegiacs with him, and this
was the beginning of our closer acquaintance. In town, in the Winter, we
two younger ones were only rarely with the rest of the family, but in
Summer it was different. The Minister had built a house at Rungsted, on
a piece of land belonging to his brother, who was a farmer and the owner
of Rungstedgaard, Rungstedlund and Folehavegaard, a shrewd and practical
man. To this villa, which was in a beautiful situation, overlooking the
sea, 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 to
the rest of the family; they received me for the son's sake; but by
degrees I won a footing with them, too. The handsome, clever and
sprightly mistress of the house took a motherly interest in me, and the
young 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 the
woods and got hungry, he used to take provisions from the stores in the
lockers of the phaetons that put up at Klampenborg, while the people
were walking about in the park, and the coachmen inside the public-
house. One day, with Moehl and David, he got hold of a huge layer-cake.
The young fellows had devoured a good half of it and replaced it under
the seat of the carriage, when the family came back, caught sight of
Heiberg, whom they knew, and invited the young men to have a piece of
cake and a glass of wine. When they made the horrifying discovery of the
havoc that had been wrought, they themselves would not touch it, and the
robbers, who were stuffed already, were obliged to consume the remainder
of 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 reading
carefully. The pleasant outdoor life gave me a few glimpses of that rare
and ardently desired thing, still contentment. It was more particularly
alone with Nature that I felt myself at home.

A loose page from my diary of those days will serve to indicate the
untried 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 Valloroed 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 Hoersholm, 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 Hoersholm. 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 our
friendship had begun, when things were looking rather black for me, my
father having suffered great business losses, and no longer being able
to give me the same help as before, Ludvig David invited me to go and
live altogether at his father's house, and be like a son there--an offer
which I of course refused, but which affected me deeply, especially when
I learnt that it had only been made after the whole family had been
consulted.


X.

In November, 1859, at exactly the same time as Kappers' "literary and
scientific" society was started, a fellow-student named Groenbeck, from
Falster, who knew the family of Caspar Paludan-Mueller, the historian,
proposed my joining another little society of young students, of whom
Groenbeck thought very highly on account of their altogether unusual
knowledge of books and men.

In the old Students' Union in Boldhusgade, the only meeting-place at
that time for students, which was always regarded in a poetic light, I
had not found what I wanted. There was no life in it, and at the
convivial meetings on Saturday night the punch was bad, the speeches
were 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 of
acquaintances from whom I could learn anything, and nothing was too much
for me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I was
introduced to the society so extolled by Groenbeck, which called itself
neither "literary" nor "scientific," had no other object than
sociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a young
philological student, Frederik Nutzhorn.

Expecting as I did something out of the ordinary, I was very much
disappointed. The society proved to be quite vague and indefinite. Those
present, the host, a certain Jens Paludan-Mueller, son of the historian,
a certain Julius Lange, son of the Professor of Pedagogy, and a few
others, received me as though they had been waiting for me to put the
society on its legs; they talked as if I were going to do everything to
entertain them, and as if they themselves cared to do nothing; they
seemed to be indolent, almost sluggish. First we read aloud in turns
from Bjoernson's _Arne_, which was then new; a lagging conversation
followed. Nutzhorn talked nonsense, Paludan-Mueller snuffled, Julius
Lange alone occasionally let fall a humorous remark. The contrast
between Nutzhorn's band, who took sociability calmly and quietly, and
Kappers' circle, which met to work and discuss things to its utmost
capacity, was striking. The band seemed exceedingly phlegmatic in
comparison.

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

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

One evening, shortly before Midsummer's eve, when we had gone out to
Vedbaek, fetched Emil Petersen from Tryggeroed and thoroughly enjoyed the
beautiful scenery, we had a wrestling match out in the water off
Skodsborg and a supper party afterwards at which, under the influence of
the company, the gaiety rose to a wild pitch and eventually passed all
bounds. We made speeches, sang, shouted our witticisms at each other all
at once, seized each other round the waist and danced, till we had to
stop for sheer tiredness. Then we all drank pledges of eternal
friendship, and trooped into the town together, and hammered at the
doors of the coffee-houses after midnight to try to get in somewhere
where we could have coffee. We had learnt all at once to know and
appreciate each other to the full; we were united by a feeling of
brotherhood and remained friends for life. The life allotted to several
of the little band was, it is true, but short; Jens Paludan-Mueller fell
at Sankelmark three and a half years later; Nutzhorn had only five years
and a half to live. Of the others, Emil Petersen and Julius Lange are
dead. But, whether our lives were long or short, our meetings frequent
or rare, we continued to be cordially attached to one another, and no
misunderstanding or ill-feeling ever cropped up between us.


XI.

Among my Danish excursions was one to Slesvig in July, 1860. The
Copenhagen students had been asked to attend a festival to be held at
Angel at the end of July for the strengthening of the sparse Danish
element in that German-minded region. There were not many who wished to
go, but several of those who did had beautiful voices, and sang
feelingly the national songs with which it was hoped the hearts of the
Angel people, and especially of the ladies, might be touched. Several
gentlemen still living, at that time among the recognised leaders of the
students, went with us.

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

Unfriendly and sneering looks from the windows at Flensborg very soon
showed the travellers that Danish students' caps were not a welcome
sight there. The Angel peasants, however, were very pleasant. The
festival, 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 girls
till his senses were in a whirl, could not help regarding the scene of
the festival in a romantic light, as he stood there alone, late at
night, surrounded by flaring torches, the fireworks sputtering and
glittering about him. Some few of the students sat in the fields round
flaming rings of pitch, an old Angel peasant keeping the fires alight
and singing Danish songs. Absolutely enraptured, and with tears in his
eyes, he went about shaking hands with the young men and thanking them
for 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 had
the same idea, so we all four walked together. They were young men of a
type I had not met with before. The way they felt and spoke was new to
me. They all talked in a very affectionate manner, betrayed at once that
they worshipped one another, and seemed to have strong, open natures,
much resembling each other. They were Ernst Trier, Noerregaard, and
Baagoee, later the three well-known High School men.

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

Our time was short, if we wanted to get under a roof that night. At 9
o'clock we were still eight miles from Slesvig. We did the first four at
a 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 the
hotel, there stood Madam Esselbach, of war renown, in the doorway, with
her hands on her hips, as in her portrait; she summed up the arrivals
with shrewd, sharp eyes, and exclaimed: "_Das ist ja das junge
Daenemark_." Inside, officers were sitting, playing cards. Major
Sommer promised us young men to show us Gottorp at 6 o'clock next
morning; we should then get a view of the whole of the town from
Hersterberg beforehand.

The Major, who was attacked in the newspapers after the war, and whose
expression "my maiden sword," was made great fun of, showed us younger
ones the magnificent church, and afterwards the castle, which, as a
barracks, was quite spoilt. He acted as the father of the regiment, and,
like Poul Moeller's artist, encouraged the efficient, and said hard words
to the slighty, praising or blaming unceasingly, chatted Danish to the
soldiers, Low German to the cook, High German to the little housekeeper
at the castle, and called the attention of his guests to the perfect
order and cleanliness of the stables. He complained bitterly that a
certain senior lieutenant he pointed out to us, who in 1848 had flung
his cockade in the gutter and gone over to the Germans, had been
reinstated 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 to
Julius Lange on my return, he remarked: "They are a good sort, who wear
their 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 named
Falkman (really Petersen), even at that time on the staff of _The
Dally Paper_. I little guessed then that my somewhat vulgar
travelling companion would develop into the Cato who wished Ibsen's
_Ghosts_ "might be thrust into the slime-pit, where such things
belong," and would write articles by the hundred against me. Neither had
I any suspicion, during my acquaintance with Topsoee, that the latter
would one day be one of my most determined persecutors. Without exactly
being strikingly youthful, the large, broad-shouldered Borup was still a
young man. Falkman wrote good-humouredly long reports to Bille about
Slesvig, which I corrected for him. Borup and Falkman generally
exclaimed the moment I opened my mouth: "Not seraphic, now!"

We travelled together to Gluecksborg, saw the camp there, and, as we had
had nothing since our morning coffee at 5 o'clock, ate between the three
of us a piece of roast meat six pounds weight. We spent the night at
Flensborg and drove next day to Graasten along a lovely road with wooded
banks on either side. It was pouring with rain, and we sat in dead
silence, trying to roll ourselves up in horse-cloths. When in an hour's
time the rain stopped, and we put up at an inn, our enforced silence
gave place to the wildest merriment. We three young fellows--the future
Finance Minister as well--danced into the parlour, hopped about like
wild men, spilt milk over ourselves, the sofa, and the waitress; then
sprang, waltzing and laughing, out through the door again and up into
the carriage, after having heaped the girl with small copper coins.

From Graasten we proceeded to Soenderborg. The older men lay down and
slept after the meal. I went up to Dybboelmoelle. On the way back, I found
on a hill looking out over Als a bench from which there was a beautiful
view across to Slesvig. I lay down on the seat and gazed up at the sky
and across the perfect country. The light fields, with their tall, dark
hedges, which give the Slesvig scenery its peculiar stamp, from this
high-lying position looked absolutely lovely.


XII.

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light. My nature, one
uninterrupted endeavour, was too tense for that. Although I occasionally
felt the spontaneous enjoyments of breathing the fresh air, seeing the
sun shine, and listening to the whistling of the wind, and always
delighted in the fact that I was in the heyday of my youth, there was
yet a considerable element of melancholy in my temperament, and I was so
loth to abandon myself to any illusion that when I looked into my own
heart and summed up my own life it seemed to me that I had never been
happy for a day. I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day
at a time, scarcely for an hour. I had only known a moment's rapture in
the companionship of my comrades at a merry-making, in intercourse with
a friend, under the influence of the beauties of Nature, or the charm of
women, or in delight at gaining intellectual riches--during the reading
of 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 was
unfortunately rare with me. Almost always, when talking to strangers, I
felt the exact opposite, which annoyed me exceedingly, namely, that I
was being intellectually sucked, squeezed like a lemon, and whereas I
was never bored when alone, in the society of other people I suffered
overwhelmingly from boredom. In fact, I was so bored by the visits
heaped upon me by my comrades and acquaintances, who inconsiderately
wasted my time, in order to kill a few hours, that I was almost driven
to despair; I was too young obstinately to refuse to see them.

By degrees, the thought of the boredom that I suffered at almost all
social functions dominated my mind to such an extent that I wrote a
little fairy tale about boredom, by no means bad (but unfortunately
lost), round an idea which I saw several years later treated in another
way in Sibbern's well-known book of the year 2135. This fairy tale was
read 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 of
elation, which, as soon as the company of others brought me out of my
usual balance, acted like exuberant mirth and made me burst out
laughing.

I was noted, among my comrades, and not always to my advantage, for my
absolutely ungovernable risibility. I had an exceedingly keen eye for
the ridiculous, and easily influenced as I still was, I could not
content myself with a smile. Not infrequently, when walking about the
town, I used to laugh the whole length of a street. There were times
when I was quite incapable of controlling my laughter; I laughed like a
child, and it was incomprehensible to me that people could go so soberly
and 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 I
went out and saw two drunken labourers, in a cab, each with a wreath on
his knee; I was obliged to laugh; I met an old dandy whom I knew, with
two coats on, one of which hung down below the other; I had to laugh at
that, too. Sometimes, walking or standing, absorbed in thoughts, I was
outwardly abstracted, and answered mechanically, or spoke in a manner
unsuited to my words; if I noticed this myself, I could not refrain from
laughing aloud at my own absent-mindedness. It occasionally happened
that at an evening party, where I had been introduced by the son of the
house to a stiff family to whom I was a stranger, and where the
conversation at table was being carried on in laboured monosyllables, I
would begin to laugh so unrestrainedly that every one stared at me in
anger or amazement. And it occasionally happened that when some sad
event, concerning people present, was being discussed, the recollection
of something comical I had seen or heard the same day would crop up in
my mind to the exclusion of all else, and I would be overtaken by fits
of laughter that were both incomprehensible and wounding to those round
me, but which it was impossible to me to repress. At funeral ceremonies,
I was in such dread of bursting out laughing that my attention would
involuntarily fix itself on everything it ought to avoid. This habit of
mine was particularly trying when my laughter had a ruffling effect on
others in a thing that I myself was anxious to carry through. Thus I
spoilt the first rehearsals of Sophocles' Greek play _Philoctetes_,
which a little group of students were preparing to act at the request of
Julius Lange. Some of them pronounced the Greek in an unusual manner,
others had forgotten their parts or acted badly--and that was quite
enough to set me off in a fit of laughter which I had difficulty in
stopping. Thus I often laughed, when I was tormented at being compelled
to laugh, in reality feeling melancholy, and mentally worried; I used to
think of Oechlenschlaeger's Oervarodd, who does not laugh when he is
happy, but breaks into a guffaw when he is deeply affected.

These fits of laughter were in reality the outcome of sheer
youthfulness; with all my musings and reflection, I was still in many
ways a child; I laughed as boys and girls laugh, without being able to
stop, and especially when they ought not. But this painful trait in
myself directed my thoughts to the nature proper of laughter; I tried to
sum 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 the
comical consisted of, and then recorded the fruits of my reflections in
my second long treatise, _On Laughter_, which has been lost.

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


XIII.

Meanwhile I had completed my eighteenth year and had to make my choice
of a profession. But what was I fitted for? My parents, and those other
of 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, it
was impossible for me to determine. There was only one thing that I felt
clear about, and that was that I should never be contented with a
subordinate position in the literary world; better a hundred times be a
judge in a provincial town. I felt an inward conviction that I should
make my way as a writer. It seemed to me that a deathlike stillness
reigned for the time being over European literature, but that there were
mighty forces working in the silence. I believed that a revival was
imminent. In August, 1860, I wrote in my private papers: "We Danes, with
our national culture and our knowledge of the literatures of other
countries, will stand well equipped when the literary horn of the Gods
resounds again through the world, calling fiery youth to battle. I am
firmly convinced that that time will come and that I shall be, if not
the one who evokes it in the North, at any rate one who will contribute
greatly towards it."

One of the first books I had read as a student was Goethe's _Dichtung
und Wahrheit_, and this career had extraordinarily impressed me. In
my childlike enthusiasm I determined to read all the books that Goethe
says that he read as a boy, and thus commenced and finished
Winckelmann's collected works, Lessing's _Laocoon_ and other books
of artistic and archaeological research; in other words, studied the
history and philosophy of Art in the first instance under aspects which,
from the point of view of subsequent research, were altogether
antiquated, though in themselves, and in their day, valuable enough.

Goethe's life fascinated me for a time to such an extent that I found
duplicates of the characters in the book everywhere. An old language
master, to whom I went early in the morning, in order to acquire from
him 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 two
pretty daughters. A more important point was that the book awoke in me a
restless thirst for knowledge, at the same time that I conceived a
mental picture of Goethe's monumental personality and began to be
influenced 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 literature
presented were too remote. For Physics I had no talent; the logical bent
of my abilities seemed to point in the direction of the Law; so
Jurisprudentia was selected and my studies commenced.

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

We consequently had to pursue our studies with the help of a coach, and
the one whom I, together with Kappers, Ludvig David and a few others,
had chosen, Otto Algreen-Ussing, was both a capable and a pleasant
guide. Five years were yet to elapse before this man and his even more
gifted brother, Frederik, on the formation of the Loyal and Conservative
Society of August, were persecuted and ridiculed as reactionaries, by
the editors of the ascendant Press, who, only a few years later, proved
themselves to be ten times more reactionary themselves. Otto was
positively 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 took
pains, but there was little in the subject that aroused my interest.
Christian the Fifth's _Danish Law_ attracted me exclusively on
account of its language and the perspicuity and pithiness of the
expressions occasionally made use of.

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

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


XIV.

About the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning, I planned
out a study of Philosophy and Aesthetics on a large scale as well. My
day was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night,
and there was time for everything, for ancient and modern languages, for
law lessons with the coach, for the lectures in philosophy which
Professors H. Broechner and R. Nielsen were holding for more advanced
students, and for independent reading of a literary, scientific and
historic description.

One of the masters who had taught me at school, a very erudite
philologian, 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 were
carefully studied.

Frederik Nutzhorn read the _Edda_ and the _Niebelungenlied_
with me in the originals; with Jens Paludan-Mueller I went through the
New 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 I
approached my nineteenth year. In philosophy I had hitherto mastered
only a few books by Soeren Kierkegaard. But now I began a conscientious
study of Heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavoured to
make myself familiar with his speculative logic. As Heiberg's _Prose
Writings_ came out, in the 1861 edition, they were studied with
extreme care. Heiberg's death in 1860 was a great grief to me; as a
thinker I had loved and revered him. The clearness of form and the
internal obscurity of his adaptation of Hegel's Teachings, gave one a
certain artistic satisfaction, at the same time that it provoked an
effort really to understand.

But in the nature of things, Heiberg's philosophical life-work could not
to 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 by
1860 Europe had long passed his works by in favour of more modern
thinking. With a passionate desire to reach a comprehension of the
truth, I grappled with the System, began with the Encyclopaedia, read
the three volumes of Aesthetics, The Philosophy of Law, the Philosophy
of History, the Phenomenology of the Mind, then the Philosophy of Law
again, and finally the Logic, the Natural Philosophy and the Philosophy
of the Mind in a veritable intoxication of comprehension and delight.
One day, when a young girl towards whom I felt attracted had asked me to
go and say good-bye to her before her departure, I forgot the time, her
journey, and my promise to her, over my Hegel. As I walked up and down
my room I chanced to pull my watch out of my pocket, and realised that I
had 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, partly
on account of the superiority with which the substantial quality of
Hegel's mind is there presented, and partly on account of the challenge
in 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 was
easy to understand, and yet weighty, superabundantly rich.

Again and again while reading Hegel's works I felt carried away with
delight at the new world of thought opening out before me. And when
anything that for a long time had been incomprehensible to me, at last
after tenacious reflection became clear, I felt what I myself called "an
unspeakable bliss." Hegel's system of thought, anticipatory of
experience, his German style, overburdened with arbitrarily constructed
technical words from the year 1810, which one might think would daunt a
young student of another country and another age, only meant to me
difficulties which it was a pleasure to overcome. Sometimes it was not
Hegelianism itself that seemed the main thing. The main thing was that I
was learning to know a world-embracing mind; I was being initiated into
an attempt to comprehend the universe which was half wisdom and half
poetry; I was obtaining an insight into a method which, if
scientifically unsatisfying, and on that ground already abandoned by
investigators, was fruitful and based upon a clever, ingenuous, highly
intellectual conception of the essence of truth; I felt myself put to
school to a great intellectual leader, and in this school I learnt to
think.

I might, it is true, have received my initiation in a school built up on
more modern foundations; it is true that I should have saved much time,
been spared many detours, and have reached my goal more directly had I
been introduced to an empirical philosophy, or if Fate had placed me in
a school in which historical sources were examined more critically, but
not less intelligently, and in which respect for individuality was
greater. But such as the school was, I derived from it all the benefit
it could afford to my _ego_, and I perceived with delight that my
intellectual progress was being much accelerated. Consequently it did
not specially take from my feeling of having attained a measure of
scientific insight, when I learnt--what I had not known at first--that
my teachers, Hans Broechner, as well as Rasmus Nielsen, were agreed not
to remain satisfied with the conclusions of the German philosopher, had
"got beyond Hegel." At the altitude to which the study of philosophy had
now lifted me, I saw that the questions with which I had approached
Science were incorrectly formulated, and they fell away of themselves,
even without being answered. Words that had filled men's minds for
thousands of years, God, Infinity, Thought, Nature and Mind, Freedom and
Purpose, all these words acquired another and a deeper meaning, were
stamped with a new character, acquired a new value, and the depurated
ideas which they now expressed opposed each other, and combined with
each 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 which
occupied the human herd seemed so contemptible. Of what account, for
instance, was the wrangling in the Senate and the Parliament of a little
country 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 of
the newspapers, compared with the possibility now thrown open of a life
of eternal ideals, lived in and for them!


XV.

I had an even deeper perception of my initiation when I went back from
Hegel to Spinoza and, filled with awe and enthusiasm, read the
_Ethica_ for the first time. Here I stood at the source of modern
pantheistic Philosophy. Here Philosophy was even more distinctly
Religion, since it took Religion's place. Though the method applied was
very artificial, purely mathematical, at least Philosophy had here the
attraction of a more original type of mind, the effect being much the
same as that produced by primitive painting, compared with a more
developed stage. His very expression, _God or Nature_, had a
fascinating mysticism about it. The chapter in the book which is devoted
to the Natural History of passions, surprised and enriched one by its
simple, but profound, explanation of the conditions of the human soul.
And although his fight against Superstition's views of life is conducted
with a keenness that scouts discussion, whereas in modern Philosophy the
contention is merely implied, it seemed as though his thoughts travelled
along less stormy paths.

In Hegel, it had been exclusively the comprehensiveness of the thoughts
and the mode of the thought's procedure that held my attention. With
Spinoza it was different. It was his personality that attracted, the
great man in him, one of the greatest that History has known. With him a
new type had made its entrance into the world's History; he was the calm
thinker, looking down from above on this earthly life, reminding one, by
the purity and strength of his character, of Jesus, but a contrast to
Jesus, inasmuch as he was a worshipper of Nature and Necessity, and a
Pantheist. His teaching was the basis of the faith of the new age. He
was 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 to
penetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to become
master of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peace
with regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself in
incontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire for
insight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness in
the delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going on
in my emotions.

As my being grew and developed within me and I slowly emerged from the
double state of which I had been conscious, in other words, the more I
became one and individual and strove to be honest and true, the less I
felt myself to be a mere individual, the more I realised that I was
bound up with humanity, one link in the chain, one organ belonging to
the Universe. The philosophical Pantheism I was absorbed by, itself
worked counter to the idea of individualism inherent in me, taught me
and 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 life
proceeded; it was from the fountains of emotion which now shot up and
filled 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 been
lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast
compassion.

This gradually absorbed me till I could hardly bear the thought of the
suffering, the poor, the oppressed, the victims of Injustice. I always
saw 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 so
many were being starved and tortured. Often as I walked along the
streets at night I brooded over these ideas till I knew nothing of what
was passing around me, but only felt how all the forces of my brain drew
me towards those who suffered.

