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Hunger

by Knut Hamsun · English · Gutenberg #8387 · 375,121 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hunger

Author: Knut Hamsun

Translator: George Egerton


        
Release date: June 1, 2005 [eBook #8387]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8387

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUNGER ***




HUNGER

by KNUT HAMSUN

Translated from the Norwegian by GEORGE EGERTON


_With an introduction by Edwin Bjorkman_




This PG edition is based upon the eighth printing, published in
September 1921 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
This edition is a bowdlerised version of the original 1899 translation,
also by George Egerton.




  Knut Hamsun

  Since the death of Ibsen and Strindberg, Hamsun is undoubtedly the
  foremost creative writer of the Scandinavian countries. Those
  approaching most nearly to his position are probably Selma Lagerlöf in
  Sweden and Henrik Pontoppidan in Denmark. Both these, however, seem to
  have less than he of that width of outlook, validity of interpretation
  and authority of tone that made the greater masters what they were.

  His reputation is not confined to his own country or the two
  Scandinavian sister nations. It spread long ago over the rest of Europe,
  taking deepest roots in Russia, where several editions of his collected
  works have already appeared, and where he is spoken of as the equal of
  Tolstoy and Dostoyevski. The enthusiasm of this approval is a
  characteristic symptom that throws interesting light on Russia as well
  as on Hamsun.

  Hearing of it, one might expect him to prove a man of the masses, full
  of keen social consciousness. Instead, he must be classed as an
  individualistic romanticist and a highly subjective aristocrat, whose
  foremost passion in life is violent, defiant deviation from everything
  average and ordinary. He fears and flouts the dominance of the many, and
  his heroes, who are nothing but slightly varied images of himself, are
  invariably marked by an originality of speech and action that brings
  them close to, if not across, the borderline of the eccentric.

  In all the literature known to me, there is no writer who appears more
  ruthlessly and fearlessly himself, and the self thus presented to us is
  as paradoxical and rebellious as it is poetic and picturesque. Such a
  nature, one would think, must be the final blossoming of powerful
  hereditary tendencies, converging silently through numerous generations
  to its predestined climax. All we know is that Hamsun's forebears were
  sturdy Norwegian peasant folk, said only to be differentiated from their
  neighbours by certain artistic preoccupations that turned one or two of
  them into skilled craftsmen. More certain it is that what may or may not
  have been innate was favoured and fostered and exaggerated by physical
  environment and early social experiences.

  Hamsun was born on Aug. 4, 1860, in one of the sunny valleys of central
  Norway. From there his parents moved when he was only four to settle in
  the far northern district of Lofoden--that land of extremes, where the
  year, and not the day, is evenly divided between darkness and light;
  where winter is a long dreamless sleep, and summer a passionate dream
  without sleep; where land and sea meet and intermingle so gigantically
  that man is all but crushed between the two--or else raised to titanic
  measures by the spectacle of their struggle.

  The Northland, with its glaring lights and black shadows, its unearthly
  joys and abysmal despairs, is present and dominant in every line that
  Hamsun ever wrote. In that country his best tales and dramas are laid.
  By that country his heroes are stamped wherever they roam. Out of that
  country they draw their principal claims to probability. Only in that
  country do they seem quite at home. Today we know, however, that the
  pathological case represents nothing but an extension of perfectly
  normal tendencies. In the same way we know that the miraculous
  atmosphere of the Northland serves merely to develop and emphasize
  traits that lie slumbering in men and women everywhere. And on this
  basis the fantastic figures created by Hamsun relate themselves to
  ordinary humanity as the microscopic enlargement of a cross section to
  the living tissues. What we see is true in everything but proportion.

  The artist and the vagabond seem equally to have been in the blood of
  Hamsun from the very start. Apprenticed to a shoemaker, he used his
  scant savings to arrange for the private printing of a long poem and a
  short novel produced at the age of eighteen, when he was still signing
  himself Knud Pedersen Hamsund. This done, he abruptly quit his
  apprenticeship and entered on that period of restless roving through
  trades and continents which lasted until his first real artistic
  achievement with "Hunger," In 1888-90. It has often been noted that
  practically every one of Hamsun's heroes is of the same age as he was
  then, and that their creator takes particular pain to accentuate this
  fact. It is almost as if, during those days of feverish literary
  struggle, he had risen to heights where he saw things so clearly that
  no subsequent experience could add anything but occasional details.

  Before he reached those heights, he had tried life as coal-heaver and
  school teacher, as road-mender and surveyor's attendant, as farm hand
  and streetcar conductor, as lecturer and free-lance journalist, as
  tourist and emigrant. Twice he visited this country during the middle
  eighties, working chiefly on the plains of North Dakota and in the
  streets of Chicago. Twice during that time he returned to his own
  country and passed through the experiences pictured in "Hunger," before,
  at last, he found his own literary self and thus also a hearing from the
  world at large. While here, he failed utterly to establish any
  sympathetic contact between himself and the new world, and his first
  book after his return in 1888 was a volume of studies named "The
  Spiritual Life of Modern America," which a prominent Norwegian critic
  once described as "a masterpiece of distorted criticism." But I own a
  copy of this book, the fly-leaf of which bears the following inscription
  in the author's autograph:

      "A youthful work. It has ceased to represent my opinion of America.
      May 28, 1903. Knut Hamsun."

  In its original form, "Hunger" was merely a sketch, and as such it
  appeared in 1888 in a Danish literary periodical, "New Earth." It
  attracted immediate widespread attention to the author, both on account
  of its unusual theme and striking form. It was a new kind of realism
  that had nothing to do with photographic reproduction of details. It was
  a professedly psychological study that had about as much in common with
  the old-fashioned conceptions of man's mental activities as the
  delirious utterances of a fever patient. It was life, but presented in
  the Impressionistic temper of a Gauguin or Cezanne. On the appearance of
  the completed novel in 1890, Hamsun was greeted as one of the chief
  heralds of the neo-romantic movement then spreading rapidly through the
  Scandinavian north and finding typical expressions not only in the works
  of theretofore unknown writers, but in the changed moods of masters like
  Ibsen and Bjornson and Strindberg.

  It was followed two years later by "Mysteries," which pretends to be a
  novel, but which may be better described as a delightfully irresponsible
  and defiantly subjective roaming through any highway or byway of life or
  letters that happened to take the author's fancy at the moment of
  writing. Some one has said of that book that in its abrupt swingings
  from laughter to tears, from irreverence to awe, from the ridiculous to
  the sublime, one finds the spirits of Dostoyevski and Mark Twain
  blended.

  The novels "Editor Lynge" and "New Earth," both published in 1893, were
  social studies of Christiania's Bohemia and chiefly characterized by
  their violent attacks on the men and women exercising the profession
  which Hamsun had just made his own. Then came "Pan" in 1894, and the
  real Hamsun, the Hamsun who ever since has moved logically and with
  increasing authority to "The Growth of the Soil," stood finally
  revealed. It is a novel of the Northland, almost without a plot, and
  having its chief interest in a primitively spontaneous man's reactions
  to a nature so overwhelming that it makes mere purposeless existence
  seem a sufficient end in itself. One may well question whether Hamsun
  has ever surpassed the purely lyrical mood of that book, into which he
  poured the ecstatic dreams of the little boy from the south as, for the
  first time, he saw the forestclad northern mountains bathing their feet
  in the ocean and their crowns in the light of a never-setting sun. It is
  a wonderful paean to untamed nature and to the forces let loose by it
  within the soul of man.

  Like most of the great writers over there, Hamsun has not confined
  himself to one poetic mood or form, but has tried all of them. From the
  line of novels culminating in "Pan," he turned suddenly to the drama,
  and in 1895 appeared his first play, "At the Gates of the Kingdom." It
  was the opening drama of a trilogy and was followed by "The Game of
  Life" in 1896 and "Sunset Glow" in 1898. The first play is laid in
  Christiania, the second in the Northland, and the third in Christiania
  again. The hero of all three is Ivar Kareno, a student and thinker who
  is first presented to us at the age of 29, then at 39, and finally at
  50. His wife and several other characters accompany the central figure
  through the trilogy, of which the lesson seems to be that every one is
  a rebel at 30 and a renegade at 50. But when Kareno, the irreconcilable
  rebel of "At the Gates of the Kingdom," the heaven-storming truth-seeker
  of "The Game of Life," and the acclaimed radical leader in the first
  acts of "Sunset Glow," surrenders at last to the powers that be in order
  to gain a safe and sheltered harbor for his declining years, then
  another man of 29 stands ready to denounce him and to take up the rebel
  cry of youth to which he has become a traitor. Hamsun's ironical humor
  and whimsical manner of expression do more than the plot itself to knit
  the plays into an organic unit, and several of the characters are
  delightfully drawn, particularly the two women who play the greatest
  part in Kareno's life: his wife Eline, and Teresita, who is one more
  of his many feminine embodiments of the passionate and changeable
  Northland nature. Any attempt to give a political tendency to the
  trilogy must be held wasted. Characteristically, Kareno is a sort of
  Nietzschean rebel against the victorious majority, and Hamsun's
  seemingly cynical conclusions stress man's capacity for action
  rather than the purposes toward which that capacity may be directed.

  Of three subsequent plays, "Vendt the Monk," (1903), "Queen Tamara"
  (1903) and "At the Mercy of Life" (1910), the first mentioned is by far
  the most remarkable. It is a verse drama in eight acts, centred about
  one of Hamsun's most typical vagabond heroes. The monk Vendt has much
  in common with Peer Gynt without being in any way an imitation or a
  duplicate. He is a dreamer in revolt against the world's alleged
  injustice, a rebel against the very powers that invisibly move the
  universe, and a passionate lover of life who in the end accepts it as
  a joyful battle and then dreams of the long peace to come. The vigor
  and charm of the verse proved a surprise to the critics when the play
  was published, as Hamsun until then had given no proof of any poetic
  gift in the narrower sense.

  From 1897 to 1912 Hamsun produced a series of volumes that simply marked
  a further development of the tendencies shown in his first novels:
  "Siesta," short stories, 1897; "Victoria" a novel with a charming love
  story that embodies the tenderest note in his production, 1898; "In
  Wonderland," travelling sketches from the Caucasus, 1903; "Brushwood,"
  short stories, 1903; "The Wild Choir," a collection of poems, 1904;
  "Dreamers," a novel, 1904; "Struggling Life," short stories and
  travelling sketches, 1905; "Beneath the Autumn Star" a novel, 1906;
  "Benoni," and "Rosa," two novels forming to some extent sequels to
  "Pan," 1908; "A Wanderer Plays with Muted Strings," a novel, 1909;
  and "The Last Joy," a shapeless work, half novel and half mere
  uncoordinated reflections, 1912.

  The later part of this output seemed to indicate a lack of development,
  a failure to open up new vistas, that caused many to fear that the
  principal contributions of Hamsun already lay behind him. Then appeared
  in 1913 a big novel, "Children of the Time," which in many ways struck
  a new note, although led up to by "Rosa" and "Benoni." The horizon is
  now wider, the picture broader. There is still a central figure, and
  still he possesses many of the old Hamsun traits, but he has crossed the
  meridian at last and become an observer rather than a fighter and doer.
  Nor is he the central figure to the same extent as Lieutenant Glahn in
  "Pan" or Kareno in the trilogy. The life pictured is the life of a
  certain spot of ground--Segelfoss manor, and later the town of
  Segelfoss--rather than that of one or two isolated individuals. One
  might almost say that Hamsun's vision has become social at last, were it
  not for his continued accentuation of the irreconcilable conflict
  between the individual and the group.

  "Segelfoss Town" in 1915 and "The Growth of the Soil"--the title ought
  to be "The Earth's Increase"--in 1918 continue along the path Hamsun
  entered by "Children of the Time." The scene is laid in his beloved
  Northland, but the old primitive life is going--going even in the
  outlying districts, where the pioneers are already breaking ground for
  new permanent settlements. Business of a modern type has arrived, and
  much of the quiet humor displayed in these the latest and maturest of
  Hamsun's works springs from the spectacle of its influence on the
  natives, whose hands used always to be in their pockets, and whose
  credulity in face of the improbable was only surpassed by their
  unwillingness to believe anything reasonable. Still the life he
  pictures is largely primitive, with nature as man's chief antagonist,
  and to us of the crowded cities it brings a charm of novelty rarely
  found in books today. With it goes an understanding of human nature
  which is no less deep-reaching because it is apt to find expression in
  whimsical or flagrantly paradoxical forms.

  Hamsun has just celebrated his sixtieth birthday anniversary. He is as
  strong and active as ever, burying himself most of the time on his
  little estate in the heart of the country that has become to such a
  peculiar extent his own. There is every reason to expect from him works
  that may not only equal but surpass the best of his production so far.
  But even if such expectations should prove false, the body of his work
  already accomplished is such, both in quantity and quality, that he must
  perforce be placed in the very front rank of the world's living writers.
  To the English-speaking world he has so far been made known only through
  the casual publication at long intervals of a few of his books:
  "Hunger," "Fictoria" and "Shallow Soil" (rendered in the list above as
  "New Earth"). There is now reason to believe that this negligence will
  be remedied, and that soon the best of Hamsun's work will be available
  in English. To the American and English publics it ought to prove a
  welcome tonic because of its very divergence from what they commonly
  feed on. And they may safely look to Hamsun as a thinker as well as a
  poet and laughing dreamer, provided they realize from the start that his
  thinking is suggestive rather than conclusive, and that he never meant
  it to be anything else.

  EDWIN BJÖRKMAN.




Part I


It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania:
Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without
carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was lying awake in my attic and I heard a clock below strike six. It
was already broad daylight, and people had begun to go up and down the
stairs. By the door where the wall of the room was papered with old
numbers of the _Morgenbladet_, I could distinguish clearly a notice
from the Director of Lighthouses, and a little to the left of that an
inflated advertisement of Fabian Olsens' new-baked bread.

The instant I opened my eyes I began, from sheer force of habit, to
think if I had anything to rejoice over that day. I had been somewhat
hard-up lately, and one after the other of my belongings had been taken
to my "Uncle." I had grown nervous and irritable. A few times I had
kept my bed for the day with vertigo. Now and then, when luck had
favoured me, I had managed to get five shillings for a feuilleton from
some newspaper or other.

It grew lighter and lighter, and I took to reading the advertisements
near the door. I could even make out the grinning lean letters of
"winding-sheets to be had at Miss Andersen's" on the right of it. That
occupied me for a long while. I heard the clock below strike eight as I
got up and put on my clothes.

I opened the window and looked out. From where I was standing I had a
view of a clothes-line and an open field. Farther away lay the ruins
of a burnt-out smithy, which some labourers were busy clearing away. I
leant with my elbows resting on the window-frame and gazed into open
space. It promised to be a clear day--autumn, that tender, cool time of
the year, when all things change their colour, and die, had come to us.
The ever-increasing noise in the streets lured me out. The bare room,
the floor of which rocked up and down with every step I took across it,
seemed like a gasping, sinister coffin. There was no proper fastening
to the door, either, and no stove. I used to lie on my socks at night
to dry them a little by the morning. The only thing I had to divert
myself with was a little red rocking-chair, in which I used to sit in
the evenings and doze and muse on all manner of things. When it blew
hard, and the door below stood open, all kinds of eerie sounds moaned
up through the floor and from out the walls, and the _Morgenbladet_
near the door was rent in strips a span long.

I stood up and searched through a bundle in the corner by the bed for a
bite for breakfast, but finding nothing, went back to the window.

God knows, thought I, if looking for employment will ever again avail
me aught. The frequent repulses, half-promises, and curt noes, the
cherished, deluded hopes, and fresh endeavours that always resulted in
nothing had done my courage to death. As a last resource, I had applied
for a place as debt collector, but I was too late, and, besides, I
could not have found the fifty shillings demanded as security. There
was always something or another in my way. I had even offered to enlist
in the Fire Brigade. There we stood and waited in the vestibule, some
half-hundred men, thrusting our chests out to give an idea of strength
and bravery, whilst an inspector walked up and down and scanned the
applicants, felt their arms, and put one question or another to them.
Me, he passed by, merely shaking his head, saying I was rejected on
account of my sight. I applied again without my glasses, stood there
with knitted brows, and made my eyes as sharp as needles, but the man
passed me by again with a smile; he had recognized me. And, worse than
all, I could no longer apply for a situation in the garb of a
respectable man.

How regularly and steadily things had gone downhill with me for a long
time, till, in the end, I was so curiously bared of every conceivable
thing. I had not even a comb left, not even a book to read, when things
grew all too sad with me. All through the summer, up in the churchyards
or parks, where I used to sit and write my articles for the newspapers,
I had thought out column after column on the most miscellaneous
subjects. Strange ideas, quaint fancies, conceits of my restless brain;
in despair I had often chosen the most remote themes, that cost me long
hours of intense effort, and never were accepted. When one piece was
finished I set to work at another. I was not often discouraged by the
editors' "no." I used to tell myself constantly that some day I was
bound to succeed; and really occasionally when I was in luck's way, and
made a hit with something, I could get five shillings for an
afternoon's work.

Once again I raised myself from the window, went over to the
washing-stand, and sprinkled some water on the shiny knees of my
trousers to dull them a little and make them look a trifle newer.
Having done this, I pocketed paper and pencil as usual and went out. I
stole very quietly down the stairs in order not to attract my
landlady's attention (a few days had elapsed since my rent had fallen
due, and I had no longer anything wherewith to raise it).

It was nine o'clock. The roll of vehicles and hum of voices filled the
air, a mighty morning-choir mingled with the footsteps of the
pedestrians, and the crack of the hack-drivers' whips. The clamorous
traffic everywhere exhilarated me at once, and I began to feel more and
more contented. Nothing was farther from my intention than to merely
take a morning walk in the open air. What had the air to do with my
lungs? I was strong as a giant; could stop a dray with my shoulders. A
sweet, unwonted mood, a feeling of lightsome happy-go-luckiness took
possession of me. I fell to observing the people I met and who passed
me, to reading the placards on the wall, noted even the impression of a
glance thrown at me from a passing tram-car, let each bagatelle, each
trifling incident that crossed or vanished from my path impress me.

If one only had just a little to eat on such a lightsome day! The sense
of the glad morning overwhelmed me; my satisfaction became
ill-regulated, and for no definite reason I began to hum joyfully.

