Hunger by Knut Hamsun (page 3)

was, for that matter, only a stable and a tinker’s workshop…. She was certainly on a wrong track if she was seeking any one there.

At this she turns her head away, and says: “I am not seeking for anybody. I am only standing here; it was really only a whim. I” … she stops.

Indeed, really, she only stood there, just stood there, evening after evening, just for a whim’s sake!

That was a little odd. I stood and pondered over it, and it perplexed me more and more. I made up my mind to be daring; I jingled my money in my pocket, and asked her, without further ado, to come and have a glass of wine some place or another … in consideration that winter had come, ha, ha! … it needn’t take very long … but perhaps she would scarcely….

Ah, no, thanks; she couldn’t well do that. No! she couldn’t do that; but would I be so kind as to accompany her a little way? She … it was rather dark to go home now, and she was rather nervous about going up Carl Johann after it got so late.

We moved on; she walked at my right side. A strange, beautiful feeling empowered me; the certainty of being near a young girl. I looked at her the whole way along. The scent of her hair; the warmth that irradiated from her body; the perfume of woman that accompanied her; the sweet breath every time she turned her face towards me–everything penetrated in an ungovernable way through all my senses. So far, I just caught a glimpse of a full, rather pale, face behind the veil, and a high bosom that curved out against her cape. The thought of all the hidden beauty which I surmised lay sheltered under the cloak and veil bewildered me, making me idiotically happy without any reasonable grounds. I could not endure it any longer; I touched her with my hand, passed my fingers over her shoulder, and smiled imbecilely.

“How queer you are,” said I.

“Am I, really; in what way?”

Well, in the first place, simply, she had a habit of standing outside a stable door, evening after evening, without any object whatever, just for a whim’s sake….

Oh, well, she might have her reason for doing so; besides, she liked staying up late at night; it was a thing she had always had a great fancy for. Did I care about going to bed before twelve?

I? If there was anything in the world I hated it was to go to bed before twelve o’clock at night.

Ah, there, you see! She, too, was just the same; she took this little tour in the evenings when she had nothing to lose by doing so. She lived up in St. Olav’s Place.

“Ylajali,” I cried.

“I beg pardon?”

“I only said ‘Ylajali’ … it’s all right. Continue….”

She lived up in St. Olav’s Place, lonely enough, together with her mother, to whom one couldn’t talk because she was so deaf. Was there anything odd in her liking to get out for a little?

“No, not at all,” I replied.

“No? well, what then?”

I could hear by her voice that she was smiling.

Hadn’t she a sister?

Yes; an older sister. But, by-the-way, how did I know that? She had gone to Hamburg.

“Lately?”

“Yes; five weeks ago.” From where did I learn that she had a sister?

I didn’t learn it at all; I only asked.

We kept silence. A man passes us, with a pair of shoes under his arm; otherwise, the street is empty as far as we can see. Over at the Tivoli a long row of coloured lamps are burning. It no longer snows; the sky is clear.

“Gracious! don’t you freeze without an overcoat?” inquires the lady, suddenly looking at me.

Should I tell her why I had no overcoat; make my sorry condition known at once, and frighten her away? As well first as last. Still, it was delightful to walk here at her side and keep her in ignorance yet a while longer. So I lied. I answered:

“No, not at all”; and, in order to change the subject, I asked, “Have you seen the menagerie in the Tivoli?”

“No,” she answered; “is there really anything to see?”

Suppose she were to take it into her head to wish to go there? Into that blaze of light, with the crowd of people. Why, she would be filled with shame; I would drive her out again, with my shabby clothes, and lean face; perhaps she might even notice that I had no waistcoat on….

“Ah, no; there is sure to be nothing worth seeing!”

And a lot of happy ideas occurred to me, of which I at once made use; a few sparse words, fragments left in my dessicated brain. What would one expect from such a small menagerie? On the whole, it did not interest me in the least to see animals in cases. These animals know that one is standing staring at them; they feel hundreds of inquisitive looks upon them; are conscious of them. No; I would prefer to see animals that didn’t know one observed them; shy creatures that nestle in their lair, and lie with sluggish green eyes, and lick their claws, and muse, eh?

Yes; I was certainly right in that.

It was only animals in all their peculiar fearfulness and peculiar savagery that possessed a charm. The soundless, stealthy tread in the total darkness of night; the hidden monsters of the woods; the shrieks of a bird flying past; the wind, the smell of blood, the rumbling in space; in short, the reigning spirit of the kingdom of savage creatures hovering over savagery … the unconscious poetry!… But I was afraid this bored her. The consciousness of my great poverty seized me anew, and crushed me. If I had only been in any way well-enough dressed to have given her the pleasure of this little tour in the Tivoli! I could not make out this creature, who could find pleasure in letting herself be accompanied up the whole of Carl Johann Street by a half-naked beggar. What, in the name of God, was she thinking of? And why was I walking there, giving myself airs, and smiling idiotically at nothing? Had I any reasonable cause, either, for letting myself be worried into a long walk by this dainty, silken-clad bird? Mayhap it did not cost me an effort? Did I not feel the ice of death go right into my heart at even the gentlest puff of wind that blew against us? Was not madness running riot in my brain, just for lack of food for many months at a stretch? Yet she hindered me from going home to get even a little milk into my parched mouth; a spoonful of sweet milk, that I might perhaps be able to keep down. Why didn’t she turn her back on me, and let me go to the deuce?…

I became distracted; my despair reduced me to the last extremity. I said:

“Considering all things, you ought not to walk with me. I disgrace you right under every one’s eyes, if only with my clothes. Yes, it is positively true; I mean it.”

She starts, looks up quickly at me, and is silent; then she exclaims suddenly:

“Indeed, though!” More she doesn’t say.

“What do you mean by that?” I queried.

“Ugh, no; you make me feel ashamed…. We have not got very far now”; and she walked on a little faster.

We turned up University Street, and could already see the lights in St. Olav’s Place. Then she commenced to walk slowly again.

“I have no wish to be indiscreet,” I say; “but won’t you tell me your name before we part? and won’t you, just for one second, lift up your veil so that I can see you? I would be really so grateful.”

A pause. I walked on in expectation.

“You have seen me before,” she replies.

“Ylajali,” I say again.

“Beg pardon. You followed me once for half-a-day, almost right home. Were you tipsy that time?”

I could hear again that she smiled.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, worse luck, I was tipsy that time.”

“That was horrid of you!”

And I admitted contritely that it was horrid of me.

We reached the fountains; we stop and look up at the many lighted windows of No. 2.

“Now, you mustn’t come any farther with me,” she says. “Thank you for coming so far.”

I bowed; I daren’t say anything; I took off my hat and stood bareheaded. I wonder if she will give me her hand.

“Why don’t you ask me to go back a little way with you?” she asks, in a low voice, looking down at the toe of her shoe.

“Great Heavens!” I reply, beside myself, “Great Heavens, if you only would!”

“Yes; but only a little way.”

And we turned round.

I was fearfully confused. I absolutely did not know if I were on my head or my heels. This creature upset all my chain of reasoning; turned it topsy-turvy. I was bewitched and extraordinarily happy. It seemed to me as if I were being dragged enchantingly to destruction. She had expressly willed to go back; it wasn’t my notion, it was her own desire. I walk on and look at her, and get more and more bold. She encourages me, draws me to her by each word she speaks. I forget for a moment my poverty, my humble position, my whole miserable condition. I feel my blood course madly through my whole body, as in the days before I caved in, and resolved to feel my way by a little ruse.

“By-the-way, it wasn’t you I followed that time,” said I. “It was your sister.”

“Was it my sister?” she questions, in the highest degree amazed. She stands still, looks up at me, and positively waits for an answer. She puts the question in all sober earnest.

“Yes,” I replied. “Hum–m, that is to say, it was the younger of the two ladies who went on in front of me.”

“The youngest, eh? eh? a-a-ha!” she laughed out all at once, loudly, heartily, like a child. “Oh, how sly you are; you only said that just to get me to raise my veil, didn’t you? Ah, I thought so; but you may just wait till you are blue first … just for punishment.”

We began to laugh and jest; we talked incessantly all the time. I do not know what I said, I was so happy. She told me that she had seen me once before, a long time ago, in the theatre. I had then comrades with me, and I behaved like a madman; I must certainly have been tipsy that time too, more’s the shame.

Why did she think that?

Oh, I had laughed so.

“Really, a-ah yes; I used to laugh a lot in those days.”

“But now not any more?”

“Oh yes; now too. It is a splendid thing to exist sometimes.”

We reached Carl Johann. She said: “Now we won’t go any farther,” and we returned through University Street. When we arrived at the fountain once more I slackened my pace a little; I knew that I could not go any farther with her.

“Well, now you must turn back here,” she said, and stopped.

“Yes, I suppose I must.”

But a second after she thought I might as well go as far as the door with her. Gracious me, there couldn’t be anything wrong in that, could there?

“No,” I replied.

But when we were standing at the door all my misery confronted me clearly. How was one to keep up one’s courage when one was so broken down? Here I stood before a young lady, dirty, ragged, torn, disfigured by hunger, unwashed, and only half-clad; it was enough to make one sink into the earth. I shrank into myself, bent my head involuntarily, and said:

“May I not meet you any more then?”

I had no hope of being permitted to see her again. I almost wished for a sharp No, that would pull me together a bit and render me callous.

“Yes,” she whispered softly, almost inaudibly.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause….

“Won’t you be so kind as to lift your veil, only just for a minute,” I asked. “So that I can see whom I have been talking to. Just for one moment, for indeed I must see whom I have been talking to.”

Another pause….

“You can meet me outside here on Tuesday evening,” she said. “Will you?”

“Yes, dear lady, if I have permission to.”

“At eight o’clock.”

“Very well.”

I stroked down her cloak with my hand, merely to have an excuse for touching her. It was a delight to me to be so near her.

“And you mustn’t think all too badly of me,” she added; she was smiling again.

“No.”

Suddenly she made a resolute movement and drew her veil up over her forehead; we stood and gazed at one another for a second.