There were warm-hearted and benevolent men among my near relatives. The
man whom my mother's younger sister had married had his heart in the
right place, so much indeed that he no sooner saw or heard of distress
than his hand was in his pocket, although he had little from which to
give. My father's brother was a genuinely philanthropic man, who founded
one beneficent institution or society after the other, had an unusual
power of inducing his well-to-do fellow-townsmen to carry his schemes
through, and in the elaboration of them showed a perception and
practical sense that almost amounted to genius; this was the more
surprising since his intelligence was not otherwise remarkable for its
keenness and his reasoning methods were confused. But what I felt was
quite different. My feelings were not so easily roused as those of the
first-mentioned; I was not so good-natured or so quick to act as he.
Neither did they resemble those of my other uncle, who merely
represented compassion for those unfortunately situated, but was without
the least vestige of rebellious feeling against the conditions or the
people responsible for the misery; my uncle was always content with life
as it was, saw the hand of a loving Providence everywhere and was fully
and firmly convinced that he himself was led and helped by this same
Providence, which specially watched over the launching of his projects
for the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite another kind.
Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes quite childish
optimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the sufferings of a few
individuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I sought the causes of
them in brutality and injustice. Neither could I recognise the finger of
a Universal Ruler in a confusion of coincidences, conversations,
newspaper articles, and advice by prudent men, the outcome of all which
was the founding of a society for seamstresses or the erection of a
hospital to counteract the misery that the Controlling Power had Itself
occasioned. I was a child no longer, and in that sense never had been
childish. But my heart bled none the less with sympathy for society's
unfortunates. I did not as yet perceive the necessity of that
selfishness which is self-assertion, and I felt oppressed and tormented
by 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 an
impulse to step forward as a preacher to the world around me, to the
thoughtless and the hardhearted. Under the influence of strong emotion I
wrote an edifying discourse, _The Profitable Fear_. I began to
regard it as my duty, so soon as I was fitted for it, to go out into the
town and preach at every street-corner, regardless of whether a lay
preacher, like myself, should encounter indifference or harvest scorn.

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

As provisionally, self-abnegation, humility, and asceticism seemed to me
to be the most difficult things, for a time my whole spiritual life was
concentrated into an endeavour to attain them. Just at this time--I was
nineteen--my family was in a rather difficult pecuniary position, and I,
quite a poor student, was cast upon my own resources. I had consequently
not much of this world's goods to renounce. From a comfortable residence
in Crown Prince's Street, my parents had moved to a more modest flat in
the exceedingly unaristocratic Salmon Street, where I had an attic of
limited dimensions with outlook over roofs by day and a view of the
stars by night. Quiet the nights were not, inasmuch as the neighbouring
houses re-echoed with screams and shrieks from poor women, whom their
late-returning husbands or lovers thrashed in their cups. But never had
I felt myself so raised, so exhilarated, so blissfully happy, as in that
room. My days slipped by in ecstasy; I felt myself consecrated a
combatant in the service of the Highest. I used to test my body, in
order 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 bare
floor, gradually to make myself as hardy as I required to be. I tried to
crush the youthful sensuality that was awakening in me, and by degrees
acquired complete mastery over myself, so that I could be what I wished
to be, a strong and willing instrument in the fight for the victory of
Truth. And I plunged afresh into study with a passion and a delight that
prevented my perceiving any lack, but month after month carried me
along, increasing in knowledge and in mental power, growing from day to
day.


XVII.

This frame of mind, however, was crossed by another. The religious
transformation in my mind could not remain clear and unmuddied, placed
as I was in a society furrowed through and through by different
religious currents, issued as I was from the European races that for
thousands of years had been ploughed by religious ideas. All the
atavism, all the spectral repetition of the thoughts and ideas of the
past that can lie dormant in the mind of the individual, leaped to the
reinforcement of the harrowing religious impressions which came to me
from without.

It was not the attitude of my friends that impressed me. All my more
intimate friends were orthodox Christians, but the attempts which
various ones, amongst them Julius Lange, and Jens Paludan-Mueller, had
made to convert me had glanced off from my much more advanced thought
without making any impression. I was made of much harder metal than
they, and their attempts to alter my way of thinking did not penetrate
beyond my hide. To set my mind in vibration, there was needed a brain
that I felt superior to my own; and I did not find it in them. I found
it in the philosophical and religious writings of Soeren Kierkegaard, in
such works, for instance, as _Sickness unto Death_.

The struggle within me began, faintly, as I approached my nineteenth
year. 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 at
that time was. All that rose up inimical to _The Idea_ or Ideal
merited to be lashed with scorn or felled with indignation. And one day
I penned this outburst: "Heine wept over _Don Quixote_. Yes, he was
right. I could weep tears of blood when I think of the book." But the
first thing needed was to acquire a clear conception of what must be
understood by the Ideal. Heiberg had regarded the uneducated as those
devoid of ideals. But I was quite sure myself that education afforded no
criterion. And I could find no other criterion of devotion to the Ideal
than a willingness to make sacrifices. If, I said, I prove myself less
self-sacrificing than any one of the wretches I am fighting, I shall
myself incur well-merited scorn. But if self-sacrifice were the
criterion, then Jesus, according to the teachings of tradition, was the
Ideal, for who as self-sacrificing as He?

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

But just as I was about to complete my twentieth year, the storm broke
out over again, and during the whole of the ensuing six months raged
with unintermittent violence. Was I, at this stage of my development, a
Christian 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 constant
effort, sometimes a minutely recurring effort, to attain moral mastery
over one's self, and though this certainly need not bring with it a
feeling of self-satisfaction, much less _ought_ to do so, it does
bring with it a recognition of the value of this self-mastery. How
strange, then, that Christianity, which commands its attainment, at the
same time declares it to be a matter of indifference to the revealed God
whether a man has lived morally or not, since Faith or lack of Faith is
the one condition upon which so-called Salvation depends!

The next thought was this: It is only in the writings of Kierkegaard, in
his teachings concerning paradox, that Christianity appears so definite
that it cannot be confused with any other spiritual trend whatever. But
when one has to make one's choice between Pantheism and Christianity,
then the question arises, Are Kierkegaard's teachings really historic
Christianity, and not rather a rational adaptation? And this question
must be answered in the negative, since it is possible to assimilate it
without touching upon the question of the revelation of the Holy Ghost
in the shape of a dove, to the Voice from the clouds, and the whole
string of miracles and dogmas.

The next thought again was this: Pantheism does not place any one
unconditional goal in front of man. The unbeliever passes his life
interested in the many aims that man, as man, has. The Pantheist will
therefore have difficulty in living a perfect ethical life. There are
many cases in which, by deviating from the strictly ethic code, you do
not harm anyone, you only injure your own soul. The Non-Believer will in
this case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up his
mind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by his
passionate 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, a
lack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Courage
was needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being a
Christian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. When
thinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between the
cowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed under
discussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. And
it was clear to me that, on the road which led to Christianity, doubt
must be overcome before cowardice--not the contrary, as Kierkegaard
maintains in his _For Self-Examination_, where he says that none of
the martyrs doubted.

But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was
only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or
madness. For me it was sometimes both. I concluded therefrom that I had
no consciousness of sin, and found this idea confirmed when I looked
into my own heart. For however violently at this period I reproached
myself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknesses
that ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, never
sins that necessitated forgiveness, and for the obtaining of this
forgiveness, a Saviour. That God had died for me as my Saviour,--I could
not understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed nothing to
me.

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


XIX.

With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack of
courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back
from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed
permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of
it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only
be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself
to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in
possibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primeval
creation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements.
The whole of Nature was in its essence Divine, and I felt myself at
heart a worshipper of Nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He always maintained that the desire of the individual for a
continuation of personality was nothing but the outcome of vanity. He
would very often put the question in a comical light. He related the
following anecdote: In summer evenings he used to go for a walk along
the Philosopher's Avenue (now West Rampart Street). Here he had
frequently met, sitting on their benches, four or five old gentlemen who
took their evening ramble at the same time; by degrees they made each
other's acquaintance and got into conversation with one another. It
turned out that the old gentlemen were candle-makers who had retired
from business and now had considerable difficulty in passing their time
away. In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly.
These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred with
enthusiasm--their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And it
amused Broechner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so
much as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have a
whole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself of
the grotesqueness of wishing to endure for millions of centuries, which
time even then was nothing in comparison with eternity.


XX.

But in spite of it all, it was a hard saying, that in the pantheistic
view of life the absorption of the individual into the great whole took
the place of the continued personal existence which was desired by the
_ego_. But what frightened me even more was that the divine All was
not to be moved or diverted by prayer. But pray I had to. From my
earliest childhood I had been accustomed, in anxiety or necessity, to
turn my thoughts towards a Higher Power, first forming my needs and
wishes into words, and then later, without words, concentrating myself
in worship. It was a need inherited from many hundreds of generations of
forefathers, this need of invoking help and comfort. Nomads of the
plains, Bedouins of the desert, ironclad warriors, pious priests, roving
sailors, travelling merchants, the citizen of the town and the peasant
in the country, all had prayed for centuries, and from the very dawn of
time; the women, the hundreds and hundreds of women from whom I was
descended, had centred all their being in prayer. It was terrible, never
to be able to pray again.... Never to be able to fold one's hands, never
to raise one's eyes above, but to live, shut in overhead, alone in the
universe!

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

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




ADOLESCENCE

Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University Prize
Competition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of Scandinavian
Students--The Paludan-Muellers--Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson--Magdalene
Thoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The Political
Situation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--_Admissus cum laude
praecipua_--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A Walking
Tour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David--
Stockholm.


I.

Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whom
comradeship had developed into friendship, and this friendship again
assumed a passionate character. We were the two, who, of them all, were
most exactly suited to one another, completed one another. Fundamentally
different though we were, we could always teach each other something. We
grew indispensable to one another; for years there seldom a day went by
that we did not meet. The association with his junior cannot possibly
have given Julius Lange a delight corresponding to that which his
society gave me. Intellectually equal, we were of temperaments
diametrically opposed. Having the same love of Art and the same
enthusiasm for Art,--save that the one cared more for its pictorial and
the other for its literary expression,--we were of mutual assistance to
one another in the interchange of thoughts and information. Entirely at
variance in our attitude towards religious tradition, in our frequent
collisions we were both perpetually being challenged to a critical
inspection of our intellectual furniture. But I was the one who did the
worshipping.

When Julius Lange, on December 17, 1861, after having twice been to see
me and found me out, the third time met with me and informed me: "I have
received an invitation to go to Italy on Saturday and be away five
months," 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 would
not come back changed? How should I be able to endure my life! I should
have to work tremendously hard, to be able to bear the loss of him. I
could hardly understand how I should be able to exist when I could no
longer, evening after evening, slip up to my friend's little room to sit
there in calm, quiet contentment, seeing pictures and exchanging
thoughts! It was as though a nerve had been cut. I only then realised
that I had never loved any man so much. I had had four eyes; now I had
only two again; I had had two brains; now I had only one; in my heart I
had felt the happiness of two human beings; now only the melancholy of
one was left behind.

There was not a painting, a drawing, a statue or a bas-relief in the
galleries and museums of Copenhagen that we had not studied together and
compared our impressions of. We had been to Thorwaldsen's Museum
together, we went together to Bissen's studio, where in November, 1861,
I met for the first time my subsequent friends, Vilhelm Bissen and
Walter Runeberg. The memory of Julius Lange was associated in my mind
with every picture of Hobbema, Dubbels or Ruysdael, Rembrandt or Rubens,
every reproduction of Italian Renaissance art, every photograph of
church or castle. And I myself loved pictures even more ardently than
poetry. I was fond of comparing my relations with literature to
affection for a being of the same sex; my passion for pictures to the
stormy passion of a youth for a woman. It is true that I knew much less
about Art than about Poetry, but that made no difference. I worshipped
my favourite artists with a more impetuous enthusiasm than any of my
favourite authors. And this affection for pictures and statuary was a
link between my friend and myself. When we were sitting in my room
together, and another visitor happened to be there, I positively
suffered over the sacrifice of an hour's enjoyment and when Lange got up
to go, I felt as though a window had been slammed to, and the fresh air
shut out.


II.

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

I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Broechner speak on
Psychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was so
monotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. It
was only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attracted
me, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautiful
expression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now, I
determined to venture up to Broechner. But I had not the courage to
mention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it should
frighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step I
was 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 of
the house several times before I could make up my mind to go upstairs; I
tried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say, and what it
would be best for me to reply, interminably.

The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, opened
the door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to become
his most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as he
heard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I had
recently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going through
a 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 had
himself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modern
Philosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and left
behind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner all
useless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as I
went home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History of
Philosophy from the beginning.

My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quickly
sprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder,
in an attitude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hitherto
been a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving him
practical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could further
his well-being and assist his future; my attitude was one of reverence
and affection, and of profound gratitude for the care of which I was the
object.

I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness and
his skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painful
distrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, compared
with his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as it
were, being struck in our intercourse, when Broechner, despite the doubts
and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I
shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still
tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the
confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an
attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully
prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a
lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the
sympathies and antipathies of a young man.

To me, for instance, Ploug's _The Fatherland_ was at that time
Denmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille's _Daily Paper_
disgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and the
tone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms. Broechner,
who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any special
distinction between the two, looked down on both these papers of the
educated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against the
trivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality of
his mind. Broechner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile,
"You do not read _The Daily Paper_ on principle," made me perceive
in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it
contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me to
suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself,
of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, when
making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naivete of
nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute my
personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent
enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, _a wide
horizon_ and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make
up for my lack of humour and facility."

It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that I
felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Broechner. I had been
enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was the
first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of God in
the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found a
presentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the usual heavy
formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a very
salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling of
security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservative
than my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways I
felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in the
eternal 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 it
began 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 my
writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I
should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And
the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think of
suicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from the
torment of them. I felt myself so little adapted to the Law that I
wasted my time with Hamlet-like cogitations as to how I could give up
the study without provoking my parents' displeasure, and without
stripping myself of all prospects for the future. And for quite a year
these 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 in
several subjects, and not infrequently plunged into philosophical works
of the past, that were too difficult for me, such as the principal works
of Kant. Consequently when I was nineteen, I begun to feel my strength
going. I felt unwell, grew nervous, had a feeling that I could not draw
a deep breath, and when I was twenty my physical condition was a violent
protest against overwork. One day, while reading Kant's _Kritik der
Urteilskraft_, 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 on
taking them and have done so ever since. I did my gymnastic exercises
with a Swede named Nycander, who had opened an establishment for Swedish
gymnastics in Copenhagen.

There I met, amongst others, the well-known Icelandic poet and
diplomatist, Grimur Thomsen, who bore the title of Counsellor of
Legation. His compatriots were very proud of him. Icelandic students
declared that Grimur possessed twelve dress shirts, three pairs of
patent leather boots, and had embraced a marchioness in Paris. At
gymnastics, Grimur Thomsen showed himself audacious and not seldom
coarse in what he said and hinted. It is true that by reason of my youth
I was very susceptible and took offence at things that an older man
would have heard without annoyance.


IV.

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

As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes at the prize questions that had
been set, and which hung up in the Entrance Hall of the University. But
none of them were suited to me. In 1861 I made up my mind to attempt a
reply, even if the questions in themselves should not be attractive.

There was amongst them one on the proper correlation between poetic
fiction and history in the historical romances. The theme in itself did
not 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 the
artist, in general. I was of opinion that just as in sculpture the human
figure should not be represented with wings, but the conception of its
species be observed, so the essential nature of a past age should be
unassailed in historic fiction. Throughout numerous carefully elaborated
abstractions, extending over 120 folio pages, and in which I aimed at
scientific perspicuity, I endeavoured to give a soundly supported theory
of the limits of inventive freedom in Historical Romance. The
substructure was so painstaking that it absorbed more than half of the
treatise. Quite apart from the other defects of this tyro handiwork, it
lauded and extolled an aesthetic direction opposed to that of both the
men who were to adjudicate upon it. Hegel was mentioned in it as "The
supreme exponent of Aesthetics, a man whose imposing greatness it is
good 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 with
profound reverence and as a man whose slightest utterance was of
importance. Sibbern's artistic and philosophical researches, on the
other hand, were quite overlooked, indeed sometimes Vischer was praised
as being the first originator of psychological developments, which
Sibbern had suggested many years before him. I had, for that matter,
made a very far from sufficient study of Sibbern's researches, which
were, partly, not systematic enough for me, and partly had repelled me
by the peculiar language in which they were couched.

Neither was it likely that this worship of Heiberg, which undeniably
peeped 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 not
fresh, and that in its skeleton-like thinness it positively tottered
under the weight of its definitions, it is no wonder that it did not win
the prize. The verdict passed upon it was to the effect that the
treatise was thorough in its way, and that it would have been awarded
the prize had the question asked been that of determining the
correlation between History and Fiction in general, but that under the
circumstances it dwelt too cursorily on Romance and was only deemed
deserving of "a very honourable mention."

Favourable as this result was, it was nevertheless a blow to me, who had
made my plans for the following years dependent on whether I won the
prize or not. Julius Lange, who knocked at my door one evening to tell
me 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 you
prohibited the opening of the paper giving your name in the event of the
paper not winning the prize, for no one will trouble their heads about
the flattering criticism and an honourable mention would only harm you
in People's eyes; it would stamp you with the mark of mediocrity."


V.

The anonymous recipient of the honourable mention nevertheless
determined to call upon his judges, make their acquaintance, and let
them 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 old
man of seventy and over paying me, young man as I was, one compliment
after the other. The treatise was "extraordinarily good," they had been
very 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 eighteen
months I should be ready to take my Magister examination; the old poet
thought he might venture to prophesy that I should do well. He was
surprised at his visitor's youth, could hardly understand how at my age
I could have read and thought so much, and gave me advice as to the
continuation of my studies.

Sibbern was as cordial as Hauch had been polite and cautious. It was
very funny that, whereas Hauch remarked that he himself had wished to
give me the prize with an _although_ in the criticism, but that
Sibbern had been against it, Sibbern declared exactly the reverse; in
spite of all its faults he had wanted to award the medal, but Hauch had
expressed himself adverse. Apparently they had misunderstood one
another; but in any case the result was just, so there was nothing to
complain of.

Sibbern went into the details of the treatise, and was stricter than
Hauch. He regretted that the main section of the argument was deficient;
the premises were too prolix. He advised a more historic, less
philosophical study of Literature and Art. He was pleased to hear of the
intimate terms I was on with Broechner, whereas Hauch would have
preferred my being associated with Rasmus Nielsen, whom he jestingly
designated "a regular brown-bread nature." When the treatise was given
back to me, I found it full of apt and instructive marginal notes from
Sibbern's hand.

Little as I had gained by my unsuccessful attempt to win this prize, and
unequivocally as my conversation with the practical Sibbern had proved
to me that a post as master in my mother tongue at a Grammar-school was
all 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 a
master in a school, this conversation nevertheless ripened my
determination to give up my law studies, but of course only when by
successfully competing for the prize the next year I had satisfactorily
proved my still questionable ability.


VI.

The Meeting of Scandinavian students at Copenhagen in June, 1862, taught
me what it meant to be a Scandinavian. Like all the other
undergraduates, I was Scandinavian at heart, and the arrangements of the
Meeting were well calculated to stir the emotions of youth. Although, an
insignificant Danish student, I did not take part in the expedition to
North Zealand specially arranged for our guests, consequently neither
was present at the luncheon given by Frederik VII to the students at
Fredensborg (which was interrupted by a heavy shower), I was
nevertheless deeply impressed by the Meeting.

It was a fine sight to behold the students from the three other
Scandinavian Universities come sailing across the Sound from Malmoe to
Copenhagen. 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 any
difference between them.

For me, there were three perfect moments during the festivities. The
first 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 Metropolitan
School, crowding the windows of the building, greeted them with a shout
of delight. There was such a freshness, such a childish enthusiasm about
it, that some of us had wet eyes. It was as though the still distant
future were acclaiming the young ones now advancing to the assault, and
promising them sympathy and conquest.

The second was when the four new flags embroidered by Danish ladies for
the students were consecrated and handed over. Clausen's speech was full
of grandeur, and addressed, not to the recipients, but to the flags as
living beings: "Thou wilt cross the Baltic to the sanctuary at Upsala.
Thou wilt cross the Cattegat to the land of rocks...." and the address
to each of the flags concluded: "Fortune and Honour attend thee!" The
evening after the consecration of the flags, there was a special
performance at the Royal Theatre for the members of the Meeting, at
which Heiberg, radiant as she always was, and saluted with well-merited
enthusiasm, played _Sophie_ in the vaudeville "_No_," with a
rosette of the Scandinavian colours at her waist. Then it was that
Paludan-Mueller's prologue, recited by our idolised actor, Michael Wiehe,
caused me the third thrilling moment. Listening to the words of the poet
from a bad place in the gallery, I was hardly the only one who felt
strangely 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's
summons referred.

The general spirit of this Meeting has been called flat in comparison
with that pervading former meetings. It did not strike the younger
participants so. A breath of Scandinavianism swept over every heart; one
felt borne along on a historic stream. It seemed like a bad dream that
the peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and laid
waste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered it
impossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence in
Europe.

One could feel at the Meeting, though very faintly, that the Swedes and
Norwegians took more actual pleasure in each other, and regarded
themselves as to a greater extent united than either of them looked upon
themselves as united with the Danes, who were outside the political
Union. I was perhaps the only Dane present who fancied I detected this,
but when I mentioned what I thought I observed to a gifted young
Norwegian, 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 heard
expressed on every hand the conviction that if Germany were shortly to
declare war against Denmark--which no one doubted--the Swedes and
Norwegians would most decidedly not leave the Danes in the lurch. The
promise was given oftener than it was asked. Only, of course, it was
childish on the part of those present at the Meeting to regard such
promises, given by the leaders of the students, and by the students
themselves in festive mood, as binding on the nations and their
statesmen.

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

There was another young Swedish student whom I caught a glimpse of for
the first time at the Students' Meeting, towards whom I felt more and
more attracted, and who eventually became my friend. This was the
darling of the gods, Carl Snoilsky. At a fete in Rosenborg Park, amongst
the songs was one which, with my critical scent, I made a note of. It
was by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was far from
possessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that later
distinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a troubadour
song to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of it was a
youth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and smooth
brown hair, a regular Adonis. The following year he came again, drawn by
strong cords to Christian Winther's home, loving the old poet like a
son, as Swinburne loved Victor Hugo, sitting at Mistress Julie Winther's
feet in affectionate admiration and semi-adoration, although she was
half a century old and treated him as a mother does a favourite child.

It was several years, however, before there was any actual friendship
between the Swedish poet and myself. He called upon me one day in my
room in Copenhagen, looking exceedingly handsome in a tight-fitting
waistcoat of blue quilted silk. In the absence of the Swedo-Norwegian
Ambassador, he was Charge d'Affaires in Copenhagen, after, in his
capacity as diplomatic attache, having been stationed in various parts
of the world and, amongst others, for some time in Paris. He could have
no warmer admirer of his first songs than myself, and we very frequently
spent our evenings together in Bauer's wine room--talking over
everything in Scandinavian, English, or French literature which both of
us had enthusiastically and critically read. On many points our verdicts
were agreed.

There came a pause in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed.
It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had
to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they
regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was at
that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivation
of the freedom without which it was impossible to write. Still, he never
mentioned these strictly personal matters. But one evening that we were
together, Snoilsky was so overcome by the thought of his lack of freedom
that tears suddenly began to run down his cheeks. He was almost
incapable of controlling himself again, and when we went home together
late at night, poured out a stream of melancholy, half-despairing
remarks.

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

As years passed by, his outward bearing became more and more reserved
and a trifle stiff, but he was the same at heart, and no one who had
known 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 Jens
Paludan-Mueller, I spent a few weeks at his home at Nykjoebing, in the
island of Falster, where his father, Caspar Paludan-Mueller, the
historian, was at the time head master of the Grammar-school. Those were
rich and beautiful weeks, which I always remembered later with
gratitude.