At a butcher's stall a woman stood speculating on sausage for dinner.
As I passed her she looked up at me. She had but one tooth in the front
of her head. I had become so nervous and easily affected in the last
few days that the woman's face made a loathsome impression upon me. The
long yellow snag looked like a little finger pointing out of her gum,
and her gaze was still full of sausage as she turned it upon me. I
immediately lost all appetite, and a feeling of nausea came over me.
When I reached the market-place I went to the fountain and drank a
little. I looked up; the dial marked ten on Our Saviour's tower.

I went on through the streets, listlessly, without troubling myself
about anything at all, stopped aimlessly at a corner, turned off into a
side street without having any errand there. I simply let myself go,
wandered about in the pleasant morning, swinging myself care-free to
and fro amongst other happy human beings. This air was clear and bright
and my mind too was without a shadow.

For quite ten minutes I had had an old lame man ahead of me. He carried
a bundle in one hand and exerted his whole body, using all his strength
in his endeavours to get along speedily. I could hear how he panted
from the exertion, and it occurred to me that I might offer to bear his
bundle for him, but yet I made no effort to overtake him. Up in
Graendsen I met Hans Pauli, who nodded and hurried past me. Why was he
in such a hurry? I had not the slightest intention of asking him for a
shilling, and, more than that, I intended at the very first opportunity
to return him a blanket which I had borrowed from him some weeks before.

Just wait until I could get my foot on the ladder, I would be beholden
to no man, not even for a blanket. Perhaps even this very day I might
commence an article on the "Crimes of Futurity," "Freedom of Will," or
what not, at any rate, something worth reading, something for which I
would at least get ten shillings.... And at the thought of this article
I felt myself fired with a desire to set to work immediately and to
draw from the contents of my overflowing brain. I would find a suitable
place to write in the park and not rest until I had completed my
article.

But the old cripple was still making the same sprawling movements ahead
of me up the street. The sight of this infirm creature constantly in
front of me, commenced to irritate me--his journey seemed endless;
perhaps he had made up his mind to go to exactly the same place as I
had, and I must needs have him before my eyes the whole way. In my
irritation it seemed to me that he slackened his pace a little at every
cross street, as if waiting to see which direction I intended to take,
upon which he would again swing his bundle in the air and peg away with
all his might to keep ahead of me. I follow and watch this tiresome
creature and get more and more exasperated with him, I am conscious
that he has, little by little, destroyed my happy mood and dragged the
pure, beautiful morning down to the level of his own ugliness. He looks
like a great sprawling reptile striving with might and main to win a
place in the world and reserve the footpath for himself. When we
reached the top of the hill I determined to put up with it no longer. I
turned to a shop window and stopped in order to give him an opportunity
of getting ahead, but when, after a lapse of some minutes, I again
walked on there was the man still in front of me--he too had stood
stock still,--without stopping to reflect I made three or four furious
onward strides, caught him up, and slapped him on the shoulder.

He stopped directly, and we both stared at one another fixedly. "A
halfpenny for milk!" he whined, twisting his head askew.

So that was how the wind blew. I felt in my pockets and said: "For
milk, eh? Hum-m--money's scarce these times, and I don't really know
how much you are in need of it."

"I haven't eaten a morsel since yesterday in Drammen; I haven't got a
farthing, nor have I got any work yet!"

"Are you an artisan?"

"Yes; a binder."

"A what?"

"A shoe-binder; for that matter, I can make shoes too."

"Ah, that alters the case," said I, "you wait here for some minutes
and I shall go and get a little money for you; just a few pence."

I hurried as fast as I could down Pyle Street, where I knew of a
pawnbroker on a second-floor (one, besides, to whom I had never been
before). When I got inside the hall I hastily took off my waistcoat,
rolled it up, and put it under my arm; after which I went upstairs and
knocked at the office door. I bowed on entering, and threw the
waistcoat on the counter.

"One-and-six," said the man.

"Yes, yes, thanks," I replied. "If it weren't that it was beginning to
be a little tight for me, of course I wouldn't part with it."

I got the money and the ticket, and went back. Considering all things,
pawning that waistcoat was a capital notion. I would have money enough
over for a plentiful breakfast, and before evening my thesis on the
"Crimes of Futurity" would be ready. I began to find existence more
alluring; and I hurried back to the man to get rid of him.

"There it is," said I. "I am glad you applied to me first."

The man took the money and scrutinized me closely. At what was he
standing there staring? I had a feeling that he particularly examined
the knees of my trousers, and his shameless effrontery bored me. Did
the scoundrel imagine that I really was as poor as I looked? Had I not
as good as begun to write an article for half-a-sovereign? Besides, I
had no fear whatever for the future. I had many irons in the fire. What
on earth business was it of an utter stranger if I chose to stand him a
drink on such a lovely day? The man's look annoyed me, and I made up my
mind to give him a good dressing-down before I left him. I threw back
my shoulders, and said:

"My good fellow, you have adopted a most unpleasant habit of staring at
a man's knees when he gives you a shilling."

He leant his head back against the wall and opened his mouth widely;
something was working in that empty pate of his, and he evidently came
to the conclusion that I meant to best him in some way, for he handed
me back the money. I stamped on the pavement, and, swearing at him,
told him to keep it. Did he imagine I was going to all that trouble for
nothing? If all came to all, perhaps I owed him this shilling; I had
just recollected an old debt; he was standing before an honest man,
honourable to his finger-tips--in short, the money was his. Oh, no
thanks were needed; it had been a pleasure to me. Good-bye!

I went on. At last I was freed from this work-ridden plague, and I
could go my way in peace. I turned down Pyle Street again, and stopped
before a grocer's shop. The whole window was filled with eatables, and
I decided to go in and get something to take with me.

"A piece of cheese and a French roll," I said, and threw my sixpence on
to the counter.

"Bread and cheese for the whole of it?" asked the woman ironically,
without looking up at me.

"For the whole sixpence? Yes," I answered, unruffled.

I took them up, bade the fat old woman good-morning, with the utmost
politeness, and sped, full tilt, up Castle Hill to the park.

I found a bench to myself, and began to bite greedily into my
provender. It did me good; it was a long time since I had had such a
square meal, and, by degrees, I felt the same sated quiet steal over me
that one feels after a good long cry. My courage rose mightily. I could
no longer be satisfied with writing an article about anything so simple
and straight-ahead as the "Crimes of Futurity," that any ass might
arrive at, ay, simply deduct from history. I felt capable of a much
greater effort than that; I was in a fitting mood to overcome
difficulties, and I decided on a treatise, in three sections, on
"Philosophical Cognition." This would, naturally, give me an
opportunity of crushing pitiably some of Kant's sophistries ... but, on
taking out my writing materials to commence work, I discovered that I
no longer owned a pencil: I had forgotten it in the pawn-office. My
pencil was lying in my waistcoat pocket.

Good Lord! how everything seems to take a delight in thwarting me
today! I swore a few times, rose from the seat, and took a couple of
turns up and down the path. It was very quiet all around me; down near
the Queen's arbour two nursemaids were trundling their perambulators;
otherwise, there was not a creature anywhere in sight. I was in a
thoroughly embittered temper; I paced up and down before my seat like a
maniac. How strangely awry things seemed to go! To think that an
article in three sections should be downright stranded by the simple
fact of my not having a pennyworth of pencil in my pocket. Supposing I
were to return to Pyle Street and ask to get my pencil back? There
would be still time to get a good piece finished before the promenading
public commenced to fill the parks. So much, too, depended on this
treatise on "Philosophical Cognition"--mayhap many human beings'
welfare, no one could say; and I told myself it might be of the
greatest possible help to many young people. On second thoughts, I
would not lay violent hands on Kant; I might easily avoid doing that; I
would only need to make an almost imperceptible gliding over when I
came to query Time and Space; but I would not answer for Renan, old
Parson Renan....

At all events, an article of so-and-so many columns has to be
completed. For the unpaid rent, and the landlady's inquiring look in
the morning when I met her on the stairs, tormented me the whole day;
it rose up and confronted me again and again, even in my pleasant
hours, when I had otherwise not a gloomy thought.

I must put an end to it, so I left the park hurriedly to fetch my
pencil from the pawnbroker's.

As I arrived at the foot of the hill I overtook two ladies, whom I
passed. As I did so, I brushed one of them accidentally on the arm. I
looked up; she had a full, rather pale, face. But she blushes, and,
becomes suddenly surprisingly lovely. I know not why she blushes; maybe
at some word she hears from a passer-by, maybe only at some lurking
thought of her own. Or can it be because I touched her arm? Her high,
full bosom heaves violently several times, and she closes her hand
tightly above the handle of her parasol. What has come to her?

I stopped, and let her pass ahead again. I could, for the moment, go no
further; the whole thing struck me as being so singular. I was in a
tantalizing mood, annoyed with myself on account of the pencil
incident, and in a high degree disturbed by all the food I had taken on
a totally empty stomach. Suddenly my thoughts, as if whimsically
inspired, take a singular direction. I feel myself seized with an odd
desire to make this lady afraid; to follow her, and annoy her in some
way. I overtake her again, pass her by, turn quickly round, and meet
her face-to-face in order to observe her well. I stand and gaze into
her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have
never heard before--a name with a gliding, nervous sound--Ylajali! When
she is quite close to me I draw myself up and say impressively:

"You are losing your book, madam!" I could hear my heart beat audibly
as I said it.

"My book?" she asks her companion, and she walks on.

My devilment waxed apace, and I followed them. At the same time, I was
fully conscious that I was playing a mad prank without being able to
stop myself. My disordered condition ran away with me; I was inspired
with the craziest notions, which I followed blindly as they came to me.
I couldn't help it, no matter how much I told myself that I was playing
the fool. I made the most idiotic grimaces behind the lady's back, and
coughed frantically as I passed her by. Walking on in this manner--very
slowly, and always a few steps in advance--I felt her eyes on my back,
and involuntarily put down my head with shame for having caused her
annoyance. By degrees, a wonderful feeling stole over me of being far,
far away in other places; I had a half-undefined sense that it was not
I who was going along over the gravel hanging my head.

A few minutes later, they reached Pascha's bookshop. I had already
stopped at the first window, and as they go by I step forward and
repeat:

"You are losing your book, madam!"

"No; what book?" she asks affrightedly. "Can you make out what book it
is he is talking about?" and she comes to a stop.

I hug myself with delight at her confusion; the irresolute perplexity
in her eyes positively fascinates me. Her mind cannot grasp my short,
passionate address. She has no book with her; not a single page of a
book, and yet she fumbles in her pockets, looks down repeatedly at her
hands, turns her head and scrutinizes the streets behind her, exerts
her sensitive little brain to the utmost in trying to discover what
book it is I am talking about. Her face changes colour, has now one,
now another expression, and she is breathing quite audibly--even the
very buttons on her gown seem to stare at me, like a row of frightened
eyes.

"Don't bother about him!" says her companion, taking her by the arm.
"He is drunk; can't you see that the man is drunk?"

Strange as I was at this instant to myself, so absolutely a prey to
peculiar invisible inner influences, nothing occurred around me without
my observing it. A large, brown dog sprang right across the street
towards the shrubbery, and then down towards the Tivoli; he had on a
very narrow collar of German silver. Farther up the street a window
opened on the second floor, and a servant-maid leant out of it, with
her sleeves turned up, and began to clean the panes on the outside.
Nothing escaped my notice; I was clear-headed and ready-witted.
Everything rushed in upon me with a gleaming distinctness, as if I were
suddenly surrounded by a strong light. The ladies before me had each a
blue bird's wing in their hats, and a plaid silk ribbon round their
necks. It struck me that they were sisters.

They turned, stopped at Cisler's music-shop, and spoke together. I
stopped also. Thereupon they both came back, went the same road as they
had come, passed me again, and turned the corner of University Street
and up towards St. Olav's place. I was all the time as close at their
heels as I dared to be. They turned round once, and sent me a
half-fearful, half-questioning look, and I saw no resentment nor any
trace of a frown in it.

This forbearance with my annoyance shamed me thoroughly and made me
lower my eyes. I would no longer be a trouble to them; out of sheer
gratitude I would follow them with my gaze, not lose sight of them
until they entered some place safely and disappeared.

Outside No. 2, a large four-storeyed house, they turned again before
going in. I leant against a lamp-post near the fountain and listened
for their footsteps on the stairs. They died away on the second floor.
I advanced from the lamp-post and looked up at the house. Then
something odd happened. The curtains above were stirred, and a second
after a window opened, a head popped out, and two singular-looking eyes
dwelt on me. "Ylajali!" I muttered, half-aloud, and I felt I grew red.

Why does she not call for help, or push over one of these flower-pots
and strike me on the head, or send some one down to drive me away? We
stand and look into one another's eyes without moving; it lasts a
minute. Thoughts dart between the window and the street, and not a word
is spoken. She turns round, I feel a wrench in me, a delicate shock
through my senses; I see a shoulder that turns, a back that disappears
across the floor. That reluctant turning from the window, the
accentuation in that movement of the shoulders was like a nod to me. My
blood was sensible of all the delicate, dainty greeting, and I felt all
at once rarely glad. Then I wheeled round and went down the street.

I dared not look back, and knew not if she had returned to the window.
The more I considered this question the more nervous and restless I
became. Probably at this very moment she was standing watching closely
all my movements. It is by no means comfortable to know that you are
being watched from behind your back. I pulled myself together as well
as I could and proceeded on my way; my legs began to jerk under me, my
gait became unsteady just because I purposely tried to make it look
well. In order to appear at ease and indifferent, I flung my arms
about, spat out, and threw my head well back--all without avail, for I
continually felt the pursuing eyes on my neck, and a cold shiver ran
down my back. At length I escaped down a side street, from which I took
the road to Pyle Street to get my pencil.

I had no difficulty in recovering it; the man brought me the waistcoat
himself, and as he did so, begged me to search through all the pockets.
I found also a couple of pawn-tickets which I pocketed as I thanked the
obliging little man for his civility. I was more and more taken with
him, and grew all of a sudden extremely anxious to make a favourable
impression on this person. I took a turn towards the door and then back
again to the counter as if I had forgotten something. It struck me that
I owed him an explanation, that I ought to elucidate matters a little.
I began to hum in order to attract his attention. Then, taking the
pencil in my hand, I held it up and said:

"It would never have entered my head to come such a long way for any
and every bit of pencil, but with this one it was quite a different
matter; there was another reason, a special reason. Insignificant as it
looked, this stump of pencil had simply made me what I was in the
world, so to say, placed me in life." I said no more. The man had come
right over to the counter.

"Indeed!" said he, and he looked inquiringly at me.

"It was with this pencil," I continued, in cold blood, "that I wrote my
dissertation on 'Philosophical Cognition,' in three volumes." Had he
never heard mention of it?

Well, he did seem to remember having heard the name, rather the title.

"Yes," said I, "that was by me, so it was." So he must really not be
astonished that I should be desirous of having the little bit of pencil
back again. I valued it far too highly to lose it; why, it was almost
as much to me as a little human creature. For the rest I was honestly
grateful to him for his civility, and I would bear him in mind for it.
Yes, truly, I really would. A promise was a promise; that was the sort
of man I was, and he really deserved it. "Good-bye!" I walked to the
door with the bearing of one who had it in his power to place a man in
a high position, say in the fire-office. The honest pawnbroker bowed
twice profoundly to me as I withdrew. I turned again and repeated my
good-bye.

On the stairs I met a woman with a travelling-bag in her hand, who
squeezed diffidently against the wall to make room for me, and I
voluntarily thrust my hand in my pocket for something to give her, and
looked foolish as I found nothing and passed on with my head down. I
heard her knock at the office door; there was an alarm over it, and I
recognized the jingling sound it gave when any one rapped on the door
with his knuckles.

The sun stood in the south; it was about twelve. The whole town began
to get on its legs as it approached the fashionable hour for
promenading. Bowing and laughing folk walked up and down Carl Johann
Street. I stuck my elbows closely to my sides, tried to make myself
look small, and slipped unperceived past some acquaintances who had
taken up their stand at the corner of University Street to gaze at the
passers-by. I wandered up Castle Hill and fell into a reverie.

How gaily and lightly these people I met carried their radiant heads,
and swung themselves through life as through a ball-room! There was no
sorrow in a single look I met, no burden on any shoulder, perhaps not
even a clouded thought, not a little hidden pain in any of the happy
souls. And I, walking in the very midst of these people, young and
newly-fledged as I was, had already forgotten the very look of
happiness. I hugged these thoughts to myself as I went on, and found
that a great injustice had been done me. Why had the last months
pressed so strangely hard on me? I failed to recognize my own happy
temperament, and I met with the most singular annoyances from all
quarters. I could not sit down on a bench by myself or set my foot any
place without being assailed by insignificant accidents, miserable
details, that forced their way into my imagination and scattered my
powers to all the four winds. A dog that dashed by me, a yellow rose in
a man's buttonhole, had the power to set my thoughts vibrating and
occupy me for a length of time.

       *       *       *       *       *

What was it that ailed me? Was the hand of the Lord turned against me?
But why just against me? Why, for that matter, not just as well against
a man in South America? When I considered the matter over, it grew more
and more incomprehensible to me that I of all others should be selected
as an experiment for a Creator's whims. It was, to say the least of it,
a peculiar mode of procedure to pass over a whole world of other humans
in order to reach me. Why not select just as well Bookseller Pascha, or
Hennechen the steam agent?

As I went my way I sifted this thing, and could not get quit of it. I
found the most weighty arguments against the Creator's arbitrariness in
letting me pay for all the others' sins. Even after I had found a seat
and sat down, the query persisted in occupying me, and prevented me
from thinking of aught else. From the day in May when my ill-luck began
I could so clearly notice my gradually increasing debility; I had
become, as it were, too languid to control or lead myself whither I
would go. A swarm of tiny noxious animals had bored a way into my inner
man and hollowed me out.

Supposing God Almighty simply intended to annihilate me? I got up and
paced backwards and forwards before the seat.

My whole being was at this moment in the highest degree of torture, I
had pains in my arms, and could hardly bear to hold them in the usual
way. I experienced also great discomfort from my last full meal; I was
oversated, and walked backwards and forwards without looking up. The
people who came and went around me glided past me like faint gleams. At
last my seat was taken up by two men, who lit cigars and began to talk
loudly together. I got angry and was on the point of addressing them,
but turned on my heel and went right to the other end of the Park, and
found another seat. I sat down.

       *       *       *       *       *

The thought of God began to occupy me. It seemed to me in the highest
degree indefensible of Him to interfere every time I sought for a
place, and to upset the whole thing, while all the time I was but
imploring enough for a daily meal.

I had remarked so plainly that, whenever I had been hungry for any
length of time, it was just as if my brains ran quite gently out of my
head and left me with a vacuum--my head grew light and far off, I no
longer felt its weight on my shoulders, and I had a consciousness that
my eyes stared far too widely open when I looked at anything.