“Ylajali!” I cried. She stretched herself up, flung her arms round my neck and kissed me right on the mouth–only once, swiftly, bewilderingly swiftly, right on the mouth. I could feel how her bosom heaved; she was breathing violently. She wrenched herself suddenly out of my clasp, called a good-night, breathlessly, whispering, and turned and ran up the stairs without a word more….

The hall door shut.

* * * * *

It snowed still more the next day, a heavy snow mingled with rain; great wet flakes that fell to earth and were turned to mud. The air was raw and icy. I woke somewhat late, with my head in a strange state of confusion, my heart intoxicated from the foregone evening by the agitation of that delightful meeting. In my rapture (I had lain a while awake and fancied Ylajali at my side) I spread out my arms and embraced myself and kissed the air. At length I dragged myself out of bed and procured a fresh cup of milk, and straight on top of that a plate of beef. I was no longer hungry, but my nerves were in a highly-strung condition.

I went off to the clothes-shop in the bazaar. It occurred to me that I might pick up a second-hand waistcoat cheaply, something to put on under my coat; it didn’t matter what.

I went up the steps to the bazaar and took hold of one and began to examine it.

While I was thus engaged an acquaintance came by; he nodded and called up to me. I let the waistcoat hang and went down to him. He was a designer, and was on the way to his office.

“Come with me and have a glass of beer,” he said. “But hurry up, I haven’t much time…. What lady was that you were walking with yesterday evening?”

“Listen here now,” said I, jealous of his bare thought. “Supposing it was my _fiancee_.”

“By Jove!” he exclaimed.

“Yes; it was all settled yesterday evening.”

This nonplussed him completely. He believed me implicitly. I lied in the most accomplished manner to get rid of him. We ordered the beer, drank it, and left.

“Well, good-bye! O listen,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a few shillings. It is a shame, too, that I haven’t paid you long ago, but now you shall have them during the next few days.”

“Yes, thanks,” I replied; but I knew that he would never pay me back the few shillings. The beer, I am sorry to say, went almost immediately to my head. The thought of the previous evening’s adventure overwhelmed me–made me delirious. Supposing she were not to meet me on Tuesday! Supposing she were to begin to think things over, to get suspicious … get suspicious of what?… My thoughts gave a jerk and dwelt upon the money. I grew afraid; deadly afraid of myself. The theft rushed in upon me in all its details. I saw the little shop, the counter, my lean hands as I seized the money, and I pictured to myself the line of action the police would adopt when they would come to arrest me. Irons on my hands and feet; no, only on my hands; perhaps only on one hand. The dock, the clerk taking down the evidence, the scratch of his pen–perhaps he might take a new one for the occasion–his look, his threatening look. There, Herr Tangen, to the cell, the eternally dark….

Humph! I clenched my hands tightly to try and summon courage, walked faster and faster, and came to the market-place. There I sat down.

Now, no child’s play. How in the wide world could any one prove that I had stolen? Besides, the huckster’s boy dare not give an alarm, even if it should occur to him some day how it had all happened. He valued his situation far too dearly for that. No noise, no scenes, may I beg!

But all the same, this money weighed in my pocket sinfully, and gave me no peace. I began to question myself, and I became clearly convinced that I had been happier before, during the period in which I had suffered in all honour. And Ylajali? Had I, too, not polluted her with the touch of my sinful hands? Lord, O Lord my God, Ylajali! I felt as drunk as a bat, jumped up suddenly, and went straight over to the cake woman who was sitting near the chemist’s under the sign of the elephant. I might even yet lift myself above dishonour; it was far from being too late; I would show the whole world that I was capable of doing so.

On the way over I got the money in readiness, held every farthing of it in my hand, bent down over the old woman’s table as if I wanted something, clapped the money without further ado into her hands. I spoke not a word, turned on my heel, and went my way.

What a wonderful savour there was in feeling oneself an honest man once more! My empty pockets troubled me no longer; it was simply a delightful feeling to me to be cleaned out. When I weighed the whole matter thoroughly, this money had in reality cost me much secret anguish; I had really thought about it with dread and shuddering time upon time. I was no hardened soul; my honourable nature rebelled against such a low action. God be praised, I had raised myself in my own estimation again! “Do as I have done!” I said to myself, looking across the thronged market-place– “only just do as I have done!” I had gladdened a poor old cake vendor to such good purpose that she was perfectly dumbfounded. Tonight her children wouldn’t go hungry to bed…. I buoyed myself up with these reflections and considered that I had behaved in a most exemplary manner. God be praised! The money was out of my hands now!

Tipsy and nervous, I wandered down the street, and swelled with satisfaction. The joy of being able to meet Ylajali cleanly and honourably, and of feeling I could look her in the face, ran away with me. I was not conscious of any pain. My head was clear and buoyant; it was as if it were a head of mere light that rested and gleamed on my shoulders. I felt inclined to play the wildest pranks, to do something astounding, to set the whole town in a ferment. All up through Graendsen I conducted myself like a madman. There was a buzzing in my ears, and intoxication ran riot in my brains. The whim seized me to go and tell my age to a commissionaire, who, by-the-way, had not addressed a word to me; to take hold of his hands, and gaze impressively in his face, and leave him again without any explanation. I distinguished every nuance in the voice and laughter of the passers-by, observed some little birds that hopped before me in the street, took to studying the expression of the paving-stones, and discovered all sorts of tokens and signs in them. Thus occupied, I arrive at length at Parliament Place. I stand all at once stock-still, and look at the droskes; the drivers are wandering about, chatting and laughing. The horses hang their heads and cower in the bitter weather. “Go ahead!” I say, giving myself a dig with my elbow. I went hurriedly over to the first vehicle, and got in. “Ullevoldsveien, No. 37,” I called out, and we rolled off.

On the way the driver looked round, stooped and peeped several times into the trap, where I sat, sheltered underneath the hood. Had he, too, grown suspicious? There was no doubt of it; my miserable attire had attracted his attention.

“I want to meet a man,” I called to him, in order to be beforehand with him, and I explained gravely that I must really meet this man. We stop outside 37, and I jump out, spring up the stairs right to the third storey, seize a bell, and pull it. It gives six or seven fearful peals inside.

A maid comes out and opens the door. I notice that she has round, gold drops in her ears, and black stuff buttons on her grey bodice. She looks at me with a frightened air.

I inquire for Kierulf–Joachim Kierulf, if I might add further–a wool-dealer; in short, not a man one could make a mistake about….

The girl shook her head. “No Kierulf lives here,” said she.

She stared at me, and held the door ready to close it. She made no effort to find the man for me. She really looked as if she knew the person I inquired for, if she would only take the trouble to reflect a bit. The lazy jade! I got vexed, turned my back on her, and ran downstairs again.

“He wasn’t there,” I called to the driver.

“Wasn’t he there?”

“No. Drive to Tomtegaden, No. 11.” I was in a state of the most violent excitement, and imparted something of the same feeling to the driver. He evidently thought it was a matter of life and death, and he drove on, without further ado. He whipped up the horse sharply.

“What’s the man’s name?” he inquired, turning round on the box.

“Kierulf, a dealer in wool–Kierulf.”

And the driver, too, thought this was a man one would not be likely to make any mistake about.

“Didn’t he generally wear a light morning, coat?”

“What!” I cried; “a light morning-coat? Are you mad? Do you think it is a tea-cup I am inquiring about?” This light morning-coat came most inopportunely; it spoilt the whole man for me such as I had fancied him.

“What was it you said he was called?–Kierulf?”

“Of course,” I replied. “Is there anything wonderful in that? The name doesn’t disgrace any one.”

“Hasn’t he red hair?”

Well, it was quite possible that he had red hair, and now that the driver mentioned the matter, I was suddenly convinced that he was right. I felt grateful to the poor driver, and hastened to inform him that he had hit the man off to a T–he really was just as he described him,–and I remarked, in addition, that it would be a phenomenon to see such a man without red hair.

“It must be him I drove a couple of times,” said the driver; “he had a knobbed stick.”

This brought the man vividly before me, and I said, “Ha, ha! I suppose no one has ever yet seen the man without a knobbed stick in his hand, of that you can be certain, quite certain.”

Yes, it was clear that it was the same man he had driven. He recognized him–and he drove so that the horse’s shoes struck sparks as they touched the stones.

All through this phase of excitement I had not for one second lost my presence of mind. We pass a policeman, and I notice his number is 69. This number struck me with such vivid clearness that it penetrated like a splint into my brain–69–accurately 69. I wouldn’t forget it.

I leant back in the vehicle, a prey to the wildest fancies; crouched under the hood so that no one could see me. I moved my lips and commenced to I talk idiotically to myself. Madness rages through my brain, and I let it rage. I am fully conscious that I am succumbing to influences over which I have no control. I begin to laugh, silently, passionately, without a trace of cause, still merry and intoxicated from the couple of glasses of ale I have drunk. Little by little my excitement abates, my calm returns more and more to me. I feel the cold in my sore finger, and I stick it down inside my collar to warm it a little. At length we reach Tomtegaden. The driver pulls up.

I alight, without any haste, absently, listlessly, with my head heavy. I go through a gateway and come into a yard across which I pass. I come to a door which I open and pass through; I find myself in a lobby, a sort of anteroom, with two windows. There are two boxes in it, one on top of the other, in one corner, and against the wall an old, painted sofa-bed over which a rug is spread. To the right, in the next room, I hear voices and the cry of a child, and above me, on the second floor, the sound of an iron plate being hammered. All this I notice the moment as I enter.

I step quietly across the room to the opposite door without any haste, without any thought of flight; open it, too, and come out in Vognmansgaden. I look up at the house through which I have passed. “Refreshment and lodgings for travellers.”

It is not my intention to escape, to steal away from the driver who is waiting for me. I go very coolly down Vognmansgaden, without fear of being conscious of doing any wrong. Kierulf, this dealer in wool, who has spooked in my brain so long–this creature in whose existence I believe, and whom it was of vital importance that I should meet–had vanished from my memory; was wiped out with many other mad whims which came and went in turns. I recalled him no longer, except as a reminiscence–a phantom.