The stern old father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed
one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the
world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the
house likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known in
Danish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Goeiske. Jens was a cordial and
attentive host, the daughters were all of them women out of the
ordinary, and bore the impress of belonging to a family of the highest
culture in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second,
with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in a
manner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiable
young girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony of
provincial life, and their release came when their father was appointed
to a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of manner
and a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family. Two young,
handsome Counts Reventlow were being brought up in the house, still only
half-grown boys at that time, but who were destined later to win
honourable renown. One of them, the editor of his ancestress's papers,
kept up his acquaintance with the guest he had met in the Paludan-Mueller
home for over forty years.

There often came to the house a young Dane from Caracas in Venezuela, of
unusual, almost feminine beauty, with eyes to haunt one's dreams. He
played uncommonly well, was irresistibly gentle and emotional. After a
stay of a few years in Denmark he returned to his native place. The
previously mentioned Groenbeck, with his pretty sister, and other young
people from the town, were frequent guests during the holidays, and the
days passed in games, music, wanderings about the garden, and delightful
excursions to the woods.

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

A few years later the old historian was called upon to publish the
little book on Gulland, with its short biography prefixed, as a memorial
to his only son, fallen at Sankelmark, and again, a few years later, to
edit Frederik Nutzhorn's translation of Apuleius in memory of his son's
friend, his elder daughter's fiance. During the preparation of these two
little books, our relations became more intimate, and our friendship
continued unbroken until in the month of February, 1872, a remark in one
of my defensive articles caused him to take up his pen against me. My
remark was to the effect that there were men of the same opinions as
myself even among the priests of the established church. Caspar Paludan-
Mueller declared it my public duty to mention of whom I was thinking at
the time, since such a traitor was not to be tolerated in the lap of the
Church. As I very naturally did not wish to play the part of informer, I
incurred, by my silence, the suspicion of having spoken without
foundation. The Danish man whom I had in my thoughts, and who had
confided his opinions to me, was still alive at the time. This was the
late Dean Ussing, at one time priest at Mariager, a man of an
extraordinarily refined and amiable disposition, secretly a convinced
adherent of Ernest Renan. A Norwegian priest, who holds the same
opinions, is still living.


VIII.

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

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

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


IX.

Two other celebrated personages whom I met for the first time a little
later were Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson and Magdalene Thoresen.

I became acquainted with Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson at the Nutzhorns, their
son, Ditlev, being a passionate admirer of his. His _King Sverre_
of 1861 had been a disappointment, but _Sigurd Slembe_ of the
following year was new and great poetry, and fascinated young people's
minds. Bjoernson, socially, as in literature, was a strong figure, self-
confident, loud-voiced, outspoken, unique in all that he said, and in
the weight which he knew how to impart to all his utterances. His manner
jarred a little on the more subdued Copenhagen style; the impression he
produced was that of a great, broad-shouldered, and very much spoilt
child. In the press, all that he wrote and did was blazoned abroad by
the leading critics of the day, who had a peculiar, challenging way of
praising Bjoernson, although his ability was not seriously disputed by
anyone. The National Liberal Leaders, Alfred Hage, Carl Ploug, etc., had
opened their hearts and houses to him. It is said that at one time
Heiberg had held back; the well-bred old man, a little shocked by the
somewhat noisy ways of the young genius, is said to have expressed to
his friend Krieger some scruples at inviting him to his house. To
Krieger's jesting remark: "What does it matter! He is a young man; let
him rub off his corners!" Heiberg is credited with having replied: "Very
true! Let him! but not in my drawing-room! That is not a place where
people may rub anything off." Heiberg's wife, on the other hand, admired
him exceedingly, and was undoubtedly very much fascinated by him.

In a circle of younger people, Bjoernson was a better talker than
conversationalist. Sometimes he came out with decidedly rash expressions
of opinion, conclusively dismissing a question, for instance, with
severe verdicts over Danish music, Heyse's excepted, judgments which
were not supported by sufficient knowledge of the subject at issue. But
much of what he said revealed the intellectual ruler, whose self-
confidence might now and again irritate, but at bottom was justified. He
narrated exceptionally well, with picturesque adjectives, long
remembered in correct Copenhagen, spoke of the _yellow_ howl of
wolves, and the like. Take it all in all, his attitude was that of a
conqueror.

He upheld poetry that was actual and palpable, consequently had little
appreciation for poetry, that, like Paludan-Mueller's, was the perfection
of thought and form, and boldly disapproved of my admiration for it.


X.

It was likewise through Frederik Nutzhorn that I, when a young beginner
in the difficult art of life, became acquainted with Madame Magdalene
Thoresen. Our first conversation took place in the open air one Summer
day, at the Klampenborg bathing establishment. Although Magdalene
Thoresen 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, her
mouth as fresh as a young girl's; she had brilliant and very striking
eyes. 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 a
propensity towards considerable extravagance of speech. Originally
incited thereto by Bjoernson's peasant stories, she had then published
her first tales, _The Student and Signe's Story_, which belonged,
half to Norwegian, half to Danish literature, and had been well
received. She was the daughter of a fisherman at Fredericia, and after
having known both the buffets and the smiles of Fortune, had come to be
on terms of friendship with many men and women of importance, now
belonging to the recognised personalities of the day. She was also very
well received and much appreciated in the Heiberg circle.

In comparison with her, a woman, I might have been called erudite and
well-informed. Her own knowledge was very desultory. She was interested
in me on account of my youth, and her warm interest attached me to her
for 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 so
unreservedly, still, no woman, at least no mature and gifted woman, had
told me so much about herself before. She was a woman who had felt
strongly and thought much; she had lived a rich, and eventful life; but
all that had befallen her she romanticised. Her poetic tendency was
towards the sublime. She was absolutely veracious, and did not really
mean to adorn her tales, but partly from pride, partly from
whimsicality, she saw everything, from greatest to least, through
beautifully coloured magnifying-glasses, so that a translation of her
communications 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 to
an every-day standard, without wounding the narrator to the quick. For
these reasons I never ventured to include among my Collected Essays a
little biographical sketch of her (written just as she herself had
idealised its events to me), one of the first articles I had printed.

She saw strong natures, rich and deep natures, in lives that were meagre
or unsuccessful. Again, from lack of perspicacity, she sometimes saw
nothing but inefficiency in people with wide intellectual gifts; thus,
she considered that her son-in-law, Henrik Ibsen, who at that time had
not become either known or celebrated, had very imperfect poetic gifts.
"What he writes is as flat as a drawing," she would say. Or she would
remark: "He ought to be more than a collaborator of Kierkegaard." It was
only much later that she discovered his genius. Bjoernson, on the other
hand, she worshipped with an enthusiastic love; it was a trouble to her
that just about this time he had become very cool to her.

Vague feelings did not repel her, but all keen and pointed intelligence
did. She was wholly and entirely romantic. Gallicism she objected to;
the clarity of the French seemed to her superficial; she saw depth in
the reserved and taciturn Northern, particularly the Norwegian, nature.
She had groped her way forward for a long time without realising what
her gifts really were. Her husband, who had done all he could to assist
her education, had even for a time imagined, and perhaps persuaded her,
that her gifts lay in the direction of Baggesen's. Now, however, she had
found 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 with
her overflowing warm-heartedness, with her honest inclination to
believe, a Heathen in her averseness to any negation of either life or
Nature. She used to say that she loved Christ and Eros equally, or
rather, that to her, they both meant the same. To her, Christianity was
the new, the modern, in contrast to the rationalism of a past age, so
that Christianity and modern views of life in general merged in her eyes
into one unity.

Hers was a deeply feminine nature, and a productive nature. Her fertile
character was free from all taint of over-estimation of herself. She
only revealed a healthy and pleasing self-satisfaction when she imagined
that some person wished to set up himself or herself over her and
misjudge acts or events in her life with respect to which she considered
herself the only person qualified to judge. At such times she would
declare in strong terms that by her own unassisted strength she had
raised herself from a mean and unprotected position to the level of the
best men and women of her day. Herself overflowing with emotion, and of
a noble disposition, she craved affection and goodwill, and gave back a
hundredfold what she received. If she felt herself the object of cold
and piercing observation, she would be silent and unhappy, but if she
herself were at ease and encountered no coolness, she was all geniality
and enthusiasm, though not to such an extent that her enthusiasm ceased
to be critical.

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

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

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

This richly endowed woman made me appear quite new to myself, inasmuch
as, in conversations with my almost maternal friend, I began to think I
was of a somewhat cold nature, a nature which in comparison with hers
seemed rather dry, unproductive and unimaginative, a creature with
thoughts 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 the
fire on the countless facets of its crystals, but was itself nothing but
cold, smooth, polished, prisms.

Thus during my association with Magdalene Thoresen I came to regard
myself in a new light, when I saw myself with her eyes, and I was struck
more than ever by how different the verdicts over me would be were my
various friends and acquaintances each to describe me is I appeared to
them. To Magdalene Thoresen I was all mind, to others all passion, to
others again all will. At the Nutzhorns' I went by the name of the
modest B., elsewhere I was deemed conceitedly ambitious, some people
thought 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 my
real 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 way
through the whole of the juridic system, Roman Law excluded. But the
industry devoted to this was purely mechanical. I pursued my other
studies, on the contrary, with delight, even tried to produce something
myself, and during the last months of 1862 elaborated a very long paper
on _Romeo and Juliet_, chiefly concerning itself with the
fundamental problems of the tragedy, as interpreted in the Aesthetics of
the day; it has been lost, like so much else that I wrote during those
years. I sent it to Professor Broechner and asked his opinion of it.

Simultaneously I began to work upon a paper on the Idea of Fate in Greek
Tragedy, a response to the Prize question of the year 1862-1863, and on
December 31, 1862, had finished the Introduction, which was published
for the first time about six years later, under the title _The Idea of
Tragic Fate_. Appended to this was a laborious piece of work dealing
with the conceptions of Fate recorded in all the Greek tragedies that
have come down to us. This occupied the greater part of the next six
months.

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

In November, 1862, I joined a very large recently started
undergraduates' society, which met once a fortnight at Borch's College
to hear lectures and afterwards discuss them together. It numbered full
fifty members, amongst them most of the men of that generation who
afterwards distinguished themselves in Denmark. The later known
politician, Octavius Hansen, was Speaker of the Meetings, and even then
seemed made for the post. His parliamentary bearing was unrivalled. It
was not for nothing he was English on the mother's side. He looked
uncommonly handsome on the platform, with his unmoved face, his
beautiful eyes, and his brown beard, curled like that of Pericles in the
Greek busts. He was good-humoured, just, and well-informed. Of the
numerous members, Wilhelm Thomsen the philologist was certainly the most
prominent, and the only one whom I later on came to value, that is, for
purely personal reasons; in daily association it was only once in a way
that Thomsen could contribute anything from his special store of
knowledge. One day, when we had been discussing the study of cuneiform
inscriptions, the young philologist had said, half in jest, half in
earnest: "If a stone were to fall down from the Sun with an inscription
in unknown signs, in an unknown language, upon it, we should be able to
make it out,"--a remark which I called to mind many years later when
Thomsen deciphered the Ancient Turkish inscriptions in the Mountains of
Siberia.

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

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

Thus it was that my eager patron first introduced what became a
wearisome tangle, lasting a whole generation, concerning my claims to a
certain 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 the
prospect of an honourable position in society was held out to me by a
man who was in a position to judge of my fitness for it, but because
this smiling prospect of an official post was in my eyes a snare which
might hold me so firmly that I should not be able to pursue the path of
renunciation that alone seemed to me to lead to my life's goal. I felt
myself an apostle, but an apostle and a professor were, very far apart.
I certainly remembered that the Apostle Paul had been a tent-maker. But
I feared that, once appointed, I should lose my ideal standard of life
and 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 a
professorship than never to accept it. And, once a professor, a man soon
got married and settled down as a citizen of the state, not in a
position to dare anything. To dispose of my life at Broechner's request
would be like selling my soul to the Devil.

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

By the middle of June, 1863, the prize paper was copied out. In
September the verdict was announced; the gold medal was awarded to me
with a laudatory criticism. The gold medal was also won by my friend
Jens Paludan-Mueller for a historic paper, and in October, at the annual
Ceremony at the University, we were presented with the thin medal
bearing the figure of Athene, which, for my part, being in need of a
Winter overcoat, I sold next day. Clausen, the Rector, a little man with
regular features, reserved face and smooth white hair, said to us that
he hoped this might prove the first fruits of a far-reaching activity in
the field of Danish literature. But what gave me much greater pleasure
was that I was shaken hands with by Monrad, who was present as Minister
for Education. Although Clausen was well known, both as a theologian and
an important National Liberal, I cared nothing for him. But I was a
little 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 together
to offer our congratulations to Frederik Nutzhorn, whose birthday it
was. His sisters received me with their usual cheerfulness, but their
father, the old doctor, remarked as I entered: "You come with grave
thoughts in your mind, too," for the general uneasiness occasioned by
Frederik VII's state of health was reflected in my face. There was good
reason for anxiety concerning all the future events of which an
unfavourable 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 inhaling
and exhaling of the breath; the resting-point of the breathing was the
moment of actual consciousness, etc.; altogether very young, curious,
and confused.

In the afternoon came the news of the King's death. In the evening, at
the Students' Union, there was great commotion and much anxiety. There
were rumours of a change of Ministry, of a Bluhme-David-Ussing Ministry,
and of whether the new King would be willing to sign the Constitution
from which people childishly expected the final incorporation of Slesvig
into Denmark. That evening I made the acquaintance of the poet Christian
Richardt, who told me that he had noticed my face before he knew my
name. Julius Lange was exceedingly exasperated and out of spirits. Ploug
went down the stairs looking like a man whose hopes had been shattered,
and whom the blow had found unprepared. His paper had persistently sown
distrust of the Prince of Denmark.

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

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

Then the King came forward. There were loud shouts, doubtless some cries
of "Long live the King," but still more and louder shouts of: "The
Constitution forever!" which were by no means loyally intended. At a
distance, from the Castle balcony, the different shouts could, of
course, not be distinguished. As the King took them all to be shouts of
acclamation, he bowed politely several times, and as the shouts
continued kissed his hand to right and left. The effect was not what he
had intended. His action was not understood as a simple-hearted
expression of pure good-will. People were used to a very different
bearing on the part of their King. With all his faults and foibles,
Frederik VII was always in manner the Father of his people; always the
graceful superior; head up and shoulders well back, patronisingly and
affectionately waving his hand: "Thank you, my children, thank you! And
now go home and say 'Good-morning' to your wives and children from the
King!" One could not imagine Frederik VII bowing to the people, much
less kissing his hand to them.

There was a stormy meeting of the Students' Union that evening. Vilhelm
Rode made the principal speech and caustically emphasised that it took
more than a "Kiss of the hand and a parade bow" to win the hearts of the
Danish people. The new dynasty, the head of which had been abused for
years by the National Liberal press, especially in _The Fatherland_,
who had thrown suspicion of German sympathies on the heir-presumptive, was
still so weak that none of the students thought it necessary to take much
notice of the change of sovereigns that had taken place. This was partly
because since Frederik VII's time people had been accustomed to
indiscriminate free speech concerning the King's person--it was the
fashion and meant nothing, as he was beloved by the body of the people
--partly because what had happened was not regarded as irrevocable. All
depended on whether the King signed the Constitution, and even the coolest
and most conservative, who considered that his signing it would be a fatal
misfortune, thought it possible that Christian IX. would be dethroned if
he did not. So it is not difficult to form some idea of how the Hotspurs
talked. The whole town was in a fever, and it was said that Prince Oscar
was in Scania, ready at the first sign to cross the Sound and allow
himself to be proclaimed King on behalf of Charles XV. Men with
Scandinavian sympathies hoped for this solution, by means of which the
three kingdoms would have been united without a blow being struck.

In the middle of the meeting, there arrived a message from Crone, the
Head of Police, which was delivered verbally in this incredibly
irregular form--that the Head of Police was as good a Scandinavian as
anyone, but he begged the students for their own sakes to refrain from
any 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 the
crowd, and in the evening at the meeting of the students was auditor to
the passionate utterances let fall there, felt my mood violently swayed,
but was altogether undecided with regard to the political question, the
compass of which I could not fully perceive. I felt anxious as to the
attitude of foreign powers would be in the event of the signing of the
Constitution. Old C.N. David had said in his own home that if the matter
should depend on him, which, however, he hoped it would not, he would
not permit the signing of the Constitution, were he the only man in
Denmark of that way of thinking, since by so doing we should lose our
guarantee of existence, and get two enemies instead of one, Russia as
well as Germany.

The same evening I wrote down: "It is under such circumstances as these
that one realises how difficult it is to lead a really ethical
existence. I am not far-sighted enough to perceive what would be the
results of that which to me seems desirable, and one cannot
conscientiously 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 so
excited that I even detected in myself an inclination to come forward as
a political speaker, greenhorn though I be."


XIII.

On the 18th of November, the fever in the town was at its height. From
early in the morning the space in front of the Castle was crowded with
people. Orla Lehmann, a Minister at the time, came out of the Castle,
made his way through the crowd, and shouted again and again, first to
one 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 and
kaleidoscopic alteration of the political situation. Relations with all
foreign powers, and even with Sweden and Norway, presented a different
aspect to the Danish public every week. Sweden's withdrawal created a
very bitter impression; the public had been induced to believe that an
alliance was concluded. Then followed the "pressure" in Copenhagen by
the emissaries of all the Powers, to induce the Government to recall the
November Constitution, then the Czar's letter to the Duke of
Augustenborg, finally the occupation of Holstein by German troops, with
all the censure and disgrace that the Danish army had to endure, for
Holstein was evacuated without a blow being struck, and the Duke, to the
accompanyment of scorn and derision heaped on the Danes, was proclaimed
in 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 head
of the country, and in connection with this a rumour that all young men
of twenty-one were to be called out at once. This last proved to be
incorrect, and the minds of the young men alternated between composure
at the prospect of war and an enthusiastic desire for war, and a belief
that 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 help
in the event of the Eider being passed, people began to hope that the
war might be avoided, and pinned their faith to Monrad's dictatorship.

Frederik Nutzhorn, who did not believe there would be a war, started on
a visit to Rome; Jens Paludan-Mueller, who had been called out, was
quartered at Rendsborg until the German troops marched in; Julius Lange,
who, as he had just become engaged, did not wish to see his work
interrupted and his future prospects delayed by the war, had gone to
Islingen, where he had originally made the acquaintance of his fiancee.
Under these circumstances, as a twenty-one-year-old student who had
completed his university studies, I was anxious to get my examination
over as quickly as possible. At the end of 1863 I wrote to my teacher,
Professor Broechner, who had promised me a short philosophical summary as
a preparation for the University test: "I shall sit under a conjunction
of all the most unfavourable circumstances possible, since for more than
a month my head has been so full of the events of the day that I have
been able neither to read nor think, while the time of the examination
itself promises to be still more disquiet. Still, I dare not draw back,
as I should then risk--which may possibly happen in any case--being
hindered from my examination by being called out by the conscription and
perhaps come to lie in my grave as _Studiosus_ instead of
_candidatus magisterii_, which latter looks infinitely more
impressive and is more satisfying to a man as greedy of honour as Your
respectful 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 remembered
examining, and accorded me a whole hour's conversation. He was, as
always, alert and fiery, not in the least blase, but with a slight
suggestion of charlatanism about him. His conversation was as lively and
disconnected as his lectures; there was a charm in the clear glance of
his green eyes, a look of genius about his face. He talked for a long
time about Herbart, whose Aesthetics, for that matter, he betrayed
little knowledge of, then of Hegel, Heiberg, and Kierkegaard. To my
intense surprise, he opened up a prospect, conflicting with the opinions
he had publicly advocated, that Science, "when analyses had been carried
far enough," might come to prove the possibility of miracles. This was
an offence against my most sacred convictions.

Nielsen had recently, from the cathedra, announced his renunciation of
the Kierkegaard standpoint he had so long maintained, in the phrase:
"The Kierkegaard theory is impracticable"; he had, perhaps influenced
somewhat by the Queen Dowager, who about that time frequently invited
him to meet Grundtvig, drawn nearer to Grundtvigian ways of thinking,--
as Broechner sarcastically remarked about him: "The farther from
Kierkegaard, 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 over
Duty and Life, and was startled by the indescribable irony in the word
by which I was accustomed to interpret my ethically religious
endeavours,--_Himmelspraet_. [Footnote: Word implying one who
attempts to spring up to Heaven, and of course falls miserably to earth
again. The word, in ordinary conversation, is applied to anyone tossed
in a blanket.]

I handed in, then, my request to be allowed to sit for my Master of Arts
examination; the indefatigable Broechner had already mentioned the matter
to the Dean of the University, who understood the examinee's reasons for
haste. But the University moved so slowly that it was some weeks before
I received the special paper set me, which, to my horror, ran as
follows: "Determine the correlation between the pathetic and the
symbolic in general, in order by that means to elucidate the contrast
between Shakespeare's tragedies and Dante's _Divina Commedia_,
together with the possible errors into which one might fall through a
one-sided preponderance of either of these two elements."

This paper, which had been set by R. Nielsen, is characteristic of the
purely speculative manner, indifferent to all study of history, in which
Aesthetics were at that time pursued in Copenhagen. It was, moreover,
worded with unpardonable carelessness; it was impossible to tell from it
what was to be understood by the correlation on which it was based, and
which was assumed to be a given conclusion. Even so speculative a
thinker as Frederik Paludan-Mueller called the question absolutely
meaningless. It looked as though its author had imagined Shakespeare's
dramas and Dante's epic were produced by a kind of artistic commingling
of pathetic with symbolic elements, and as though he wished to call
attention to the danger of reversing the correct proportions, for
instance, by the symbolic obtaining the preponderance in tragedy, or
pathos in the epopee, or to the danger of exaggerating these
proportions, until there was too much tragic pathos, or too much epic
symbolism. But a scientific definition of the expressions used was
altogether lacking, and I had to devote a whole chapter to the
examination of the meaning of the problem proposed to me.

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

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

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

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

_Monday, Feb. 1st_. Heard to-day that the Germans have passed the
Eider 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 been
abandoned without a blow being struck. This is indescribable,
overwhelming.

_Thursday, Feb. 28th_. We may, unfortunately, assume it as certain
that my dear friend Jens Paludan-Mueller fell at Oversoe on Feb. 5th.

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


XV.

I thought about this time of nothing but my desire to become a competent
soldier of my country. There was nothing I wanted more, but I felt
physically very weak. When the first news of the battles of Midsunde and
Bustrup arrived, I was very strongly inclined to follow Julius Lange to
the Reserve Officers' School. When tidings came of the abandonment of
the Danevirke my enthusiasm cooled; it was as though I foresaw how
little prospect of success there was. Still, I was less melancholy than
Lange at the thought of going to the war. I was single, and delighted at
the thought of going straight from the examination-table into a camp
life, and from a book-mad student to become a lieutenant. I was
influenced most by the prospect of seeing Lange every day at the
Officers' School, and on the field. But my comrades explained to me that
even if Lange and I came out of the School at the same time, it did not
follow 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 the
least good, or having the slightest likelihood in front of me of doing
anything but quickly find myself in hospital. I did not really think
myself that I should be able to stand the fatigue, as the pupils of the
military academy went over to the army with an equipment that I could
scarcely have carried. I could not possibly suppose that the
conscription would select me as a private, on account of my fragile
build; but like all the rest, I was expecting every day a general
ordering out of the fit men of my age.