I sat there on the seat and pondered over all this, and grew more and
more bitter against God for His prolonged inflictions. If He meant to
draw me nearer to Him, and make me better by exhausting me and placing
obstacle after obstacle in my way, I could assure Him He made a slight
mistake. And, almost crying with defiance, I looked up towards Heaven
and told Him so mentally, once and for all.

Fragments of the teachings of my childhood ran through my memory. The
rhythmical sound of Biblical language sang in my ears, and I talked
quite softly to myself, and held my head sneeringly askew. Wherefore
should I sorrow for what I eat, for what I drink, or for what I may
array this miserable food for worms called my earthy body? Hath not my
Heavenly Father provided for me, even as for the sparrow on the
housetop, and hath He not in His graciousness pointed towards His lowly
servitor? The Lord stuck His finger in the net of my nerves
gently--yea, verily, in desultory fashion--and brought slight disorder
among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there
were fibres and delicate root-like filaments adhering to the finger,
and they were the nerve-threads of the filaments. And there was a
gaping hole after the finger, which was God's finger, and a wound in my
brain in the track of His finger. But when God had touched me with His
finger, He let me be, and touched me no more, and let no evil befall
me; but let me depart in peace, and let me depart with the gaping hole.
And no evil hath befallen me from the God who is the Lord God of all
Eternity.

The sound of music was borne up on the wind to me from the Students'
Allée. It was therefore past two o'clock. I took out my writing
materials to try to write something, and at the same time my book of
shaving-tickets [Footnote: Issued by the barbers at cheaper rates, as
few men in Norway shave themselves.] fell out of my pocket. I opened
it, and counted the tickets; there were six. "The Lord be praised," I
exclaimed involuntarily; "I can still get shaved for a couple of weeks,
and look a little decent"; and I immediately fell into a better frame
of mind on account of this little property which still remained to me.
I smoothed the leaves out carefully, and put the book safely into my
pocket.

But write I could not. After a few lines nothing seemed to occur to me;
my thought ran in other directions, and I could not pull myself
together enough for any special exertion.

Everything influenced and distracted me; everything I saw made a fresh
impression on me. Flies and tiny mosquitoes stick fast to the paper and
disturb me. I blow at them to get rid of them--blow harder and harder;
to no purpose, the little pests throw themselves on their backs, make
themselves heavy, and fight against me until their slender legs bend.
They are not to be moved from the spot; they find something to hook on
to, set their heels against a comma or an unevenness in the paper, or
stand immovably still until they themselves think fit to go their way.

These insects continued to busy me for a long time, and I crossed my
legs to observe them at leisure. All at once a couple of high clarionet
notes waved up to me from the bandstand, and gave my thoughts a new
impulse.

Despondent at not being able to put my article together, I replaced the
paper in my pocket, and leant back in the seat. At this instant my head
is so clear that I can follow the most delicate train of thought
without tiring. As I lie in this position, and let my eyes glide down
my breast and along my legs, I notice the jerking movement my foot
makes each time my pulse beats. I half rise and look down at my feet,
and I experience at this moment a fantastic and singular feeling that I
have never felt before--a delicate, wonderful shock through my nerves,
as if sparks of cold light quivered through them--it was as if catching
sight of my shoes I had met with a kind old acquaintance, or got back a
part of myself that had been riven loose. A feeling of recognition
trembles through my senses; the tears well up in my eyes, and I have a
feeling as if my shoes are a soft, murmuring strain rising towards me.
"Weakness!" I cried harshly to myself, and I clenched my fists and I
repeated "Weakness!" I laughed at myself, for this ridiculous feeling,
made fun of myself, with a perfect consciousness of doing so, talked
very severely and sensibly, and closed my eyes very tightly to get rid
of the tears.

As if I had never seen my shoes before, I set myself to study their
looks, their characteristics, and, when I stir my foot, their shape and
their worn uppers. I discover that their creases and white seams give
them expression--impart a physiognomy to them. Something of my own
nature had gone over into these shoes; they affected me, like a ghost
of my other I--a breathing portion of my very self.

I sat and toyed with these fancies a long time, perhaps an entire hour.
A little, old man came and took the other end of the seat; as he seated
himself he panted after his walk, and muttered:

"Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay; very true!"

As soon as I heard his voice, I felt as if a wind had swept through my
head. I let shoes be shoes, and it seemed to me that the distracted
phase of mind I had just experienced dated from a long-vanished period,
maybe a year or two back, and was about to be quietly effaced from my
memory. I began to observe the old fellow.

Did this little man concern me in any way? Not in the least, not in the
very slightest degree! Only that he held a newspaper in his hand, an
old number (with the advertisement sheet on the outside), in which
something or other seemed to be rolled up; my curiosity was aroused,
and I could not take my eyes away from this paper. The insane idea
entered my head that it might be a quite peculiar newspaper--unique of
its kind. My curiosity increased, and I began to move backwards and
forwards on the seat. It might contain deeds, dangerous documents
stolen from some archive or other; something floated before me about a
secret treaty--a conspiracy.

The man sat quietly, and pondered. Why did he not carry his newspaper
as every other person carries a paper, with its name out? What species
of cunning lurked under that? He did not seem either to like letting
his package out of his hands, not for anything in the world; perhaps he
did not even dare trust it into his own pocket. I could stake my life
there was something at the bottom of that package--I considered a bit.
Just the fact of finding it so impossible to penetrate this mysterious
affair distracted me with curiosity. I searched my pockets for
something to offer the man in order to enter into conversation with
him, took hold of my shaving-book, but put it back again. Suddenly it
entered my head to be utterly audacious; I slapped my empty
breast-pocket, and said:

"May I offer you a cigarette?"

"Thank you!" The man did not smoke; he had to give it up to spare his
eyes; he was nearly blind. Thank you very much all the same. Was it
long since his eyes got bad? In that case, perhaps, he could not read
either, not even a paper?

No, not even the newspaper, more's the pity. The man looked at me; his
weak eyes were each covered with a film which gave them a glassy
appearance; his gaze grew bleary, and made a disgusting impression on
me.

"You are a stranger here?" he said.

"Yes." Could he not even read the name of the paper he held in his hand?

"Barely." For that matter, he could hear directly that I was a
stranger. There was something in my accent which told him. It did not
need much; he could hear so well. At night, when every one slept, he
could hear people in the next room breathing....

"What I was going to say was, 'where do you live?'"

On the spur of the moment a lie stood, ready-made, in my head. I lied
involuntarily, without any object, without any _arrière pensée_, and I
answered--

"St. Olav's Place, No. 2."

"Really?" He knew every stone in St. Olav's Place. There was a
fountain, some lamp-posts, a few trees; he remembered all of it. "What
number do you live in?"

Desirous to put an end to this, I got up. But my notion about the
newspaper had driven me to my wit's end; I resolved to clear the thing
up, at no matter what cost.

"When you cannot read the paper, why--"

"In No. 2, I think you said," continued the man, without noticing my
disturbance. "There was a time I knew every person in No. 2; what is
your landlord's name?"

I quickly found a name to get rid of him; invented one on the spur of
the moment, and blurted it out to stop my tormentor.

"Happolati!" said I.

"Happolati, ay!" nodded the man; and he never missed a syllable of this
difficult name.

I looked at him with amazement; there he sat, gravely, with a
considering air. Before I had well given utterance to the stupid name
which jumped into my head the man had accommodated himself to it, and
pretended to have heard it before.

In the meantime, he had laid his package on the seat, and I felt my
curiosity quiver through my nerves. I noticed there were a few grease
spots on the paper.

"Isn't he a sea-faring man, your landlord?" queried he, and there was
not a trace of suppressed irony in his voice; "I seem to remember he
was."

"Sea-faring man? Excuse me, it must be the brother you know; this man
is namely J. A. Happolati, the agent."

I thought this would finish him; but he willingly fell in with
everything I said. If I had found a name like Barrabas Rosebud it would
not have roused his suspicions.

"He is an able man, I have heard?" he said, feeling his way.

"Oh, a clever fellow!" answered I; "a thorough business head; agent for
every possible thing going. Cranberries from China; feathers and down
from Russia; hides, pulp, writing-ink--"

"He, he! the devil he is?" interrupted the old chap, highly excited.

This began to get interesting. The situation ran away with me, and one
lie after another engendered in my head. I sat down again, forgot the
newspaper, and the remarkable documents, grew lively, and cut short the
old fellow's talk.

The little goblin's unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would
stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and
stop his mouth from sheer amazement.

Had he heard of the electric psalm-book that Happolati had invented?

"What? Elec--"

"With electric letters that could give light in the dark! a perfectly
extraordinary enterprise. A million crowns to be put in circulation;
foundries and printing-presses at work, and shoals of regular mechanics
to be employed; I had heard as many as seven hundred men."

"Ay, isn't it just what I say?" drawled out the man calmly.

He said no more, he believed every word I related, and for all that, he
was not taken aback. This disappointed me a little; I had expected to
see him utterly bewildered by my inventions.

I searched my brain for a couple of desperate lies, went the whole hog,
hinted that Happolati had been Minister of State for nine years in
Persia. "You perhaps have no conception of what it means to be Minister
of State in Persia?" I asked. It was more than king here, or about the
same as Sultan, if he knew what that meant, but Happolati had managed
the whole thing, and was never at a loss. And I related about his
daughter Ylajali, a fairy, a princess, who had three hundred slaves,
and who reclined on a couch of yellow roses. She was the loveliest
creature I had ever seen; I had, may the Lord strike me, never seen her
match for looks in my life!

"So--o; was she so lovely?" remarked the old fellow, with an absent
air, as he gazed at the ground.

"Lovely? She was beauteous, she was sinfully fascinating. Eyes like raw
silk, arms of amber! Just one glance from her was as seductive as a
kiss; and when she called me, her voice darted like a wine-ray right
into my soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he
imagine she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was
simply a Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale.

"Yes, to be sure!" said he, not a little bewildered. His quiet bored
me; I was excited by the sound of my own voice and spoke in utter
seriousness; the stolen archives, treaties with some foreign power or
other, no longer occupied my thoughts; the little flat bundle of paper
lay on the seat between us, and I had no longer the smallest desire to
examine it or see what it contained. I was entirely absorbed in stories
of my own which floated in singular visions across my mental eye. The
blood flew to my head, and I roared with laughter.

At this moment the little man seemed about to go. He stretched himself,
and in order not to break off too abruptly, added: "He is said to own
much property, this Happolati?"

How dared this bleary-eyed, disgusting old man toss about the rare name
I had invented as if it were a common name stuck up over every
huckster-shop in the town? He never stumbled over a letter or forgot a
syllable. The name had bitten fast in his brain and struck root on the
instant. I got annoyed; an inward exasperation surged up in me against
this creature whom nothing had the power to disturb and nothing render
suspicious.

I therefore replied shortly, "I know nothing about that! I know
absolutely nothing whatever about that! Let me inform you once for all
that his name is Johann Arendt Happolati, if you go by his own
initials."

"Johannn Arendt Happolati!" repeated the man, a little astonished at my
vehemence; and with that he grew silent.

"You should see his wife!" I said, beside myself. "A fatter creature
... Eh? what? Perhaps you don't even believe she is really fat?"

Well, indeed he did not see his way to deny that such a man might
perhaps have a rather stout wife. The old fellow answered quite gently
and meekly to each of my assertions, and sought for words as if he
feared to offend and perhaps make me furious.

"Hell and fire, man! Do you imagine that I am sitting here stuffing you
chock-full of lies?" I roared furiously. "Perhaps you don't even
believe that a man of the name of Happolati exists! I never saw your
match for obstinacy and malice in any old man. What the devil ails you?
Perhaps, too, into the bargain, you have been all this while thinking
to yourself I am a poverty-stricken fellow, sitting here in my
Sunday-best without even a case full of cigarettes in my pocket. Let me
tell you such treatment as yours is a thing I am not accustomed to, and
I won't endure it, the Lord strike me dead if I will--neither from you
nor any one else, do you know that?"

The man had risen with his mouth agape; he stood tongue-tied and
listened to my outbreak until the end. Then he snatched his parcel from
off the seat and went, ay, nearly ran, down the patch, with the short,
tottering steps of an old man.

I leant back and looked at the retreating figure that seemed to shrink
at each step as it passed away. I do not know from where the impression
came, but it appeared to me that I had never in my life seen a more
vile back than this one, and I did not regret that I had abused the
creature before he left me.

The day began to decline, the sun sank, it commenced to rustle lightly
in the trees around, and the nursemaids who sat in groups near the
parallel bars made ready to wheel their perambulators home. I was
calmed and in good spirit. The excitement I had just laboured under
quieted down little by little, and I grew weaker, more languid, and
began to feel drowsy. Neither did the quantity of bread I had eaten
cause me any longer any particular distress. I leant against the back
of the seat in the best of humours, closed my eyes, and got more and
more sleepy. I dozed, and was just on the point of falling asleep, when
a park-keeper put his hand on my shoulder and said:

"You must not sit here and go to sleep!"

"No?" I said, and sprang immediately up, my unfortunate position rising
all at once vividly before my eyes. I must do something; find some way
or another out of it. To look for situations had been of no avail to
me. Even the recommendations I showed had grown a little old, and were
written by people all too little known to be of much use; besides that,
constant refusals all through the summer had somewhat disheartened me.
At all events, my rent was due, and I must raise the wind for that; the
rest would have to wait a little.

Quite involuntarily I had got paper and pencil into my hand again, and
I sat and wrote mechanically the date, 1848, in each corner. If only
now one single effervescing thought would grip me powerfully, and put
words into my mouth. Why, I had known hours when I could write a long
piece, without the least exertion, and turn it off capitally, too.

I am sitting on the seat, and I write, scores of times, 1848. I write
this date criss-cross, in all possible fashions, and wait until a
workable idea shall occur to me. A swarm of loose thoughts flutter
about in my head. The feeling of declining day makes me downcast,
sentimental; autumn is here, and has already begun to hush everything
into sleep and torpor. The flies and insects have received their first
warning. Up in the trees and down in the fields the sounds of
struggling life can be heard rustling, murmuring, restless; labouring
not to perish. The down-trodden existence of the whole insect world is
astir for yet a little while. They poke their yellow heads up from the
turf, lift their legs, feel their way with long feelers and then
collapse suddenly, roll over, and turn their bellies in the air.

Every growing thing has received its peculiar impress: the delicately
blown breath of the first cold. The stubbles straggle wanly sunwards,
and the falling leaves rustle to the earth, with a sound as of errant
silkworms.

It is the reign of Autumn, the height of the Carnival of Decay, the
roses have got inflammation in their blushes, an uncanny hectic tinge,
through their soft damask.

I felt myself like a creeping thing on the verge of destruction,
gripped by ruin in the midst of a whole world ready for lethargic
sleep. I rose, oppressed by weird terrors, and took some furious
strides down the path. "No!" I cried out, clutching both my hands;
"there must be an end to this," and I reseated myself, grasped the
pencil, and set seriously to work at an article.

There was no possible use in giving way, with the unpaid rent staring
me straight in the face.

Slowly, quite slowly, my thoughts collected. I paid attention to them,
and wrote quietly and well; wrote a couple of pages as an introduction.
It would serve as a beginning to anything. A description of travel, a
political leader, just as I thought fit--it was a perfectly splendid
commencement for something or anything. So I took to seeking for some
particular subject to handle, a person or a thing, that I might grapple
with, and I could find nothing. Along with this fruitless exertion,
disorder began to hold its sway again in my thoughts. I felt how my
brain positively snapped and my head emptied, until it sat at last,
light, buoyant, and void on my shoulders. I was conscious of the gaping
vacuum in my skull with every fibre of my being. I seemed to myself to
be hollowed out from top and toe.

In my pain I cried: "Lord, my God and Father!" and repeated this cry
many times at a stretch, without adding one word more.

The wind soughed through the trees; a storm was brewing. I sat a while
longer, and gazed at my paper, lost in thought, then folded it up and
put it slowly into my pocket. It got chilly; and I no longer owned a
waistcoat. I buttoned my coat right up to my throat and thrust my hands
in my pockets; thereupon I rose and went on.

If I had only succeeded this time, just this once. Twice my landlady
had asked me with her eyes for payment, and I was obliged to hang my
head and slink past her with a shamefaced air. I could not do it again:
the very next time I met those eyes I would give warning and account
for myself honestly. Well, any way, things could not last long at this
rate.

On coming to the exit of the park I saw the old chap I had put to
flight. The mysterious new paper parcel lay opened on the seat next
him, filled with different sorts of victuals, of which he ate as he
sat. I immediately wanted to go over and ask pardon for my conduct, but
the sight of food repelled me. The decrepit fingers looked like ten
claws as they clutched loathsomely at the greasy bread and butter; I
felt qualmish, and passed by without addressing him. He did not
recognize me; his eyes stared at me, dry as horn, and his face did not
move a muscle.

And so I went on my way.

As customary, I halted before every newspaper placard I came to, to
read the announcements of situations vacant, and was lucky enough to
find one that I might try for.

A grocer in Groenlandsleret wanted a man every week for a couple of
hours' book-keeping; remuneration according to agreement. I noted my
man's address, and prayed to God in silence for this place. I would
demand less than any one else for my work; sixpence was ample, or
perhaps fivepence. That would not matter in the least.

On going home, a slip of paper from my landlady lay on my table, in
which she begged me to pay my rent in advance, or else move as soon as
I could. I must not be offended, it was absolutely a necessary request.
Friendlily Mrs. Gundersen.

I wrote an application to Christy the grocer, No. 13 Groenlandsleret,
put it in an envelope, and took it to the pillar at the corner. Then I
returned to my room and sat down in the rocking-chair to think, whilst
the darkness grew closer and closer. Sitting up late began to be
difficult now.

I woke very early in the morning. It was still quite dark as I opened
my eyes, and it was not till long after that I heard five strokes of
the clock down-stairs. I turned round to doze again, but sleep had
down. I grew more and more wakeful, and lay and thought of a thousand
things.

Suddenly a few good sentences fitted for a sketch or story strike me,
delicate linguistic hits of which I have never before found the equal.
I lie and repeat these words over to myself, and find that they are
capital. Little by little others come and fit themselves to the
preceding ones. I grow keenly wakeful. I get up and snatch paper and
pencil from the table behind my bed. It was as if a vein had burst in
me; one word follows another, and they fit themselves together
harmoniously with telling effect. Scene piles on scene, actions and
speeches bubble up in my brain, and a wonderful sense of pleasure
empowers me. I write as one possessed, and fill page after page,
without a moment's pause.