In measure, as I walked on, I become more and more sober; felt languid and weary, and dragged my legs after me. The snow still fell in great moist flakes. At last I reached Gronland; far out, near the church, I sat down to rest on a seat. All the passers-by looked at me with much astonishment. I fell a-thinking.

Thou good God, what a miserable plight I have come to! I was so heartily tired and weary of all my miserable life that I did not find it worth the trouble of fighting any longer to preserve it. Adversity had gained the upper hand; it had been too strong for me. I had become so strangely poverty-stricken and broken, a mere shadow of what I once had been; my shoulders were sunken right down on one side, and I had contracted a habit of stooping forward fearfully as I walked, in order to spare my chest what little I could. I had examined my body a few days ago, one noon up in my room, and I had stood and cried over it the whole time. I had worn the same shirt for many weeks, and it was quite stiff with stale sweat, and had chafed my skin. A little blood and water ran out of the sore place; it did not hurt much, but it was very tiresome to have this tender place in the middle of my stomach. I had no remedy for it, and it wouldn’t heal of its own accord. I washed it, dried it carefully, and put on the same shirt. There was no help for it, it….

I sit there on the bench and ponder over all this, and am sad enough. I loathe myself. My very hands seem distasteful to me; the loose, almost coarse, expression of the backs of them pains me, disgusts me. I feel myself rudely affected by the sight of my lean fingers. I hate the whole of my gaunt, shrunken body, and shrink from bearing it, from feeling it envelop me. Lord, if the whole thing would come to an end now, I would heartily, gladly die!

Completely worsted, soiled, defiled, and debased in my own estimation, I rose mechanically and commenced to turn my steps homewards. On the way I passed a door, upon which the following was to be read on a plate–“Winding-sheets to be had at Miss Andersen’s, door to the right.” Old memories! I muttered, as my thoughts flew back to my former room in Hammersborg. The little rocking-chair, the newspapers near the door, the lighthouse director’s announcement, and Fabian Olsen, the baker’s new-baked bread. Ah yes; times were better with me then than now; one night I had written a tale for ten shillings, now I couldn’t write anything. My head grew light as soon as ever I attempted it. Yes, I would put an end to it now; and I went on and on.

As I got nearer and nearer to the provision shop, I had the half-conscious feeling of approaching a danger, but I determined to stick to my purpose; I would give myself up. I ran quickly up the steps. At the door I met a little girl who was carrying a cup in her hands, and I slipped past her and opened the door. The shop boy and I stand face to face alone for the second time.

“Well!” he exclaims; “fearfully bad weather now, isn’t it?” What did this going round the bush signify? Why didn’t he seize me at once? I got furious, and cried:

“Oh, I haven’t come to prate about the weather.”

This violent preliminary takes him aback; his little huckster brain fails him. It has never even occurred to him that I have cheated him of five shillings.

“Don’t you know, then, that I have swindled you?” I query impatiently, and I breathe quickly with the excitement; I tremble and am ready to use force if he doesn’t come to the point.

But the poor man has no misgivings.

Well, bless my soul, what stupid creatures one has to mix with in this world! I abuse him, explain to him every detail as to how it had all happened, show him where the fact was accomplished, where the money had lain; how I had gathered it up in my hand and closed my fingers over it–and he takes it all in and does nothing. He shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, listens for footsteps in the next room, make signs to hush me, to try and make me speak lower, and says at last:

“It was a mean enough thing of you to do!”

“No; hold on,” I explained in my desire to contradict him–to aggravate him. It wasn’t quite so mean as he imagined it to be, in his huckster head. Naturally, I didn’t keep the money; that could never have entered my head. I, for my part, scorned to derive any benefit from it–that was opposed to my thoroughly honest nature.

“What did you do with it, then?”

“I gave it away to a poor old woman–every farthing of it.” He must understand that that was the sort of person I was; I didn’t forget the poor so….

He stands and thinks over this a while, becomes manifestly very dubious as to how far I am an honest man or not. At last he says:

“Oughtn’t you rather to have brought it back again?”

“Now, listen here,” I reply; “I didn’t want to get you into trouble in any way; but that is the thanks one gets for being generous. Here I stand and explain the whole thing to you, and you simply, instead of being ashamed as a dog, make no effort to settle the dispute with me. Therefore I wash my hands of you, and as for the rest, I say, ‘The devil take you!’ Good-day.”

I left, slamming the door behind me. But when I got home to my room, into the melancholy hole, wet through from the soft snow, trembling in my knees from the day’s wanderings, I dismounted instantly from my high horse, and sank together once more.

I regretted my attack upon the poor shop-boy, wept, clutched myself by the throat to punish myself for my miserable trick, and behaved like a lunatic. He had naturally been in the most deadly terror for the sake of his situation; he had not dared to make any fuss about the five shillings that were lost to the business, and I had taken advantage of his fear, had tortured him with my violent address, stabbed him with every loud word that I had roared out. And the master himself had perhaps been sitting inside the inner room, almost within an ace of feeling called upon to come out and inquire what was the row. No, there was no longer any limit to the low things I might be tempted to do.

Well, why hadn’t I been locked up? then it would have come to an end. I would almost have stretched out my wrists for the handcuffs. I would not have offered the slightest resistance; on the contrary, I would have assisted them. Lord of Heaven and Earth! one day of my life for one happy second again! My whole life for a mess of lentils! Hear me only this once!…

I lay down in the wet clothes I had on, with a vague idea that I might die during the night. And I used my last strength to tidy up my bed a little, so that it might appear a little orderly about me in the morning. I folded my hands and chose my position.

All at once I remember Ylajali. To think that I could have forgotten her the entire evening through! And light forces its way ever so faintly into my spirit again–a little ray of sunshine that makes me so blessedly warm; and gradually more sun comes, a rare, silken, balmy light that caresses me with soothing loveliness. And the sun grows stronger and stronger, burns sharply in my temples, seethes fiercely and glowingly in my emaciated brain. And at last, a maddening pyre of rays flames up before my eyes; a heaven and earth in conflagration men and beasts of fire, mountains of fire, devils of fire, an abyss, a wilderness, a hurricane, a universe in brazen ignition, a smoking, smouldering day of doom!

And I saw and heard no more….

* * * * *

I woke in a sweat the next morning, moist all over, my whole body bathed in dampness. The fever had laid violent hands on me. At first I had no clear idea of what had happened to me; I looked about me in amazement, felt a complete transformation of my being, absolutely failed to recognize myself again. I felt along my own arms and down my legs, was struck with astonishment that the window was where it was, and not in the opposite wall; and I could hear the tramp of the horses’ feet in the yard below as if it came from above me. I felt rather sick, too–qualmish.

My hair clung wet and cold about my forehead. I raised myself on my elbow and looked at the pillow; damp hair lay on it, too, in patches. My feet had swelled up in my shoes during the night, but they caused me no pain, only I could not move my toes much, they were too stiff.

As the afternoon closed in, and it had already begun to grow a little dusk, I got up out of bed and commenced to move about the room a little. I felt my way with short, careful steps, taking care to keep my balance and spare my feet as much as possible. I did not suffer much, and I did not cry; neither was I, taking all into consideration, sad. On the contrary, I was blissfully content. It did not strike me just then that anything could be otherwise than it was.

Then I went out.

The only thing that troubled me a little, in spite of the nausea that the thought of food inspired in me, was hunger. I commenced to be sensible of a shameless appetite again; a ravenous lust of food, which grew steadily worse and worse. It gnawed unmercifully in my breast; carrying on a silent, mysterious work in there. It was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more, then lay quite still for a moment’s space, and then began afresh, boring noiselessly in, and without any haste, and left empty spaces everywhere after them as they went on….

I was not ill, but faint; I broke into a sweat. I thought of going to the market-place to rest a while, but the way was long and wearisome; at last I had almost reached it. I stood at the corner of the market and Market Street; the sweat ran down into my eyes and blinded me, and I had just stopped in order to wipe it away a little. I did not notice the place I was standing in; in fact, I did not think about it; the noise around me was something frightful.

Suddenly a call rings out, a cold, sharp warning. I hear this cry–hear it quite well, and I start nervously to one side, stepping as quickly as my bad foot allows me to. A monster of a bread-van brushes past me, and the wheel grazes my coat; I might perhaps have been a little quicker if I had exerted myself. Well, there was no help for it; one foot pained me, a couple of toes were crunched. I felt that they, as it were, curled up in my shoes.

The driver reins in his horse with all his might. He turns round on the van and inquires in a fright how it fares with me. Oh! it might have been worse, far worse…. It was perhaps not so dangerous…. I didn’t think any bones were broken. Oh, pray….

I rushed over as quickly as I could to a seat; all these people who stopped and stared at me abashed me. After all, it was no mortal blow; comparatively speaking, I had got off luckily enough, as misfortune was bound to come in my way. The worst thing was that my shoe was crushed to pieces; the sole was torn loose at the toe. I help up my foot, and saw blood inside the gap. Well, it wasn’t intentional on either side; it was not the man’s purpose to make things worse for me than they were; he looked much concerned about it. It was quite certain that if I had begged him for a piece of bread out of his cart he would have given it to me. He would certainly have given it to me gladly. God bless him in return, wherever he is!…

I was terribly hungry, and I did not know what to do with myself and my shameless appetite. I writhed from side to side on the seat, and bowed my chest right down to my knees; I was almost distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall–God knows how I got there–and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me by; otherwise I observed nothing.

All at once, it enters my head to go to one of the meat bazaars underneath me, and beg a piece of raw meat. I go straight along the balustrade to the other side of the bazaar buildings, and descend the steps. When I had nearly reached the stalls on the lower floor, I called up the archway leading to the stairs, and made a threatening backward gesture, as if I were talking to a dog up there, and boldly addressed the first butcher I met.

“Ah, will you be kind enough to give me a bone for my dog?” I said; “only a bone. There needn’t be anything on it; it’s just to give him something to carry in his mouth.”

I got the bone, a capital little bone, on which there still remained a morsel of meat, and hid it under my coat. I thanked the man so heartily that he looked at me in amazement.