All this time I worked with might and main at the development of my
physical strength and accomplishments. I went every day to fencing
practice, likewise to cavalry sword practice; I took lessons in the use
of the bayonet, and I took part every afternoon in the shooting
practices conducted by the officers--with the old muzzle-loaders which
were the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr.
Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holstein
non-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "A
smart fencer."


XVI.

Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, I
here reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to in
writing were:

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

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

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

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

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

2. Point out the special contributions to a philosophical definition of
the 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 be
designated a piece of contemporary history; they depict exactly both the
Science 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 six
hours' notice on April 25th, the judges, Hauch, Nielsen and Broechner,
deliberated for about ten minutes, then called in the auditors and R.
Nielsen read aloud the following verdict: "The candidate, in his long
essay, in the shorter written tests, and in his oral lectures, has
manifested such knowledge of his subject, such intellectual maturity,
and such originality in the treatment of his themes, that we have on
that account unanimously awarded him the mark: _admissus cum laude
praecipua_."


XVII.

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

In Broechner's house, too, there was a great deal said about my becoming
a professor. I myself was despondent about it; I thought only of the
war, only wished to be fit for a soldier. Hauch was pleased at my
wanting 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 himself
was 73), he started up in his chair and said:

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

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

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


XVIII.

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

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

I was very far from regarding this peace as final; for that, I was too
inexperienced. I correctly foresaw that before very long the state of
affairs in Europe would give rise to other wars, but I incorrectly
concluded therefrom that another fight for Slesvig, or in any case, its
restoration to Denmark, would result from them.

In the meantime peace, discouraging, disheartening though it was, opened
up possibilities of further undisturbed study, fresh absorption in
scientific occupations.

When, after the termination of my University studies, I had to think of
earning my own living, I not only, as before, gave private lessons, but
I gave lectures, first to a circle before whom I lectured on Northern
and Greek mythology, then to another, in David's house, to whom I
unfolded the inner history of modern literature to interested listeners,
amongst them several beautiful young girls. I finally engaged myself to
my old Arithmetic master as teacher of Danish in his course for National
school-mistresses. I found the work horribly dull, but there was one
racy thing about it, namely, that I, the master, was three years younger
than the youngest of my pupils; these latter were obliged to be at least
25, 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 or
schoolmaster's widow, of over fifty, a poor thing who had to begin--at
her 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 to
make himself respected. But I succeeded, my pupils being so well-
behaved.

It was an exciting moment when these pupils of mine went up for their
teacher'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 very
great deal of _belles-lettres_, and continued to work at German
philosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plunged
into a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much more
stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism.
It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before his
time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a
most abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyes
and independent thoughts, was an emancipating phenomenon. He had
divested himself of all Danish prejudices. "There is still a great deal
of phlogiston in our philosophy," he used to say sometimes.

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

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

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

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


XX.

I had lived so little with Nature. The Spring of 1865, the first Spring
I had spent in the country--although quite near to Copenhagen--meant to
me rich impressions of nature that I never forgot, a long chain of the
most exquisite Spring memories. I understood as I had never done before
the inborn affection felt by every human being for the virgin, the
fresh, the untouched, the not quite full-blown, just as it is about to
pass over into its maturity. It was in the latter half of May. I was
looking for anemones and violets, which had not yet gone to seed. The
budding beech foliage, the silver poplar with its shining leaves, the
maple with its blossoms, stirred me, filled me with Spring rapture. I
could lie long in the woods with my gaze fastened on a light-green
branch with the sun shining through it, and, as if stirred by the wind,
lighted up from different sides, and floating and flashing as if coated
with 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 a
rivulet oozed slowly along. Then came a little fall, and it began to
speak, to gurgle and murmur; but only at this one place, and here it
seemed to me to be like a young man or woman of twenty. Now that I, who
in my boyhood's days had gone for botanical excursions with my master
and school-fellows, absorbed myself in every plant, from greatest to
least, without wishing to arrange or classify any, it seemed as though
an infinite wisdom in Nature were being revealed to me for the first
time.

As near to Copenhagen as Soendermarken, stood the beech, with its curly
leaves and black velvet buds in their silk jackets. In the gardens of
Frederiksberg Avenue, the elder exhaled its fragrance, but was soon
over; the hawthorn sprang out in all its splendour. I was struck by the
loveliness of the chestnut blooms. When the blossom on the cherry-trees
had withered, the lilac was out, and the apple and pear-trees paraded
their gala dress.

It interested me to notice how the colour sometimes indicated the shape,
sometimes produced designs quite independently of it. I loitered in
gardens to feast my eyes on the charming grouping of the rhubarb leaves
no less than on the exuberance of their flowers, and the leaves of the
scorzonera 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 my
own, and I strove to understand in what beauty consisted. I considered
the relations between beauty and life; why was it that artificial
flowers and the imitation of a nightingale's song were so far behind
their originals in beauty? What was the difference between the beauty of
the real, the artificial and the painted flower? Might not Herbart's
Aesthetics be wrong, in their theory of form? The form itself might be
the same in Nature and the imitation, in the rose made of velvet and the
rose growing in the garden. And I reflected on the connection between
the beauty of the species and that of the individual. Whether a lily be
a beautiful flower, I can say without ever having seen lilies before,
but whether it be a beautiful lily, I cannot. The individual can only be
termed 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 and
intellectual conditions. Was not the death of Socrates more beautiful
than his preservation of Alcibiades' life in battle?--though this was
none the less a beautiful act.


XXI.

In the month of July I started on a walking tour through Jutland, with
the scenery of which province I had not hitherto been acquainted;
travelled also occasionally by the old stage-coaches, found myself at
Skanderborg, which, for me, was surrounded by the halo of mediaeval
romance; wandered to Silkeborg, entering into conversation with no end
of 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 often
over-full, so that I was obliged to sleep on the floor; my wanderings
were often somewhat exhausting, as there were constant showers, and the
night rain had soaked the roads. I drove in a peasant's cart to Mariager
to visit my friend Emil Petersen, who was in the office of the district
judge of that place, making his home with his brother-in-law and his
very pretty sister, and I stayed for a few days with him. Here I became
acquainted with a little out-of-the-world Danish town. The priest and
his wife were an interesting and extraordinary couple. The priest, the
before-mentioned Pastor Ussing, a little, nervous, intelligent and
unworldly man, was a pious dreamer, whose religion was entirely
rationalistic. Renan's recently published _Life of Jesus_ was so
far from shocking him that the book seemed to him in all essentials to
be on the right track. He had lived in the Danish West Indies, and there
he had become acquainted with his wife, a lady with social triumphs
behind her, whose charms he never wearied of admiring. The mere way in
which she placed her hat upon her head, or threw a shawl round her
shoulders, could make him fall into ecstasies, even though he only
expressed his delight in her in half-facetious terms. This couple showed
me the most cordial kindness; to their unpractised, provincial eyes, I
seemed to be a typical young man of the world, and they amazed me with
the way in which they took it for granted that I led the dances at every
ball, was a lion in society, etc. I was reminded of the student's words
in Hostrup's vaudeville: "Goodness! How innocent they must be to think
_me_ a dandy!" and vainly assured them that I lived an exceedingly
unnoticed 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, and
promised that we should be pleased with it. We went to church somewhat
expectant, and the sermon was certainly a most unusual one. It was
delivered with great rapture, after the priest had bent his head in his
hands for a time in silent reflection. With great earnestness he
addressed himself to his congregation and demanded, after having put
before them some of the cures in the New Testament, generally extolled
as miracles, whether they dared maintain that these so-called miracles
could not have taken place according to Nature's laws. And when he
impressively called out: "Darest thou, with thy limited human
intelligence, say, 'This cannot happen naturally?'" it was in the same
tone and style in which another priest would have shouted out: "Darest
thou, with thy limited human intelligence, deny the miracle?" The
peasants, who, no doubt, understood his words quite in this latter
sense, 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 with
caressing words or caressingly with abusive words, simply from the
speaker's tone; and both his tone and facial expression were ecstatic.
They perceived no heresy and felt themselves no less edified by the
address than did the two young Copenhagen graduates.


XXII.

My first newspaper articles were printed in _The Fatherland_ and
the _Illustrated Times_; the very first was a notice of Paludan-
Mueller's _Fountain of Youth_, in which I had compressed matter for
three or four lectures; a commissioned article on Dante was about the
next, but this was of no value. But it was a great event to see one's
name printed in a newspaper for the first time, and my mother saw it not
without emotion.

About this time Henrik Ibsen's first books fell into my hands and
attracted my attention towards this rising poet, who, among the leading
Danish critics, encountered a reservation of appreciation that scarcely
concealed ill-will. From Norway I procured Ibsen's oldest dramas, which
had appeared there.

Frederik Algreen-Ussing asked me to contribute to a large biographical
dictionary, which he had for a long time been planning and preparing,
and which he had just concluded a contract for with the largest Danish
publishing firm of the time. A young man who hated the August
Association and all its deeds could not fail to feel scruples about
engaging in any collaboration with its founder. But Algreen-Ussing knew
how to vanquish all such scruples, inasmuch as he waived all rights of
censorship, and left it to each author to write as he liked upon his own
responsibility. And he was perfectly loyal to his promise. Moreover, the
question here was one of literature only, and not politics.

As the Danish authors were to be dealt with in alphabetical order, the
article that had to be set about at once was an account of the only
Danish poet whose name began with _Aa_. Thus it was that Emil
Aarestrup came to be the first Danish poet of the past of whom I chanced
to write. I heard of the existence of a collection of unprinted letters
from Aarestrup to his friend Petersen, the grocer, which were of very
great advantage to my essay. A visit that I paid to the widow of the
poet, on the other hand, led to no result whatever. It was strange to
meet 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 not
give me any information about him. It was only a generation later that
his letters to her came into my hands.

In September, 1865, the article on Aarestrup was finished. It was
intended to be quickly followed up by others on the remaining Danish
authors in A. But it was the only one that was written, for Algreen-
Ussing's apparently so well planned undertaking was suddenly brought to
a standstill. The proprietors of the National Liberal papers declared,
as soon as they heard of the plan, that they would not on any account
agree 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 to
annihilate the undertaking, the publishers, who were altogether
dependent on the attitude of these papers, did not dare to defy them.
They explained to Algreen-Ussing that they felt obliged to break their
contract with him, but were willing to pay him the compensation agreed
upon beforehand for failure to carry it out. He fought long to get his
project carried through, but his efforts proving fruitless, he refused,
from pride, to accept any indemnity, and was thus compelled to see with
bitterness many years' work and an infinite amount of trouble completely
wasted. Shortly afterwards he succumbed to an attack of illness.


XXIII.

A young man who plunged into philosophical study at the beginning of the
sixties in Denmark, and was specially engrossed by the boundary
relations between Philosophy and Religion, could not but come to the
conclusion that philosophical life would never flourish in Danish soil
until a great intellectual battle had been set on foot, in the course of
which conflicting opinions which had never yet been advanced in express
terms should be made manifest and wrestle with one another, until it
became clear which standpoints were untenable and which could be
maintained. Although he cherished warm feelings of affection for both R.
Nielsen and Broechner the two professors of Philosophy, he could not help
hoping for a discussion between them of the fundamental questions which
were engaging his mind. As Broechner's pupil, I said a little of what was
in my mind to him, but could not induce him to begin. Then I begged
Gabriel Sibbern to furnish a thorough criticism of Nielsen's books, but
he declined. I began to doubt whether I should be able to persuade the
elder men to speak.

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

In an eleven-page letter to Broechner I condensed all that I had thought
about the philosophical study at the University during these first years
of 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 come
forward, and that it would be foolish, in fact wrong, to leave the
matter alone. I knew well enough that I was jeopardising my precious
friendship with Broechner by my action, but I was willing to take the
risk. I did not expect any immediate result of my letter, but thought to
myself that it should ferment, and some time in the future might bear
fruit. The outcome of it far exceeded my expectations, inasmuch as
Broechner was moved by my letter, and not only thanked me warmly for my
daring words, but went without delay to Nielsen and told him that he
intended to write a book on his entire philosophical activity and
significance. Nielsen took his announcement with a good grace.

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

At that I felt that I myself must venture, and, as a beginning, Julius
Lange and I, in collaboration, wrote a humorous article on Schmidt's
review of _The Logic of Fundamental Ideas_, which Lange was to get
into _The Daily Paper_, to which he had access. Three days after
the article was finished Lange came to me and told me that to his dismay
it was--gone. It was so exactly like him that I was just as delighted as
if he had informed me that the article was printed. For some time we
hoped that it might be on Lange's table, for, the day before, he had
said:

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

However, it had irrevocably disappeared.

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

The first article was not printed for months; the next ones appeared
without such long delay. But Ploug was somewhat uneasy about the
contents of them, and cautiously remarked that there was "not to be any
fun 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 me
from the paper as soon as he perceived my mischievous tendency. This was
a failure of memory on his part; the reason I left the paper was a
different one, and I left of my own accord.

Bold and surly, virile and reliable as Ploug seemed, in things
journalistic you could place slight dependence on his word. His dearest
friend admitted as much; he gave his consent, and then forgot it, or
withdrew it. Nothing is more general, but it made an overweening
impression on a beginner like myself, inexperienced in the ways of life.

When Ibsen's _Brand_ came out, creating an unusual sensation, I
asked 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 the
remark that the paper had now received another notice from their regular
reviewer, whom he "could not very well kick aside." Ploug's promise had
apparently been meaningless! I went my way with my article, firmly
resolved never to go there again.

From 1866 to 1870 I sought and found acceptance for my newspaper
articles (not very numerous) in Bille's _Daily Paper_, which in its
turn closed its columns to me after my first series of lectures at the
University of Copenhagen. Bille as an editor was pleasant, a little
patronising, it is true, but polite and invariably good-tempered. He
usually received his contributors reclining at full length on his sofa,
his head, with its beautifully cut features, resting against a cushion
and his comfortable little stomach protruding. He was scarcely of medium
height, quick in everything he did, very clear, a little flat; very
eloquent, but taking somewhat external views; pleased at the great
favour he enjoyed among the Copenhagen bourgeoisie. If he entered
Tivoli's Concert Hall in an evening all the waiter's ran about at once
like cockroaches. They hurried to know what he might please to want, and
fetched chairs for him and his party. Gay, adaptable, and practised, he
was the principal speaker at every social gathering. In his editorial
capacity he was courteous, decided, and a man of his word; he did not
allow himself to be alarmed by trifles. When Bjoernson attacked me (I was
at the time his youngest contributor), he raised my scale of pay,
unsolicited. The first hitch in our relations occurred when in 1869 I
published a translation of Mill's Subjection of Women. This book roused
Bille's exasperation and displeasure. He forbade it to be reviewed in
his paper, refused me permission to defend it in the paper, and would
not even allow the book in his house, so that his family had to read it
clandestinely, as a dangerous and pernicious work.


XXIV.

In the beginning of the year 1866 Ludvig David died suddenly in Rome, of
typhoid fever. His sorrowing parents founded in memory of him an
exhibition for law-students which bears and perpetuates his name. The
first executors of the fund were, in addition to his most intimate
friend, two young lawyers named Emil Petersen and Emil Bruun, who had
both been friends of his. The latter, who has not previously been
mentioned in these pages, was a strikingly handsome and clever young
man, remarkable for his calm and superior humour, and exceedingly self-
confident and virile. His attitude towards Ludvig David in his early
youth had been somewhat that of a protector. Unfortunately he was
seriously wounded during the first storming of the Dybboel redoubts by
the Germans; a bullet crushed one of the spinal vertebrae; gradually the
wound brought on consumption of the lungs and he died young.

Ludvig David's death was a great loss to his friends. It was not only
that he took such an affectionate interest in their welfare and
happiness, but he had a considerable gift for Mathematics and History,
and, from his home training, an understanding of affairs of state which
was considerably above that of most people. Peculiarly his own was a
combination of keen, disintegrating intelligence, and a tendency towards
comprehensive, rounded off, summarising. He had strong public
antipathies. In his opinion the years of peace that had followed the
first war in Slesvig had had an enervating effect; public speakers and
journalists had taken the places of brave men; many a solution of a
difficulty, announced at first with enthusiasm, had in course of time
petrified into a mere set phrase. He thought many of the leading men
among the Liberals superficial and devoid of character, and accused
them, with the pitilessness of youth, of mere verbiage. Influenced as he
was by Kierkegaard, such a man as Bille was naturally his aversion. He
considered--not altogether justly--that Bille cloaked himself in false
earnestness.

He himself was profoundly and actively philanthropic, with an impulse--
by no means universal--to relieve and help. Society life he hated; to
him it was waste of time and a torture to be obliged to figure in a
ballroom; he cared very little for his appearance, and was by no means
elegant in his dress. He was happy, however, in the unconstrained
society of the comrades he cared about, enjoyed a merry chat or a
frolicsome party, and in intimate conversation he would reveal his
inmost nature with modest unpretension, with good-natured wit, directed
against himself as much as against others, and with an understanding and
sympathetic eye for his surroundings. His warmest outburst had generally
a little touch of mockery or teasing about it, as though he were
repeating, half roguishly, the feelings of another, rather than
unreservedly expressing his own. But a heartfelt, steadfast look would
often come into his beautiful dark eyes.


XXV.

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

"Strange how one ends as one begins! I have written no verses since my
early youth, and now I have written a poem on my grief for Ludvig. I
will 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, he
took me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreign
capital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I no longer, it is
true, had the same intense boyish impressionability as when I was in
Sweden for the first time, seven years before. The most trifling thing
then had been an experience. In Goeteborg I had stayed with a friend of
my mother's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, Bluma Alida, a wondrously
charming little maiden, had jokingly been destined by the two mothers
for my bride from the child's very birth. And at that time I had
assimilated every impression of people or scenery with a voracious
appetite which rendered these impressions ineffaceable all my life long.
That Summer month, my fancy had transformed every meeting with a young
girl into an adventure and fixed every landscape on my mental retina
with an affection such as the landscape painter generally only feels for
a place where he is specially at home. Then I had shared for a whole
month Goeteborg family and social life. Now I was merely travelling as a
tourist, and as the companion of a highly respected old man.

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

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

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

One recollection from these weeks is associated with a night when the
sky was overcast. I had wandered round the town, before retiring to
rest, 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 got
there, and threw them away. When I was nearly back at the hotel it
flashed upon me that it had been small Swedish notes--all the money that
I had changed for my stay in Stockholm--that I had been carrying loose
in my pocket and had so thoughtlessly thrown away. With a great deal of
trouble, I found the square again, but of course not a sign of the
riches that in unpardonable forgetfulness I had scattered to the winds.
I was obliged to borrow six Rigsdaler (a sum of a little over thirteen
shillings) from my old protector. That my requirements were modest is
proved by the fact that this sum sufficed.

The Danish Ambassador was absent from Stockholm just at this time, and
the Charge d'Affaires at the Legation had to receive the Danish ex-
Minister in his stead. He was very attentive to us, and took the
travellers everywhere where C.N. David wished his arrival to be made
known. He himself, however, was a most unfortunate specimen of Danish
diplomacy, a man disintegrated by hideous debauchery, of coarse
conversation, and disposition so brutal that he kicked little children
aside with his foot when they got in front of him in the street.
Abnormities of too great irregularity brought about, not long
afterwards, 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 in
Stockholm were invited. It was held at Hasselbakken, [Footnote: a
favourite outdoor pleasure resort at Stockholm.] and the arrangements
were magnificent. But what highly astonished me, and was in reality most
out of keeping in such a circle, was the tone that the conversation at
table gradually assumed, and especially the obscenity of the subjects of
conversation. It was not, however, the Ministers and Diplomats present,
but a Danish roue, a professor of Physics, who gave this turn to the
talk. He related anecdotes that would have made a sailor blush. Neither
Count Manderstroem, nor any of the other Ministers, neither Malmgren, nor
the dignified and handsome Norwegian Minister Bretteville, seemed to be
offended. Manderstroem's expression, however, changed very noticeably
when the professor ventured to make some pointed insinuations regarding
the Swedish attitude, and his personal attitude in particular, previous
to the Dano-German war and during its course. He suddenly pretended not
to understand, and changed the subject of conversation.

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

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




FIRST LONG SOJOURN ABROAD

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


I.

I had wished for years to see Paris, the city that roused my most devout
feelings. As a youth I had felt a kind of reverent awe for the French
Revolution, which represented to me the beginning of human conditions
for all those who were not of the favoured among men,--and Paris was the
city of the Revolution. Moreover, it was the city of Napoleon, the only
ruler since Caesar who had seriously fascinated me, though my feelings
for him changed so much that now admiration, now aversion, got the upper
hand. And Paris was the city, too, of the old culture, the city of
Julian the Apostate, the city of the middle ages, that Victor Hugo had
portrayed in _Notre Dame de Paris_--the first book I had read in
French, difficult though it was with its many peculiar expressions for
Gothic arches and buttresses--and it was the city where Alfred de Musset
had written his poems and where Delacroix had painted. The Louvre and
the Luxembourg, the Theatre Francais and the Gymnase were immense
treasuries that tempted me. In the Autumn of 1866, when Gabriel Sibbern
started to Paris, somewhat before I myself could get away, my last words
to 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's
help, I had written against Nielsen's adjustment of the split between
Protestant orthodoxy and the scientific view of the universe, and which
I had called _Dualism in our Modern Philosophy_. I was not troubled
with any misgivings as to how I should get the book published. As long
ago as 1864 a polite, smiling, kindly man, who introduced himself to me
as Frederik Hegel, the bookseller, had knocked at the door of my little
room and asked me to let him print the essay which I had written for my
Master of Arts examination, and if possible he would also like the paper
which had won the University gold medal; and in fact, anything else I
might wish published. To my amazed reply that those essays were not
worth publishing, and that in general I did not consider what I wrote
sufficiently mature for publication, Hegel had first suggested that I
should leave that question to the publisher, and then, when he saw that
my refusal was honestly meant, had simply asked me to take my work to
him when I myself considered that the moment had arrived. On this
occasion, as on many others, the acute and daring publisher gave proof
of the _flair_ which made him the greatest in the North. He
accepted the little book without raising any difficulties, merely
remarking 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 mentioned
in the Press, its author was on his way to foreign parts.


III.

On one of the first days of November, I journeyed, in a tremendous
storm, to Luebeck, the characteristic buildings of which (the Church of
Mary, the Exchange, the Town-hall), together with the remains of the old
fortifications, aroused my keen interest. In this Hanse town, with its
strongly individual stamp, I found myself carried back three hundred
years.

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

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

At Cologne, where I had stood, reverential, in the noble forest of
pillars in the Cathedral, then afterwards, in my simplicity, allowed
someone to foist a whole case of Eau de Cologne upon me, I shortened my
stay, in my haste to see Paris. But, having by mistake taken a train
which would necessitate my waiting several hours at Liege, I decided
rather to continue my journey to Brussels and see that city too. The run
through Belgium seemed to me heavenly, as for a time I happened to be
quite alone in my compartment and I walked up and down, intoxicated with
the joy of travelling.