Thoughts come so swiftly to me and continue to flow so richly that I
miss a number of telling bits, that I cannot set down quickly enough,
although I work with all my might. They continue to invade me; I am
full of my subject, and every word I write is inspired.

This strange period lasts--lasts such a blessedly long time before it
comes to an end. I have fifteen--twenty written pages lying on my knees
before me, when at last I cease and lay my pencil aside, So sure as
there is any worth in these pages, so sure am I saved. I jump out of
bed and dress myself. It grows lighter. I can half distinguish the
lighthouse director's announcement down near the door, and near the
window it is already so light that I could, in case of necessity, see
to write. I set to work immediately to make a fair copy of what I have
written.

An intense, peculiar exhalation of light and colour emanates from these
fantasies of mine. I start with surprise as I note one good thing after
another, and tell myself that this is the best thing I have ever read.
My head swims with a sense of satisfaction; delight inflates me; I grow
grandiose.

I weigh my writing in my hand, and value it, at a loose guess, for five
shillings on the spot.

It could never enter any one's head to chaffer about five shillings; on
the contrary, getting it for half-a-sovereign might be considered
dirt-cheap, considering the quality of the thing.

I had no intention of turning off such special work gratis. As far as I
was aware, one did not pick up stories of that kind on the wayside, and
I decided on half-a-sovereign.

The room brightened and brightened. I threw a glance towards the door,
and could distinguish without particular trouble the skeleton-like
letters of Miss Andersen's winding-sheet advertisement to the right of
it. It was also a good while since the clock has struck seven.

I rose and came to a standstill in the middle of the floor. Everything
well considered, Mrs. Gundersen's warning came rather opportunely. This
was, properly speaking, no fit room for me: there were only common
enough green curtains at the windows, and neither were there any pegs
too many on the wall. The poor little rocking-chair over in the corner
was in reality a mere attempt at a rocking-chair; with the smallest
sense of humour, one might easily split one's sides with laughter at
it. It was far too low for a grown man, and besides that, one needed,
so to speak, the aid of a boot-jack to get out of it. To cut it short,
the room was not adopted for the pursuit of things intellectual, and I
did not intend to keep it any longer. On no account would I keep it. I
had held my peace, and endured and lived far too long in such a den.

Buoyed up by hope and satisfaction, constantly occupied with my
remarkable sketch, which I drew forth every moment from my pocket and
re-read, I determined to set seriously to work with my flitting. I took
out my bundle, a red handkerchief that contained a few clean collars
and some crumpled newspapers, in which I had occasionally carried home
bread. I rolled my blanket up and pocketed my reserve white
writing-paper. Then I ransacked every corner to assure myself that I
had left nothing behind, and as I could not find anything, went over to
the window and looked out.

The morning was gloomy and wet; there was no one about at the burnt-out
smithy, and the clothesline down in the yard stretched tightly from
wall to wall shrunken by the wet. It was all familiar to me, so I
stepped back from the window, took the blanket under my arm, and made a
low bow to the lighthouse director's announcement, bowed again to Miss
Andersen's winding-sheet advertisement, and opened the door. Suddenly
the thought of my land-lady struck me; she really ought to be informed
of my leaving, so that she could see she had had an honest soul to deal
with.

I wanted also to thank her in writing for the few days' overtime in
which I occupied the room. The certainty that I was now saved for some
time to come increased so strongly in me that I even promised her five
shillings. I would call in some day when passing by.

Besides that, I wanted to prove to her what an upright sort of person
her roof had sheltered.

I left the note behind me on the table.

Once again I stopped at the door and turned round; the buoyant feeling
of having risen once again to the surface charmed me, and made me feel
grateful towards God and all creation, and I knelt down at the bedside
and thanked God aloud for His great goodness to me that morning.

I knew it; ah! I knew that the rapture of inspiration I had just felt
and noted down was a miraculous heaven-brew in my spirit in answer to
my yesterday's cry for aid.

"It was God! It was God!" I cried to myself, and I wept for enthusiasm
over my own words; now and then I had to stop and listen if any one was
on the stairs. At last I rose up and prepared to go. I stole
noiselessly down each flight and reached the door unseen.

The streets were glistening from the rain which had fallen in the early
morning. The sky hung damp and heavy over the town, and there was no
glint of sunlight visible. I wondered what the day would bring forth? I
went as usual in the direction of the Town Hall, and saw that it was
half-past eight. I had yet a few hours to walk about; there was no use
in going to the newspaper office before ten, perhaps eleven. I must
lounge about so long, and think, in the meantime, over some expedient
to raise breakfast. For that matter, I had no fear of going to bed
hungry that day; those times were over, God be praised! That was a
thing of the past, an evil dream. Henceforth, Excelsior!

But, in the meanwhile, the green blanket was a trouble to me. Neither
could I well make myself conspicuous by carrying such a thing about
right under people's eyes. What would any one think of me? And as I
went on I tried to think of a place where I could have it kept till
later on. It occurred to me that I might go into Semb's and get it
wrapped up in paper; not only would it look better, but I need no
longer be ashamed of carrying it.

I entered the shop, and stated my errand to one of the shop boys.

He looked first at the blanket, then at me. It struck me that he
shrugged his shoulders to himself a little contemptuously as he took
it; this annoyed me.

"Young man," I cried, "do be a little careful! There are two costly
glass vases in that; the parcel has to go to Smyrna."

This had a famous effect. The fellow apologized with every movement he
made for not having guessed that there was something out of the common
in this blanket. When he had finished packing it up I thanked him with
the air of a man who had sent precious goods to Smyrna before now. He
held the door open for me, and bowed twice as I left.

I began to wander about amongst the people in the market place, kept
from choice near the woman who had potted plants for sale. The heavy
crimson roses--the leaves of which glowed blood-like and moist in the
damp morning--made me envious, and tempted me sinfully to snatch one,
and I inquired the price of them merely as an excuse to approach as
near to them as possible.

If I had any money over I would buy one, no matter how things went;
indeed, I might well save a little now and then out of my way of living
to balance things again.

It was ten o'clock, and I went up to the newspaper office. "Scissors"
is running through a lot of old papers. The editor has not come yet. On
being asked my business, I delivered my weighty manuscript, lead him to
suppose that it is something of more than uncommon importance, and
impress upon his memory gravely that he is to give it into we editor's
own hands as soon as he arrives.

I would myself call later on in the day for an answer.

"All right," replied "Scissors," and busied himself again with his
papers.


It seemed to me that he treated the matter somewhat too coolly; but I
said nothing, only nodded rather carelessly to him, and left.

I had now time on hand! If it would only clear up! It was perfectly
wretched weather, without either wind or freshness. Ladies carried
their umbrellas, to be on the safe side, and the woollen caps of the
men looked limp and depressing.

I took another turn across the market and looked at the vegetables and
roses. I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn round--"Missy" bids me
good morning! "Good-morning!" I say in return, a little questioningly.
I never cared particularly for "Missy."

He looks inquisitively at the large brand-new parcel under my arm, and
asks:

"What have you got there?"

"Oh, I have been down to Semb and got some cloth for a suit," I reply,
in a careless tone. "I didn't think I could rub on any longer; there's
such a thing as treating oneself too shabbily."

He looks at me with an amazed start.

"By the way, how are you getting on?" He asks it slowly.

"Oh, beyond all expectation!"

"Then you have got something to do now?"

"Something to do?" I answer and seem surprised. "Rather! Why, I am
book-keeper at Christensen's--a wholesale house."

"Oh, indeed!" he remarks and draws back a little.

"Well, God knows I am the first to be pleased at your success. If only
you don't let people beg the money from you that you earn. Good-day!"

A second after he wheels round and comes back and, pointing with his
cane to my parcel, says:

"I would recommend my tailor to you for the suit of clothes. You won't
find a better tailor than Isaksen--just say I sent you, that's all!"

This was really rather more than I could swallow. What did he want to
poke his nose in my affairs for? Was it any concern of his which tailor
I employed? The sight of this empty-headed dandified "masher"
embittered me, and I reminded him rather brutally of ten shilling he
had borrowed from me. But before he could reply I regretted that I had
asked for it. I got ashamed and avoided meeting his eyes, and, as a
lady came by just then, I stepped hastily aside to let her pass, and
seized the opportunity to proceed on my way.

What should I do with myself whilst I waited? I could not visit a cafe
with empty pockets, and I knew of no acquaintance that I could call on
at this time of day. I wended my way instinctively up town, killed a
good deal of time between the marketplace and the Graendsen, read the
_Aftenpost,_ which was newly posted up on the board outside the office,
took a turn down Carl Johann, wheeled round and went straight on to Our
Saviour's Cemetery, where I found a quiet seat on the slope near the
Mortuary Chapel.

I sat there in complete quietness, dozed in the damp air, mused,
half-slept and shivered.

And time passed. Now, was it certain that the story really was a little
masterpiece of inspired art? God knows if it might not have its faults
here and there. All things well weighed, it was not certain that it
would be accepted; no, simply not even accepted. It was perhaps
mediocre enough in its way, perhaps downright worthless. What security
had I that it was not already at this moment lying in the waste-paper
basket?... My confidence was shaken. I sprang up and stormed out of the
graveyard.

Down in Akersgaden I peeped into a shop window, and saw that it was
only a little past noon. There was no use in looking up the editor
before four. The fate of my story filled me with gloomy forebodings;
the more I thought about it the more absurd it seemed to me that I
could have written anything useable with such suddenness, half-asleep,
with my brain full of fever and dreams. Of course I had deceived myself
and been happy all through the long morning for nothing!... Of
course!... I rushed with hurried strides up Ullavold-sveien, past St.
Han's Hill, until I came to the open fields; on through the narrow
quaint lanes in Sagene, past waste plots and small tilled fields, and
found myself at last on a country road, the end of which I could not
see.

Here I halted and decided to turn.

I was warm from the walk, and returned slowly and very downcast. I met
two hay-carts. The drivers were lying flat upon the top of their loads,
and sang. Both were bare-headed, and both had round, care-free faces. I
passed them and thought to myself that they were sure to accost me,
sure to fling some taunt or other at me, play me some trick; and as I
got near enough, one of them called out and asked what I had under my
arm?

"A blanket!"

"What o'clock is it?" he asked then.

"I don't know rightly; about three, I think!" Whereupon they both
laughed and drove on. I felt at the same moment the lash of a whip curl
round one of my ears, and my hat was jerked off. They couldn't let me
pass without playing me a trick. I raised my hand to my head more or
less confusedly, picked my hat out of the ditch, and continued on my
way. Down at St. Han's Hill I met a man who told me it was past four.
Past four! already past four! I mended my pace, nearly ran down to the
town, turned off towards the news office. Perhaps the editor had been
there hours ago, and had left the office by now. I ran, jostled against
folk, stumbled, knocked against cars, left everybody behind me,
competed with the very horses, struggled like a madman to arrive there
in time. I wrenched through the door, took the stairs in four bounds,
and knocked.

No answer.

"He has left, he has left," I think. I try the door which is open,
knock once again, and enter. The editor is sitting at his table, his
face towards the window, pen in hand, about to write. When he hears my
breathless greeting he turns half round, steals a quick look at me,
shakes his head, and says:

"Oh, I haven't found time to read your sketch yet."

I am so delighted, because in that case he has not rejected it, that I
answer:

"Oh, pray, sir, don't mention it. I quite understand--there is no
hurry; in a few days, perhaps--"

"Yes, I shall see; besides, I have your address."

I forgot to inform him that I no longer had an address, and the
interview is over. I bow myself out, and leave. Hope flames up again in
me; as yet, nothing is lost--on the contrary, I might, for that matter,
yet win all. And my brain began to spin a romance about a great council
in Heaven, in which it had just been resolved that I should win--ay,
triumphantly win ten shillings for a story.

If I only had some place in which to take refuge for the night! I
consider where I can stow myself away, and am so absorbed in this query
that I come to a standstill in the middle of the street. I forget where
I am, and pose like a solitary beacon on a rock in mid-sea, whilst the
tides rush and roar about it.

A newspaper boy offers me _The Viking_.

"It's real good value, sir!"

I look up and start; I am outside Semb's shop again. I quickly turn to
the right-about, holding the parcel in front of me, and hurry down
Kirkegaden, ashamed and afraid that any one might have seen me from the
window. I pass by Ingebret's and the theatre, turn round by the
box-office, and go towards the sea, near the fortress. I find a seat
once more, and begin to consider afresh.

Where in the world shall I find a shelter for the night?

Was there a hole to be found where I could creep in and hide myself
till morning? My pride forbade my returning to my lodging--besides, it
could never really occur to me to go back on my word; I rejected this
thought with great scorn, and I smiled superciliously as I thought of
the little red rocking-chair. By some association of ideas, I find
myself suddenly transported to a large, double room I once occupied in
Haegdehaugen. I could see a tray on the table, filled with great slices
of bread-and-butter. The vision changed; it was transformed into
beef--a seductive piece of beef--a snow-white napkin, bread in plenty,
a silver fork. The door opened; enter my landlady, offering me more
tea....

Visions; senseless dreams! I tell myself that were I to get food now my
head would become dizzy once more, fever would fill my brain, and I
would have to fight again against many mad fancies. I could not stomach
food, my inclination did not lie that way; that was peculiar to me--an
idiosyncrasy of mine.

Maybe as night drew on a way could be found to procure shelter. There
was no hurry; at the worst, I could seek a place out in the woods. I
had the entire environs of the city at my disposal; as yet, there was
no degree of cold worth speaking of in the weather.

And outside there the sea rocked in drowsy rest; ships and clumsy,
broad-nosed prams ploughed graves in its bluish surface, and scattered
rays to the right and left, and glided on, whilst the smoke rolled up
in downy masses from the chimney-stacks, and the stroke of the engine
pistons pierced the clammy air with a dull sound. There was no sun and
no wind; the trees behind me were almost wet, and the seat upon which I
sat was cold and damp.

Time went. I settled down to doze, waxed tired, and a little shiver ran
down my back. A while after I felt that my eyelids began to droop, and
I let them droop....

When I awoke it was dark all around me. I started up, bewildered and
freezing. I seized my parcel and commenced to walk. I went faster and
faster in order to get warm, slapped my arms, chafed my legs--which by
now I could hardly feel under me--and thus reached the watch-house of
the fire brigade. It was nine o'clock; I had been asleep for several
hours.

Whatever shall I do with myself? I must go to some place. I stand there
and stare up at the watch-house, and query if it would not be possible
to succeed in getting into one of the passages if I were to watch for a
moment when the watchman's back was turned. I ascend the steps, and
prepare to open a conversation with the man. He lifts his ax in salute,
and waits for what I may have to say. The uplifted ax, with its edge
turned against me, darts like a cold slash through my nerves. I stand
dumb with terror before this armed man, and draw involuntarily back. I
say nothing, only glide farther and farther away from him. To save
appearances I draw my hand over my forehead, as if I had forgotten
something or other, and slink away. When I reached the pavement I felt
as much saved as if I had just escaped a great peril, and I hurried
away.

Cold and famished, more and more miserable in spirit, I flew up Carl
Johann. I began to swear out aloud, troubling myself not a whit as to
whether any one heard me or not. Arrived at Parliament House, just near
the first trees, I suddenly, by some association of ideas, bethought
myself of a young artist I knew, a stripling I had once saved from an
assault in the Tivoli, and upon whom I had called later on. I snap my
fingers gleefully, and wend my way to Tordenskjiolds Street, find the
door, on which is fastened a card with C. Zacharias Bartel on it, and
knock.

He came out himself, and smelt so fearfully of ale and tobacco that it
was horrible.

"Good-evening!" I say.

"Good-evening! is that you? Now, why the deuce do you come so late? It
doesn't look at all its best by lamplight. I have added a hayrick to it
since, and have made a few other alterations. You must see it by
daylight; there is no use our trying to see it now!"

"Let me have a look at it now, all the same," said I; though, for that
matter, I did not in the least remember what picture he was talking
about.


"Absolutely impossible," he replied; "the whole thing will look yellow;
and, besides, there's another thing"--and he came towards me,
whispering: "I have a little girl inside this evening, so it's clearly
impracticable."


"Oh, in that case, of course there's no question about it."

I drew back, said good-night, and went away.

So there was no way out of it but to seek some place out in the woods.
If only the fields were not so damp. I patted my blanket, and felt more
and more at home at the thought of sleeping out. I had worried myself
so long trying to find a shelter in town that I was wearied and bored
with the whole affair. It would be a positive pleasure to get to rest,
to resign myself; so I loaf down the street without thought in my head.
At a place in Haegdehaugen I halted outside a provision shop where some
food was displayed in the window. A cat lay there and slept beside a
round French roll. There was a basin of lard and several basins of meal
in the background. I stood a while and gazed at these eatables; but as
I had no money wherewith to buy, I turned quickly away and continued my
tramp. I went very slowly, passed by Majorstuen, went on, always on--it
seemed to me for hours,--and came at length at Bogstad's wood.

I turned off the road here, and sat down to rest. Then I began to look
about for a place to suit me, to gather together heather and juniper
leaves, and make up a bed on a little declivity where it was a bit dry.
I opened the parcel and took out the blanket; I was tired and exhausted
with the long walk, and lay down at once. I turned and twisted many
times before I could get settled. My ear pained me a little--it was
slightly swollen from the whip-lash--and I could not lie on it. I
pulled off my shoes and put them under my head, with the paper from
Semb on top.

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me ... everything
was silent--everything. But up in the heights soughed the everlasting
song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is
never silent. I listened so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it
began to bewilder me; it was surely a symphony from the rolling spheres
above. Stars that intone a song....

"I am damned if it is, though," I exclaimed; and I laughed aloud to
collect my wits. "They're night-owls hooting in Canaan!"

I rose again, pulled on my shoes, and wandered about in the gloom, only
to lay down once more. I fought and wrestled with anger and fear until
nearly dawn, then fell asleep at last.

       *        *        *        *        *

It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes, and I had a feeling that
it was going on towards noon.

I pulled on my shoes, packed up the blanket again, and set out for
town. There was no sun to be seen today either; I shivered like a dog,
my feet were benumbed, and water commenced to run from my eyes, as if
they could not bear the daylight.

It was three o'clock. Hunger began to assail me downright in earnest. I
was faint, and now and again I had to retch furtively. I swung round by
the Dampkökken, [Footnote: Steam cooking-kitchen and famous cheap
eating-house] read the bill of fare, and shrugged my shoulders in a way
to attract attention, as if corned beef or salt port was not meet food
for me. After that I went towards the railway station.

