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 11s. 3d.), 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 I7l. 12s. 6d. 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 (22s. 6d.) 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.