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

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

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

With a guide, whom in my ignorance I thought necessary, I saw the sights
of the town, and afterwards, for the first time, saw a French play. So
little experience of the world had I, that, during the interval, I left
my overcoat, which I had not given up to the attendant, lying on the
seat in the pit, and my neighbour had to explain to me that such great
confidence 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 interest
the priest in a Brussels church dispense "_indulgence pleniere_,"
or, in Flemish, _vollen aflaet_. I was interested in the curious
names 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 pretty
young Belgian girl named Marie Choteau, who was travelling with her
father, but talked all the time to her foreign fellow-traveller, and in
the course of conversation showed me a Belgian history and a Belgian
geography, from which it appeared that Belgium was the centre of the
globe, the world's most densely built over, most religious, and at the
same time most enlightened country, the one which, in proportion to its
size, had the most and largest industries. I gave her some of my
bountiful supply of Eau de Cologne.


IV.

The tiring night-journey, with its full four hours' wait at Liege, was
all pure enjoyment to me, and in a mood of mild ecstasy, at last, at
half-past ten on the morning of November 11th 1866, I made my entry into
Paris, and was received cordially by the proprietors of a modest but
clean little hotel which is still standing, No. 20 Rue Notre Dame des
Victoires, by the proprietors, two simple Lorrainers, Francois and
Mueller, to whom Gabriel Sibbern, who was staying there, had announced my
arrival. The same morning Sibbern guided my first steps to one of
Pasdeloup's great classical popular concerts.

In the evening, in spite of my fatigue after travelling all night, I
went to the Theatre Francais for the first time, and there, lost in
admiration of the masterly ensemble and the natural yet passionate
acting, with which I had hitherto seen nothing to compare, I saw
Girardin's _Le supplice d'une femme_, and Beaumarchais' _Le
mariage de Figaro_, in one evening making the acquaintance of such
stars as Regnier, Madame Favart, Coquelin and the Sisters Brohan.

Regnier especially, in his simple dignity, was an unforgettable figure,
being surrounded, moreover, in my eyes by the glory which the well-known
little 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 any
time for thinking over what I had seen, my impressions overwhelmed me at
night, till sometimes I could not sleep for sheer happiness. This, to
me, was happiness, an uninterrupted garnering of intellectual wealth in
association with objects that all appealed to my sympathies, and I wrote
home: "To be here, young, healthy, with alert senses, keen eyes and good
ears, with all the curiosity, eagerness to know, love of learning, and
susceptibility to every impression, that is youth's own prerogative, and
to have no worries about home, all that is so great a happiness that I
am sometimes tempted, like Polycrates, to fling the handsome ring I had
from Christian Richardt in the gutter."

For the rest, I was too fond of characteristic architecture to feel
attracted by the building art displayed in the long, regular streets of
Napoleon III, and too permeated with national prejudices to be able at
once to appreciate French sculpture. I was justified in feeling repelled
by many empty allegorical pieces on public monuments, but during the
first weeks I lacked perception for such good sculpture as is to be
found in the _foyer_ of the Theatre Francais. "You reel at every
step," I wrote immediately after my arrival, "that France has never had a
Thorwaldsen, and that Denmark possesses an indescribable treasure in
him. We are and remain, in three or four directions, the first nation in
Europe. This is pure and simple truth."

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

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

I was immensely interested in the art treasures from all over the world
collected in the Louvre. Every single morning, after eating my modest
breakfast at a _cremerie_ near the chateau, I paid my vows in the
_Salon carre_ and then absorbed myself in the other halls. The
gallery 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. Leonardo
and the Venetians spoke to me here for the first time. French painting
and sculpture, Puget and Houdon, Clouet and Delacroix, and the French
art that was modern then, I learnt for the first time to love and
appreciate at the Luxembourg.

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

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

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 intellectually
belonged to Italy or the Netherlands; it was French culture, the best
that 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, and
French intellectual life, I was unexpectedly admitted to constant
association with men and women of the other leading Romance races,
Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Brazilians.

Broechner had given me a letter of introduction to Costanza Testa, a
friend of his youth, now married to Count Oreste Blanchetti and living
in Paris, with her somewhat older sister Virginia, a kind-hearted and
amiable woman of the world. The latter had married in Brazil, as her
second husband, the Italian banker Pagella, and to their house came, not
only Italians and other European Southerners, but members of the South
American colony.

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

I was sincerely attached to the two sisters, and felt myself at ease in
their house, although the conversation there was chiefly carried on in a
language of which I understood but little, since French was spoken only
on my account. The only shadow over my pleasure at spending my evenings
in the Rue Valois du Roule was the fact that this necessitated my
missing some acts at the Theatre Francais, for which the Danish
Minister, through the Embassy, had procured me a free pass. Certainly no
Dane was ever made so happy by the favour. They were enraptured hours
that I spent evening after evening in the French national theatre, where
I became thoroughly acquainted with the modern, as well as the
classical, dramatic repertoire,--an acquaintance which was further
fortified during my long stay in Paris in 1870.

I enjoyed the moderation of the best actors, their restraint, and
subordination of self to the role and the general effect. It is true
that 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 with
the great representatives of the Danish stage, such as Michael Wiehe,
Johanne Luise Heiberg, or Phister. But I perceived at once that the
mannerisms of these latter would not be tolerated here for a moment;
here, under the influence of this artistic whole-harmony, they would
never have been able to give free vent to individuality and peculiarity
as they did at home.

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


V.

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

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

The first time I entered the house, as a future pupil, I found the young
lady, dressed in a plain black silk dress, surrounded by a circle of
toddlers of both sexes, for whom she had a sort of school, and whom on
my arrival she sent away. She had a pretty figure, a face that was
attractive without being beautiful, a large mouth with good teeth, and
dark brown hair. Her features were a little indefinite, her face rather
broad than oval, her eyes brown and affectionate. She had at any rate
the 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 mistakes
in pronunciation and grammar that I made in conversation. But we could
not get up any proper conversation. She was evidently bored by the
lessons, which she had only undertaken for the sake of the fees. If I
began to tell her anything, she only half listened, and yawned with all
her might very often and very loudly, although she politely put her hand
in front of her large mouth. There only came a little animation into her
expression when I either pronounced as badly as I had been taught by my
French master at school, or made some particularly ludicrous mistake,
such as _c'est tout egal_ for _bien egal_. At other times she
was distracted, sleepy, her thoughts elsewhere.

After having tried vainly for a few times to interest the young lady by
my communications, I grew tired of the lessons. Moreover, they were of
very little advantage to me, for the simple reason that my youthful
teacher had not the very slightest scientific or even grammatical
knowledge of her own tongue, and consequently could never answer my
questions 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 such
a manner. I began to neglect my lessons, sometimes made an excuse, but
oftener remained away without offering any explanation.

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

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

She began to take an interest herself in this eldest pupil of hers, who
at 24 years of age looked 20 and who was acquainted with all sorts of
things about conditions, countries, and people of which she knew
nothing.

She had been so strictly brought up that nearly all secular reading was
forbidden to her, and she had never been to any theatre, not even the
Theatre Francais. She had not read Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Musset,
had not even dared to read _Paul et Virginie_, only knew expurgated
editions of Corneille, Racine and Moliere. She was sincerely clerical,
had early been somewhat influenced by her cousin, later the well-known
Roman Catholic author, Ernest Hello, and in our conversations was always
ready to take the part of the Jesuits against Pascal; what the latter
had attacked were some antiquated and long-abandoned doctrinal books;
even if there were defects in the teaching of certain Catholic
ecclesiastics, their lives at any rate were exemplary, whereas the
contrary was the case with the free-thinking men of science; their
teaching was sometimes unassailable, but the lives they led could not be
taken seriously.

When we two young people got into a dispute, we gradually drew nearer to
one another. Our remarks contradicted each other, but an understanding
came about between our eyes. One day, as I was about to leave, she
called me back from the staircase, and, very timidly, offered me an
orange. The next time she blushed slightly when I came in. She
frequently sent me cards of admission to the Athenee, a recently started
institution, in which lectures were given by good speakers. She began to
look pleased at my coming and to express regret at the thought of my
departure.

On New Year's day, as a duty gift, I had sent her a bouquet of white
flowers, 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." From
that time forth she spoke more and more often of how empty it would be
for her when I was gone. I was not in love with her, but was too young
for her feelings, so unreservedly expressed, to leave me unaffected, and
likewise young enough to imagine that she expected me before long to ask
for her hand. So I soon informed her that I did not feel so warmly
towards her as she did towards me, and that I was not thinking of
binding myself for the present.

"Do you think me so poor an observer?" she replied, amazed. "I have
never made any claims upon you, even in my thoughts. But I owe you the
happiest 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 various
races present, I was introduced to a young lady, Mademoiselle Mathilde
M., who at first sight made a powerful impression upon me.

She was a young Spanish Brazilian, tall of stature, a proud and dazzling
racial beauty. The contours of her head were so impeccably perfect that
one scarcely understood how Nature could have made such a being
inadvertently, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion made the
carnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or crimson by the
side of hers. At the same time there was a something in the colour of
her skin that made me understand better the womanish appearance of
Zurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen in Nature
before. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the fashion of the
day, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick ringlets upon
her shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled, arched and
almost met over her delicate nose, her eyes were burning and a deep
brown; they conquered, and smiled; her mouth was a little too small,
with white teeth that were a little too large, her bust slender and
full. Her manner was distinguished, her voice rich; but most marvellous
of 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 feminine
creature I had ever seen, and that less on account of her loveliness
than 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, cared
only for the unusual, loved only "the impossible," but nevertheless
carefully observed every established custom of society. To my very first
remark to her, to the effect that the weakness of women was mostly only
an 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 she
was quite wrong.

Besides Spanish and Portuguese, she spoke French perfectly and English
not badly, sang in a melodious contralto voice, drew well for an
amateur, carved alabaster vases, and had all kinds of talents. She did
not 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 were
descended from Cervantes. As she had early been left motherless, her
father had sent her over in her fifteenth year to her aunt in Paris.
This latter was married to an old monstrosity of a Spaniard, religious
to the verge of insanity, who would seem to have committed some crime in
his youth and now spent his whole day in the church, which was next door
to his house, imploring forgiveness for his sins. He was only at home at
mealtimes, when he ate an alarming amount, and he associated only with
priests. The aunt herself, however, in spite of her age, was a pleasure-
seeking woman, rarely allowed her niece to stay at home and occupy
herself as she liked, but dragged her everywhere about with her to
parties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed,
but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was
like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and
magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well-
brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness
and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood
everything; but there was a certain sublimity in her manner.

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

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

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

My feelings, however, were much more admiration than love or desire. I
did not really want to possess her. I never felt myself quite on a level
with her even when she made decided advances to me. I rejoiced over her
as over something perfect, and there was the rich, foreign colouring
about 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 I
were 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, and
I sometimes felt as though I should be going away from my happiness
forever. She often asked me to stay with such expressions and with such
an expression that I was quite bewildered. And then she monopolised my
thoughts 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 more
odorous for that.

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

The young Frenchwoman, in her passion, found expressions for affection
and tenderness, in which she forgot all pride. She lived in a
commingling, very painful for me, of happiness at my still being in
Paris, and of horror at my approaching departure, which I was now about
to accelerate, merely to escape from the extraordinary situation in
which I found myself, and which I was too young to carry. Although
Mathilde, whom I had never seen alone, was always the same, quite the
great lady, perfectly self-controlled, it was the thought of saying
good-bye to her that was the more painful to me. Every other day, on the
other hand, Louise was trembling and ill, and I dreaded the moment of
separation.


VII.

I had not left off my daily work in Paris, but had read industriously at
the Imperial Library. I had also attended many lectures, some
occasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Leveque
and Taine.

Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begun
studying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of his
that I read was _The French Philosophers of the Nineteenth
Century_, in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern. The
book entranced me, and I determined to read every word that I could get
hold of by the same author. In the Imperial Library in Paris I read
first of all _The History of English Literature_, of which I had
hitherto only been acquainted with a few fragments, which had appeared
in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Taine was to me an antidote to
German abstraction and German pedantry. Through him I found the way to
my own inmost nature, which my Dano-German University education had
covered over.

Shortly after my arrival in Paris, therefore, I had written to Taine and
begged for an interview. By a singular piece of ill-luck his reply to me
was lost, and it was only at the very end of my stay that I received a
second invitation to go to him. Although this one conversation could not
be of any vast importance to me, it was nevertheless the first personal
link between me and the man who was and remained my greatly loved master
and deliverer, even though I mistrusted his essential teachings. I was
afraid that I had created a bad impression, as I had wasted the time
raising objections; but Taine knew human nature well enough to perceive
the personality behind the clumsy form and the admiration behind the
criticism. In reality, I was filled with passionate gratitude towards
Taine, and this feeling remained unaltered until his latest hour.

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




EARLY MANHOOD

Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--My
First Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of Modern
Coercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Trip
to 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 Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson--
Hard Work.


I.

After my return from France to Denmark, in 1867, my thoughts were taken
up once more by the feud that had broken out in Danish literature
between 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, took
part in it with a dual front, against the orthodox theologians, and more
especially against R. Nielsen, the assailant of the theologians, whom I
regarded as no less theologically inclined than his opponents.

I thereby myself became the object of a series of violent attacks from
various quarters. These did not have any appreciable effect on my
spirits, but they forced me for years into a somewhat irritating
attitude of self-defence. Still I was now arrived at that period of my
youth 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 were
leading up to war between Prussia and Austria, and while the young blood
of Denmark imagined that their country would be drawn into this war, I
had taken part, as a member of the Academic Shooting Society, in drill
and shooting practice. After the battle of Koeniggratz these occupations
lost much of their attraction.

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

Up to that time I had never been able to afford to ride. But just then a
captain of the dragoons offered to teach me for a very low fee, and in
the Queen's Riding-School I was initiated during the Spring months into
the elementary stages of the art, in order that in Summer I might be
able to ride out. These riding-lessons were the keenest possible delight
to me. I, who so seldom felt happy, and still more seldom jubilant, was
positively 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 its
disposition. I liked to change as often as possible, and preferred
rather difficult horses to mares too well broken in. I felt the arrogant
pride of youth seethe in my veins as I galloped briskly along.

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

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

The captain was a pleasant, good-natured man, quite uneducated in
literary matters, who confidingly communicated his bachelor experiences
to his pupil. These were summed up in the reflection that when womenkind
fall in love, they dread neither fire nor water; the captain himself,
who yet, in his own opinion, only looked well on horseback, had once had
an 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. Since
then the captain had not felt the need of women, so to speak, preferred
to be without them, and found his greatest pleasure in his horses and
his skill as an equestrian.

The sister was a maiden lady of forty, by no means devoid of
intellectual ability, with talent for observation and an appreciation of
good books, but whose development had been altogether neglected. She now
cherished an ambition to write. She wrote in secret little tales that
were not really stupid but had not the slightest pretensions to style or
literary talent. She was very plain and exceedingly stout, which
produced a comical effect, especially as she was inclined to
exaggeration 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 her
intellectual equal, I was likewise her equal in age. In the natural
order 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 large
lady, half angry, half distressed, rose to seize hold of me and give me
a shaking, I would run round the table, pursued by her, or shoot out a
chair between her and myself,--which indubitably did not add to the
dignity of our lessons.

There was no question of thorough or connected instruction. What the
lady wanted more particularly was that I should go through her literary
attempts and correct them, but corrections could not transform them into
art. And so it came about that after no very long time I gave up these
arduous lessons, although obliged to give up my precious riding lessons
at the same time.

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


III.

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

During my University studies, in my real budding manhood, I had
voluntarily cut myself away from the usual erotic diversions of youth.
Precocious though I was in purely intellectual development, I was very
backward in erotic experience. In that respect I was many years younger
than my age.

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

Then my surroundings claimed their rights, and it was not without
emotion that I realised how charming the girls at home were. For I was
only then entering upon the Cherubino stage of my existence, when the
sight of feminine grace or beauty immediately transports a youth into a
mild state of love intoxication.

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

If you went out towards the north side of the town, there was a house
there on the first floor of which you were very welcome, where a
handsome and well-bred couple once a week received young men for the
sake of the lady's young niece. The master of the house was a lean and
silent man, who always looked handsome, and was always dignified; he had
honourably filled an exalted official post. His wife had been very
attractive in her youth, had grown white while still quite young, and
was now a handsome woman with snow-white curls clustering round her
fresh-coloured face. To me she bore, as it were, an invisible mark upon
her forehead, for when quite a young girl she had been loved by a great
man. She was sincerely kind and genuinely pleasant, but the advantage of
knowing her was not great; for that she was too restless a hostess. When
it was her At Home she never remained long enough with one group of
talkers properly to understand what was being discussed. After about a
minute she hurried off to the opposite corner of the drawing-room, said
a 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 people
congregated at the house. It was for the sake of the eighteen-year-old
fairy maiden, her niece, whose face was one to haunt a man's dreams. It
was not from her features that the witchery emanated, although in shape
her face was a faultless oval, her narrow forehead high and well-shaped,
her chin powerful. Neither was it from the personality one obtained a
glimpse of through her features. The girl's character and mental quality
seemed much the same as that of other girls; she was generally silent,
or communicative about trifles, and displayed no other coquetry than the
very innocent delight in pleasing which Nature itself would demand.

But all the same there was a fascination about her, as about a fairy
maiden. There was a yellow shimmer about her light hair; azure flames
flashed from her blue eyes. These flames drew a magic circle about her,
and the dozen young men who had strayed inside the circle flocked round
her aunt the evening in the week that the family were "at home" and sat
there, vying with each other for a glance from those wondrous eyes,
hating each other with all their hearts, and suffering from the
ridiculousness of yet meeting like brothers, week after week, as guests
in the same house. The young girl's male relatives, who had outgrown
their enthusiasm for her, declared that her character was not good and
reliable--poor child! had she to be all that, too? Others who did not
ask 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 she
had married a widower in a provincial town--she who belonged to the
realms of Poesy!

Then there was another young girl, nineteen. Whereas the fairy maiden
did not put herself out to pretend she troubled her head about the young
men whom she fascinated with the rhythm of her movements or the
radiation of her loveliness, was rather inclined to be short in her
manner, a little staccato in her observations, too accustomed to
admiration to attract worshippers to herself by courting them, too
undeveloped and impersonal to consciously assert herself--this other
girl was of quite another sort. She had no innate irresistibility, but
was a shrewd and adaptable human girl. Her face did not attract by its
beauty, though she was very much more beautiful than ugly, with a
delicately hooked nose, a mouth full of promise, an expression of
thoughtfulness and determination. When she appeared at a ball, men's
eyes lingered on her neck, and even more on her white back, with its
firm, smooth skin, and fine play of the muscles; for if she did not
allow very much of her young bust to be seen, her dress at the back was
cut down nearly to her belt. Her voice was a deep contralto, and she
knew how to assume an expression of profound gravity and reflection. But
she captivated most by her attentiveness. When a young man whom she
wished to attract commenced a conversation with her, she never took her
eyes from his, or rather she gazed into his, and showed such a rapt
attention to his words, such an interest in his thoughts and his
occupations, that after meeting her once he never forgot her again. Her
coquetry did not consist of languishing glances, but of a pretended
sympathy, that flattered and delighted its object.


IV.

These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returned
from 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, and
because I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to the
monuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, man
or woman, who was foreign to Denmark.

But in the midst of all these visitations of calf-love, and their
vibrations among undefined sensations, I was pulled back with a jerk, as
it were, to my earlier and deepest impression, that of the loveliness
and exalted person of the young Spaniard. Letters from Paris furrowed my
mind like steamers the waters of a lake, made it foam, and the waves run
high, left long streaks across its wake. Not that Mlle. Mathilde sent
letters to me herself, but her Italian lady and gentlemen friends wrote
for her, apparently in her name, loudly lamenting my unreasonable
departure, wishing and demanding my return, telling me how she missed
me, sometimes how angry she was.

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

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

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

The whole of the month of July and part of the month of August I was on
the rack, now passionately desiring a successful issue of my plans, now
hoping just as ardently that they would be stranded through the
opposition of the foreign family; for I was compelled to admit to myself
that the beautiful Spaniard would be very unsuited to Copenhagen, would
freeze there, mentally as well as literally. And I said to myself every
day that supposing the war expected in Denmark were to break out again,
and the young men were summoned to arms, the most insignificant little
Danish girl would make me a better Valkyrie; all my feelings would be
foreign 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! Yet
she was the only one for me.

Thus I was swayed by opposing wishes the whole of the long time during
which the matter was pending and uncertain. I was so exhausted by
suspense that I only kept up by taking cold baths twice a day and by
brisk rides. The mere sight of a postman made my heart beat fast. The
scorn heaped upon me in the Danish newspapers had a curious effect upon
me 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; I
dreamt of my Dulcinea every night, and began to look as exhausted as I
felt. One day that I went to Fredensborg, in response to an invitation
from Frederik Paludan-Mueller, the poet said to me: "Have you been ill
lately? You look so pale and shaken." I pretended not to care; whatever
I said or did in company was incessant acting.

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

When the decision came, when,--as everyone with the least experience of
the world could have foretold,--all the beautiful dreams and audacious
plans collapsed suddenly, I felt as though this long crisis had thrown
me back indescribably; my intellectual development had been at a
standstill for months. It was such a feeling as when the death of some
loved person puts an end to the long, tormenting anxiety of the
foregoing illness. I, who had centred everything round one thought, must
now start joylessly along new paths. My outburst,--which astonished
myself,--was:

"How I wanted a heart!"


V.

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

It was not much more than a month before the field was sown. Amongst my
Danish acquaintances there was only one, a young and very beautiful
widow, upon whom, placed as I was with regard to Mile. Mathilde, I had
definitely counted. I should have taken the young Spaniard to her; she
alone would have understood her--they would have been friends.

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

She pointed out how preposterous it was in me to wish to seek so far
away a happiness that perhaps was very close to me, and how even more
preposterous to neglect, as I had done, my studies and intellectual aims
for a fantastic love. And for the first time in my life, a young woman
spoke to me of my abilities and of the impression she had received of
them, partly through the reading of the trifles that I had had printed,
partly, and more particularly, through her long talks with me. Neither
the little French girl nor the young Spanish lady had ever spoken to me
of myself, my talents, or my future; this Danish woman declared that she
knew me through and through. And the new thing about it all, the thing
hitherto 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 of
unusual mark, and was ardently ambitious for me.

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

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

My whole nature was shaken to its foundations. Up to this time I had
only regarded her as my friend and comforter, had neither felt nor
fought against any personal attraction. But she had scarcely spoken,
before she was transformed in my eyes. The affection I had thirsted for
was 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 that
scorned scruples.

In my austere youth hitherto, I had not really had erotic experiences
whatever. I had led the chaste life of the intellectual worker. My
thoughts had been the thoughts of a man; they had ascended high and had
delved deep, but my love affairs had been the enthusiasms and fancies of
a half-grown boy, chimeras and dreams. This young woman was my first
living 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 first
time like a man.

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

And yet it was more a physical state, an almost mechanical outcome of
what to me was overwhelmingly new, association with a woman. It was not
because it was just this particular woman. For my emotional nature was
so composite that even in the first moment of my bliss I did not regard
this bliss as unmixed. From the very first hour, I felt a gnawing regret
that it was not I who had desired her, but she who had chosen me, so
that 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 my
thoughts, but in an altogether different manner. Circumstances resulted
in my being taken into the secret of unhappy and disturbing domestic
relations in a well-to-do house to which I was frequently invited, and
where to all outward seeming all the necessary conditions of domestic
happiness were present.