A singular sense of confusion suddenly darted through my head. I
stumbled on, determined not to heed it; but I grew worse and worse, and
was forced at last to sit down on a step. My whole being underwent a
change, as if something had slid aside in my inner self, or as if a
curtain or tissue of my brain was rent in two.

I was not unconscious; I felt that my ear was gathering a little, and,
as an acquaintance passed by, I recognized him at once and got up and
bowed.

What sore of fresh, painful perception was this that was being added to
the rest? Was it a consequence of sleeping in the sodden fields, or did
it arise from my not having had any breakfast yet? Looking the whole
thing squarely in the face, there was no meaning in living on in this
manner, by Christ's holy pains, there wasn't. I failed to see either
how I had made myself deserving of this special persecution; and it
suddenly entered my head that I might just as well turn rogue at once
and go to my "Uncle's" with the blanket. I could pawn it for a
shilling, and get three full meals, and so keep myself going until I
thought of something else. 'Tis true I would have to swindle Hans
Pauli. I was already on my way to the pawn-shop, but stopped outside
the door, shook my head irresolutely, then turned back. The farther
away I got the more gladsome, ay, delighted I became, that I had
conquered this strong temptation. The consciousness that I was yet pure
and honourable rose to my head, filled me with a splendid sense of
having principle, character, of being a shining white beacon in a
muddy, human sea amidst floating wreck.

Pawn another man's property for the sake of a meal, eat and drink one's
self to perdition, brand one's soul with the first little scar, set the
first black mark against one's honour, call one's self a blackguard to
one's own face, and needs must cast one's eyes down before one's self?
Never! never! It could never have been my serious intention--it had
really never seriously taken hold of me; in fact, I could not be
answerable for every loose, fleeting, desultory thought, particularly
with such a headache as I had, and nearly killed carrying a blanket,
too, that belonged to another fellow.

There would surely be some way or another of getting help when the
right time came! Now, there was the grocer in Groenlandsleret. Had I
importuned him every hour in the day since I sent in my application?
Had I rung the bell early and late, and been turned away? Why, I had
not even applied personally to him or sought an answer! It did not
follow, surely, that it must needs be an absolutely vain attempt.

Maybe I had luck with me this time. Luck often took such a devious
course, and I started for Groenlandsleret.

The last spasm that had darted through my head had exhausted me a
little, and I walked very slowly and thought over what I would say to
him.

Perhaps he was a good soul; if the whim seized him he might pay me for
my work a shilling in advance, even without my asking for it. People of
that sort had sometimes the most capital ideas.

I stole into a doorway and blackened the knees of my trousers with
spittle to try and make them look a little respectable, left the parcel
behind me in a dark corner at the back of a chest, and entered the
little shop.

A man is standing pasting together bags made of old newspaper.

"I would like to see Mr. Christie," I said.

"That's me!" replied the man.

"Indeed!" Well, my name was so-and-so. I had taken the liberty of
sending him an application, I did not know if it had been of any use.

He repeated my name a couple of times and commenced to laugh.

"Well now, you shall see," he said, taking my letter out of his
breast-pocket, "if you will just be good enough to see how you deal
with dates, sir. You dated your letter 1848," and the man roared with
laughter.

"Yes, that was rather a mistake," I said, abashed--a distraction, a
want of thought; I admitted it.

"You see I must have a man who, as a matter of fact, makes no mistakes
in figures," said he. "I regret it, your handwriting is clear, and I
like your letter, too, but--"

I waited a while; this could not possibly be the man's final say. He
busied himself again with the bags.

"Yes, it was a pity," I said; "really an awful pity, but of course it
would not occur again; and, after all, surely this little error could
not have rendered me quite unfit to keep books?"

"No, I didn't say that," he answered, "but in the meantime it had so
much weight with me that I decided at once upon another man."

"So the place is filled?"

"Yes."

"A--h, well, then there's nothing more to be said about it!"

"No! I'm sorry, but--"

"Good-evening!" said I.

Fury welled up in me, blazing with brutal strength. I fetched my parcel
from the entry, set my teeth together, jostled against the peaceful
folk on the footpath, and never once asked their pardon.

As one man stopped and set me to rights rather sharply for my
behaviour, I turned round and screamed a single meaningless word in his
ear, clenched my fist right under his nose, and stumbled on, hardened
by a blind rage that I could not control.

He called a policeman, and I desired nothing better than to have one
between my hands just for one moment. I slackened my pace intentionally
in order to give him an opportunity of overtaking me; but he did not
come. Was there now any reason whatever that absolutely every one of
one's most earnest and most persevering efforts should fail? Why, too,
had I written 1848? In what way did that infernal date concern me? Here
I was going about starving, so that my entrails wriggle together in me
like worms, and it was, as far as I knew, not decreed in the book of
fate that anything in the shape of food would turn up later on in the
day.

I was becoming mentally and physically more and more prostrate; I was
letting myself down each day to less and less honest actions, so that I
lied on each day without blushing, cheated poor people out of their
rent, struggled with the meanest thoughts of making away with other
men's blankets--all without remorse or prick of conscience.

Foul places began to gather in my inner being, black spores which
spread more and more. And up in Heaven God Almighty sat and kept a
watchful eye on me, and took heed that _my_ destruction proceeded in
accordance with all the rules of art, uniformly and gradually, without
a break in the measure.

But in the abysses of hell the angriest devils bristled with range
because it lasted such a long time until I committed a mortal sin, an
unpardonable offence for which God in His justice must cast me--down....

I quickened my pace, hurried faster and faster, turned suddenly to the
left and found myself, excited and angry, in a light ornate doorway. I
did not pause, not for one second, but the whole peculiar ornamentation
of the entrance struck on my perception in a flash; every detail of the
decoration and the tiling of the floor stood clear on my mental vision
as I sprang up the stairs. I rang violently on the second floor. Why
should I stop exactly on the second floor? And why just seize hold of
this bell which was some little way from the stairs?

A young lady in a grey gown with black trimming came out and opened the
door. She looked for a moment in astonishment at me, then shook her
head and said:

"No, we have not got anything today," and she made a feint to close the
door.

What induced me to thrust myself in this creature's way? She took me
without further ado for a beggar.

I got cool and collected at once. I raised my hat, made a respectful
bow, and, as if I had not caught her words, said, with the utmost
politeness:

"I hope you will excuse me, madam, for ringing so hard, the bell was
new to me. Is it not here that an invalid gentleman lives who has
advertised for a man to wheel him about in a chair?"

She stood awhile and digested this mendacious invention and seemed to
be irresolute in her summing up of my person.

"No!" she said at length; "no, there is no invalid gentleman living
here."


"Not really? An elderly gentleman--two hours a day--sixpence an hour?"

"No!"

"Ah! in that case, I again ask pardon," said I. "It is perhaps on the
first floor. I only wanted, in any case, to recommend a man I know, in
whom I am interested; my name is Wedel-Jarlsberg," [Footnote: The last
family bearing title of nobility in Norway.] and I bowed again and drew
back. The young lady blushed crimson, and in her embarrassment could
not stir from the spot, but stood and stared after me as I descended
the stairs.

My calm had returned to me, and my head was clear. The lady's saying
that she had nothing for me today had acted upon me like an icy shower.
So it had gone so far with me that any one might point at me, and say
to himself, "There goes a beggar--one of those people who get their
food handed out to them at folk's back-doors!"

I halted outside an eating-house in Möller Street, and sniffed the
fresh smell of meat roasting inside; my hand was already upon the
door-handle, and I was on the point of entering without any fixed
purpose, when I bethought myself in time, and left the spot. On
reaching the market, and seeking for a place to rest for a little, I
found all the benches occupied, and I sought in vain all round outside
the church for a quiet seat, where I could sit down.

Naturally, I told myself, gloomily--naturally, naturally; and I
commenced to walk again. I took a turn round the fountain at the corner
of the bazaar, and swallowed a mouthful of water. On again, dragging
one foot after the other; stopped for a long time before each shop
window; halted, and watched every vehicle that drove by. I felt a
scorching heat in my head, and something pulsated strangely in my
temples. The water I had drunk disagreed with me fearfully, and I
retched, stopping here and there to escape being noticed in the open
street. In this manner I came up to Our Saviour's Cemetery.

I sat down here, with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. In
this cramped position I was more at ease, and I no longer felt the
little gnawing in my chest.

A stone-cutter lay on his stomach on a large slab of granite, at the
side of me, and cut inscriptions. He had blue spectacles on, and
reminded me of an acquaintance of mine, whom I had almost forgotten.

If I could only knock all shame on the head and apply to him. Tell him
the truth right out, that things were getting awfully tight with me
now; ay, that I found it hard enough to keep alive. I could give him my
shaving-tickets.

Zounds! my shaving-tickets; tickets for nearly a shilling. I search
nervously for this precious treasure. As I do not find them quickly
enough, I spring to my feet and search, in a sweat of fear. I discover
them at last in the bottom of my breast-pocket, together with other
papers--some clean, some written on--of no value.

I count these six tickets over many times, backwards and forwards; I
had not much use for them; it might pass for a whim--a notion of
mine--that I no longer cared to get shaved.

I was saved to the extent of sixpence--a white sixpence of Kongsberg
silver. The bank closed at six; I could watch for my man outside the
Opland Café between seven and eight.

I sat, and was for a long time pleased with this thought. Time went.
The wind blew lustily through the chestnut trees around me, and the day
declined.

After all, was it not rather petty to come slinking up with six
shaving-tickets to a young gentleman holding a good position in a bank?
Perhaps, he had already a book, maybe two, quite full of spick and span
tickets, a contrast to the crumpled ones I held.

Who could tell? I felt in all my pockets for anything else I could let
go with them, but found nothing. If I could only offer him my tie? I
could well do without it if I buttoned my coat tightly up, which, by
the way, I was already obliged to do, as I had no waistcoat. I untied
it--it was a large overlapping bow which hid half my chest,--brushed it
carefully, and folded it up in a piece of clean white writing-paper,
together with the tickets. Then I left the churchyard and took the road
leading to the Opland.

It was seven by the Town Hall clock. I walked up and down hard by the
café, kept close to the iron railings, and kept a sharp watch on all
who went in and came out of the door. At last, about eight o'clock, I
saw the young fellow, fresh, elegantly dressed, coming up the hill and
across to the cafe door. My heart fluttered like a little bird in my
breast as I caught sight of him, and I blurted out, without even a
greeting:

"Sixpence, old friend!" I said, putting on cheek; "here is the worth of
it," and I thrust the little packet into his hand.

"Haven't got it," he exclaimed. "God knows if I have!" and he turned
his purse inside out right before my eyes. "I was out last night and
got totally cleared out! You must believe me, I literally haven't got
it."

"No, no, my dear fellow; I suppose it is so," I answered, and I took
his word for it. There was, indeed, no reason why he should lie about
such a trifling matter. It struck me, too, that his blue eyes were
moist whilst he ransacked his pockets and found nothing. I drew back.
"Excuse me," I said; "it was only just that I was a bit hard up." I was
already a piece down the street, when he called after me about the
little packet. "Keep it! keep it," I answered; "you are welcome to it.
There are only a few trifles in it--a bagatelle; about all I own in the
world," and I became so touched at my own words, they sounded so
pathetic in the twilight, that I fell a-weeping....

The wind freshened, the clouds chased madly across the heavens, and it
grew cooler and cooler as it got darker. I walked, and cried as I
walked, down the whole street; felt more and more commiseration with
myself, and repeated, time after time, a few words, an ejaculation,
which called forth fresh tears whenever they were on the point of
ceasing: "Lord God, I feel so wretched! Lord God, I feel so wretched!"

An hour passed; passed with such strange slowness, such weariness. I
spent a long time in Market Street; sat on steps, stole into doorways,
and when any one approached, stood and stared absently into the shops
where people bustled about with wares or money. At last I found myself
a sheltered place, behind a deal hoarding, between the church and the
bazaar.

No; I couldn't go out into the woods again this evening. Things must
take their course. I had not strength enough to go, and it was such an
endless way there. I would kill the night as best I could, and remain
where I was; if it got all too cold, well, I could walk round the
church. I would not in any case worry myself any more about that, and I
leant back and dozed.

The noise around me diminished; the shops closed. The steps of the
pedestrians sounded more and more rarely, and in all the windows about
the lights went out. I opened my eyes, and became aware of a figure
standing in front of me. The flash of shining buttons told me it was a
policeman, though I could not see the man's face.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night," I answered and got afraid.

"Where do you live?" he queried.

I name, from habit, and without thought, my old address, the little
attic.


He stood for a while.

"Have I done anything wrong?" I asked anxiously.

"No, not at all!" he replied; "but you had perhaps better be getting
home now; it's cold lying here."

"Ay, that's true; I feel it is a little chilly." I said good-night, and
instinctively took the road to my old abode. If I only set about it
carefully, I might be able to get upstairs without being heard; there
were eight steps in all, and only the two top ones creaked under my
tread. Down at the door I took off my shoes, and ascended. It was quiet
everywhere. I could hear the slow tick-tack of a clock, and a child
crying a little. After that I heard nothing. I found my door, lifted
the latch as I was accustomed to do, entered the room, and shut the
door noiselessly after me.

Everything was as I had left it. The curtains were pulled aside from
the windows, and the bed stood empty. I caught a glimpse of a note
lying on the table; perhaps it was my note to the landlady--she might
never have been up here since I went away.

I fumbled with my hands over the white spot, and felt, to my
astonishment, that it was a letter. I take it over to the window,
examine as well as it is possible in the dark the badly-written letters
of the address, and make out at least my own name. Ah, I thought, an
answer from my landlady, forbidding me to enter the room again if I
were for sneaking back.

Slowly, quite slowly I left the room, carrying my shoes in one hand,
the letter in the other, and the blanket under my arm. I draw myself
up, set my teeth as I tread on the creaking steps, get happily down the
stairs, and stand once more at the door. I put on my shoes, take my
time with the laces, sit a while quietly after I'm ready, and stare
vacantly before me, holding the letter in my hand. Then I get up and go.

The flickering ray of a gas lamp gleams up the street. I make straight
for the light, lean my parcel against the lamp-post and open the
letter. All this with the utmost deliberation. A stream of light, as it
were, darts through my breast, and I hear that I give a little cry--a
meaningless sound of joy. The letter was from the editor. My story was
accepted--had been set in type immediately, straight off! A few slight
alterations.... A couple of errors in writing amended.... Worked out
with talent ... be printed tomorrow ... half-a-sovereign.

I laughed and cried, took to jumping and running down the street,
stopped, slapped my thighs, swore loudly and solemnly into space at
nothing in particular. And time went.

All through the night until the bright dawn I "jodled" about the
streets and repeated--"Worked out with talent--therefore a little
masterpiece--a stroke of genius--and half-a-sovereign."




Part II


A few weeks later I was out one evening. Once more I had sat out in a
churchyard and worked at an article for one of the newspapers. But
whilst I was struggling with it eight o'clock struck, and darkness
closed in, and time for shutting the gates.

I was hungry--very hungry. The ten shillings had, worse luck, lasted
all too short. It was now two, ay, nearly three days since I had eaten
anything, and I felt somewhat faint; holding the pencil even had taxed
me a little. I had half a penknife and a bunch of keys in my pocket,
but not a farthing.

When the churchyard gate shut I meant to have gone straight home, but,
from an instinctive dread of my room--a vacant tinker's workshop, where
all was dark and barren, and which, in fact, I had got permission to
occupy for the present--I stumbled on, passed, not caring where I went,
the Town Hall, right to the sea, and over to a seat near the railway
bridge.

At this moment not a sad thought troubled me. I forgot my distress, and
felt calmed by the view of the sea, which lay peaceful and lovely in
the murkiness. For old habit's sake I would please myself by reading
through the bit I had just written, and which seemed to my suffering
head the best thing I had ever done.

I took my manuscript out of my pocket to try and decipher it, held it
close up to my eyes, and ran through it, one line after the other. At
last I got tired, and put the papers back in my pocket. Everything was
still. The sea stretched away in pearly blueness, and little birds
flitted noiselessly by me from place to place.

A policeman patrols in the distance; otherwise there is not a soul
visible, and the whole harbour is hushed in quiet.

I count my belongings once more--half a penknife, a bunch of keys, but
not a farthing. Suddenly I dive into my pocket and take the papers out
again. It was a mechanical movement, an unconscious nervous twitch. I
selected a white unwritten page, and--God knows where I got the notion
from--but I made a cornet, closed it carefully, so that it looked as if
it were filled with something, and threw it far out on to the pavement.
The breeze blew it onward a little, and then it lay still.

By this time hunger had begun to assail me in earnest. I sat and looked
at the white paper cornet, which seemed as if it might be bursting with
shining silver pieces, and incited myself to believe that it really did
contain something. I sat and coaxed myself quite audibly to guess the
sum; if I guessed aright, it was to be mine.

I imagined the tiny, pretty penny bits at the bottom and the thick
fluted shillings on top--a whole paper cornet full of money! I sat and
gazed at it with wide opened eyes, and urged myself to go and steal it.

Then I hear the constable cough. What puts it into my head to do the
same? I rise up from the seat and repeat the cough three times so that
he may hear it. Won't he jump at the corner when he comes. I sat and
laughed at this trick, rubbed my hands with glee, and swore with
rollicking recklessness. What a disappointment he will get, the dog!
Wouldn't this piece of villainy make him inclined to sink into hell's
hottest pool of torment! I was drunk with starvation; my hunger had
made me tipsy.

A few minutes later the policeman comes by, clinking his iron heels on
the pavement, peering on all sides. He takes his time; he has the whole
night before him; he does not notice the paper bag--not till he comes
quite close to it. Then he stops and stares at it. It looks so white
and so full as it lies there; perhaps a little sum--what? A little sum
of silver money?... and he picks it up. Hum ... it is light--very
light; maybe an expensive feather; some hat trimming.... He opened it
carefully with his big hands, and looked in. I laughed, laughed,
slapped my thighs, and laughed, like a maniac. And not a sound issued
from my throat; my laughter was hushed and feverish to the intensity of
tears.

Clink, clink again over the paving-stones, and the policeman took a
turn towards the landing-stage. I sat there, with tears in my eyes, and
hiccoughed for breath, quite beside myself with feverish merriment. I
commenced to talk aloud to myself all about the cornet, imitated the
poor policeman's movements, peeped into my hollow hand, and repeated
over and over again to myself, "He coughed as he threw it away--he
coughed as he threw it away." I added new words to these, gave them
additional point, changed the whole sentence, and made it catching and
piquant. He coughed once--Kheu heu!