“Oh, no need of thanks,” said he.

“Oh yes; don’t say that,” I mumbled; “it is kindly done of you,” and I ascended the steps again.

My heart was throbbing violently in my breast. I sneaked into one of the passages, where the forges are, as far in as I could go, and stopped outside a dilapidated door leading to a back-yard. There was no light to be seen anywhere, only blessed darkness all around me; and I began to gnaw at the bone.

It had no taste; a rank smell of blood oozed from it, and I was forced to vomit almost immediately. I tried anew. If I could only keep it down, it would, in spite of all, have some effect. It was simply a matter of forcing it to remain down there. But I vomited again. I grew wild, bit angrily into the meat, tore off a morsel, and gulped it down by sheer strength of will; and yet it was of no use. Just as soon as the little fragments of meat became warm in my stomach up they came again, worse luck. I clenched my hands in frenzy, burst into tears from sheer helplessness, and gnawed away as one possessed. I cried, so that the bone got wet and dirty with my tears, vomited, cursed and groaned again, cried as if my heart would break, and vomited anew. I consigned all the powers that be to the lowermost torture in the loudest voice.

Quiet–not a soul about–no light, no noise; I am in a state of the most fearful excitement; I breathe hardly and audibly, and I cry with gnashing teeth, each time that the morsel of meat, which might satisfy me a little, comes up. As I find that, in spite of all my efforts, it avails me naught, I cast the bone at the door. I am filled with the most impotent hate; shriek, and menace with my fists towards Heaven; yell God’s name hoarsely, and bend my fingers like claws, with ill-suppressed fury….

I tell you, you Heaven’s Holy Baal, you don’t exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face–I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down!

I tell you your Heaven is full of the kingdom of the earth’s most crass-headed idiots and poverty-stricken in spirit! I tell you, you have filled your Heaven with the grossest and most cherished harlots from here below, who have bent their knees piteously before you at their hour of death! I tell you, you have used force against me, and you know not, you omniscient nullity, that I never bend in opposition! I tell you, all my life, every cell in my body, every power of my soul, gasps to mock you–you Gracious Monster on High. I tell you, I would, if I could, breathe it into every human soul, every flower, every leaf, every dewdrop in the garden! I tell you, I would scoff you on the day of doom, and curse the teeth out of my mouth for the sake of your Deity’s boundless miserableness! I tell you from this hour I renounce all thy works and all thy pomps! I will execrate my thought if it dwell on you again, and tear out my lips if they ever utter your name! I tell you, if you exist, my last word in life or in death–I bid you farewell, for all time and eternity–I bid you farewell with heart and reins. I bid you the last irrevocable farewell, and I am silent, and turn my back on you and go my way…. Quiet.

I tremble with excitement and exhaustion, and stand on the same spot, still whispering oaths and abusive epithets, hiccoughing after the violent crying fit, broken down and apathetic after my frenzied outburst of rage. I stand there for maybe an hour, hiccough and whisper, and hold on to the door. Then I hear voices–a conversation between two men who are coming down the passage. I slink away from the door, drag myself along the walls of the houses, and come out again into the light streets. As I jog along Young’s Hill my brain begins to work in a most peculiar direction. It occurs to me that the wretched hovels down at the corner of the market-place, the stores for loose materials, the old booths for second-hand clothes, are really a disgrace to the place–they spoilt the whole appearance of the market, and were a blot on the town, Fie! away with the rubbish! And I turned over in my mind as I walked on what it would cost to remove the Geographical Survey down there–that handsome building which had always attracted me so much each time I passed it. It would perhaps not be possible to undertake a removal of that kind under two or three hundred pounds. A pretty sum–three hundred pounds! One must admit, a tidy enough little sum for pocket-money! Ha, ha! just to make a start with, eh? and I nodded my head, and conceded that it was a tidy enough bit of pocket-money to make a start with. I was still trembling over my whole body, and hiccoughed now and then violently after my cry. I had a feeling that there was not much life left in me–that I was really singing my last verse. It was almost a matter of indifference to me; it did not trouble me in the least. On the contrary, I wended my way down town, down to the wharf, farther and farther away from my room. I would, for that matter, have willingly laid myself down flat in the street to die. My sufferings were rendering me more and more callous. My sore foot throbbed violently; I had a sensation as if the pain was creeping up through my whole leg. But not even that caused me any particular distress. I had endured worse sensations.

In this manner, I reached the railway wharf. There was no traffic, no noise–only here and there a person to be seen, a labourer or sailor slinking round with their hands in their pockets. I took notice of a lame man, who looked sharply at me as we passed one another. I stopped him instinctively, touched my hat, and inquired if he knew if the Nun had sailed. Someway, I couldn’t help snapping my fingers right under the man’s nose, and saying, “Ay, by Jove, the _Nun_; yes, the _Nun_!” which I had totally forgotten. All the same, the thought of her had been smouldering in me. I had carried it about unconsciously.

Yes, bless me, the Nun had sailed.

He couldn’t tell me where she had sailed to?

The man reflects, stands on his long leg, keeps the other up in the air; it dangles a little.

“No,” he replies. “Do you know what cargo she was taking in here?”

“No,” I answer. But by this time I had already lost interest in the _Nun_, and I asked the man how far it might be to Holmestrand, reckoned in good old geographical miles.

“To Holmestrand? I should think…”

“Or to Voeblungsnaess?”

“What was I going to say? I should think to Holmestrand…”

“Oh, never mind; I have just remembered it,” I interrupted him again. “You wouldn’t perhaps be so kind as to give me a small bit of tobacco–only just a tiny scrap?”

I received the tobacco, thanked the man heartily, and went on. I made no use of the tobacco; I put it into my pocket. He still kept his eye on me–perhaps I had aroused his suspicions in some other way or another. Whether I stood still or walked on, I felt his suspicious look following me. I had no mind to be persecuted by this creature. I turn round, and, dragging myself back to him, say:

“Binder”–only this one word, “Binder!” no more. I looked fixedly at him as I say it, indeed I was conscious of staring fearfully at him. It was as if I saw him with my entire body instead of only with my eyes. I stare for a while after I give utterance to this word, and then I jog along again to the railway square. The man does not utter a syllable, he only keeps his gaze fixed upon me.

“Binder!” I stood suddenly still. Yes, wasn’t that just what I had a feeling of the moment I met the old chap; a feeling that I had met him before! One bright morning up in Graendsen, when I pawned my waistcoat. It seemed to me an eternity since that day.

Whilst I stand and ponder over this, I lean and support myself against a house wall at the corner of the railway square and Harbour Street. Suddenly, I start quickly and make an effort to crawl away. As I do not succeed in it, I stare case-hardened ahead of me and fling all shame to the winds. There is no help for it. I am standing face to face with the “Commandor.” I get devil-may-care–brazen. I take yet a step farther from the wall in order to make him notice me. I do not do it to awake his compassion, but to mortify myself, place myself, as it were, on the pillory. I could have flung myself down in the street and begged him to walk over me, tread on my face. I don’t even bid him good-evening.

Perhaps the “Commandor” guesses that something is amiss with me. He slackens his pace a little, and I say, in order to stop him, “I would have called upon you long ago with something, but nothing has come yet!”

“Indeed?” he replies in an interrogative tone. “You haven’t got it finished, then?”

“No, it didn’t get finished.”

My eyes by this time are filled with tears at his friendliness, and I cough with a bitter effort to regain my composure. The “Commandor” tweaks his nose and looks at me.

“Have you anything to live on in the meantime?” he questions.

“No,” I reply. “I haven’t that either; I haven’t eaten anything today, but….”

“The Lord preserve you, man, it will never do for you to go and starve yourself to death,” he exclaims, feeling in his pocket.

This causes a feeling of shame to awake in me, and I stagger over to the wall and hold on to it. I see him finger in his purse, and he hands me half-a-sovereign.

He makes no fuss about it, simply gives me half-a-sovereign, reiterating at the same time that it would never do to let me starve to death. I stammered an objection and did not take it all at once. It is shameful of me to … it was really too much….

“Hurry up,” he says, looking at his watch. “I have been waiting for the train; I hear it coming now.”

I took the money; I was dumb with joy, and never said a word; I didn’t even thank him once.

“It isn’t worth while feeling put out about it,” said the “Commandor” at last. “I know you can write for it.”

And so off he went.

When he had gone a few steps, I remembered all at once that I had not thanked him for this great assistance. I tried to overtake him, but could not get on quickly enough; my legs failed me, and I came near tumbling on my face. He went farther and farther away from me. I gave up the attempt; thought of calling after him, but dared not; and when after all I did muster up courage enough and called once or twice, he was already at too great a distance, and my voice had become too weak.

I was left standing on the pavement, gazing after him. I wept quietly and silently. “I never saw the like!” I said to myself. “He gave me half-a- sovereign.” I walked back and placed myself where he had stood, imitated all his movements held the half-sovereign up to my moistened eyes, inspected it on both sides, and began to swear–to swear at the top of my voice, that there was no manner of doubt that what I held in my hand was half-a-sovereign. An hour after, maybe–a very long hour, for it had grown very silent all around me–I stood, singularly enough, outside No. 11 Tomtegaden. After I had stood and collected my wits for a moment and wondered thereat, I went through the door for the second time, right into the “Entertainment and lodgings for travellers.” Here I asked for shelter and was immediately supplied with a bed.

* * * * *

Tuesday.

Sunshine and quiet–a strangely bright day. The snow had disappeared. There was life and joy, and glad faces, smiles, and laughter everywhere. The fountains threw up sprays of water in jets, golden-tinted from the sun-light, azure from the sky….

At noon I left my lodgings in Tomtegaden, where I still lived and found fairly comfortable, and set out for town. I was in the merriest humour, and lazied about the whole afternoon through the most frequented streets and looked at the people. Even before seven o’clock I took a turn up St. Olav’s Place and took a furtive look up at the window of No. 2. In an hour I would see her. I went about the whole time in a state of tremulous, delicious dread. What would happen? What should I say when she came down the stairs? Good-evening? or only smile? I concluded to let it rest with the smile. Of course I would bow profoundly to her.