The master of the house had in his younger days been a very handsome
man, lazy, not clever, and of an exceedingly passionate temper. He was
the 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 professional
vices, persistent untruthfulness, a comedian's manner, prodigality, a
love 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 too
young, had never loved him, and never been suited to him. As an
innocent, ignorant girl, she had been placed in the arms of a man who
was much the worse for a reckless life, and suffering from an illness
that necessitated nursing, and made him repulsive to her. Every day that
passed she suffered more from being bound to a man whose slightest
movement was objectionable to her and whose every remark a torture. In
the second decade of her marriage the keenest marital repulsion had
developed in her; this was so strong that she sometimes had to pull
herself together in order, despite her maternal feelings, not to
transfer her dislike to the children, who were likewise his, and in whom
she dreaded to encounter his characteristics.

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

Her whole aim and aspiration was to get the bond that united them
dissolved. But this he would not hear of, for many reasons, and more
especially from dislike of scandal. He regarded himself, and according
to the usual conception of the words, justly so, as a good husband and
father. He asked for no impossible sacrifice from his wife, and he was
affectionate to his children. He could not help her detesting him, and
indeed, did not fully realise that she did. And yet, it was difficult
for him to misunderstand. For his wife scarcely restrained her aversion
even when there were guests in the house. If he told an untruth, she
kept silence with her lips, but scarcely with her expression. And she
would sometimes talk of the faults and vices that she most abhorred, and
then name his.

The incessant agitation in which she lived had made her nervous and
restless to excess. As the feminine craving to be able, in marriage, to
look up to the man, had never been satisfied, she only enacted the more
vehemently veracity, firmness and intellect in men. But undeveloped as
she was, and in despair over the dissatisfaction, the drowsiness, and
the darkness in which her days glided away, whatever invaded the
stagnation and lighted up the darkness: sparkle, liveliness, brilliance
and 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 Madame
Voltisubito cannot sing unless she hears the crack of a whip. Thus it
seemed to me that her nature could not sing, save to the accompaniment
of all the cart, carriage and riding whips of the mind. But I saw how
unhappy she was, and that the intense strain of her manner was only an
expression of it.

She could not know the beauty of inward peace, and in spite of her
Protestant upbringing she had retained all the unaffectedness and
sincerity 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 resulted
in, and what it covered up, and she passed her life in unmitigated
despair, which was ordinarily calm to all appearance, but in reality
rebellious: what she was enduring was the attempted murder of her soul.

To all that she suffered purely mentally from her life with her husband
in the home that was no home at all, there had of late been added
circumstances which likewise from a practical point of view made
interference and alteration necessary. Her lord and master had always
been 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 them
had fallen entirely into his own hands, and he managed them in such a
way that expenses increased at a terrific rate, while his income
diminished with equal rapidity, and the question of total ruin only
seemed a matter of time.

His wife had no outside support. She was an orphan and friendless. Her
husband's relations did not like her and did not understand her. And yet
just at this time she required as a friend a man who understood her and
could help her to save her own and the children's fortunes from the
shipwreck, before it was too late. She felt great confidence in me, whom
she had met, at intervals, from my boyhood, and she now opened her heart
to me in conversation more and more. She confided in me fully, gave me a
complete insight into the torture of her life, and implored me to help
her 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 was
produced upon me. The impression was not merely powerful, but it waked,
like a cry of distress, both my thinking powers and my energy. As
through a chink in the smooth surface of society, I looked down into the
depths of horror. Behind the unhappiness of one, I suspected that of a
hundred thousand, knew that of a hundred thousand. And I felt myself
vehemently called upon, not only to name the horror by its name, but to
step in, as far as I was able, and prevent the thing spreading unheeded.

Scales had fallen from my eyes. Under the semblance of affection and
peace, couples were lacerating one another by the thousand, swallowed up
by hatred and mutual aversion. The glitter of happiness among those
higher placed dazzled the thoughtless and the credulous. He who had eyes
to 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 directly
remedied; inherited maladies and those brought upon one's self,
stupidity and folly, brutality and malice, undeniably existed. But the
institutions of society ought to be so planned as to render these
destructive forces inoperative, or at least diminish their harmfulness,
not so as to give them free scope and augment their terrors by securing
them victims.

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

But that woman should be oppressed in modern society, that the one-half
of the human race could be legally deprived of their rights, revealed
that 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 between
man and woman.

My thought pierced down into the state of society that obtained and was
praised so highly, and with ever less surprise and ever greater
disquiet, found hollowness everywhere. And this called my will to
battle, armed it for the fight.


VII.

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

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

It was in the spirit of the Aesthetics of the time, that, after having
been engaged upon the Tragic Idea, I plunged into researches on the
Comic, and by degrees, as the material ordered itself for me, I tried to
write a doctor's thesis upon it, Abstract researches were regarded as
much more valuable than historic investigation. In comic literature
Aristophanes in particular delighted me, and I was thinking of letting
my general definitions merge into a description of the greatness of the
Greek comedian; but as the thread broke for me, I did not get farther
than the theory of the Comic in general. It was not, like my previous
treatise on the Tragic, treated under three headings, according to the
Hegelian model, but written straight ahead, without any subdivision into
sections.

Whilst working at this paper I was, of course, obliged constantly to
consult the national comedies and lighter plays, till I knew them from
cover to cover. Consequently, when Gotfred Rode, the poet, who was
connected with a well-known educational establishment for girls, asked
me whether I would care to give a course of public lectures for ladies,
I chose as my subject _The Danish Comedy_. The lectures were
attended in force. The subject was supremely innocent, and it was
treated in quite a conservative manner. At that time I cherished a
sincere admiration, with only slight reservations, for Heiberg, Hertz,
Hostrup and many others as comic playwriters, and was not far short of
attributing to their works an importance equal to those of Holberg. And
yet I was unable to avoid giving offence. I had, it appears, about
Heiberg's _Klister and Malle_, an inseparable betrothed couple,
used what was, for that matter, an undoubtedly Kierkegaardian
expression, viz., _to beslobber a relation_. This expression was
repeated indignantly to the Headmistress, and the thoughtless lecturer
was requested to call upon the Principal of the college. When, after a
long wait, and little suspecting what was going to be said to me, I was
received in audience, it appeared that I had been summoned to receive a
polite but decided admonition against wounding the susceptibilities of
my listeners by expressions which were not "good form," and when I,
unconscious of wrongdoing, asked which expression she alluded to, the
unfortunate 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 only
been as the author of shorter or longer contributions to the
philosophical discussion of the relations between Science and Faith;
when these had been accepted by a daily paper it had been as its
heaviest ballast. I had never yet written anything that the ordinary
reader could follow with pleasure, and I had likewise been obliged to
make use of a large number of abstruse philosophical words.

The proprietors of the _Illustrated Times_ offered me the reviewing
of the performances at the Royal Theatre in their paper, which had not
hitherto printed dramatic criticisms. I accepted the offer, because it
afforded me a wished-for opportunity of further shaking off the dust of
the schools. I could thus have practice with my pen, and get into touch
with a section of the reading public who, without caring for philosophy,
nevertheless had intellectual interests; and these articles were in
reality a vent for what I had at heart about this time touching matters
human and artistic. They were written in a more colloquial style than
anything I had written before, or than it was usual to write in Denmark
at that time, and they alternated sometimes with longer essays, such as
those on Andersen and Goldschmidt.

Regarded merely as dramatic criticisms, they were of little value. The
Royal Theatre, the period of whose zenith was nearly at an end, I cared
little for, and I was personally acquainted with next to none of the
actors, only meeting, at most, Phister and Adolf Rosenkilde and of
ladies, Soedring in society.

I found it altogether impossible to brandish my cane over the individual
actor in his individual part. But the form of it was merely a pretext. I
wanted to show myself as I was, speak out about dramatic and other
literature, reveal how I felt, show what I thought about all the
conditions 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 10
Kr. a column (about 11_s_. 3_d_.), which at that time was very
respectable 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 my
yearly 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 a
University bursary, I should have come badly off, and even with it
was not rolling in riches.

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


IX.

With the first money I received for my books, I went in the middle of
the Summer of 1868 for a trip to Germany. I acquired some idea of
Berlin, which was then still only the capital of Prussia, and in
population corresponded to the Copenhagen of our day; I spent a few
weeks in Dresden, where I felt very much at home, delighted in the
exquisite 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, tried
to realise how the greatest painters had regarded Life. Switzerland
added to my store of impressions with grand natural spectacles. I saw
the Alps, and a thunderstorm in the Alps, passed starlit nights on the
Swiss lakes, traced the courses of foaming mountain streams such as the
Tamina at Pfaeffers, ascended the Rigi at a silly forced march, and from
the Kulm saw a procession of clouds that gripped my fancy like the
procession of the Vanir in Northern mythology. Many years afterwards I
described it in the Fourth volume of _Main Currents_. From
Interlaken I gazed on the whiteness of the Jungfrau, but scarcely with
greater emotion than once upon a time when I had gazed at the white
cliffs of Moeen. On my homeward journey I saw Heidelberg's lovely ruins,
to which Charles V.'s castle, near the Al-hambra, makes a marvellous
pendant, Strassburg's grave Cathedral, and Goethe's house at Frankfurt.

My travels were not long, but were extraordinarily instructive. I made
acquaintance with people from the most widely different countries, with
youthful frankness engaged in conversation with Germans and Frenchmen,
Englishmen and Americans, Poles and Russians, Dutchmen, Belgians and
Swiss, met them as travelling companions, and listened attentively to
what they narrated. They were, moreover, marvellously frank towards the
young 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 not
unmingled with contempt. On the other hand, I was astonished, during a
half day's excursion on foot with a few Leipzig students, to learn how
strong was the feeling of the unity of Germany and of the necessity of
the supremacy of Prussia, even in the states which in the 1866 war had
been on the side of Austria. The students felt no grief over having been
defeated, the victors were Germans too; everything was all right so long
as the German Empire became one. These and similar conversations, which
finally brought me to the conclusion that the whole of the bourgeoisie
was satisfied with the dominance of Prussia, had for result that in 1870
I 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 France
against Prussia.

English undergraduates told me what philosophical and historical works
were being most read in the universities of Great Britain; Bohemian
students explained to me that in the German philosophical world Kant had
quite outshone Hegel and put him in the background.

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

But I also met with Americans of quite a different cast. A young student
from Harvard University, who, for that matter, was not in love with the
Germans and declared that the United States could with difficulty absorb
and digest those who were settled there, surprised me with his view that
in the future Bismarck would come to be regarded as no less a figure
than Cavour. The admiration of contemporary educated thought was then
centred around Cavour, whereas Bismarck had hitherto only encountered
passionate aversion outside Germany, and even in Germany was the object
of much hatred. This student roused me into thinking about Bismarck for
myself.

Having lain down, all bathed in perspiration, during the ascent without
a guide of a mountain in Switzerland, I was accosted by a woman, who
feared I had come to some harm. I walked on up with her. She turned out
to be a young peasant woman from Normandy, who lived half-way up the
mountain. She had accompanied her husband to Switzerland, but cursed her
lot, and was always longing to be back in France. When I remarked that
it must be some consolation to live in so lovely a place, she
interrupted me with the most violent protests. A beautiful place! This!
The steep mountain, the bristly fir-trees and pine-trees, the snow on
the top and the lake deep down below--anything uglier it would be hard
to conceive. No fields, no pasture-land, no apple-trees! No indeed! If
she 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 up
or down hill; there, thank God, it was flat. Did I think stones
beautiful, 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 the
house; she herself sat and fretted all through the Winter; life then was
almost more than she could bear.

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

At the hotel table at Lucerne I made the acquaintance of a Dutch captain
from Batavia, an acquaintance productive of much pleasure to me. Before
the soup was brought round I had pulled out a letter I had just
received, opened it and begun to read it. A voice by my side said in
French:

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

The captain was a man of forty, who in the course of an active life had
had many and varied experiences and met with prosperity, but was
suffering from a feeling of great void. His society was exceedingly
attractive to me, and he related to me the main events of his life; but
after one day's association only, we were obliged to part. All through
my trip I had a curious feeling of every farewell on the journey being
in all human probability a farewell for life, but had not realised it
painfully before. But when next day the brave captain, whose home was
far 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 last
twenty-four hours had shown me, was in extraordinary sympathy and
agreement with me.

Separated from those dearest to me, the whole of the journey, for that
matter, 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 time
to ponder over my position and vocation in life. I summed up my
impressions in the sentence: "The Powers have designated me the champion
of great ideas against great talents, unfortunately greater than I."


X.

There was only one distinguished person outside my circle of
acquaintance to whom I wished to bring my first descriptive book, as a
mark of homage, Johanne Louise Heiberg, the actress. I had admired her
on the stage, even if not to the same extent as Michael Wiehe; but to me
she was the representative of the great time that would soon sink into
the grave. In addition, I ventured to hope that she, being a friend of
Frederik Paludan-Mueller, Magdalene Thoresen and others who wished me
well, would be at any rate somewhat friendly inclined towards me. A few
years before, it had been rumoured in Copenhagen after the publication
of my little polemical pamphlet against Nielsen, that at a dinner at the
Heiberg's there had been a good deal of talk about me; even Bishop
Martensen had expressed himself favourably, and it also attracted
attention that a short time afterwards, in a note to his book _On
Knowledge and Faith_, he mentioned me not unapprovingly, and
contented himself with a reminder to me not to feel myself too soon
beyond being surprised. When the Bishop of Zealand, one of the actress's
most faithful adherents, had publicly spoken thus mildly of the youthful
heretic, there was some hope that the lady herself would be free from
prejudice. My friends also eagerly encouraged me to venture upon a visit
to her home.

I was admitted and asked to wait in a room through the glass doors of
which I was attentively observed for some time by the lady's adopted
children. Then she came in, in indoor dress, with a stocking in her
hand, at which she uninterruptedly continued to knit during the
following conversation: She said: "Well! So you have collected your
articles." I was simple enough to reply--as if that made any difference
to the lady--that the greater part of the book had not been printed
before. She turned the conversation upon Bjoernson's _Fisher Girl_,
which had just been published, and which had been reviewed by _The
Fatherland_ the evening before, declaring that she disagreed
altogether 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 a
mistake that genius is marked by restlessness, refractoriness, an
irregular life, or the like. That is all antiquated superstition. True
genius has no connection whatever with excesses and caprices, in fact,
is impossible without the strict fulfilment of one's duty. (Knitting
furiously.) 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 the
lady, I blurted out most tactlessly that I was sure that lady was much
interested in me. It was a mere nothing, but at the moment sounded like
conceit and boasting. I realised it the moment the words were out of my
mouth, and instinctively felt that I had definitely displeased her. But
the conversational material was used up and I withdrew. I never saw
Johanne Louise Heiberg again; henceforth she thought anything but well
of me.


XI.

Magdalene Thoresen was spending that year in Copenhagen, and our
connection, which had been kept up by correspondence, brought with it a
lively mutual interchange of thoughts and impressions. Our natures, it
is true, were as much unlike as it was possible for them to be; but
Magdalene Thoresen's wealth of moods and the overflowing warmth of her
heart, the vivacity of her disposition, the tenderness that filled her
soul, and the incessant artistic exertion, which her exhausted body
could not stand, all this roused in me a sympathy that the mistiness of
her reasoning, and the over-excitement of her intellectual life, could
not diminish. Besides which, especially when she was away from
Copenhagen, but when she was there, too, she needed a literary assistant
who could look through her MSS. and negotiate over them with the
publishers of anthologies, year-books, and weekly papers, and for this
purpose she not infrequently seized upon me, innocently convinced, like
everybody else for that matter, that she was the only person who made a
similar demand upon me.

Still, it was rather trying that, when my verdict on her work did not
happen to be what she wished, she saw in what I said an unkindness, for
which 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 freely
in the fog. That, however, did not come between her and me, whom she
often thought in the right. With regard to my newspaper activity, she
merely urged the stereotyped but pertinent opinion, that I ought not to
write so many small things; my nature could not stand this wasting, drop
by drop.

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


XII.

There were not many of the upper middle class houses in Copenhagen at
that time, the hospitality of which a young man with intellectual
interests 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 of
intellectual 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 who
had retained the uncompromising radicalism of the first half of the
century. The spirit of Knowledge was the Holy Spirit to him; the
profession of doctor had placed him in the service of humanity, and to
firmness of character he united pure philanthropy. The most despised
outcasts of society met with the same consideration and the same
kindness from him as its favoured ones.

His wife was well calculated, by her charm of manner, to be the centre
of the numerous circle of talented men who, both from Denmark and
abroad, frequented the house. There one met all the foreign natural
scientists who came to Copenhagen, all the esteemed personalities
Denmark had at the time, who might be considered as belonging to the
freer trend of thought, and many neutrals. Actors such as Hoeedt and
Phister went there, favourite narrators such as Bergsoee, painters like
Kroeyer, distinguished scientists like J.C. Schioedte, the entomologist.
This last was an independent and intellectual man, somewhat touchy, and
domineering in his manner, a master of his subject, a man of learning,
besides, ceremonious, often cordial, ready to listen to anything worth
hearing that was said. He had weaknesses, never would admit that he had
made a mistake, and was even very unwilling to own he had not read a
book that was being spoken of. Besides which, he had spent too great a
part of his life in virulent polemics to be devoid of the narrowing of
the horizon which is the concomitant of always watching and being ready
to attack the same opponent. But he was in the grand style, which is
rare in Denmark, as elsewhere.


XIII.

The house of the sisters Spang was a pleasant one to go to; they were
two unmarried ladies who kept an excellent girls' school, at which
Julius Lange taught drawing. Benny Spang, not a beautiful, but a
brilliant girl, with exceptional brains, daughter of the well-known
Pastor Spang, a friend of Soeren Kierkegaard, adopted a tone of good-
fellowship towards me that completely won my affection. She was
cheerful, witty, sincere and considerate. Not long after we became
acquainted she married a somewhat older man than herself, the gentle and
refined landscape painter, Gotfred Rump. The latter made a very good
sketch of me.

The poet Paludan-Mueller and the Lange family visited at the house; so
did the two young and marvellously beautiful girls, Alma Trepka and
Clara Rothe, the former of whom was married later to Carl Bloch the
painter, the other to her uncle, Mr. Falbe, the Danish Minister in
London.

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


XIV.

Just about this time a foreign element entered the circle of Copenhagen
students to which I belonged. One day there came into my room a youth
with a nut-brown face, short and compactly built, who after only a few
weeks' stay in Copenhagen could speak Danish quite tolerably. He was a
young Armenian, who had seen a great deal of the world and was of very
mixed race. His father had married, at Ispahan, a lady of Dutch-German
origin. Up to his seventh year he had lived in Batavia. When the family
afterwards moved to Europe, he was placed at school in Geneva. He had
there been brought up, in French, to trade, but as he revealed an
extraordinary talent for languages, was sent, for a year or eighteen
months at a time, to the four German universities of Halle, Erlangen,
Goettingen and Leipzig. Now, at the age of 22, he had come to Copenhagen
to copy Palahvi and Sanscrit manuscripts that Rask and Westergaard had
brought to Europe. He knew a great many languages, and was moreover very
many-sided in his acquirements, sang German student songs charmingly,
was introduced and invited everywhere, and with his foreign appearance
and quick intelligence was a great success. He introduced new points of
view, was full of information, and brought with him a breath from the
great world outside. Industrious though he had been before, Copenhagen
social life tempted him to idleness. His means came to an end; he said
that the annual income he was in the habit of receiving by ship from
India had this year, for some inexplicable reason, failed to arrive,
dragged out a miserable existence for some time under great
difficulties, starved, borrowed small sums, and disappeared as suddenly
as he had come.


XV.

Knowing this Armenian made me realise how restricted my own learning
was, 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's
thesis on French Aesthetics, which cost me no little pains; it was my
first attempt to construct a consecutive book, and it was only by a
vigorous effort that I completed it at the end of 1869. But I had then
been casting over in my mind for some years thoughts to which I never
was able to give a final form, thoughts about the position of women in
society, which would not let me rest.

A woman whose thought fired mine even further just about this time, a
large-minded woman, who studied society with an uncompromising
directness that was scarcely to be met with in any man of the time in
Denmark, was the wife of the poet Carsten Hauch. When she spoke of
Danish women, the stage of their development and their position in law,
their apathy and the contemptibleness of the men, whether these latter
were despots, pedants, or self-sufficient Christians, she made me a
sharer 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's
movement" woman before the name was invented. She taught no doctrine,
but she glowed with ardour for the cause of freedom and justice. She saw
through the weak, petty men and women of her acquaintance and despised
them. She too passionately desired a thorough revolution in modern
society to be able to feel satisfied merely by an amelioration of the
circumstances of women of the middle classes; and yet it was the
condition of women, especially in the classes she knew well, that she
thought most about.

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

In September, 1868, after wandering with my old friend up and down the
shore, under the pure, starlit heaven, and at last finding myself late
at night in my room, I was unable to go to rest. All that had been
talked of and discussed in the course of the day made my head hot and
urged me to reflection and action. Often I seized a piece of paper and
scribbled off, disconnectedly, in pencil, remarks corresponding to the
internal 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 English
literature on the woman subject.

In the year 1869 my thoughts on the subordinate position of women in
society began to assume shape, and I attempted a connected record of
them. I adopted as my starting point Soeren Kierkegaard's altogether
antiquated conception of woman and contested it at every point. But all
that I had planned and drawn up was cast aside when in 1869 John Stuart
Mill's book on the subject fell into my hands. I felt Mill's superiority
to be so immense and regarded his book as so epoch-making that I
necessarily had to reject my own draft and restrict myself to the
translation and introduction of what he had said. In November, 1869, I
published Mill's book in Danish and in this manner introduced the modern
woman's movement into Denmark.

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


XVI.

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

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

In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C.N. David's house, on
Runeberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and Lehmann
houses, despite the political differences between them, were closely
related one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla Lehmann had
heard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he had just
founded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremely
conservative 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 in
Crystal Street, and over my room was one, in the attic, inhabited by my
seventeen-year-old brother, who had not yet matriculated.

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

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

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

As the addressee looked about to speak, he continued, drowning every
objection, "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 seniority
here. I am accustomed to accomplish what I determine upon, and I shall
take 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 to
interpose:

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

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

"Just underneath."

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

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

"Won't you sit down? I thank you for your offer. But my lecture was not
good enough to be repeated before so large a gathering. I do not know
enough about Runeberg's life, and my voice, moreover, will not carry. I
should 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 written
in your face. But there is no question of seniority about it. I am
accustomed to carry through anything that I have determined upon, and I
take no notice of objections. What you do not know about Runeberg's
life, you can read up in a literary history. And if you can give a
successful lecture to a private audience, you can give one in a theatre
hall. I am interested in you, I am depending on you, I take your promise
with me. Good-bye!"