I exhausted myself in weaving variations on these words, and the
evening was far advanced before my mirth ceased. Then a drowsy quiet
overcame me; a pleasant languor which I did not attempt to resist. The
darkness had intensified, and a slight breeze furrowed the pearl-blue
sea. The ships, the masts of which I could see outlined against the
sky, looked with their black hulls like voiceless monsters that
bristled and lay in wait for me. I had no pain--my hunger had taken the
edge off it. In its stead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by
everything around me, and glad not to be noticed by any one. I put my
feet up on the seat and leant back. Thus I could best appreciate the
well-being of perfect isolation. There was not a cloud on my mind, not
a feeling of discomfort, and so far as my thought reached, I had not a
whim, not a desire unsatisfied. I lay with open eyes, in a state of
utter absence of mind. I felt myself charmed away. Moreover, not a
sound disturbed me. Soft darkness had hidden the whole world from my
sight, and buried me in ideal rest. Only the lonely, crooning voice of
silence strikes in monotones on my ear, and the dark monsters out there
will draw me to them when night comes, and they will bear me far across
the sea, through strange lands where no man dwells, and they will bear
me to Princess Ylajali's palace, where an undreamt-of grandeur awaits
me, greater than that of any other man. And she herself will be sitting
in a dazzling hall where all is amethyst, on a throne of yellow roses,
and will stretch out her hands to me when I alight; will smile and call
as I approach and kneel: "Welcome, welcome, knight, to me and my land!
I have waited twenty summers for you, and called for you on all bright
nights. And when you sorrowed I have wept here, and when you slept I
have breathed sweet dreams in you!"... And the fair one clasps my hand
and, holding it, leads me through long corridors where great crowds of
people cry, "Hurrah!" through bright gardens where three hundred tender
maidens laugh and play; and through another hall where all is of
emerald; and here the sun shines.

In the corridors and galleries choirs of musicians march by, and rills
of perfume are wafted towards me.

I clasp her hand in mine; I feel the wild witchery of enchantment
shiver through my blood, and I fold my arms around her, and she
whispers, "Not here; come yet farther!" and we enter a crimson room,
where all is of ruby, a foaming glory, in which I faint.

Then I feel her arms encircle me; her breath fans my face with a
whispered "Welcome, loved one! Kiss me ... more ... more...."

I see from my seat stars shooting before my eyes, and my thoughts are
swept away in a hurricane of light....

I had fallen asleep where I lay, and was awakened by the policeman.
There I sat, recalled mercilessly to life and misery. My first feeling
was of stupid amazement at finding myself in the open air; but this was
quickly replaced by a bitter despondency, I was near crying with sorrow
at being still alive. It had rained whilst I slept, and my clothes were
soaked through and through, and I felt a damp cold in my limbs.

The darkness was denser; it was with difficulty that I could
distinguish the policeman's face in front of me.

"So, that's right," he said; "get up now."

I got up at once; if he had commanded me to lie down again I would have
obeyed too. I was fearfully dejected, and utterly without strength;
added to that, I was almost instantly aware of the pangs of hunger
again.

"Hold on there!" the policeman shouted after me; "why, you're walking
off without your hat, you Juggins! So--h there; now, go on."

"I indeed thought there was something--something I had forgotten," I
stammered, absently. "Thanks, good-night!" and I stumbled away.

If one only had a little bread to eat; one of those delicious little
brown loaves that one could bite into as one walked along the street;
and as I went on I thought over the particular sort of brown bread that
would be so unspeakably good to munch. I was bitterly hungry; wished
myself dead and buried; I got maudlin, and wept.

There never was any end to my misery. Suddenly I stopped in the street,
stamped on the pavement, and cursed loudly. What was it he called me? A
"Juggins"? I would just show him what calling me a "Juggins" means. I
turned round and ran back. I felt red-hot with anger. Down the street I
stumbled, and fell, but I paid no heed to it, jumped up again, and ran
on. But by the time I reached the railway station I had become so tired
that I did not feel able to proceed all the way to the landing-stage;
besides, my anger had cooled down with the run. At length I pulled up
and drew breath. Was it not, after all, a matter of perfect
indifference to me what such a policeman said? Yes; but one couldn't
stand everything. Right enough, I interrupted myself; but he knew no
better. And I found this argument satisfactory. I repeated twice to
myself, "He knew no better"; and with that I returned again.

"Good Lord!" thought I, wrathfully, "what things you do take into your
head: running about like a madman through the soaking wet streets on
dark nights." My hunger was now tormenting me excruciatingly, and gave
me no rest. Again and again I swallowed saliva to try and satisfy
myself a little; I fancied it helped.

I had been pinched, too, for food for ever so many weeks before this
last period set in, and my strength had diminished considerably of
late. When I had been lucky enough to raise five shillings by some
manoeuvre or another they only lasted any time with difficulty; not
long enough for me to be restored to health before a new hunger period
set in and reduced me again. My back and shoulders caused me the worst
trouble. I could stop the little gnawing I had in my chest by coughing
hard, or bending well forward as I walked, but I had no remedy for back
and shoulders. Whatever was the reason that things would not brighten
up for me? Was I not just as much entitled to live as any one else? for
example, as Bookseller Pascha or Steam Agent Hennechen? Had I not two
shoulders like a giant, and two strong hands to work with? and had I
not, in sooth, even applied for a place as wood-chopper in Möllergaden
in order to earn my daily bread? Was I lazy? Had I not applied for
situations, attended lectures, written articles, and worked day and
night like a man possessed? Had I not lived like a miser, eaten bread
and milk when I had plenty, bread alone when I had little, and starved
when I had nothing? Did I live in an hotel? Had I a suite of rooms on
the first floor? Why, I am living in a loft over a tinker's workshop, a
loft already forsaken by God and man last winter, because the snow blew
in. So I could not understand the whole thing; not a bit of it.

I slouched on, and dwelt upon all this, and there was not as much as a
spark of bitterness or malice or envy in my mind.

I halted at a paint-shop and gazed into the window. I tried to read the
labels on a couple of the tins, but it was too dark. Vexed with myself
over this new whim, and excited--almost angry at not being able to make
out what these tins held,--I rapped twice sharply on the window and
went on.

Up the street I saw a policeman. I quickened my pace, went close up to
him, and said, without the slightest provocation, "It is ten o'clock."

"No, it's two," he answered, amazed.

"No, it's ten," I persisted; "it is ten o'clock!" and, groaning with
anger, I stepped yet a pace or two nearer, clenched my fist, and said,
"Listen, do you know what, it's ten o'clock!"

He stood and considered a while, summed up my appearance, stared aghast
at me, and at last said, quite gently, "In any case, it's about time ye
were getting home. Would ye like me to go with ye a bit?"

I was completely disarmed by this man's unexpected friendliness. I felt
that tears sprang to my eyes, and I hastened to reply:

"No, thank you! I have only been out a little too late in a café. Thank
you very much all the same!"

He saluted with his hand to his helmet as I turned away. His
friendliness had overwhelmed me, and I cried weakly, because I had not
even a little coin to give him.

I halted, and looked after him as he went slowly on his way. I struck
my forehead, and, in measure, as he disappeared from my sight, I cried
more violently.

I railed at myself for my poverty, called myself abusive names,
invented furious designations--rich, rough nuggets--in a vein of abuse
with which I overwhelmed myself. I kept on at this until I was nearly
home. On coming to the door I discovered I had dropped my keys.

"Oh, of course," I muttered to myself, "why shouldn't I lose my keys?
Here I am, living in a yard where there is a stable underneath and a
tinker's workshop up above. The door is locked at night, and no one, no
one can open it; therefore, why should I not lose my keys?

"I am as wet as a dog--a little hungry--ah, just ever such a little
hungry, and slightly, ay, absurdly tired about my knees; therefore, why
should I not lose them?

"Why, for that matter, had not the whole house flitted out to Aker by
the time I came home and wished to enter it?" ... and I laughed to
myself, hardened by hunger and exhaustion.

I could hear the horses stamp in the stables, and I could see my window
above, but I could not open the door, and I could not get in.

It had begun to rain again, and I felt the water soak through to my
shoulders. At the Town Hall I was seized by a bright idea. I would ask
the policeman to open the door. I applied at once to a constable, and
earnestly begged him to accompany me and let me in, if he could.

Yes, if he could, yes! But he couldn't; he had no key. The police keys
were not there; they were kept in the Detective Department.

What was I to do then?

Well, I could go to an hotel and get a bed!

But I really couldn't go to an hotel and get a bed; I had not money, I
had been out--in a café ... he knew....

We stood a while on the Town Hall steps. He considered and examined my
personal appearance. The rain fell in torrents outside.

"Well then, you must go to the guard-house and report yourself as
homeless!" said he.

Homeless? I hadn't thought of that. Yes, by Jove, that was a capital
idea; and I thanked the constable on the spot for the suggestion. Could
I simply go in and say I was homeless?

"Just that."...

       *       *       *       *       *

"Your name?" inquired the guard.

"Tangen--Andreas Tangen!"

I don't know why I lied; my thoughts fluttered about disconnectedly and
inspired me with many singular whims, more than I knew what to do with.
I hit upon this out-of-the-way name on the spur of the moment, and
blurted it out without any calculation. I lied without any occasion for
doing so.

"Occupation?"

This was driving me into a corner with a vengeance. Occupation! what
was my occupation? I thought first of turning myself into a tinker--but
I dared not; firstly, I had given myself a name that was not common to
every and any tinker--besides, I wore _pince-nez_. It suddenly entered
my head to be foolhardy. I took a step forward and said firmly, almost
solemnly:

"A journalist."

The guard gave a start before he wrote it down, whilst I stood as
important as a homeless Cabinet Minister before the barrier. It roused
no suspicions. The guard understood quite well why I hesitated a little
before answering. What did it look like to see a journalist in the
night guard-house without a roof over his head?

"On what paper, Herr Tangen?"

"_Morgenbladet_!" said I. "I have been out a little too late this
evening, more's the shame!"

"Oh, we won't mention that," he interrupted, with a smile; "when young
people are out ... we understand!"

Turning to a policeman, he said, as he rose and bowed politely to me,
"Show this gentleman up to the reserved section. Good-night!"

I felt ice run down my back at my own boldness, and I clenched my hands
to steady myself a bit. If I only hadn't dragged in the _Morgenbladet_.
I knew Friele could show his teeth when he liked, and I was reminded of
that by the grinding of the key turning in the lock.

"The gas will burn for ten minutes," remarked the policeman at the door.

"And then does it go out?"

"Then it goes out!"

I sat on the bed and listened to the turning of the key. The bright
cell had a friendly air; I felt comfortably and well sheltered; and
listened with pleasure to the rain outside--I couldn't wish myself
anything better than such a cosy cell. My contentment increased.
Sitting on the bed, hat in hand, and with eyes fastened on the gas jet
over in the wall, I gave myself up to thinking over the minutes of my
first interview with the police. This was the first time, and how
hadn't I fooled them? "Journalist!--Tangen! if you please! and then
_Morgenbladet_!" Didn't I appeal straight to his heart with
_Morgenbladet_? "We won't mention that! Eh? Sat in state in the
Stiftsgaarden till two o'clock; forgot door-key and a pocket-book with
a thousand kroner at home. Show this gentleman up to the reserved
section!"...

All at once out goes the gas with a strange suddenness, without
diminishing or flickering.

I sit in the deepest darkness; I cannot see my hand, nor the white
walls--nothing. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, and I
undressed.

But I was not tired from want of sleep, and it would not come to me. I
lay a while gazing into the darkness, this dense mass of gloom that had
no bottom--my thoughts could not fathom it.

It seemed beyond all measure dense to me, and I felt its presence
oppress me. I closed my eyes, commenced to sing under my breath, and
tossed to and fro, in order to distract myself, but to no purpose. The
darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and left me not a moment
in peace. Supposing I were myself to be absorbed in darkness; made one
with it?

I raise myself up in bed and fling out my arms. My nervous condition
has got the upper hand of me, and nothing availed, no matter how much I
tried to work against it. There I sat, a prey to the most singular
fantasies, listening to myself crooning lullabies, sweating with the
exertion of striving to hush myself to rest. I peered into the gloom,
and I never in all the days of my life felt such darkness. There was no
doubt that I found myself here, in face of a peculiar kind of darkness;
a desperate element to which no one had hitherto paid attention. The
most ludicrous thoughts busied me, and everything made me afraid.

A little hole in the wall at the head of my bed occupies me greatly--a
nail hole. I find the marks in the wall--I feel it, blow into it, and
try to guess its depth. That was no innocent hole--not at all. It was a
downright intricate and mysterious hole, which I must guard against!
Possessed by the thought of this hole, entirely beside myself with
curiosity and fear, I get out of bed and seize hold of my penknife in
order to gauge its depth, and convince myself that it does not reach
right into the next wall.

I lay down once more to try and fall asleep, but in reality to wrestle
again with the darkness. The rain had ceased outside, and I could not
hear a sound. I continued for a long time to listen for footsteps in
the street, and got no peace until I heard a pedestrian go by--to judge
from the sound, a constable. Suddenly I snap my fingers many times and
laugh: "That was the very deuce! Ha--ha!" I imagined I had discovered a
new word. I rise up in bed and say, "It is not in the language; I have
discovered it. 'Kuboa.' It has letters as a word has. By the benign
God, man, you have discovered a word!... 'Kuboa' ... a word of profound
import."

I sit with open eyes, amazed at my own find, and laugh for joy. Then I
begin to whisper; some one might spy on me, and I intended to keep my
discovery a secret. I entered into the joyous frenzy of hunger. I was
empty and free from pain, and I gave free rein to my thoughts.

In all calmness I revolve things in my mind. With the most singular
jerks in my chain of ideas I seek to explain the meaning of my new
word. There was no occasion for it to mean either God or the Tivoli;
[Footnote: Theatre of Varieties, etc., and Garden in Christiania.] and
who said that it was to signify cattle show? I clench my hands
fiercely, and repeat once again, "Who said that it was to signify
cattle show?" No; on second thoughts, it was not absolutely necessary
that it should mean padlock, or sunrise. It was not difficult to find a
meaning for such a word as this. I would wait and see. In the meantime
I could sleep on it.

I lie there on the stretcher-bed and laugh slily, but say nothing; give
vent to no opinion one way or the other. Some minutes pass over, and I
wax nervous; this new word torments me unceasingly, returns again and
again, takes up my thoughts, and makes me serious. I had fully formed
an opinion as to what it should not signify, but had come to no
conclusion as to what it should signify. "That is quite a matter of
detail," I said aloud to myself, and I clutched my arm and reiterated:
"That is quite a matter of detail." The word was found, God be praised!
and that was the principal thing. But ideas worry me without end and
hinder me from falling asleep. Nothing seemed good enough to me for
this unusually rare word. At length I sit up in bed again, grasp my
head in both hands, and say, "No! it is just this, it is impossible to
let it signify emigration or tobacco factory. If it could have meant
anything like that I would have decided upon it long since and taken
the consequences." No; in reality the word is fitted to signify
something psychical, a feeling, a state. Could I not apprehend it? and
I reflect profoundly in order to find something psychical. Then it
seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I
answer angrily, "Beg pardon! Your match in idiocy is not to be found;
no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh.
Might I ask why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton,
when I had a special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton? I had
discovered the word myself, so, for that matter, I was perfectly within
my right in letting it signify whatsoever I pleased. As far as I was
aware, I had not yet expressed an opinion as to....

But my brain got more and more confused. At last I sprang out of bed to
look for the water-tap. I was not thirsty, but my head was in a fever,
and I felt an instinctive longing for water. When I had drunk some I
got into bed again, and determined with all my might to settle to
sleep. I closed my eyes and forced myself to keep quiet. I lay thus for
some minutes without making a movement, sweated and felt my blood jerk
violently through my veins. No, it was really too delicious the way he
thought to find money in the paper cornet! He only coughed once, too! I
wonder if he is pacing up and down there yet! Sitting on my bench? the
pearly blue sea ... the ships....

I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep?
The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity
which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the
most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize
this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if
I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to
the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw
me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea,
through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board,
drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking--sinking.

I give a hoarse cry of terror, clutch the bed tightly--I had made such
a perilous journey, whizzing down through space like a bolt. Oh, did I
not feel that I was saved as I struck my hands against the wooden
frame! "This is the way one dies!" said I to myself. "Now you will
die!" and I lay for a while and thought over that I was to die.

Then I start up in bed and ask severely, "If I found the word, am I not
absolutely within my right to decide myself what it is to signify?"...
I could hear myself that I was raving. I could hear it now whilst I was
talking. My madness was a delirium of weakness and prostration, but I
was not out of my senses. All at once the thought darted through my
brain that I was insane. Seized with terror, I spring out of bed again,
I stagger to the door, which I try to open, fling myself against it a
couple of times to burst it, strike my head against the wall, bewail
loudly, bite my fingers, cry and curse....

All was quiet; only my own voice echoed from the walls. I had fallen to
the floor, incapable of stumbling about the cell any longer.

Lying there I catch a glimpse, high up, straight before my eyes, of a
greyish square in the wall, a suggestion of white, a presage--it must
be of daylight. I felt it must be daylight, felt it through every pore
in my body. Oh, did I not draw a breath of delighted relief! I flung
myself flat on the floor and cried for very joy over this blessed
glimpse of light, sobbed for very gratitude, blew a kiss to the window,
and conducted myself like a maniac. And at this moment I was perfectly
conscious of what I was doing. All my dejection had vanished; all
despair and pain had ceased, and I had at this moment, at least as far
as my thought reached, not a wish unfilled. I sat up on the floor,
folded my hands, and waited patiently for the dawn.

What a night this had been!

That they had not heard any noise! I thought with astonishment. But
then I was in the reserved section, high above all the prisoners. A
homeless Cabinet Minister, if I might say so.

Still in the best of humours, with eyes turned towards the lighter,
ever lighter square in the wall, I amused myself acting Cabinet
Minister; called myself Von Tangen, and clothed my speech in a dress of
red-tape. My fancies had not ceased, but I was far less nervous. If I
only had not been thoughtless enough to leave my pocket-book at home!
Might I not have the honour of assisting his Right Honourable the Prime
Minister to bed? And in all seriousness, and with much ceremony I went
over to the stretcher and lay down.