I stole away, a little ashamed to be there so early, wandered up Carl Johann for a while, and kept my eyes on University Street. When the clocks struck eight I walked once more towards St. Olav’s Place. On the way it struck me that perhaps I might arrive a few minutes too late, and I quickened my pace as much as I could. My foot was very sore, otherwise nothing ailed me.

I took up my place at the fountain and drew breath. I stood there a long while and gazed up at the window of No. 2, but she did not come. Well, I would wait; I was in no hurry. She might be delayed, and I waited on. It couldn’t well be that I had dreamt the whole thing! Had my first meeting with her only existed in imagination the night I lay in delirium? I began in perplexity to think over it, and wasn’t at all sure.

“Hem!” came from behind me. I heard this, and I also heard light steps near me, but I did not turn round, I only stared up at the wide staircase before me.

“Good-evening,” came then. I forget to smile; I don’t even take off my hat at first, I am so taken aback to see her come this way.

“Have you been waiting long?” she asks. She is breathing a little quickly after her walk.

“No, not at all; I only came a little while ago,” I reply. “And besides, would it matter if I had waited long? I expected, by-the-way, that you would come from another direction.”

“I accompanied mamma to some people. Mamma is spending the evening with them.”

“Oh, indeed,” I say.

We had begun to walk on involuntarily. A policeman is standing at the corner, looking at us.

“But, after all, where are we going to?” she asks, and stops.

“Wherever you wish; only where _you_ wish.”

“Ugh, yes! but it’s such a bore to have to decide oneself.”

A pause.

Then I say, merely for the sake of saying something:

“I see it’s dark up in your windows.”

“Yes, it is,” she replies gaily; “the servant has an evening off, too, so I am all alone at home.”

We both stand and look up at the windows of No. 2 as if neither of us had seen them before.

“Can’t we go up to your place, then?” I say; “I shall sit down at the door the whole time if you like.”

But then I trembled with emotion, and regretted greatly that I had perhaps been too forward. Supposing she were to get angry, and leave me. Suppose I were never to see her again. Ah, that miserable attire of mine! I waited despairingly for her reply.

“You shall certainly not sit down by the door,” she says. She says it right down tenderly, and says accurately these words: “You shall certainly not sit down by the door.”

We went up.

Out on the lobby, where it was dark, she took hold of my hand, and led me on. There was no necessity for my being so quiet, she said, I could very well talk. We entered. Whilst she lit the candle–it was not a lamp she lit, but a candle–whilst she lit the candle, she said, with a little laugh:

“But now you mustn’t look at me. Ugh! I am so ashamed, but I will never do it again.”

“What will you never do again?”

“I will never … ugh … no … good gracious … I will never kiss you again!”

“Won’t you?” I said, and we both laughed. I stretched out my arms to her, and she glided away; slipped round to the other side of the table. We stood a while and gazed at one another; the candle stood right between us.

“Try and catch me,” she said; and with much laughter I tried to seize hold of her. Whilst she sprang about, she loosened her veil, and took off her hat; her sparkling eyes hung on mine, and watched my movements. I made a fresh sortie, and tripped on the carpet and fell, my sore foot refusing to bear me up any longer. I rose in extreme confusion.

“Lord, how red you did get!” she said. “Well it was awfully awkward of you.”

“Yes, it was,” I agreed, and we began the chase afresh.

“It seems to me you limp.”

“Yes; perhaps I do–just a little–only just a little, for that matter.”

“Last time you had a sore finger, now you have got a sore foot; it is awful the number of afflictions you have.”

“Ah, yes. I was run over slightly, a few days ago.”

“Run over! Tipsy again? Why, good heavens! what a life you lead, young man!” and she threatened me with her forefinger, and tried to appear grave. “Well, let us sit down, then; no, not down there by the door; you are far too reserved! Come here–you there, and I here–so, that’s it … ugh, it’s such a bore with reticent people! One has to say and do everything oneself; one gets no help to do anything. Now, for example, you might just as well put your arm over the back of my chair; you could easily have thought of that much out of your own head, couldn’t you? But if I say anything like that, you open your eyes as wide as if you couldn’t believe what was being said. Yes, it is really true; I have noticed it several times; you are doing it now, too; but you needn’t try to persuade me that you are always so modest; it is only when you don’t dare to be otherwise than quiet. You were daring enough the day you were tipsy–when you followed me straight home and worried me with your witticisms. ‘You are losing your book, madam; you are quite certainly losing your book, madam!’ Ha, ha, ha! it was really shameless of you.”

I sat dejectedly and looked at her; my heart beat violently, my blood raced quickly through my veins, there was a singular sense of enjoyment in it!

“Why don’t you say something?”

“What a darling you are,” I cried. “I am simply sitting here getting thoroughly fascinated by you–here this very moment thoroughly fascinated…. There is no help for it…. You are the most extraordinary creature that … sometimes your eyes gleam so, that I never saw their match; they look like flowers … eh? No, well, no, perhaps, not like flowers, either, but … I am so desperately in love with you, and it is so preposterous … for, great Scott! there is naturally not an atom of a chance for me…. What is your name? Now, you really must tell me what you are called.”

“No; what is _your_ name? Gracious, I was nearly forgetting that again! I thought about it all yesterday, that I meant to ask you–yes, that is to say, not _all_ yesterday, but–“

“Do you know what I named you? I named you Ylajali. How do you like that? It has a gliding sound….”

“Ylajali?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a foreign language?”

“Humph–no, it isn’t that either!”

“Well, it isn’t ugly!”

After a long discussion we told one another our names. She seated herself close to my side on the sofa, and shoved the chair away with her foot, and we began to chatter afresh.

“You are shaved this evening, too,” she said; look on the whole a little better than the last time–that is to say, only just a scrap better. Don’t imagine … no; the last time you were really shabby, and you had a dirty rag round your finger into the bargain; and in that state you absolutely wanted me to go to some place, and take wine with you–thanks, not me!”

“So it was, after all, because of my miserable appearance that you would not go with me?” I said.

“No,” she replied and looked down. “No; God knows it wasn’t. I didn’t even think about it.”

“Listen,” said I; “you are evidently sitting here labouring under the delusion that I can dress and live exactly as I choose, aren’t you? And that is just what I can’t do; I am very, very poor.”

She looked at me. “Are you?” she queried.

“Yes, worse luck, I am.”

After an interval.

“Well, gracious, so am I, too,” she said, with a cheerful movement of her head.

Every one of her words intoxicated me, fell on my heart like drops of wine. She enchanted me with the trick she had of putting her head a little on one side, and listening when I said anything, and I could feel her breath brush my face.

“Do you know,” I said, “that … but, now, you mustn’t get angry–when I went to bed last night I settled this arm for you … so … as if you lay on it … and then I went to sleep.”

“Did you? That was lovely!” A pause. “But of course it could only be from a distance that you would venture to do such a thing, for otherwise….”

“Don’t you believe I could do it otherwise?”

“No, I don’t believe it.”

“Ah, from me you may expect everything,” I said, and I put my arm around her waist.

“Can I?” was all she said.

It annoyed me, almost wounded me, that she should look upon me as being so utterly inoffensive. I braced myself up, steeled my heart, and seized her hand; but she withdrew it softly, and moved a little away from me. That just put an end to my courage again; I felt ashamed, and looked out through the window. I was, in spite of all, in far too wretched a condition; I must, above all, not try to imagine myself any one in particular. It would have been another matter if I had met her during the time that I still looked like a respectable human being–in my old, well-off days when I had sufficient to make an appearance; and I felt fearfully downcast!

“There now, one can see!” she said, “now one can just see one can snub you with just the tiniest frown–make you look sheepish by just moving a little away from you” … she laughed, tantalizingly, roguishly, with tightly-closed eyes, as if she could not stand being looked at, either.

“Well, upon my soul!” I blurted out, “now you shall just see,” and I flung my arms violently around her shoulders. I was mortified. Was the girl out of her senses? Did she think I was totally inexperienced! Ha! Then I would, by the living…. No one should say of me that I was backward on that score. The creature was possessed by the devil himself! If it were only a matter of going at it, well….

She sat quite quietly, and still kept her eyes closed; neither of us spoke. I crushed her fiercely to me, pressed her body greedily against my breast, and she spoke never a word. I heard her heart’s beat, both hers and mine; they sounded like hurrying hoofbeats.

I kissed her.

I no longer knew myself. I uttered some nonsense, that she laughed at, whispered pet names into her mouth, caressed her cheek, kissed her many times….

She winds her arms about my neck, quite slowly, tenderly, the breath of her pink quivering nostrils fans me right in the face; she strokes down my shoulders with her left hand, and says, “What a lot of loose hair there is.”

“Yes,” I reply.

“What can be the reason that your hair falls out so?”

“Don’t know.”

“Ah, of course, because you drink too much, and perhaps … fie, I won’t say it. You ought to be ashamed. No, I wouldn’t have believed that of you! To think that you, who are so young, already should lose your hair! Now, do please just tell me what sort of way you really spend your life–I am certain it is dreadful! But only the truth, do you hear; no evasions. Anyway, I shall see by you if you hide anything–there, tell now!”

“Yes; but let me kiss you first, then.”

“Are you mad?… Humph, … I want to hear what kind of a man you are…. Ah, I am sure it is dreadful.”

It hurt me that she should believe the worst of me; I was afraid of thrusting her away entirely, and I could not endure the misgivings she had as to my way of life. I would clear myself in her eyes, make myself worthy of her, show her that she was sitting at the side of a person almost angelically disposed. Why, bless me, I could count my falls up to date on my fingers. I related–related all–and I only related truth. I made out nothing any worse than it was; it was not my intention to rouse her compassion. I told her also that I had stolen five shillings one evening.

She sat and listened, with open mouth, pale, frightened, her shining eyes completely bewildered. I desired to make it good again, to disperse the sad impression I had made, and I pulled myself up.

“Well, it is all over now!” I said; “there can be no talk of such a thing happening again; I am saved now….”

But she was much dispirited. “The Lord preserve me!” was all she said, then kept silent. She repeated this at short intervals, and kept silent after each “the Lord preserve me.”