This so-called promise became a regular nightmare to me, young and
absolutely untried as I was. It did not even occur to me to work up and
improve my lecture on Runeberg, for the very thought of appearing before
a large audience alarmed me and was utterly intolerable to me. During
the whole of my first stay in Paris I was so tormented by the consent
that Orla Lehmann had extorted from me, that it was a shadow over my
pleasure. I would go happy to bed and wake up in the middle of the night
with the terror of a debtor over something far off, but surely
threatening, upon me, seek in my memory for what it was that was
troubling me, and find that this far-off, threatening thing was my
promise to Lehmann. It was only after my return home that I summoned up
courage to write to him, pleading my youth and unfitness, and begging to
be released from the honourable but distasteful duty. Orla Lehmann, in
the meantime, had in all probability not bestowed a thought on the whole
matter and long since forgotten all about it.

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

Among Broechner's private pupils was a young student. Kristian Moeller, by
name, who devoted himself exclusively to philosophy, and of whom
Broechner was particularly fond. He had an unusually keen intelligence,
inclined to critical and disintegrating research. His abilities were
very promising, inasmuch as it seemed that he might be able to establish
destructive verdicts upon much that was confused, or self-
contradicting, but nevertheless respected; in other respects he had a
strangely infertile brain. He had no sudden inspirations, no
imagination. It could not be expected that he would ever bring forward
any specially new thoughts, only that he would penetrate confusion,
think out errors to the bottom, and, with the years, carry out a process
of thorough cleansing.

But before he had accomplished any independent work his lungs became
affected. It was not at once perceived how serious the affection was,
and Orla Lehmann, who, with the large-mindedness and open-handedness of
a patriot, had taken him up, as well as sundry other young men who
promised well or were merely poor, not only invited him to his weekly
dinner-parties at Frederiksberg, but sent him to Upsala, that he might
study Swedish philosophy there. Moeller himself was much inclined to
study Bostroemianism and write a criticism of this philosophy, which was
at that time predominant in Sweden.

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

In 1868 he returned to Copenhagen, pale, with hollow cheeks, and a
stern, grave face, that of a marked man, his health thoroughly
undermined. His friends soon learnt, and doubtless he understood
himself, that his condition was hopeless. The quite extraordinary
strength of character with which he submitted, good-temperedly and
without a murmur, to his fate, had for effect that all who knew him vied
with each other in trying to lessen the bitterness of his lot and at any
rate show him how much they cared for him. As he could not go out, and
as he soon grew incapable of connected work, his room became an
afternoon and evening meeting-place for many of his comrades, who went
there to distract him with whatever they could think of to narrate, or
discuss. If you found him alone, it was rarely long before a second and
a third visitor came, and the room filled up.

Orla Lehmann, his patron, was also one of Kristian Moeller's frequent
visitors. But whenever he arrived, generally late and the last, the
result was always the same. The students and graduates, who had been
sitting in the room in lively converse, were struck dumb, awed by the
presence of the great man; after the lapse of a few minutes, one would
get up and say good-bye; immediately afterwards the next would remember
that he was engaged elsewhere just at that particular time; a moment
later the third would slip noiselessly out of the room, and it would be
empty.

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

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

Passionately patriotic though Orla Lehmann was, he was very far from
falling into the then usual error of overestimating Denmark's historical
exploits and present importance. He related one day that when he was in
Paris, as a young man, speaking under an impression very frequent among
his 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 quelque
chose! on parlera de vous_." He approved of the reply. We younger
ones looked upon him as belonging to another period and living in
another plane of ideas, although, being a liberal-minded man, he was not
far removed from us. He was supposed to be a freethinker, and it was
told of him that when his old housekeeper repeatedly, and with
increasing impatience, requested him to come to table, he would reply,
in the presence of students--a rallying allusion to the lady's Christian
disposition:

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

People felt sorry for Lehmann because his politics had so wholly
miscarried, and somewhat sore against him because he wanted to lay all
the blame on the old despotism and the unfavourable circumstances of the
time. Take him altogether, to those who were not intimately associated
with him, and did not share the strong dislike felt against him in
certain circles, he was chiefly a handsome and attractive antiquity.

Kristian Moeller died in 1869, and his death was deeply lamented. He was
one of the few comrades admired by the younger ones alike for his gifts
and his stoicism. With his death my opportunities of frequently meeting
Orla 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 examination
upon my doctor's thesis at the University. As on this occasion Lehmann
arrived a little late, he was placed on a chair in front of all the
other auditors, and very imposing he looked, in a mighty fur coat which
showed off his stately figure. He listened very attentively to
everything, and several times during the discussion showed by a short
laugh 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 another
celebrity of the time. This was M. Goldschmidt, the author, whose great
talent I had considerable difficulty in properly appreciating, so
repelled was I by his uncertain and calculating personality.

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

A man who had emigrated to England as a poor boy returned to Copenhagen
in the sixties at the age of fifty, after having acquired a considerable
fortune. He was uneducated, kind, impeccably honourable, and was anxious
to secure acquaintances and associates for his adopted daughter, a
delicate young girl, who was strange to Copenhagen. With this object in
view, he invited a large number of young people to a ball in the rooms
of the King's Club, provided good music and luxurious refreshments. This
man was a cousin of Goldschmidt's, and as he himself was unable to make
more 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 of
language, as Goldschmidt, would be able, with the greatest ease, to make
an after-dinner speech, especially when he had had plenty of time to
prepare himself; but the gift of speaking is, as everyone knows, a gift
in 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 that
their host, who was a rich man, had earned his money in a strictly
honourable manner; it was always a good thing to know "that one had
clear ground to dance upon"; then he dwelt on the Jewish origin of the
giver of the feast, and, starting from the assumption that the greater
number of the invited guests were young Jews and Jewesses, he formulated
his toast in praise of "the Jewish woman, who lights the Sabbath
candles." The young Jewesses called out all at once: "The Danish woman I
The Danish woman! We are Danish!" They were irritated at the dead
Romanticism into which Goldschmidt was trying to push them back. They
lighted no Sabbath candles! they did not feel themselves Jewish either
by religion or nationality. The day of Antisemitism had not arrived.
Consequently there was still no Zionist Movement. They had also often
felt vexed at the descriptions that Goldschmidt in his novels frequently
gave of modern Jews, whose manners and mode of expression he screwed
back fifty years.

These cries, which really had nothing offensive about them, made
Goldschmidt lose his temper to such an extent that he shouted, in great
exasperation: "Will you keep silence while I speak! What manners are
these! I will teach you to keep silence!" and so forth,--which evoked a
storm of laughter. He continued for some time to rebuke their exuberant
mirth in severe terms, but was so unsuccessful that he broke off his
speech and, very much out of humour, sat down.

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

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

Goldschmidt had greater difficulty in hitting on the right manner to
adopt towards a much younger man. He used expressions which showed that
he was standing on his dignity, and was all the time conscious of his
own superiority. "People have spoken about you to me," he said, "and I
know you by name." The word here rendered _people_ had a strangely
foreign 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 learn
about anything foreign. We have enough of our own, is it not so? It is a
very 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 Soeren
Kierkegaard, had pilloried him for the benefit of a second-rate public.
I disliked him on Kierkegaard's account. But I disliked him much more
actively on my master, Professor Broechner's account.

Broechner had an intense contempt for Goldschmidt; intellectually he
thought him of no weight, as a man he thought him conceited, and
consequently ridiculous. He had not the slightest perception of the
literary artist in him. The valuable and unusual qualities of his
descriptive talent he overlooked. But the ignorance Goldschmidt had
sometimes shown about philosophy, and the incapacity he had displayed
with regard to art, his change of political opinion, his sentimentality
as a wit, all the weaknesses that one Danish critic had mercilessly
dragged into the light, had inspired Broechner with the strongest
aversion to Goldschmidt. Add to this the personal collisions between the
two men. At some public meeting Broechner had gazed at Goldschmidt with
such an ironic smile that the latter had passionately called him to
account.

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

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

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

Shortly afterwards, in _North and South_, Goldschmidt, on the
occasion of Broechner's candidature for parliament, had written that the
well-known atheist, H. Broechner, naturally, as contributor to _The
Fatherland_, was supported by the "Party." Now, there was nothing
that annoyed Broechner so much as when anyone called him an atheist, and
tried to make him hated for that reason,--the word, it is true, had a
hundred times a worse sound then than now,--he always maintaining that
he and other so-called atheists were far more religious than their
assailants. And although Goldschmidt's sins against Broechner were in
truth but small, although the latter, moreover--possibly unjustifiably--
had challenged him to the attack, Broechner nevertheless imbued me with
such a dislike of Goldschmidt that I could not regard him with quite
unprejudiced eyes.

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

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

One Spring morning in 1869, a little man with blue spectacles came into
my room and introduced himself as Goldschmidt's publisher, Bookseller
Steen. He had come on a confidential errand from Goldschmidt, regarding
which he begged me to observe strict silence, whatever the outcome of
the matter might be.

Goldschmidt knew that, as a critic, I was not in sympathy with him, but
being very difficultly placed, he appealed to my chivalry. For reasons
which he did not wish to enter into, he would be obliged, that same
year, to sever his connection with Denmark and settle down permanently
in England. For the future he should write in English. But before he
left he wished to terminate his literary activity in his native country
by an edition of his collected works, or at any rate a very exhaustive
selection from them. He would not and could not direct so great an
undertaking himself, from another country; he only knew one man who was
capable of doing so, and him he requested to undertake the matter. He
had drawn up a plan of the edition, a sketch of the order in which the
writings were to come out, and what the volume was to contain, and he
placed it before me for approval or criticism. The edition was to be
preceded by an account of Goldschmidt as an author and of his artistic
development; if I would undertake to write this, I was asked to go to
see Goldschmidt, in order to hear what he himself regarded as the main
features and chief points of his literary career.

The draft of what the projected edition was to include made quite a
little parcel of papers; besides these, Steen gave me to read the actual
request to me to undertake the task, which was cautiously worded as a
letter, not to me, but to Bookseller Steen, and which Steen had been
expressly enjoined to bring back with him. Although I did not at all
like this last-mentioned item, and although this evidence of distrust
was in very conspicuous variance with the excessive and unmerited
confidence that was at the same time being shown me, this same
confidence impressed me greatly.

The information that Goldschmidt, undoubtedly the first prose writer in
the country, was about to break off his literary activity and
permanently leave Denmark, was in itself overwhelming and at once set my
imagination actively at work. What could the reason be? A crime? That
was out of the question. What else could there be but a love affair, and
that had my entire sympathy. It was well known that Goldschmidt admired
a very beautiful woman, who was watched the more jealously by her
husband, because the latter had for a great number of years been
paralysed. He would not allow her to go to the theatre to sit anywhere
but in the mirror box [Footnote: The mirror box was a box in the first
Royal Theatre, surrounded by mirrors and with a grating in front, where
the stage could be seen, reflected in the mirrors, but the occupants
were invisible. It was originally constructed to utilise a space whence
the performance could not otherwise be seen, and was generally occupied
by actresses, etc.], where she could not be seen by the public. The
husband met with no sympathy from the public; he had always been a
characterless and sterile writer, had published only two books, written
in a diametrically opposite spirit, flatly contradicting one another. As
long as he was able to go out he had dyed his red hair black. He was an
insignificant man in every way, and by his first marriage with an ugly
old maid had acquired the fortune which alone had enabled him to pay
court to the beautiful woman he subsequently won.

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

What more likely than the assumption that the position of affairs had at
last become unbearable to Goldschmidt, and that he had determined on an
elopement to London? In a romantic purpose of the sort Goldschmidt could
count upon the sympathy of a hot-blooded young man. I consequently
declared myself quite willing to talk the matter over with the poet and
learn more particulars as to what was expected of me; meanwhile, I
thought I might promise my assistance. It was Easter week, I believe
Maunday Thursday; I promised to call upon Goldschmidt on one of the
holidays at a prearranged time.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday I was prevented from going to him, and I
had already made up my mind to pay my visit on Easter Monday when on
Monday morning I received a letter from Bookseller Steen which made me
exceedingly indignant. The letter, which exhibited, as I considered,
(incorrectly, as it turned out), unmistakably signs of having been
dictated to him, bore witness to the utmost impatience. Steen wrote that
after undertaking to pay a visit to Goldschmidt I had now let two days
elapse without fulfilling my promise. There was "no sense in keeping a
man waiting" day after day, on such important business; in Steen's
"personal opinion," it had not been at all polite of me, as the younger
author, 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 wounded
Goldschmidt's vanity deeply by not going to him immediately upon receipt
of his communication; but my chief impression was one of surprise that
Goldschmidt should reveal himself such a poor psychologist in my case.
How could he believe that I would allow myself to be terrified by rough
treatment or won by tactless reprimands? How could he think that I
regarded the task he wished to allot me as such an honour that for that
reason I had not refused it? Could not Goldschmidt understand that it
was solely the appeal to my better feelings from an opponent, struck by
an untoward fate, that had determined my attitude?

Simultaneously, though at first very faintly, a suspicion crossed my
mind. Was it possible that the whole touching story which had been
confided to me was a hoax calculated to disarm my antagonism, arouse my
sympathy and secure Goldschmidt a trumpeting herald? Was it possible
that the mysterious information about the flight to London was only an
untruth, the sole purpose of which was to get me into Goldschmidt's
service?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


XVIII.

In my public capacity about this time, I had many against me and no one
wholly for me, except my old protector Broechner, who, for one thing, was
very ill, and for another, by reason of his ponderous language, was
unknown to the reading world at large. Among my personal friends there
was not one who shared my fundamental views; if they were fond of me, it
was in spite of my views. That in itself was a sufficient reason why I
could not expect them, in the intellectual feud in which I was still
engaged, to enter the lists on my behalf. I did not need any long
experience to perceive that complete and unmixed sympathy with my
endeavours was a thing I should not find. Such a sympathy I only met
with in reality from one of my comrades, Emil Petersen, a young private
individual with no connection whatever with literature, and without
influence in other directions.

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

I had against me at once every literary or artistic critic who already
held an assured position, from the influential men who wrote in _The
Fatherland_ or the _Berlin Times_ to the small fry who snapped
in the lesser papers, and if they mentioned me at all it was with the
utmost contempt, or in some specially disparaging manner. It was the
rival 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 an
affectionate thought upon me. (Later, in Norway, I became Collin's
_idee fixe_.)

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

Definite as were the limits of my articles and longer contributions to
the dispute concerning Faith and Science, and although, strictly
speaking, they only hinged upon an obscure point in Rasmus Nielsen's
philosophy, they alarmed and excited a large section of the
ecclesiastics of the country. I had carefully avoided saying anything
against faith or piety; I knew that Orthodoxy was all-powerful in
Denmark. However, I did not meet with refutations, only with the
indignation of fanaticism. As far back as 1867 Bjoernson had come forward
in print against me, had reproached the Daily Paper with giving my
contributions a place in their columns, and reported their contents to
the Editor, who was away travelling, on the supposition that they must
have been accepted against his wishes; and although the article did not
bear Bjoernson's name, this attack was not without weight. The innocent
remark that Soeren Kierkegaard was the Tycho Brahe of our philosophy, as
great as Tycho Brahe, but, like him, failing to place the centre of our
solar system in its Sun, gave Bjoernson an opportunity for the
statement,--a very dangerous one for a young author of foreign origin to
make,--that the man who could write like that "had no views in common
with other Danes, no Danish mind."

The year after I was astonished by inflammatory outbursts on the part of
the clergy. One day in 1868 the much-respected Pastor Hohlenberg walked
into my friend Benny Spang's house, reprimanded her severely for
receiving such an undoubted heretic and heathen under her roof, and
demanded that she should break off all association with me. As she
refused to do so and turned a deaf ear to his arguments, losing all
self-control, he flung his felt hat on the floor, continued to rage and
rail against me, and, no result coming of it, dashed at last, in a
towering passion, out through the door, which he slammed behind him.
There was a farcical ending to the scene, since he was obliged to ring
at the door again for his hat, which, in his exasperation, he had
forgotten. This was a kind of private prologue to the ecclesiastical
drama which from the year 1871 upwards was enacted in most of the
pulpits of the country. Only the parsons instead of flinging their hats
upon the floor, beat their hands against the pulpit.

But what surprised me, a literary beginner, still more, was the gift I
discovered in myself of hypnotising, by my mere existence, an ever-
increasing number of my contemporaries till they became as though
possessed by a hatred which lasted, sometimes a number of years,
sometimes a whole life long, and was the essential determining factor in
their careers and actions. By degrees, in this negative manner, I
succeeded in engaging the attentions of more than a score of persons.
For the time being, I encountered the phenomenon in the person of one
solitary 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 whose
examination lectures he coached freshmen, was enraged beyond measure by
the objections, perfectly respectful, for that matter, in form, which I
had raised against one of the main points in Nielsen's philosophy. In
1866 he published a pamphlet on the subject; in 1867 a second, which, so
possessed was he by his fury against his opponent, he signed with the
latter's own initials, Gb. And from this time forth, for at least a
generation, it became this wretch's task in life to persecute me under
every possible pseudonym, and when his own powers were not sufficient,
to get up conspiracies against me. In particular, he did all he could
against me in Germany.

Meanwhile, he started a magazine in order to bring before the public
himself 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 the
Grundtvigian way of thinking, partly also those of Grundtvig. The
magazine had three editors, amongst them R. Nielsen himself, and when
one of them, who was the critic of the _Fatherland_, suddenly left
the country, Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson took his place. The three names, R.
Nielsen, B. Bjoernson, and Rudolph Schmidt, formed a trinity whose
supremacy did not augur well for the success of a beginner in the paths
of literature, who had attacked the thinker among them for ideal
reasons, and who had been the object of violent attacks from the two
others. 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 the
literary arena was, under the conditions of the time, an event. He had
no little talent, attracted by ideas and fancies that were sometimes
very 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 of
Bjoernson's first appearance he had attached himself so enthusiastically
and inviolably to him that by the general public he was almost regarded
as Bjoernson's herald. At every opportunity he emphatically laid down
Bjoernson's importance and as a set-off fell upon those who might be
supposed to be his rivals. Ibsen, in particular, received severe
handling. His departure was thus a very hard blow for Bjoernson, but for
that matter, was also felt as a painful loss by those he opposed.


XIX.

Not long after this departure, and immediately after the publication of
my long article on Goldschmidt, I received one day, to my surprise, a
letter of eight closely written pages from Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, dated
April 15th, 1869.

What had called it forth was my remark, in that article, that Bjoernson,
like Goldschmidt, sometimes, when talent failed, pretended to have
attained the highest, pretended that obscurity was the equivalent of
profundity. When writing this, I was thinking of the obscure final
speech about God in Heaven in Bjoernson's _Mary Stuart_, which I
still regard as quite vague, pretentious though it be as it stands
there; however, it was an exaggeration to generalise the grievance, as I
had done, and Bjoernson was right to reply. He considered that I had
accused him of insincerity, though in this he was wrong; but for that
matter, 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 Oehlenschlaeger
  (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 Oehlenschlaeger 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
  _Synnoeve_, 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 Bjoernson and is not only a
striking self-verdict, but a valuable contribution to poetic psychology
in general, in its indication of the strength of the creative
imagination 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 naive 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 life
and actual existence was quite in the Rasmus Nielsen spirit; the use
that was made of it here was strange. One would suppose that the example
adduced established that similar natural qualifications, similar family
and other conditions, in other words, the actual essential conditions of
life, were of small importance compared with one's mode of thought,
since the brothers could be so different; Bjoernson wished to establish,
hereby, that the mode of life was more important than the mode of
thought, although the former must depend on the latter. For the rest, he
alluded to Goldschmidt's weak points, even if in somewhat too superior a
manner, 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 of
the addressee, in which he mixed up true and false in inextricable
confusion. 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. Moeller,
  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's
tone assumed in it, partly by a summing up of my critical methods which
was founded simply and solely on the reading of three or four articles,
more especially those on Rubens and Goldschmidt, and which quite missed
the point. I was far from feeling that I had been understood, and for
that reason warned against extremes; on the contrary, I saw myself only
caricatured, without even wit or humour, and could not forget that the
man who had sketched this picture of me had done his utmost to injure
me. And he compared me with P.L. Moeller!

The fact that the conclusion of the letter contained much that was
conciliatory and beautiful consequently did not help matters. Bjoernson
wrote:

  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 violently
back, into the feelings and to the intellectual standpoint that were
mine at the time, in order to understand how they could to such a pitch
incense 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 a
pupil; but more than that, as the way of youth is, I confused what I
knew myself capable of accomplishing with what I had already
accomplished; felt myself rich, exuberantly rich, already, and was
indignant 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 Bjoernson was in Copenhagen he had written that article
against me. Besides, I had been told that some few times he had read my
first articles aloud in public in friends' houses, and made fun of their
forced and tyro-like wording. And now he wanted me to believe that he
had at that time been thinking of visiting me, in order to come to an
understanding with me. And worse still, the fear of gossip had
restrained him! This hero of will-power so afraid of a little gossip! He
might go on as he liked now, I had done with him. He did go on, both
cordially and gracefully, but condescendingly, quite incapable of seeing
how wounding the manner of his advances was. He wished to make advances
to 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 here
cited is the essential part of the letter. Had its recipient known
Bjoernson better, he would in this have found a foundation to build upon.
But as things were, I altogether overlooked the honestly meant
friendliness in it and merely seized upon the no small portion of it
that could not do other than wound. My reply, icy, sharp and in the
deeper sense of the word, worthless, was a refusal. I did not believe in
Bjoernson, saw in the letter nothing but an attempt to use me as a
critic, now that he had lost his former advocate in the Press. The
prospect of the journey to the North did not tempt me; in Bjoernson's
eyes it would have been Thor's journey with Loki, and I neither was Loki
nor wished to be.

But even had I been capable of rising to a more correct and a fuller
estimate of Bjoernson's character, there was too much dividing us at this
time for any real friendship to have been established. Bjoernson was then
still an Orthodox Protestant, and in many ways hampered by his youthful
impressions; I myself was still too brusque to be able to adapt myself
to so difficult and masterful a personality.

Eight years elapsed before the much that separated me from Bjoernson
crumbled away. But then, when of his own accord he expressed his regret
on a public occasion at the rupture between us, and spoke of me with
unprejudiced comprehension and good-will, I seized with warmth and
gratitude the hand stretched out to me. A hearty friendship, bringing
with it an active and confidential correspondence, was established
between us and remained unshaken for the next ten years, when it broke
down, this time through no fault of mine, but through distrust on
Bjoernson's part, just as our intimacy had been hindered the first time
through distrust on mine.

The year 1869 passed in steady hard work. Among the many smaller
articles I wrote, one with the title of _The Infinitely Small and the
Infinitely Great in Poetry_, starting with a representment of
Shakespeare's Harry Percy, contained a criticism of the hitherto
recognised tendency of Danish dramatic poetry and pointed out into the
future. The paper on H.C. Andersen, which came into being towards
midsummer, and was read aloud in a clover field to a solitary listener,
was representative of my critical abilities and aims at that date. I had
then known Andersen socially for a considerable time. My cordial
recognition of his genius drew us more closely together; he often came
to see me and was very ready to read his new works aloud to me. It is
hardly saying too much to declare that this paper secured me his
friendship.

The fundamental principles of the essay were influenced by Taine, the
art philosopher I had studied most deeply, and upon whom I had written a
book that was to be my doctor's thesis. Lightly and rapidly though my
shorter articles came into being, this larger task was very long in
hand. Not that I had little heart for my work; on the contrary, no
question interested me more than those on which my book hinged; but
there were only certain of them with which, as yet, I was equal to
dealing.