By this it was so light that I could distinguish in some degree the
outlines of the cell and, little by little, the heavy handle of the
door. This diverted me; the monotonous darkness so irritating in its
impenetrability that it prevented me from seeing myself was broken; my
blood flowed more quietly; I soon felt my eyes close.

I was aroused by a couple of knocks on my door. I jumped up in all
haste, and clad myself hurriedly; my clothes were still wet through
from last night.

"You'll report yourself downstairs to the officer on duty," said the
constable.

Were there more formalities to be gone through, then? I thought with
fear.

Below I entered a large room, where thirty or forty people sat, all
homeless. They were called up one by one by the registering clerk, and
one by one they received a ticket for breakfast. The officer on duty
repeated constantly to the policeman at his side, "Did he get a ticket?
Don't forget to give them tickets; they look as if they wanted a meal!"

And I stood and looked at these tickets, and wished I had one.

"Andreas Tangen--journalist."

I advanced and bowed.

"But, my dear fellow, how did you come here?"

I explained the whole state of the case, repeated the same story as
last night, lied without winking, lied with frankness--had been out
rather late, worse luck ... café ... lost door-key....

"Yes," he said, and he smiled; "that's the way! Did you sleep well
then?"

I answered, "Like a Cabinet Minister--like a Cabinet Minister!"

"I am glad to hear it," he said, and he stood up. "Good-morning."

And I went!

A ticket! a ticket for me too! I have not eaten for more than three
long days and nights. A loaf! But no one offered me a ticket, and I
dared not demand one. It would have roused suspicion at once. They
would begin to poke their noses into my private affairs, and discover
who I really was; they might arrest me for false pretences; and so,
with elevated head, the carriage of a millionaire, and hands thrust
under my coat-tails, I stride out of the guard-house.

The sun shone warmly, early as it was. It was ten o'clock, and the
traffic in Young's Market was in full swing. Which way should I take? I
slapped my pockets and felt for my manuscript. At eleven I would try
and see the editor. I stand a while on the balustrade, and watch the
bustle under me. Meanwhile, my clothes commenced to steam. Hunger put
in its appearance afresh, gnawed at my breast, clutched me, and gave
small, sharp stabs that caused me pain.

Had I not a friend--an acquaintance whom I could apply to? I ransack my
memory to find a man good for a penny piece, and fail to find him.

Well, it was a lovely day, anyway! Sunlight bright and warm surrounded
me. The sky stretched away like a beautiful sea over the Lier mountains.

Without knowing it, I was on my way home. I hungered sorely. I found a
chip of wood in the street to chew--that helped a bit. To think that I
hadn't thought of that sooner! The door was open; the stable-boy bade
me good-morning as usual.

"Fine weather," said he.

"Yes," I replied. That was all I found to say. Could I ask for the loan
of a shilling? He would be sure to lend it willingly if he could;
besides that, I had written a letter for him once.

He stood and turned something over in his mind before he ventured on
saying it.

"Fine weather! Ahem! I ought to pay my landlady today; you wouldn't be
so kind as to lend me five shillings, would you? Only for a few days,
sir. You did me a service once before, so you did."

"No; I really can't do it, Jens Olaj," I answered. "Not now--perhaps
later on, maybe in the afternoon," and I staggered up the stairs to my
room.

I flung myself on my bed, and laughed. How confoundedly lucky it was
that he had forestalled me; my self-respect was saved. Five shillings!
God bless you, man, you might just as well have asked me for five
shares in the Dampkökken, or an estate out in Aker.

And the thought of these five shillings made me laugh louder and
louder. Wasn't I a devil of a fellow, eh? Five shillings! My mirth
increased, and I gave way to it. Ugh! what a shocking smell of cooking
there was here--a downright disgustingly strong smell of chops for
dinner, phew! and I flung open the window to let out this beastly
smell. "Waiter, a plate of beef!" Turning to the table--this miserable
table that I was forced to support with my knees when I wrote--I bowed
profoundly, and said:

"May I ask will you take a glass of wine? No? I am Tangen--Tangen, the
Cabinet Minister. I--more's the pity--I was out a little late ... the
door-key." Once more my thoughts ran without rein in intricate paths. I
was continually conscious that I talked at random, and yet I gave
utterance to no word without hearing and understanding it. I said to
myself, "Now you are talking at random again," and yet I could not help
myself. It was as if one were lying awake, and yet talking in one's
sleep.

My head was light, without pain and without pressure, and my mood was
unshadowed. It sailed away with me, and I made no effort.

"Come in! Yes, only come right in! As you see everything is of
ruby--Ylajali, Ylajali! that swelling crimson silken divan! Ah, how
passionately she breathes. Kiss me--loved one--more--more! Your arms
are like pale amber, your mouth blushes.... Waiter I asked for a plate
of beef!"

The sun gleamed in through the window, and I could hear the horses
below chewing oats. I sat and mumbled over my chip gaily, glad at heart
as a child.

I kept all the time feeling for my manuscript. It wasn't really in my
thoughts, but instinct told me it was there--'twas in my blood to
remember it, and I took it out.

It had got wet, and I spread it out in the sun to dry; then I took to
wandering up and down the room. How depressing everything looked! Small
scraps of tin shavings were trodden into the floor; there was not a
chair to sit upon, not even a nail in the bare walls. Everything had
been brought to my "Uncle's," and consumed. A few sheets of paper lying
on the table, covered with thick dust, were my sole possession; the old
green blanket on the bed was lent to me by Hans Pauli some months
ago.... Hans Pauli! I snap my fingers. Hans Pauli Pettersen shall help
me! He would certainly be very angry that I had not appealed to him at
once. I put on my hat in haste, gather up the manuscript, thrust it
into my pocket, and hurry downstairs.

"Listen, Jens Olaj!" I called into the stable, "I am nearly certain I
can help you in the afternoon."

Arrived at the Town Hall I saw that it was past eleven, and I
determined on going to the editor at once. I stopped outside the office
door to see if my sheets were paged rightly, smoothed them carefully
out, put them back in my pocket, and knocked. My heart beat audibly as
I entered.

"Scissors" is there as usual. I inquire timorously for the editor. No
answer. The man sits and probes for minor items of news amongst the
provincial papers.

I repeat my question, and advance a little farther.

"The editor has not come yet!" said "Scissors" at length, without
looking up.

How soon would he come?

"Couldn't say--couldn't say at all!"

How long would the office be open?

To this I received no answer, so I was forced to leave. "Scissors" had
not once looked up at me during all this scene; he had heard my voice,
and recognized me by it. You are in such bad odour here, thought I,
that he doesn't even take the trouble to answer you. I wonder if that
is an order of the editor's. I had, 'tis true enough, right from the
day my celebrated story was accepted for ten shillings, overwhelmed him
with work, rushed to his door nearly every day with unsuitable things
that he was obliged to peruse only to return them to me. Perhaps he
wished to put an end to this--take stringent measures.... I took the
road to Homandsbyen.

Hans Pauli Pettersen was a peasant-farmer's son, a student, living in
the attic of a five-storeyed house; therefore, Hans Pauli Pettersen was
a poor man. But if he had a shilling he wouldn't stint it. I would get
it just as sure as if I already held it in my hand. And I rejoiced the
whole time, as I went, over the shilling, and felt confident I would
get it.

When I got to the street door it was closed and I had to ring.

"I want to see Student Pettersen," I said, and was about to step
inside. "I know his room."

"Student Pettersen," repeats the girl. "Was it he who had the attic?"
He had moved.

Well, she didn't know the address; but he had asked his letters to be
sent to Hermansen in Tolbod-gaden, and she mentioned the number.

I go, full of trust and hope, all the way to Tolbod-gaden to ask Hans
Pauli's address; being my last chance, I must turn it to account. On
the way I came to a newly-built house, where a couple of joiners stood
planing outside. I picked up a few satiny shavings from the heap, stuck
one in my mouth, and the other in my pocket for by-and-by, and
continued my journey.


I groaned with hunger. I had seen a marvellously large penny loaf at a
baker's--the largest I could possibly get for the price.

"I come to find out Student Pettersen's address!"

"Bernt Akers Street, No. 10, in the attic." Was I going out there?
Well, would I perhaps be kind enough to take out a couple of letters
that had come for him?

I trudge up town again, along the same road, pass by the joiners--who
are sitting with their cans between their knees, eating their good warm
dinner from the Dampkökken--pass the bakers, where the loaf is still in
its place, and at length reach Bernt Akers Street, half dead with
fatigue. The door is open, and I mount all the weary stairs to the
attic. I take the letters out of my pocket in order to put Hans Pauli
into a good humour on the moment of my entrance.

He would be certain not to refuse to give me a helping hand when I
explained how things were with me; no, certainly not; Hans Pauli had
such a big heart--I had always said that of him.... I discovered his
card fastened to the door--"H. P. Pettersen, Theological Student, 'gone
home.'"


I sat down without more ado--sat down on the bare floor, dulled with
fatigue, fairly beaten with exhaustion. I mechanically mutter, a couple
of times, "Gone home--gone home!" then I keep perfectly quiet. There
was not a tear in my eyes; I had not a thought, not a feeling of any
kind. I sat and stared, with wide-open eyes, at the letters, without
coming to any conclusion. Ten minutes went over--perhaps twenty or
more. I sat stolidly on the one spot, and did not move a finger. This
numb feeling of drowsiness was almost like a brief slumber. I hear some
one come up the stairs.

"It was Student Pettersen, I ... I have two letters for him."

"He has gone home," replies the woman; "but he will return after the
holidays. I could take the letters if you like!"

"Yes, thanks! that was all right," said I. "He could get them then when
he came back; they might contain matters of importance. Good-morning."

When I got outside, I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open
street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good
Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up
to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you are not a bungler."

Then I took a few strides, and stopped again. Suddenly, changing my
attitude, I fold my hands, hold my head to one side, and ask, with an
unctuous, sanctimonious tone of voice: "Hast thou appealed also to him,
my child?" It did not sound right!

With a large H, I say, with an H as big as a cathedral! once again,
"Hast thou invoked Him, my child?" and I incline my head, and I make my
voice whine, and answer, No!

That didn't sound right either.

You can't play the hypocrite, you idiot! Yes, you should say, I have
invoked God my Father! and you must set your words to the most piteous
tune you have ever heard in your life. So--o! Once again! Come, that
was better! But you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So--o!
that's right. Thus I go, drilling myself in hypocrisy; stamp
impatiently in the street when I fail to succeed; rail at myself for
being such a blockhead, whilst the astonished passers-by turn round and
stare at me.

I chewed uninterruptedly at my shaving, and proceeded, as steadily as I
could, along the street. Before I realized it, I was at the railway
square. The dock on Our Saviour's pointed to half-past one. I stood for
a bit and considered. A faint sweat forced itself out on my face, and
trickled down my eyelids. Accompany me down to the bridge, said I to
myself--that is to say, if you have spare time!--and I made a bow to
myself, and turned towards the railway bridge near the wharf.

The ships lay there, and the sea rocked in the sunshine. There was
bustle and movement everywhere, shrieking steam-whistles, quay porters
with cases on their shoulders, lively "shanties" coming from the prams.
An old woman, a vendor of cakes, sits near me, and bends her brown nose
down over her wares. The little table before her is sinfully full of
nice things, and I turn away with distaste. She is filling the whole
quay with her smell of cakes--phew! up with the windows!

I accosted a gentleman sitting at my side, and represented forcibly to
him the nuisance of having cake-sellers here, cake-sellers there....
Eh? Yes; but he must really admit that.... But the good man smelt a
rat, and did not give me time to finish speaking, for he got up and
left. I rose, too, and followed him, firmly determined to convince him
of his mistake.

"If it was only out of consideration for sanitary conditions," said I;
and I slapped him on the shoulders.

"Excuse me, I am a stranger here, and know nothing of the sanitary
conditions," he replied, and stared at me with positive fear.

Oh, that alters the case! if he was a stranger.... Could I not render
him a service in any way? show him about? Really not? because it would
be a pleasure to me, and it would cost him nothing....

But the man wanted absolutely to get rid of me, and he sheered off, in
all haste, to the other side of the street.

I returned to the bench and sat down. I was fearfully disturbed, and
the big street organ that had begun to grind a tune a little farther
away made me still worse--a regular metallic music, a fragment of
Weber, to which a little girl is singing a mournful strain. The
flute-like sorrowfulness of the organ thrills through my blood; my
nerves vibrate in responsive echo. A moment later, and I fall back on
the seat, whimpering and crooning in time to it.

Oh, what strange freaks one's thoughts are guilty of when one is
starving. I feel myself lifted up by these notes, dissolved in tones,
and I float out, I feel so clearly. How I float out, soaring high above
the mountains, dancing through zones of light!...

"A halfpenny," whines the little organ-girl, reaching forth her little
tin plate; "only a halfpenny."

"Yes," I said, unthinkingly, and I sprang to my feet and ransacked all
my pockets. But the child thinks I only want to make fun of her, and
she goes away at once without saying a word.

This dumb forbearance was too much for me. If she had abused me, it
would have been more endurable. I was stung with pain, and recalled her.

"I don't possess a farthing; but I will remember you later on, maybe
tomorrow. What is your name? Yes, that is a pretty name; I won't forget
it. Till tomorrow, then...."

But I understood quite well that she did not believe me, although she
never said one word; and I cried with despair because this little
street wench would not believe in me.

Once again I called her back, tore open my coat, and was about to give
her my waistcoat. "I will make up to you for it," said I; "wait only a
moment" ... and lo! I had no waistcoat.

What in the world made me look for it? Weeks had gone by since it was
in my possession. What was the matter with me, anyway? The astonished
child waited no longer, but withdrew fearsomely, and I was compelled to
let her go. People throng round me, laugh aloud; a policeman thrusts
his way through to me, and wants to know what is the row.

"Nothing!" I reply, "nothing at all; I only wanted to give the little
girl over there my waistcoat ... for her father ... you needn't stand
there and laugh at that ... I have only to go home and put on another."

"No disturbance in the street," says the constable; "so, march," and he
gives me a shove on.

"Is them your papers?" he calls after me.

"Yes, by Jove! my newspaper leader; many important papers! However
could I be so careless?" I snatch up my manuscript, convince myself
that it is lying in order and go, without stopping a second or looking
about me, towards the editor's office.

It was now four by the clock of Our Saviour's Church. The office is
shut. I stead noiselessly down the stairs, frightened as a thief, and
stand irresolutely outside the door. What should I do now? I lean up
against the wall, stare down at the stones, and consider. A pin is
lying glistening at my feet; I stoop and pick it up. Supposing I were
to cut the buttons off my coat, how much could I get for them? Perhaps
it would be no use, though buttons are buttons; but yet, I look and
examine them, and find them as good as new--that was a lucky idea all
the same; I could cut them off with my penknife and take them to the
pawn-office. The hope of being able to sell these five buttons cheered
me immediately, and I cried, "See, see; it will all come right!" My
delight got the upper hand of me, and I at once set to cut off the
buttons one by one. Whilst thus occupied, I held the following hushed
soliloquy:

Yes, you see one has become a little impoverished; a momentary
embarrassment ... worn out, do you say? You must not make slips when
you speak? I would like to see the person who wears out less buttons
than I do, I can tell you! I always go with my coat open; it is a habit
of mine, an idiosyncrasy.... No, no; of course, if you _won't_, well!
But I must have a penny for them, at least.... No indeed! who said you
were obliged to do it? You can hold your tongue, and leave me in
peace.... Yes, well, you can fetch a policeman, can't you? I'll wait
here whilst you are out looking for him, and I won't steal anything
from you. Well, good-day! Good-day! My name, by the way, is Tangen;
have been out a little late.

Some one comes up the stairs. I am recalled at once to reality. I
recognize "Scissors," and put the buttons carefully into my pocket. He
attempts to pass; doesn't even acknowledge my nod; is suddenly intently
busied with his nails. I stop him, and inquire for the editor.

"Not in, do you hear."

"You lie," I said, and, with a cheek that fairly amazed myself, I
continued, "I must have a word with him; it is a necessary
errand--communications from the Stiftsgaarden. [Footnote: Dwelling of
the civil governor of a Stift or diocese.]

"Well, can't you tell me what it is, then?"

"Tell you?" and I looked "Scissors" up and down. This had the desired
effect. He accompanied me at once, and opened the door. My heart was in
my mouth now; I set my teeth, to try and revive my courage, knocked,
and entered the editor's private office.

"Good-day! Is it you?" he asked kindly; "sit down."

If he had shown me the door it would have been almost as acceptable. I
felt as if I were on the point of crying and said:

"I beg you will excuse...."

"Pray, sit down," he repeated. And I sat down, and explained that I
again had an article which I was extremely anxious to get into his
paper. I had taken such pains with it; it had cost me much effort.

"I will read it," said he, and he took it. "Everything you write is
certain to cost you effort, but you are far too impetuous; if you could
only be a little more sober. There's too much fever. In the meantime, I
will read it," and he turned to the table again.

There I sat. Dared I ask for a shilling? explain to him why there was
always fever? He would be sure to aid me; it was not the first time.

I stood up. Hum! But the last time I was with him he had complained
about money, and had sent a messenger out to scrape some together for
me. Maybe it might be the same case now. No; it should not occur! Could
I not see then that he was sitting at work?

Was there otherwise anything? he inquired.

"No," I answered, and I compelled my voice to sound steady. "About how
soon shall I call in again?"

"Oh, any time you are passing--in a couple of days or so."

I could not get my request over my lips. This man's friendliness seemed
to me beyond bounds, and I ought to know how to appreciate it. Rather
die of hunger! I went. Not even when I was outside the door, and felt
once more the pangs of hunger, did I repent having left the office
without having asked for that shilling. I took the other shaving out of
my pocket and stuck it into my mouth. It helped. Why hadn't I done so
before? "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I said aloud. "Could it
really have entered your head to ask the man for a shilling and put him
to inconvenience again?" and I got downright angry with myself for the
effrontery of which I had almost been guilty. "That is, by God! the
shabbiest thing I ever heard," said I, "to rush at a man and nearly
tear the eyes out of his head just because you happen to need a
shilling, you miserable dog! So--o, march! quicker! quicker! you big
thumping lout; I'll teach you." I commenced to run to punish myself,
left one street after the other behind me at a bound, goaded myself on
with suppressed cries, and shrieked dumbly and furiously at myself
whenever I was about to halt. Thus I arrived a long way up Pyle Street,
when at last I stood still, almost ready to cry with vexation at not
being able to run any farther. I was trembling over my whole body, and
I flung myself down on a step. "No; stop!" I said, and, in order to
torture myself rightly, I arose again, and forced myself to keep
standing. I jeered at myself and hugged myself with pleasure at the
spectacle of my own exhaustion. At length, after the lapse of a few
moments, I gave myself, with a nod, permission to be seated, though,
even then, I chose the most uncomfortable place on the steps.