I began to jest, caught hold of her, tried to tickle her, lifted her up to my breast. I was irritated not a little–indeed, downright hurt. Was I more unworthy in her eyes now, than if I had myself been instrumental in causing the falling out of my hair? Would she have thought more of me if I had made myself out to be a _roue_?… No nonsense now;… it was just a matter of going at it; and if it was only just a matter of going at it, so, by the living…

“No;… what do you want?” she queried, and she added these distressing words, “I can’t be sure that you are not insane!”

I checked myself involuntarily, and I said: “You don’t mean that!”

“Indeed, God knows I do! you look so strangely. And the forenoon you followed me–after all, you weren’t tipsy that time?”

“No; but I wasn’t hungry then, either; I had just eaten….”

“Yes; but that made it so much the worse.”

“Would you rather I had been tipsy?”

“Yes … ugh … I am afraid of you! Lord, can’t you let me be now!”

I considered a moment. No, I couldn’t let her be…. I happened, as if inadvertently, to knock over the light, so that it went out. She made a despairing struggle–gave vent at last to a little whimper.

“No, not that! If you like, you may rather kiss me, oh, dear, kind….”

I stopped instantly. Her words sounded so terrified, so helpless, I was struck to the heart. She meant to offer me a compensation by giving me leave to kiss her! How charming, how charmingly naive. I could have fallen down and knelt before her.

“But, dear pretty one,” I said, completely bewildered, “I don’t understand…. I really can’t conceive what sort of a game this is….”

She rose, lit the candle again with trembling hands. I leant back on the sofa and did nothing. What would happen now? I was in reality very ill at ease.

She cast a look over at the clock on the wall, and started.

“Ugh, the girl will soon come now!” she said; this was the first thing she said. I took the hint, and rose. She took up her jacket as if to put it on, bethought herself, and let it lie, and went over to the fireplace. So that it should not appear as if she had shown me the door, I said:

“Was your father in the army?” and at the same time I prepared to leave.

“Yes; he was an officer. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know; it just came into my head.”

“That was odd.”

“Ah, yes; there were some places I came to where I got a kind of presentiment. Ha, ha!–a part of my insanity, eh?”

She looked quickly up, but didn’t answer. I felt I worried her with my presence, and determined to make short work of it. I went towards the door. Would she not kiss me any more now? not even give me her hand? I stood and waited.

“Are you going now, then?” she said, and yet she remained quietly standing over near the fireplace.

I did not reply. I stood humbly in confusion, and looked at her without saying anything. Why hadn’t she left me in peace, when nothing was to come of it? What was the matter with her now? It didn’t seem to put her out that I stood prepared to leave. She was all at once completely lost to me, and I searched for something to say to her in farewell–a weighty, cutting word that would strike her, and perhaps impress her a little. And in the face of my first resolve, hurt as I was, instead of being proud and cold, disturbed and offended, I began right off to talk of trifles. The telling word would not come; I conducted myself in an exceedingly aimless fashion. Why couldn’t she just as well tell me plainly and straightly to go my way? I queried. Yes, indeed, why not? There was no need of feeling embarrassed about it. Instead of reminding me that the girl would soon come home, she could have simply said as follows: “Now you must run, for I must go and fetch my mother, and I won’t have your escort through the street.” So it was not that she had been thinking about? Ah, yes; it was that all the same she had thought about; I understood that at once. It did not require much to put me on the right track; only, just the way she had taken up her jacket, and left it down again, had convinced me immediately. As I said before, I had presentiments; and it was not altogether insanity that was at the root of it….

“But, great heavens! do forgive me for that word! It slipped out of my mouth,” she cried; but yet she stood quite quietly, and did not come over to me.

I was inflexible, and went on. I stood there and prattled, with the painful consciousness that I bored her, that not one of my words went home, and all the same I did not cease.

At bottom one might be a fairly sensitive nature, even if one were not insane, I ventured to say. There were natures that fed on trifles, and died just for one hard word’s sake; and I implied that I had such a nature. The fact was, that my poverty had in that degree sharpened certain powers in me, so that they caused me unpleasantness. Yes, I assure you honestly, unpleasantness; worse luck! But this had also its advantages. It helped me in certain situations in life. The poor intelligent man is a far nicer observer than the rich intelligent man. The poor man looks about him at every step he takes, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets, every step he takes affords in this way a task for his thoughts and feelings–an occupation. He is quick of hearing, and sensitive; he is an experienced man, his soul bears the sears of the fire….

And I talked a long time over these sears my soul had. But the longer I talked, the more troubled she grew. At last she muttered, “My God!” a couple of times in despair, and wrung her hands. I could see well that I tormented her, and I had no wish to torment her–but did it, all the same. At last, being of the opinion that I had succeeded in telling her in rude enough terms the essentials of what I had to say, I was touched by her heart-stricken expression. I cried:

“Now I am going, now I am going. Can’t you see that I already have my hand on the handle of the door? Good-bye, good-bye,” I say. “You might answer me when I say good-bye twice, and stand on the point of going. I don’t even ask to meet you again, for it would torment you. But tell me, why didn’t you leave me in peace? What had I done to you? I didn’t get in your way, now, did I? Why did you turn away from me all at once, as if you didn’t know me any longer? You have plucked me now so thoroughly bare, made me even more wretched than I ever was at any time before; but, indeed, I am not insane. You know well, if you think it over, that nothing is the matter with me now. Come over, then, and give me your hand–or give me leave to go to you, will you? I won’t do you any harm; I will only kneel before you, only for a minute–kneel down on the floor before you, only for a minute, may I? No, no; there, I am not to do it then, I see. You are getting afraid. I will not, I will not do it; do you hear? Lord, why do you get so terrified. I am standing quite still; I am not moving. I would have knelt down on the carpet for a moment–just there, upon that patch of red, at your feet; but you got frightened–I could see it at once in your eyes that you got frightened; that was why I stood still. I didn’t move a step when I asked you might I, did I? I stood just as immovable as I stand now when I point out the place to you where I would have knelt before you, over there on the crimson rose in the carpet. I don’t even point with my finger. I don’t point at all; I let it be, not to frighten you. I only nod and look over at it, like this! and you know perfectly well which rose I mean, but you won’t let me kneel there. You are afraid of me, and dare not come near to me. I cannot conceive how you could have the heart to call me insane. It isn’t true; you don’t believe it, either, any longer? It was once in the summer, a long time ago, I was mad; I worked too hard, and forgot to go to dine at the right hour, when I had too much to think about. That happened day after day. I ought to have remembered it; but I went on forgetting it–by God in Heaven, it is true! God keep me from ever coming alive from this spot if I lie. There, you can see, you do me an injustice. It was not out of need I did it; I can get credit, much credit, at Ingebret’s or Gravesen’s. I often, too, had a good deal of money in my pocket, and did not buy food all the same, because I forgot it. Do you hear? You don’t say anything; you don’t answer; you don’t stir a bit from the fire; you just stand and wait for me to go….”

She came hurriedly over to me, and stretched out her hand. I looked at her, full of mistrust. Did she do it with any true heartiness, or did she only do it to get rid of me? She wound her arms round my neck; she had tears in her eyes; I only stood and looked at her. She offered her mouth; I couldn’t believe in her; it was quite certain she was making a sacrifice as a means of putting an end to all this.

She said something; it sounded to me like, “I am fond of you, in spite of all.” She said it very lowly and indistinctly; maybe I did not hear aright. She may not have said just those words; but she cast herself impetuously against my breast, clasped both her arms about my neck for a little while, stretched even up a bit on her toes to get a good hold, and stood so for perhaps a whole minute. I was afraid that she was forcing herself to show me this tenderness, and I only said:

“What a darling you are now!”

More I didn’t say. I crushed her in my arms, stepped back, rushed to the door, and went out backwards. She remained in there behind me.

Part IV

Winter had set in–a raw, wet winter, almost without snow. A foggy, dark, and everlasting night, without a single blast of fresh wind the whole week through. The gas was lighted almost all the day in the streets, and yet people jostled one another in the fog. Every sound, the clang of the church bells, the jingling of the harness of the droske horses, the people’s voices, the beat of the hoofs, everything, sounded choked and jangling through the close air, that penetrated and muffled everything.

Week followed week, and the weather was, and remained, still the same.

And I stayed steadily down in Vaterland. I grew more and more closely bound to this inn, this lodging-house for travellers, where I had found shelter, in spite of my starving condition. My money was exhausted long since; and yet I continued to come and go in this place as if I had a right to it, and was at home there. The landlady had, as yet, said nothing; but it worried me all the same that I could not pay her. In this way three weeks went by. I had already, many days ago, taken to writing again; but I could not succeed in putting anything together that satisfied me. I had not longer any luck, although I was very painstaking, and strove early and late; no matter what I attempted, it was useless. Good fortune had flown; and I exerted myself in vain.

It was in a room on the second floor, the best guest-room, that I sat and made these attempts. I had been undisturbed up there since the first evening when I had money and was able to settle for what I got. All the time I was buoyed up by the hope of at last succeeding in getting together an article on some subject or another, so that I could pay for my room, and for whatever else I owed. That was the reason I worked on so persistently. I had, in particular, commenced a piece from which I expected great things–an allegory about a fire–a profound thought upon which I intended to expend all my energy, and bring it to the “Commander” in payment. The “Commandor” should see that he had helped a talent this time. I had no doubt but that he would eventually see that; it only was a matter of waiting till the spirit moved me; and why shouldn’t the spirit move me? Why should it not come over me even now, at a very early date? There was no longer anything the matter with me. My landlady gave me a little food every day, some bread and butter, mornings and evenings, and my nervousness had almost flown. I no longer used cloths round my hands when I wrote; and I could stare down into the street from my window on the second floor without getting giddy. I was much better in every way, and it was becoming a matter of astonishment to me that I had not already finished my allegory. I couldn’t understand why it was….

But a day came when I was at last to get a clear idea of how weak I had really become; with what incapacity my dull brain acted. Namely, on this day my landlady came up to me with a reckoning which she asked me to look over. There must be something wrong in this reckoning, she said; it didn’t agree with her own book; but she had not been able to find out the mistake.