First and foremost came the question of the nature of the producing
mind, the possibility of showing a connection between its faculties and
deriving them from one solitary dominating faculty, which would thus
necessarily reveal itself in every aspect of the mind. It puzzled me,
for example, how I was to find the source whence Pascal's taste, both
for mathematics and religious philosophy, sprang. Next came the question
of the possibility of a universally applicable scientific method of
criticism, regarded as intellectual optics. If one were to define the
critic's task as that of understanding, through the discovery and
elucidation of the dependent and conditional contingencies that occur in
the intellectual world, then there was a danger that he might approve
everything, not only every form and tendency of art that had arisen
historically, but each separate work within each artistic section. If it
were no less the critic's task to distinguish between the genuine and
the spurious, he must at any rate possess a technical standard by which
to determine greater or lesser value, or he must be so specially and
extraordinarily gifted that his instinct and tact estimate infallibly.

Further, there was the question of genius, the point on which Taine's
theory roused decisive opposition in me. He regarded genius as a summing
up, not as a new starting-point; according to him it was the assemblage
of the original aptitudes of a race and of the peculiarities of a period
in which these aptitudes were properly able to display themselves. He
overlooked the originality of the man of genius, which could not be
explained from his surroundings, the new element which, in genius, was
combined with the summarising of surrounding particles. Before, when
studying Hegel, I had been repelled by the suggestion that what spoke to
us through the artist was only the universally valid, the universal
mind, which, as it were, burnt out the originality of the individual. In
Taine's teaching, nation and period were the new (although more
concrete) abstractions in the place of the universally valid; but here,
too, the particularity of the individual was immaterial. The kernel of
my work was a protest against this theory.

I was even more actively interested in the fundamental question raised
by a scientific view of history. For some years I had been eagerly
searching Comte and Littre, Buckle, Mill and Taine for their opinions on
the philosophy of History. Here, too, though in another form, the
question of the importance of the individual versus the masses presented
itself. Statistics had proved to what extent conscious actions were
subordinated to uniform laws. We could foresee from one year to another
how many murders would be committed and how many with each kind of
instrument. The differences between men and men neutralised each other,
if we took the average of a very large number. But this did not prove
that the individual was not of considerable importance. If the victory
of Salamis depended on Themistocles, then the entire civilisation of
Europe henceforth depended on him.

Another aspect of the question was: Did the consistent determinism of
modern Science, the discovery of an unalterable interdependency in the
intellectual, as in the physical worlds, allow scope for actions
proceeding otherwise than merely illusorily from the free purpose or
determination of the individual? Very difficult the question was, and I
did not feel confident of solving it; but it was some consolation to
reflect that the doubt as to the possibility of demonstrating a full
application of the law in the domain in which chance has sway, and
Ethics its sphere, was comparatively infinitesimal in the case of those
domains in which men make themselves felt by virtue of genius or talent
as producers of literary and artistic works. Here, where natural gifts
and their necessary deployment were of such extraordinary weight, the
probability of a demonstration of natural laws was, of course, much
greater.

The general fundamental question was: Given a literature, a philosophy,
an art, or a branch of art, what is the attitude of mind that produces
it? What are its sufficing and necessary conditions? What, for instance,
causes England in the sixteenth century to acquire a dramatic poetry of
the first rank, or Holland in the seventeenth century a painting art of
the first rank, without any of the other branches of art simultaneously
bearing equally fine fruit in the same country?

My deliberations resulted, for the time being, in the conviction that
all profound historical research was psychical research.

That old piece of work, revised, as it now is, has certainly none but
historic interest; but for a doctor's thesis, it is still a tolerably
readable book and may, at any rate, introduce a beginner to reflection
upon great problems.

After the fundamental scientific questions that engaged my attention, I
was most interested in artistic style. There was, in modern Danish
prose, no author who unreservedly appealed to me; in German Heinrich
Kleist, and in French Merimee, were the stylists whom I esteemed most.
The latter, in fact, it seemed to me was a stylist who, in unerring
sureness, terseness and plasticism, excelled all others. He had
certainly not much warmth or colour, but he had a sureness of line equal
to that of the greatest draughtsmen of Italian art. His aridity was
certainly not winning, and, in reading him, I frequently felt a lack of
breadth of view and horizon, but the compelling power of his line-
drawing captivated me. When my doctor's thesis was finished, towards the
middle of December, 1869, both it and the collection of articles bearing
the name _Criticisms and Portraits_ were placed in the printer's
hands. In the beginning of 1870 two hitherto unprinted pieces were
added, of which one was a paper written some time before on Kamma
Rahbek, which had been revised, the other, a new one on Merimee, which
in 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 of
my thesis I should start on prolonged travels, the real educational
travels of a young man's life. I had a little money lying ready, a small
bursary, and a promise of a travelling allowance from the State, which
promise, however, was not kept. This journey had for a long time been
haunting my fancy. I cherished an ardent wish to see France again, but
even more especially to go to Italy and countries still farther South.
My hope of catching a glimpse of Northern Africa was only fulfilled
thirty-five years later; but I got as far as Italy, which was the actual
goal of my desires. I knew enough of the country, its history from
ancient days until then, and was sufficiently acquainted with its Art
from Roman times upwards and during the Renaissance, to be regarded as
passed for intellectual consecration in the South.

When the thesis was done with and the printing of the second book was
nearing completion, not anxiety to travel, but melancholy and heavy-
heartedness at the thought of my departure, gained the upper hand. It
had been decided that I was to remain away at least a year, and it was
less to myself than to others whom I must necessarily leave behind, that
the time seemed immeasurably long. Professor Schioedte advised me rather
to take several short journeys than one long one; but that was
impracticable. I wanted to get quite away from the home atmosphere. As,
however, there were some who thought of my journey with disquiet and
dread, and from whom it was difficult for me to tear myself, I put off
my departure as long as I could. At last the remnant of work that still
bound me to Copenhagen was finished, and then all the new and enriching
prospects my stay in foreign countries was to bring me shone in a golden
light. Full of undaunted hope, I set out on my travels at the beginning
of 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--
Philarete Chasles' Reminiscences--_Le Theatre Francais_--Coquelin
--Bernhardt--Beginnings of _Main Currents_--The Tuileries--John
Stuart Mill--London--Philosophical Studies--London and Paris Compared--
Antonio Gallenga and His Wife--Don Juan Prim--Napoleon III--London
Theatres--Gladstone and Disraeli in Debate--Paris on the Eve of War--
First Reverses--Flight from Paris--Geneva, Switzerland--Italy--Pasquale
Villari--Vinnie Ream's Friendship--Roman Fever--Henrik Ibsen's
Influence--Scandinavians in Rome.


I.

The first thing that impressed me was Hamburg, and by that I mean the
European views prevalent there. At that time, doubtless mainly for
national reasons, Denmark hated Hamburg. Different Danish authors had
recently written about the town, and in as depreciatory a strain as they
could. The description of one amounted to an assertion that in Hamburg
people only talked of two things, money and women; that of another
commenced: "Of all the places I have ever seen in my life, Hamburg is
the 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 street
life not uninteresting. What decided me, however, was not the externals
of the town, but the spirit I noticed pervading the conversation. The
idea underlying things was that a young man must first and foremost
learn to keep himself well and comfortably; if he could not do this in
Hamburg, then as soon as possible he must set off to some place across
the sea, to Rio, or New York, to the Argentine, or Cape Colony, and
there make his way and earn a fortune. The sons of the families I was
invited to visit, or heard talked about, had long been away; in the
houses I went to, the head of the family had seen other parts of the
world. The contrast with Copenhagen was obvious; there the young sons of
the middle classes were a burden on their families sometimes until they
were 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 no
promotion 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 an
expression that a Hamburg lady, who had been to Copenhagen and had
stayed there some time, used about the young Danish men, namely, that
they had _l'apparence chetive_. I tried to persuade her that life
in Copenhagen had only accidentally appeared so wretched to her; but I
did not convince her in the least. She demonstrated to me, by numerous
examples, to what an extent enterprise was lacking in Denmark, and I was
obliged to restrict myself to explaining that the tremendous pressure of
political pettiness and weakness had brought a general slackness with
it, without people feeling or suspecting it, and had robbed nearly every
one of daring and success. The result of the conversation was that
Denmark was shown to me in a fresh light.

A Hamburg merchant who had lived for a long time in Mexico invited me to
dinner, and at his house I had the same impression of apparent
happiness, comfort, enterprise and wide outlook, in contrast to the
cares and the narrowness at home, where only the few had travelled far
or collected material which might by comparison offer new points of view
and give one a comprehensive experience of life. My psychological
education in Danish literature, with its idolising of "thoroughness" had
imprinted on my mind that whoever thoroughly understood how to observe a
man, woman and child in a Copenhagen backyard had quite sufficient
material whence to brew a knowledge of human nature. It now dawned upon
me that comparative observation of a Mexican and a North German family,
together with their opinions and prejudices, might nevertheless
considerably advance one's knowledge of human nature, should such
comparisons constantly obtrude themselves upon one.

The same man let fall an observation which set me thinking. When the
conversation turned upon the strained relations between France and
Prussia since the battle of Koeniggratz, and I expressed myself confident
that, in the event of a war, France would be victorious, as she
generally was victorious everywhere, he expressed well-supported doubts.
Prussia was a comparatively young state, extremely well organised and
carefully prepared for war; antiquated routine held great sway in the
French army; the Emperor himself, the esteem in which he was held, and
his management were on the down grade. These were words that I had never
heard in Denmark. The possibility of France being defeated in a war with
Prussia was not even entertained there. This merchant showed me an
original photograph of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian, taken on
the spot a moment before the word to fire was given, and a second taken
immediately afterwards. The calm bearing of the Emperor and the two
generals compelled admiration. This was the first time I had seen
photography taken into the service of history.

In the Hamburg Zoological Gardens I was fascinated by the aquarium, with
its multitudes of aquatic animals and fish. There, for the first time in
my life, I saw an elephant, and did not tire of gazing at the mighty
beast. I was struck by the strange caprice with which the great Being we
call Nature goes to work, or, more correctly, by the contrast between
the human point of view and Nature's mode of operations. To us, the
elephant's trunk was burlesque, its walk risibly clumsy; the eagle and
the kite seemed to us, as they sat, to have a severe appearance and a
haughty glance; the apes, picking lice from one another and eating the
vermin, were, to our eyes, contemptible and ridiculous at the same time;
but Nature took everything equally seriously, neither sought nor avoided
beauty, and to her one being was not more central than another. That
must be deemed Nature's central point which is equidistant from the
lowest and from the highest being; it was not impossible, for instance,
that the _harefish_, a great, thick, odd-looking creature, was the
real centre of terrestrial existence, in the same way as our celestial
sphere has its centre, through which a line reaches the pole of the
zodiac in the constellation of the Dragon. And I smiled as I thought of
R. Nielsen and his pupils always speaking as if they stood on the most
intimate footing with the "central point" of existence, and pouring
contempt on others who, it was to be supposed, could not approach it.

I was very unfavourably impressed in Hamburg by German drama and German
dramatic art.

At the town theatre, Hebbel's _Judith_ was being performed, with
Clara Ziegler in the leading part. At that time this lady enjoyed a
considerable reputation in Germany, and was, too, a tall, splendid-
looking female, with a powerful voice, a good mimic, and all the rest of
it, but a mere word-machine. The acting showed up the want of taste in
the piece. Holofernes weltered knee-deep in gore and bragged
incessantly; Judith fell in love with his "virility," and when he had
made her "the guardian of his slumbers" murdered him, from a long
disremembered loyalty to the God of Israel.

At the Thalia Theatre, Raupach's _The School of Life_ was being
produced, a lot of silly stuff, the theme of it, for that matter, allied
to the one dealt with later by Drachmann in _Once upon a Time_. A
Princess is hard-hearted and capricious. To punish her, the King, her
father, shuts a man into her bedroom, makes a feigned accusation against
her, and actually drives her out of the castle. She becomes a waiting-
maid, and passes through various stages of civil life. The King of
Navarra, whose suit she had haughtily rejected, disguised as a
goldsmith, marries her, then arrays himself in silks and velvets, to
tempt her to infidelity. When she refuses, he allows every possible
injustice to be heaped upon her, to try her, makes her believe that the
King, on a false accusation, has had her husband's eyes put out, and
then himself goes about with a bandage before his eyes, and lets her
beg. 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 and
Denmark, and it was acted by a group of actors, some very competent, at
the chief theatre of Hamburg. Slowly though business life pulsated in
Denmark, we were superior to Germany in artistic perception.

The low stage of artistic development at which Hamburg had then arrived
could not, however, efface the impression its superiority over
Copenhagen in other respects had made upon me. Take it all together, my
few days in Hamburg were well spent.


II.

And then I set foot once more in the country which I regarded as my
second fatherland, and the overflowing happiness of once more feeling
French ground under my feet returned undiminished and unchanged. I had
had all my letters sent to Mlle. Louise's address, so fetched them
shortly after my arrival and saw the girl again. Her family invited me
to dinner several times during the very first week, and I was associated
with French men and women immediately upon my arrival.

They were well-brought-up, good-natured, hospitable bourgeois, very
narrow in their views. Not in the sense that they took no interest in
politics and literature, but in that questions for them were decided
once and for all in the clerical spirit. They did not regard this as a
party standpoint, did not look upon themselves as adherents of a party;
their way of thinking was the right one; those who did not agree with
them 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-hearted
man with peculiar opinions, eager and impetuous, who would like to make
the acquaintance of her friend from the North. The aunts called him a
passionate Catholic, and an energetic writer in the service of the
Church Militant. Shortly after my arrival, I met him at dinner. He was a
middle-aged, pale, carelessly dressed man with ugly, irregular features,
and a very excitable manner. With him came his wife, who though pale and
enthusiastic like himself, yet looked quite terrestrial. He introduced
himself as Ernest Hello, contributor to Veuillot's then much talked of
Romish paper, _L'Univers_, which, edited with no small talent by a
noted stylist, adopted all sorts of abusive methods as weapons in every
feud in which the honour of the Church was involved. It was against
Veuillot that Augier had just aimed the introduction to his excellent
comedy, _Le Fils de Giboyer_, and he made no secret of the fact
that in the Deodat mentioned in the piece he had had this writer of holy
abuse in his mind. Hello was in everything Veuillot's vassal.

He was one of the martial believers who despised and hated the best free
research men, and who knew himself in a position to confute them. He
possessed some elements of culture, and had early had thoroughly drilled
into him what, in comparison with the views of later times on History
and Religion, was narrow and antiquated in Voltaire's education, and for
this reason regarded, not only Voltaire's attack on the Church, but all
subsequent philosophy inimical to the Church, as belonging to a bygone
age. He was a fanatic, and there was a sacristy odour about all that he
said. But there was in his disposition an enthusiastic admiration for
weakness in fighting against external strength, and for courage that
expressed itself in sheer defiance of worldly prudence, that made him
feel kindly towards the young Dane. Denmark's taking up arms, with its
two million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused his
enthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It must
certainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominent
characteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over all
those whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed and admired in
France.

As an instance of the paradoxicalness to which Huysmans many years later
became addicted, the latter tried to puff up Hello as being a man of
remarkable intellect; and an instance of the want of independence with
which the new Catholic movement was carried on in Denmark is to be found
in the fact that the organ of Young Denmark, _The Tower_, could
declare: "Hello is one of the few whom all men of the future are agreed
to bow before.... Hello was,--not only a Catholic burning with religious
ardour,--but a genius; these two things explain everything."

When Hello invited me to his house, I regarded it as my duty to go, that
I might learn as much as possible, and although his circle was
exceedingly antipathetic to me, I did not regret it; the spectacle was
highly instructive.

Next to Hello himself, who, despite his fanaticism and restlessness,
impressed one as very inoffensive at bottom, and not mischievous if one
steered clear of such names as Voltaire or Renan, the chief member of
his circle was the black doctor, (_le Docteur noir_,) so much
talked of in the last years of the Empire, and who is even alluded to in
Taine's _Graindorge_. His real name was Vries. He was a negro from
the 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 own
crier to the public. His conversation was one incessant brag, in
atrocious French. Although he had lived seventeen years in France, he
spoke almost unintelligibly.

He persuaded himself, or at least others, that he had discovered
perpetual motion, vowed that he had made a machine which, "by a simple
mechanism," could replace steam power and had been declared practicable
by the first engineers in Paris; but of course he declined to speak
freely about it. Columbus and Fulton only were his equals; he knew all
the secrets of Nature. He had been persecuted--in 1859 he had been
imprisoned for eleven months, on a charge of quackery--because all great
men were persecuted; remember our Lord Jesus Christ! He himself was the
greatest man living. _Moi vous dire le plus grand homme d'universe_.
Hello and the ladies smiled admiringly at him, and never grew tired of
listening to him. This encouraged him to monopolise the conversation:
He, Vries, was a man possessed of courage and wisdom; he understood
Phrenology, Allopathy, Homoeopathy, Engineering Science, Metereology
--like Moliere's doctors and Holberg's Oldfux. His greatest and most
special gift was that of curing cancer. Like writing-masters, who hang
out specimens of how people wrote when they came to them, and of their
caligraphy after they had benefited by their instruction, he had his
cancer patients photographed before and after his treatment, looking
ghastly the first time, and as fresh as a flower the second, and these
pictures hung on view in his house. No wonder, therefore, that Napoleon
III--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 bond
between him and Hello, who claimed the same extraordinary power, and had
foretold all sorts of singular events. He performed miraculous cures;
this appealed to Hello, who was suspicious of all rational Science and
ready to believe any mortal thing. He could read everybody's characters
in their faces. This was a pretext for the most barefaced flattery of
Hello, his wife, and their friends of both sexes, and of course
everything was swallowed with alacrity. To me he said: "Monsieur is
gentle, very calm, very indulgent, and readily forgives an injury."

Hideous though he was, his powerful brutality had a great effect on the
ladies of the circle. They literally hung upon his words. He seized them
by the wrists, and slid his black paws up their bare arms. The married
women 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 talk
about religious matters and got steam up, it was a veritable witches'
Sabbath, and no mistake, every voice being raised in virulent cheap Jack
denunciation of freedom, and common sense. Satan himself had dictated
Voltaire's works; now Voltaire was burning in everlasting fire.
Unbelievers ought to be exterminated; it would serve them right. Renan
ought to be hanged on the first tree that would bear him; the Black
Doctor even maintained that in Manila he would have been shot long ago.
It was always the Doctor who started the subject of the persecution of
heretics. Hello himself persecuted heretics with patronising scorn, but
was 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'Atheisme au 19me Siecle_. Such productions are
called books, because there is no other name for them. As a matter of
fact, idle talk and galimatias of the sort are in no wise literature.
Hello never wrote anything but Roman Catholic sermons, full of
theological sophistries and abuse of thinking men. In those years his
books, with their odour of incense, made the small, flat inhabitants of
the sacristy wainscotting venture out of their chinks in the wall in
delight; but they obtained no applause elsewhere.

It was only after his death that it could occur to a morbid seeker after
originality, with a bitter almond in place of a heart, like Huysmans, to
make 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 himself
was a genius, filled his writings with assertions concerning the
marvellous, incomprehensible nature of genius, and always took up the
cudgels on its behalf. During the Empire, his voice was drowned. It was
only a score of years later that the new Catholic reaction found it to
their advantage to take him at his word and see in him the genius that
he had given himself out to be. He was as much a genius as the madman in
the asylum is the Emperor.


III.

A few days after my arrival, I called upon Taine and was cordially
received. He presented me with one of his books and promised me his
great work, _De l'Intelligence_, which was to come out in a few
days, conversed with me for an hour, and invited me to tea the following
evening. He had been married since I had last been at his house, and his
wife, a young, clear-skinned lady with black plaits, brown eyes and an
extremely graceful figure, was as fresh as a rose, and talked with the
outspoken freedom of youth, though expressing herself in carefully
selected words.

After a few days, Taine, who was generally very formal with strangers,
treated me with conspicuous friendliness. He offered at once to
introduce me to Renan, and urgently advised me to remain six months in
Paris, in order to master the language thoroughly, so that I might
enlighten Frenchmen on the state of things in the North, as well as
picture the French to my fellow-countrymen. Why should I not make French
my auxiliary language, like Turgenieff and Hillebrandt!

Taine knew nothing of German belles lettres. As far as philosophy was
concerned, he despised German Aesthetics altogether, and laughed at me
for believing in "Aesthetics" at all, even one day introducing me to a
stranger as "A young Dane who does not believe in much, but is weak
enough to believe in Aesthetics." I was not precisely overburdened by
the belief. But a German Aesthetic, according to Taine's definition, was
a man absolutely devoid of artistic perception and sense of style, who
lived only in definitions. If you took him to the theatre to see a sad
piece, he would tear his hair with delight, and exclaim: "_Voila das
Tragische!_"

Of the more modern German authors, Taine knew only Heine, of whom he was
a passionate admirer and whom, by reason of his intensity of feeling, he
compared with Dante. A poem like the _Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_ roused
his enthusiasm. Goethe's shorter poems, on the other hand, he could not
appreciate, chiefly no doubt because he did not know German sufficiently
well. He was not even acquainted with the very best of Goethe's short
things, and one day that I asked him to read one poem aloud, the words
in his mouth rang very French.

_Lieber dur Laydenn moecht ee mee schlag'e, als so feel Froedenn des
Laybengs airtrah'ge_, was intended to be--

    Lieber durch Leiden,
    Moecht ich mich schlagen
    Als so viel Freuden
    Des Lebens ertragen.

Goethe's prose he did not consider good, but heavy and prolix, and
lacking in descriptive power. He would praise Voltaire's prose at his
expense. "You perceive the figure and its movements far more clearly,"
he said. The German romanticists disgusted him; their style, also, was
too inartistic for him (_ils ne savent pas ecrire, cela me degoute
d'eux_).

I frequently met friends at his house, amongst others, Marcelin, who had
been his friend from boyhood, and upon whom, many years later, he wrote
a melancholy obituary. This man, the proprietor of that supremely
worldly paper, _La Vie Parisienne_, was a powerful, broad-
shouldered, ruddy-cheeked man, who looked the incarnation of health and
very unlike one's preconception of the editor of the most frivolous and
fashionable weekly in Paris. He was a draughtsman and an author, had
studied the history of the last few centuries in engravings, and himself
owned a collection of no fewer than 300,000. What Taine had most admired
in him was the iron will with which, left, at nineteen years of age,
penniless, and defectively educated, as head of his family, he had kept
his mother and brothers and sisters by his work. Next to that Taine
admired his earnestness. Marcelin, who was generally looked upon as
belonging to gay Paris, was a solitary-minded man, an imaginative
recreator of the peoples of the past, as they were and went about, of
their ways and customs. He it was who opened Taine's eyes to the wealth
of contributions to history locked up in collections of engravings, more
especially perhaps as regarded people's external appearance, and what
the exterior revealed. Another friend who came to Taine at all sorts of
times was Gleyre, the old painter, who had been born in French
Switzerland, but was otherwise a Parisian. And he was not the only
deeply idealist