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....