I set to work to add up. My landlady sat right opposite and looked at me. I added up these score of figures first once down, and found the total right; then once up again, and arrived at the same result. I looked at the woman sitting opposite me, waiting on my words. I noticed at the same time that she was pregnant; it did not escape my attention, and yet I did not stare in any way scrutinizingly at her.

“The total is right,” said I.

“No; go over each figure now,” she answered. “I am sure it can’t be so much; I am positive of it.”

And I commenced to check each line–2 loaves at 2 1/2d., 1 lamp chimney, 3d., soap, 4d., butter, 5d…. It did not require any particularly shrewd head to run up these rows of figures–this little huckster account in which nothing very complex occurred. I tried honestly to find the error that the woman spoke about, but couldn’t succeed. After I had muddled about with these figures for some minutes I felt that, unfortunately, everything commenced to dance about in my head; I could no longer distinguish debit or credit; I mixed the whole thing up. Finally, I came to a dead stop at the following entry–“3. 5/16ths of a pound of cheese at 9d.” My brain failed me completely; I stared stupidly down at the cheese, and got no farther.

“It is really too confoundedly crabbed writing,” I exclaimed in despair. “Why, God bless me, here is 5/16ths of a pound of cheese entered–ha, ha! did any one ever hear the like? Yes, look here; you can see for yourself.”

“Yes,” she said; “it is often put down like that; it is a kind of Dutch cheese. Yes, that is all right–five-sixteenths is in this case five ounces.”

“Yes, yes; I understand that well enough,” I interrupted, although in truth I understood nothing more whatever.

I tried once more to get this little account right, that I could have totted up in a second some months ago. I sweated fearfully, and thought over these enigmatical figures with all my might, and I blinked my eyes reflectingly, as if I was studying this matter sharply, but I had to give it up. These five ounces of cheese finished me completely; it was as if something snapped within my forehead. But yet, to give the impression that I still worked out my calculation, I moved my lips and muttered a number aloud, all the while sliding farther and farther down the reckoning as if I were steadily coming to a result. She sat and waited. At last I said:

“Well, now, I have gone through it from first to last, and there is no mistake, as far as I can see.”

“Isn’t there?” replied the woman, “isn’t there really?” But I saw well that she did not believe me, and she seemed all at once to throw a dash of contempt into her words, a slightly careless tone that I had never heard from her before. She remarked that perhaps I was not accustomed to reckon in sixteenths; she mentioned also that she must only apply to some one who had a knowledge of sixteenths, to get the account properly revised. She said all this, not in any hurtful way to make me feel ashamed, but thoughtfully and seriously. When she got as far as the door, she said, without looking at me:

“Excuse me for taking up your time then.”

Off she went.

A moment after, the door opened again, and she re-entered. She could hardly have gone much farther than the stairs before she had turned back.

“That’s true,” said she; “you mustn’t take it amiss; but there is a little owing to me from you now, isn’t there? Wasn’t it three weeks yesterday since you came?” Yes, I thought it was. “It isn’t so easy to keep things going with such a big family, so that I can’t give lodging on credit, more’s the….”

I stopped her. “I am working at an article that I think I told you about before,” said I, “and as soon as ever that is finished, you shall have your money; you can make yourself quite easy….”

“Yes; but you’ll never get that article finished, though.”

“Do you think that? Maybe the spirit will move me tomorrow, or perhaps already, tonight; it isn’t at all impossible but that it may move me some time tonight, and then my article will be completed in a quarter of an hour at the outside. You see, it isn’t with my work as with other people’s; I can’t sit down and get a certain amount finished in a day. I have just to wait for the right moment, and no one can tell the day or hour when the spirit may move one–it must have its own time….”

My landlady went, but her confidence in me was evidently much shaken.

As soon as I was left alone I jumped up and tore my hair in despair. No, in spite of all, there was really no salvation for me–no salvation! My brain was bankrupt! Had I then really turned into a complete dolt since I could not even add up the price of a piece of Dutch cheese? But could it be possible I had lost my senses when I could stand and put such questions to myself? Had not I, into the bargain, right in the midst of my efforts with the reckoning, made the lucid observation that my landlady was in the family way? I had no reason for knowing it, no one had told me anything about it, neither had it occurred to me gratuitously. I sat and saw it with my own eyes, and I understood it at once, right at a despairing moment where I sat and added up sixteenths. How could I explain this to myself?

I went to the window and gazed out; it looked out into Vognmandsgade. Some children were playing down on the pavement; poorly dressed children in the middle of a poor street. They tossed an empty bottle between them and screamed shrilly. A load of furniture rolled slowly by; it must belong to some dislodged family, forced to change residence between “flitting time.” [Footnote: In Norway, l4th of March and October.] This struck me at once. Bed-clothes and furniture were heaped on the float, moth-eaten beds and chests of drawers, red-painted chairs with three legs, mats, old iron, and tin-ware. A little girl–a mere child, a downright ugly youngster, with a running cold in her nose–sat up on top of the load, and held fast with her poor little blue hands in order not to tumble off. She sat on a heap of frightfully stained mattresses, that children must have lain on, and looked down at the urchins who were tossing the empty bottle to one another….

I stood gazing at all this; I had no difficulty in apprehending everything that passed before me. Whilst I stood there at the window and observed this, I could hear my landlady’s servant singing in the kitchen right alongside of my room. I knew the air she was singing, and I listened to hear if she would sing false, and I said to myself that an idiot could not have done all this.

I was, God be praised, all right in my senses as any man.

Suddenly, I saw two of the children down in the street fire up and begin to abuse one another. Two little boys; I recognized one of them; he was my landlady’s son. I open the window to hear what they are saying to one another, and immediately a flock of children crowded together under my window, and looked wistfully up. What did they expect? That something would be thrown down? Withered flowers, bones, cigar ends, or one thing or another, that they could amuse themselves with? They looked up with their frost-pinched faces and unspeakably wistful eyes. In the meantime, the two small foes continued to revile one another.

Words like great buzzing noxious insects swarm out of their childish mouths; frightful nicknames, thieves’ slang, sailors’ oaths, that they perhaps had learnt down on the wharf; and they are both so engaged that they do not notice my landlady, who rushes out to see what is going on.

“Yes,” explains her son, “he catched me by the throat; I couldn’t breaths for ever so long,” and turning upon the little man who is the cause of the quarrel, and who is standing grinning maliciously at him, he gets perfectly furious, and yells, “Go to hell, Chaldean ass that you are! To think such vermin as you should catch folk by the throat. I will, may the Lord….”

And the mother, this pregnant woman, who dominates the whole street with her size, answers the ten-year-old child, as she seizes him by the arm and tries to drag him in:

“Sh–sh. Hold your jaw! I just like to hear the way you swear, too, as if you had been in a brothel for years. Now, in with you.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t.”

I stand up in the window and see that the mother’s temper is rising; this disagreeable scene excites me frightfully. I can’t endure it any longer. I call down to the boy to come up to me for a minute; I call twice, just to distract them–to change the scene. The last time I call very loudly, and the mother turns round flurriedly and looks up at me. She regains her self-possession at once, looks insolently at me, nay, downright maliciously, and enters the house with a chiding remark to her offspring. She talks loudly, so that I may hear it, and says to him, “Fie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to let people see how naughty you are.”

Of all this that I stood there and observed not one thing, not even one little accessory detail, was lost on me; my attention was acutely keen; I absorbed carefully every little thing as I stood and thought out my own thought, about each thing according as it occurred. So it was impossible that there could be anything the matter with my brain. How could there, in this case, be anything the matter with it?

Listen; do you know what, said I all at once to myself, that you have been worrying yourself long enough about your brain, giving yourself no end of worry in this matter? Now, there must be an end to this tomfoolery. Is it a sign of insanity to notice and apprehend everything as accurately as you do? You make me almost laugh at you, I reply. To my mind it is not without its humorous side, if I am any judge of such a case. Why, it happens to every man that he once in a way sticks fast, and that, too, just with the simplest question. It is of no significance, it is often a pure accident. As I have remarked before, I am on the point of having a good laugh at your expense. As far as that huckster account is concerned, that paltry five-sixteenths of beggar-man’s cheese, I can happily dub it so. Ha, ha!–a cheese with cloves and pepper in it; upon my word, a cheese in which, to put the matter plainly, one could breed maggots. As far as that ridiculous cheese is concerned, it might happen to the cleverest fellow in the world to be puzzled over it! Why, the smell of the cheese was enough to finish a man; … and I made the greatest fun of this and all other Dutch cheeses…. No; set me to reckon up something really eatable, said I–set me, if you like, at five-sixteenths of good dairy butter. That is another matter.

I laughed feverishly at my own whim, and found it peculiarly diverting. There was positively no longer anything the matter with me. I was in good form–was, so to say, still in the best of form; I had a level head, nothing was wanting there, God be praised and thanked! My mirth rose in measure as I paced the floor and communed with myself. I laughed aloud, and felt amazingly glad. Besides, it really seemed, too, as if I only needed this little happy hour, this moment of airy rapture, without a care on any side, to get my head into working order once more.

I seated myself at the table, and set to work at my allegory; it progressed swimmingly, better than it had done for a long time; not very fast, ’tis true, but it seemed to me that what I did was altogether first-rate. I worked, too, for the space of an hour without getting tired.

I am sitting working at a most crucial point in this Allegory of a Conflagration in a Bookshop. It appears to me so momentous a point, that all the rest I have written counted as nothing in comparison. I was, namely, just about to weave in, in a downright profound way, this thought. It was not books that were burning, it was brains, human brains; and I intended to make a perfect Bartholomew’s night of these burning brains.

Suddenly my door was flung open with a jerk and in much haste; my landlady came sailing in. She came straight over to the middle of the room, she did not even pause on the threshold.

I gave a little hoarse cry; it was just as if I had received a blow.

“What?” said she, “I thought you said something. We have got a traveller, and we must have this room for him. You will have to sleep downstairs with us tonight. Yes; you can have a bed to yourself there too.” And before she got my answer, she began, without further ceremony, to bundle my papers together on the table, and put the whole of them into a state of dire confusion.

My happy mood was blown to the winds; I stood up at once, in anger and despair. I let her tidy the table, and said nothing, never uttered a syllable. She thrust all the papers into my hand.

There was nothing else for me to do. I was forced to leave the room. And so this precious moment was spoilt also. I met the new traveller already on the stairs; a young man with great blue anchors tattooed on the backs of his hands. A quay porter followed him, bearing a sea-chest on his shoulders. He was evidently a sailor, a casual traveller for the night; he would therefore not occupy my room for any lengthened period. Perhaps, too, I might be lucky tomorrow when the man had left, and have one of my moments again; I only needed an inspiration for five minutes, and my essay on the conflagration would be completed. Well, I should have to submit to fate.

I had not been inside the family rooms before, this one common room in which they all lived, both day and night–the husband, wife, wife’s father, and four children. The servant lived in the kitchen, where she also slept at night. I approached the door with much repugnance, and knocked. No one answered, yet I heard voices inside.

The husband did not speak as I stepped in, did not acknowledge my nod even, merely glanced at me carelessly, as if I were no concern of his. Besides, he was sitting playing cards with a person I had seen down on the quays, with the by-name of “Pane o’ glass.” An infant lay and prattled to itself over in the bed, and an old man, the landlady’s father, sat doubled together on a settle-bed, and bent his head down Over his hands as if his chest or stomach pained him. His hair was almost white, and he looked in his crouching position like a poke-necked reptile that sat cocking its ears at something.

“I come, worse luck, to beg for house-room down here tonight,” I said to the man.

“Did my wife say so?” he inquired.

“Yes; a new lodger came to my room.”

To this the man made no reply, but proceeded to finger the cards. There this man sat, day after day, and played cards with anybody who happened to come in–played for nothing, only just to kill time, and have something in hand. He never did anything else, only moved just as much as his lazy limbs felt inclined, whilst his wife bustled up and down stairs, was occupied on all sides, and took care to draw customers to the house. She had put herself in connection with quay-porters and dock-men, to whom she paid a certain sum for every new lodger they brought her, and she often gave them, in addition, a shelter for the night. This time it was “Pane o’ glass” that had just brought along the new lodger.

A couple of the children came in–two little girls, with thin, freckled, gutter-snipe faces; their clothes were positively wretched. A while after the landlady herself entered. I asked her where she intended to put me up for the night, and she replied that I could lie in here together with the others, or out in the ante-room on the sofa, as I thought fit. Whilst she answered me she fussed about the room and busied herself with different things that she set in order, and she never once looked at me.

My spirits were crushed by her reply.

I stood down near the door, and made myself small, tried to make it appear as if I were quite content all the same to change my room for another for one night’s sake. I put on a friendly face on purpose not to irritate her and perhaps be hustled right out of the house.

“Ah, yes,” I said, “there is sure to be some way I . . .,” and then held my tongue.

She still bustled about the room.

“For that matter, I may as well just tell you that I can’t afford to give people credit for their board and lodging,” said she, “and I told you that before, too.”

“Yes; but, my dear woman, it is only for these few days, until I get my article finished,” I answered, “and I will willingly give you an extra five shillings–willingly.”

But she had evidently no faith in my article, I could see that; and I could not afford to be proud, and leave the house, just for a slight mortification; I knew what awaited me if I went out.

* * * * *

A few days passed over.

I still associated with the family below, for it was too cold in the ante-room where there was no stove. I slept, too, at night on the floor of the room.

The strange sailor continued to lodge in my room, and did not seem like moving very quickly. At noon, too, my landlady came in and related how he had paid her a month in advance, and besides, he was going to take his first-mate’s examination before leaving, that was why he was staying in town. I stood and listened to this, and understood that my room was lost to me for ever.

I went out to the ante-room, and sat down. If I were lucky enough to get anything written, it would have perforce to be here where it was quiet. It was no longer the allegory that occupied me; I had got a new idea, a perfectly splendid plot; I would compose a one-act drama–“The Sign of the Cross.” Subject taken from the Middle Ages. I had especially thought out everything in connection with the principal characters: a magnificently fanatical harlot who had sinned in the temple, not from weakness or desire, but for hate against heaven; sinner right at the foot of the altar, with the altar-cloth under her head, just out of delicious contempt for heaven.

I grew more and more obsessed by this creation as the hours went on. She stood at last, palpably, vividly embodied before my eyes, and was exactly as I wished her to appear. Her body was to be deformed and repulsive, tall, very lean, and rather dark; and when she walked, her long limbs should gleam through her draperies at every stride she took. She was also to have large outstanding ears. Curtly, she was nothing for the eye to dwell upon, barely endurable to look at. What interested me in her was her wonderful shamelessness, the desperately full measure of calculated sin which she had committed. She really occupied me too much, my brain was absolutely inflated by this singular monstrosity of a creature, and I worked for two hours, without a pause, at my drama. When I had finished half-a score of pages, perhaps twelve, often with much effort, at times with long intervals, in which I wrote in vain and had to tear the page in two, I had become tired, quite stiff with cold and fatigue, and I arose and went out into the street. For the last half-hour, too, I had been disturbed by the crying of the children inside the family room, so that I could not, in any case, have written any more just then. So I took a long time up over Drammensveien, and stayed away till the evening, pondering incessantly, as I walked along, as to how I would continue my drama. Before I came home in the evening of this day, the following happened:

I stood outside a shoemaker’s shop far down in Carl Johann Street, almost at the railway square. God knows why I stood just outside this shoemaker’s shop. I looked into the window as I stood there, but did not, by the way, remember that I needed shoes then; my thoughts were far away in other parts of the world. A swarm of people talking together passed behind my back, and I heard nothing of what was said. Then a voice greeted me loudly:

“Good-evening.”

It was “Missy” who bade me good-evening! I answered at random, I looked at him, too, for a while, before I recognized him.

“Well, how are you getting along?” he inquired.

“Oh, always well … as usual.”

“By the way, tell me,” said he, “are you, then, still with Christie?”

“Christie?”

“I thought you once said you were book-keeper at Christie’s?”

“Ah, yes. No; that is done with. It was impossible to get along with that fellow; that came to an end very quickly of its own accord.”

“Why so?”

“Well, I happened to make a mis-entry one day, and so–“

“A false entry, eh?”

False entry! There stood “Missy,” and asked me straight in the face if I had done this thing. He even asked eagerly, and evidently with much interest. I looked at him, felt deeply insulted, and made no reply.

“Yes, well, Lord! that might happen to the best fellow,” he said, as if to console me. He still believed I had made a false entry designedly.

“What is it that, ‘Yes, well, Lord! indeed might happen to the best fellow’?” I inquired. “To do that. Listen, my good man. Do you stand there and really believe that I could for a moment be guilty of such a mean trick as that? I!”

“But, my dear fellow, I thought I heard you distinctly say that.”

“No; I said that I had made a mis-entry once, a bagatelle; if you want to know, a false date on a letter, a single stroke of the pen wrong–that was my whole crime. No, God be praised, I can tell right from wrong yet a while. How would it fare with me if I were, into the bargain, to sully my honour? It is simply my sense of honour that keeps me afloat now. But it is strong enough too; at least, it has kept me up to date.”

I threw back my head, turned away from “Missy,” and looked down the street. My eyes rested on a red dress that came towards us; on a woman at a man’s side. If I had not had this conversation with “Missy,” I would not have been hurt by his coarse suspicion, and I would not have given this toss of my head, as I turned away in offence; and so perhaps this red dress would have passed me without my having noticed it. And at bottom what did it concern me? What was it to me if it were the dress of the Hon. Miss Nagel, the lady-in-waiting? “Missy” stood and talked, and tried to make good his mistake again. I did not listen to him at all; I stood the whole time and stared at the red dress that was coming nearer up the street, and a stir thrilled through my breast, a gliding delicate dart. I whispered in thought without moving my lips:

“Ylajali!”

Now “Missy” turned round also and noticed the two–the lady and the man with her,–raised his hat to them, and followed them with his eyes. I did not raise my hat, or perhaps I did unconsciously. The red dress glided up Carl Johann, and disappeared.

“Who was it was with her?” asked “Missy.”

“The Duke, didn’t you see? The so-called ‘Duke.’ Did you know the lady?”

“Yes, in a sort of way. Didn’t you know her?”

“No,” I replied.

“It appears to me you saluted profoundly enough.”

“Did I?”

“Ha, ha! perhaps you didn’t,” said “Missy.” “Well, that is odd. Why, it was only at you she looked, too, the whole time.”

“When did you get to know her?” I asked. He did not really know her. It dated from an evening in autumn. It was late; they were three jovial souls together, they came out late from the Grand, and met this being going along alone past Cammermeyer’s, and they addressed her. At first she answered rebuffingly; but one of the jovial spirits, a man who neither feared fire nor water, asked her right to her face if he might not have the civilized enjoyment of accompanying her home? He would, by the Lord, not hurt a hair on her head, as the saying goes–only go with her to her door, reassure himself that she reached home in safety, otherwise he could not rest all night. He talked incessantly as they went along, hit upon one thing or another, dubbed himself Waldemar Atterdag, and represented himself as a photographer. At last she was obliged to laugh at this merry soul who refused to be rebuffed by her coldness, and it finally ended by his going with her.

“Indeed, did it? and what came of it?” I inquired; and I held my breath for his reply.

“Came of it? Oh, stop there; there is the lady in question.”

We both kept silent a moment, both “Missy” and I.

“Well, I’m hanged, was that ‘the Duke’? So that’s what he looks like,” he added, reflectively. “Well, if she is in contact with that fellow; well, then, I wouldn’t like to answer for her.”

I still kept silent. Yes, of course “the Duke” would make the pace with her. Well, what odds? How did it concern me? I bade her good-day with all her wiles: a good-day I bade her; and I tried to console myself by thinking the worst thoughts about her; took a downright pleasure in dragging her through the mire. It only annoyed me to think that I had