Lord! how delicious it was to rest! I dried the sweat off my face, and
drew great refreshing breaths. How had I not run! But I was not sorry;
I had richly deserved it. Why did I want to ask for that shilling? Now
I could see the consequences, and I began to talk mildly to myself,
dealing out admonitions as a mother might have done. I grew more and
more moved, and tired and weak as I was, I fell a-crying. A quiet,
heart-felt cry; an inner sobbing without a tear.

I sat for the space of a quarter of an hour, or more, in the same
place. People came and went, and no one molested me. Little children
played about around me, and a little bird sang on a tree on the other
side of the street.

A policeman came towards me. "Why do you sit here?" said he.

"Why do I sit here?" I replied; "for pleasure."

"I have been watching you for the last half-hour. You've sat here now
half-an-hour."

"About that," I replied; "anything more?"

I got up in a temper and walked on. Arrived at the market-place, I
stopped and gazed down the street. For pleasure. Now, was that an
answer to give? For weariness, you should have replied, and made your
voice whining. You are a booby; you will never learn to dissemble. From
exhaustion, and you should have gasped like a horse.

When I got to the fire look-out, I halted afresh, seized by a new idea.
I snapped my fingers, burst into a loud laugh that confounded the
passers-by, and said: "Now you shall just go to Levion the parson. You
shall, as sure as death--ay, just for a try. What have you got to lose
by it? and it is such glorious weather!"

I entered Pascha's book-shop, found Pastor Levion's address in the
directory, and started for it.

Now for it! said I. Play no pranks. Conscience, did you say? No
rubbish, if you please. You are too poor to support a conscience. You
are hungry; you have come on important business--the first thing
needful. But you shall hold your head askew, and set your words to a
sing-song. You won't! What? Well then, I won't go a step farther. Do
you hear that? Indeed, you are in a sorely tempted condition, fighting
with the powers of darkness and great voiceless monsters at night, so
that it is a horror to think of; you hunger and thirst for wine and
milk, and don't get them. It has gone so far with you. Here you stand
and haven't as much as a halfpenny to bless yourself with. But you
believe in grace, the Lord be praised; you haven't yet lost your faith;
and then you must clasp your hands together, and look a very Satan of a
fellow for believing in grace. As far as Mammon was concerned, why, you
hated Mammon with all its pomps in any form. Now it's quite another
thing with a psalm-book--a souvenir to the extent of a few
shillings.... I stopped at the pastor's door, and read, "Office hours,
12 to 4."

Mind, no fudge, I said; now we'll go ahead in earnest! So hang your
head a little more, and I rang at the private entrance.

"I want to see the pastor," said I to the maid; but it was not possible
for me to get in God's name yet awhile.

"He has gone out."

Gone out, gone out! That destroyed my whole plan; scattered all I
intended to say to the four winds. What had I gained then by the long
walk? There I stood.

"Was it anything particular?" questioned the maid.

"Not at all," I replied, "not at all." It was only just that it was
such glorious God's weather that I thought I would come out and make a
call.

There I stood, and there she stood. I purposely thrust out my chest to
attract her attention to the pin that held my coat together. I implored
her with a look to see what I had come for, but the poor creature
didn't understand it at all.

Lovely God's weather. Was not the mistress at home either?

Yes; but she had gout, and lay on a sofa without being able to move
herself.... Perhaps I would leave a message or something?

No, not at all; I only just took walks like this now and again, just
for exercise; it was so wholesome after dinner.... I set out on the
road back--what would gossiping longer lead to? Besides, I commenced to
feel dizzy. There was no mistake about it; I was about to break down in
earnest. Office hours from 12 to 4. I had knocked at the door an hour
too late. The time of grace was over. I sat down on one of the benches
near the church in the market. Lord! how black things began to look for
me now! I did not cry; I was too utterly tired, worn to the last
degree. I sat there without trying to arrive at any conclusion, sad,
motionless, and starving. My chest was much inflamed; it smarted most
strangely and sorely--nor would chewing shavings help me much longer.
My jaws were tired of that barren work, and I let them rest. I simply
gave up. A brown orange-peel, too, I had found in the street, and which
I had at once commenced to chew, had given me nausea. I was ill--the
veins swelled up bluely on my wrists. What was it I had really sought
after? Run about the whole live-long day for a shilling, that would but
keep life in me for a few hours longer. Considering all, was it not a
matter of indifference if the inevitable took place one day earlier or
one day later? If I had conducted myself like an ordinary being I
should have gone home long ago, and laid myself down to rest, and given
in. My mind was clear for a moment. Now I was to die. It was in the
time of the fall, and all things were hushed to sleep. I had tried
every means, exhausted every resource of which I knew. I fondled this
thought sentimentally, and each time I still hoped for a possible
succour I whispered repudiatingly: "You fool, you have already begun to
die."

I ought to write a couple of letters, make all ready--prepare myself. I
would wash myself carefully and tidy my bed nicely. I would lay my head
upon the sheets of white paper, the cleanest things I had left, and the
green blanket. I ... The green blanket! Like a shot I was wide awake.
The blood mounted to my head, and I got violent palpitation of the
heart. I arise from the seat, and start to walk. Life stirs again in
all my fibres, and time after time I repeat disconnectedly, "The green
blanket--the green blanket." I go faster and faster, as if it is a case
of fetching something, and stand after a little time in my tinker's
workshop. Without pausing a moment, or wavering in my resolution, I go
over to the bed, and roll up Hans Pauli's blanket. It was a strange
thing if this bright idea of mine couldn't save me. I rose infinitely
superior to the stupid scruples which sprang up in me--half inward
cries about a certain stain on my honour. I bade good-bye to the whole
of them. I was no hero--no virtuous idiot. I had my senses left.

So I took the blanket under my arm and went to No. 5 Stener's Street. I
knocked, and entered the big, strange room for the first time. The bell
on the door above my head gave a lot of violent jerks. A man enters
from a side room, chewing, his mouth is full of food, and stands behind
the counter.

"Eh, lend me sixpence on my eye-glasses?" said I. "I shall release them
in a couple of days, without fail--eh?"

"No! they're steel, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"No; can't do it."

"Ah, no, I suppose you can't. Well, it was really at best only a joke.
Well, I have a blanket with me for which, properly speaking, I have no
longer any use, and it struck me that you might take it off my hands."

"I have--more's the pity--a whole store full of bed-clothes," he
replied; and when I had opened it he just cast one glance over it and
said, "No, excuse me, but I haven't any use for that either."

"I wanted to show you the worse side first," said I; "it's much better
on the other side."

"Ay, ay; it's no good. I won't own it; and you wouldn't raise a penny
on it anywhere."

"No, it's clear it isn't worth anything," I said; "but I thought it
might go with another old blanket at an auction."

"Well, no; it's no use."

"Three pence?" said I.

"No; I won't have it at all, man! I wouldn't have it in the house!" I
took it under my arm and went home.

I acted as if nothing had passed, spread it over the bed again,
smoothed it well out, as was my custom, and tried to wipe away every
trace of my late action. I could not possibly have been in my right
mind at the moment when I came to the conclusion to commit this
rascally trick. The more I thought over it the more unreasonable it
seemed to me. It must have been an attack of weakness; some relaxation
in my inner self that had surprised me when off my guard. Neither had I
fallen straight into the trap. I had half felt that I was going the
wrong road, and I expressly offered my glasses first, and I rejoiced
greatly that I had not had the opportunity of carrying into effect this
fault which would have sullied the last hours I had to live.

I wandered out into the city again. I let myself sink upon one of the
seats by Our Saviour's Church; dozed with my head on my breast,
apathetic after my last excitement, sick and famished with hunger. And
time went by.

I should have to sit out this hour, too. It was a little lighter
outside than in the house, and it seemed to me that my chest did not
pain quite so badly out in the open air. I should get home, too, soon
enough--and I dozed, and thought, and suffered fearfully.

I had found a little pebble; I wiped it clean on my coat sleeve and put
it into my mouth so that I might have something to mumble. Otherwise I
did not stir, and didn't even wink an eyelid. People came and went; the
noise of cars, the tramp of hoofs, and chatter of tongues filled the
air. I might try with the buttons. Of course there would be no use in
trying; and besides, I was now in a rather bad way; but when I came to
consider the matter closely, I would be obliged, as it were, to pass in
the direction of my "Uncle's" as I went home. At last I got up,
dragging myself slowly to my feet, and reeled down the streets. It
began to burn over my eyebrows--fever was setting in, and I hurried as
fast as I could. Once more I passed the baker's shop where the little
loaf lay. "Well, we must stop here!" I said, with affected decision.
But supposing I were to go in and beg for a bit of bread? Surely that
was a fleeting thought, a flash; it could never really have occurred to
me seriously. "Fie!" I whispered to myself, and shook my head, and held
on my way. In Rebslager a pair of lovers stood in a doorway and talked
together softly; a little farther up a girl popped her head out of a
window. I walked so slowly and thoughtfully, that I looked as if I
might be deep in meditation on nothing in particular, and the wench
came out into the street. "How is the world treating you, old fellow?
Eh, what, are you ill? Nay, the Lord preserve us, what a face!" and she
drew away frightened. I pulled up at once: What's amiss with my face?
Had I really begun to die? I felt over my cheeks with my hand;
thin--naturally, I was thin--my cheeks were like two hollowed bowls;
but Lord ... I reeled along again, but again came to a standstill; I
must be quite inconceivably thin. Who knows but that my eyes were
sinking right into my head? How did I look in reality? It was the very
deuce that one must let oneself turn into a living deformity for sheer
hunger's sake. Once more I was seized by fury, a last flaring up, a
final spasm. "Preserve me, what a face. Eh?" Here I was, with a head
that couldn't be matched in the whole country, with a pair of fists
that, by the Lord, could grind a navvy into finest dust, and yet I went
and hungered myself into a deformity, right in the town of Christiania.
Was there any rhyme or reason in that? I had sat in saddle, toiled day
and night like a carrier's horse.

I had read my eyes out of their sockets, had starved the brains out of
my head, and what the devil had I gained by it? Even a street hussy
prayed God to deliver her from the sight of me. Well, now, there should
be a stop to it. Do you understand that? Stop it shall, or the devil
take a worse hold of me.

With steadily increasing fury, grinding my teeth under the
consciousness of my impotence, with tears and oaths I raged on, without
looking at the people who passed me by. I commenced once more to martyr
myself, ran my forehead against lamp-posts on purpose, dug my nails
deep into my palms, bit my tongue with frenzy when it didn't articulate
clearly, and laughed insanely each time it hurt much.

Yes; but what shall I do? I asked myself at last, and I stamped many
times on the pavement and repeated, What shall I do? A gentleman just
going by remarks, with a smile, "You ought to go and ask to be locked
up." I looked after him. One of our well-known lady's doctors,
nicknamed "The Duke." Not even he understood my real condition--a man I
knew; whose hand I had shaken. I grew quiet. Locked up? Yes, I was mad;
he was right. I felt madness in my blood; felt its darting pain through
my brain. So that was to be the end of me! Yes, yes; and I resume my
wearisome, painful walk. There was the haven in which I was to find
rest.

Suddenly I stop again. But not locked up! I say, not that; and I grew
almost hoarse with fear. I implored grace for myself; begged to the
wind and weather not to be locked up. I should have to be brought to
the guard-house again, imprisoned in a dark cell which had not a spark
of light in it. Not that! There must be other channels yet open that I
had not tried, and I would try them. I would be so earnestly
painstaking; would take good time for it, and go indefatigably round
from house to house. For example, there was Cisler the music-seller; I
hadn't been to him at all. Some remedy would turn up!.... Thus I
stumbled on, and talked until I brought myself to weep with emotion.
Cisler! Was that perchance a hint from on high? His name had struck me
for no reason, and he lived so far away; but I would look him up all
the same, go slowly, and rest between times. I knew the place well; I
had been there often, when times were good had bought much music from
him. Should I ask him for sixpence? Perhaps that might make him feel
uncomfortable. I would ask him for a shilling. I went into the shop,
and asked for the chief. They showed me into his office; there he
sat--handsome, well-dressed in the latest style--running down some
accounts. I stammered through an excuse, and set forth my errand.
Compelled by need to apply to him ... it should not be very long till I
could pay it back ... when I got paid for my newspaper article.... He
would confer such a great benefit on me.... Even as I was speaking he
turned about to his desk, and resumed his work. When I had finished, he
glanced sideways at me, shook his handsome head, and said, "No"; simply
"no"--no explanation--not another word.

My knees trembled fearfully, and I supported myself against the little
polished barrier. I must try once more. Why should just his name have
occurred to me as I stood far away from there in Vaterland? Something
in my left side jerked a couple of times, and I broke out into a sweat.
I said I was really awfully run down, and rather ill, worse luck. It
would certainly be no longer than a few days when I could repay it. If
he would be so kind?

"My dear fellow, why do you come to me?" he queried; "you are a
perfect stranger off the street to me; go to the paper where you
are known."

"But only for this evening," said I; "the office is already shut
up, and I am very hungry."

He shook his head persistently; kept on shaking it after I had
seized the handle of the door. "Good-evening," I said. It was
not any hint from on high, thought I, and I smiled bitterly. If
it came to that, I could give as good a hint as that myself.
I dragged on one block after the other; now and then I rested
on a step. If only I could escape being locked up. The terror
of that cell pursued me all the time; left me no peace. Whenever
I caught sight of a policeman in my path I staggered into a side
street to avoid meeting him. Now, then, we will count a hundred
steps, and try our luck again! There must be a remedy sometime....

It was a little yarn-shop--a place in which I had never before
set foot; a solitary man behind the counter (there was an office
beyond, with a china plate on the door) was arranging things on
the shelves and counter. I waited till the last customer had left
the shop--a young lady with dimples. How happy she looked! I was
not backward in trying to make an impression with the pin holding
my coat together. I turned, and my chest heaved.

"Do you wish for anything?" queried the shopman.

"Is the chief in?" I asked.

"He is gone for a mountain tour in Jotunhejmen," he replied. Was
it anything very particular, eh?

"It concerns a couple of pence for food," I said, and I tried to
smile. "I am hungry, and haven't a fraction."

"Then you're just about as rich as I am," he remarked, and began
to tidy some packages of wool.

"Ah, don't turn me away--not now!" I said on the moment, with a
cold feeling over my whole body. "I am really nearly dead with
hunger; it is now many days since I have eaten anything."

With perfect gravity, without saying a word, he began to turn his
pockets inside out, one by one. Would I not believe him, upon his
word? What?

"Only a halfpenny," said I, "and you shall have a penny back in a
couple of days."

"My dear man, do you want me to steal out of the till?" he queried,
impatiently.

"Yes," said I. "Yes; take a halfpenny out of the till."

"It won't be I that will do that," he observed; adding, "and let me
tell you, at the same time, I've had about enough of this."

I tore myself out, sick with hunger, and boiling with shame. I had
turned myself into a dog for the sake of a miserable bone, and I had
not got it. Nay, now there must be an end of this! It had really gone
all too far with me. I had held myself up for many years, stood erect
through so many hard hours, and now, all at once, I had sunk to the
lowest form of begging. This one day had coarsened my whole mind,
bespattered my soul with shamelessness. I had not been too abashed to
stand and whine in the pettiest huckster's shop, and what had it
availed me?

But was I not then without the veriest atom of bread to put inside my
mouth? I had succeeded in rendering myself a thing loathsome to myself.
Yes, yes; but it must come to an end. Presently they would lock the
outer door at home? I must hurry unless I wished to lie in the
guard-house again.

This gave me strength. Lie in that cell again I would not. With body
bent forward, and my hands pressed hard against my left ribs to deaden
the stings a little, I struggled on, keeping my eyes fastened upon the
paving-stones that I might not be forced to bow to possible
acquaintances, and hastened to the fire look-out. God be praised! it
was only seven o'clock by the dial on Our Saviour's; I had three hours
yet before the door would be locked. What a fright I had been in!

Well, there was not a stone left unturned. I had done all I could. To
think that I really could not succeed once in a whole day! If I told it
no one could believe it; if I were to write it down they would say I
had invented it. Not in a single place! Well, well, there is no help
for it. Before all, don't go and get pathetic again. Bah! how
disgusting! I can assure you, it makes me have a loathing for you. If
all hope is over, why there is an end of it. Couldn't I, for that
matter, steal a handful of oats in the stable? A streak of light--a
ray--yet I knew the stable was shut.

I took my ease, and crept home at a slow snail's pace. I felt thirsty,
luckily for the first time through the whole day, and I went and sought
about for a place where I could get a drink. I was a long distance away
from the bazaar, and I would not ask at a private house. Perhaps,
though, I could wait till I got home; it would take a quarter of an
hour. It was not at all so certain that I could keep down a draught of
water, either; my stomach no longer suffered in any way--I even felt
nausea at the spittle I swallowed. But the buttons! I had not tried the
buttons at all yet. There I stood, stock-still, and commenced to smile.
Maybe there was a remedy, in spite of all! I wasn't totally doomed. I
should certainly get a penny for them; tomorrow I might raise another
some place or other, and Thursday I might be paid for my newspaper
article. I should just see it would come out all right. To think that I
could really go and forget the buttons. I took them out of my pocket,
and inspected them as I walked on again. My eyes grew dazed with joy. I
did not see the street; I simply went on. Didn't I know exactly the big
pawn-shop--my refuge in the dark evenings, with my blood-sucking
friend? One by one my possessions had vanished there--my little things
from home--my last book. I liked to go there on auction days, to look
on, and rejoice each time my books seemed likely to fall into good
hands. Magelsen, the actor, had my watch; I was almost proud of that. A
diary, in which I had written my first small poetical attempt, had been
bought by an acquaintance, and my topcoat had found a haven with a
photographer, to be used in the studio. So there was no cause to
grumble about any of them. I held my buttons ready in my hand; "Uncle"
is sitting at his desk, writing. "I am not in a hurry," I say, afraid
of disturbing him, and making him impatient at my application. My voice
sounded so curiously hollow I hardly recognized it again, and my heart
beat like a sledge-hammer.

He came smilingly over to me, as was his wont, laid both his hands flat
on the counter, and looked at my face without saying anything. Yes, I
had brought something of which I would ask him if he could make any
use; something which is only in my way at home, assure you of it--are
quite an annoyance--some buttons. Well, what then? what was there about
the buttons? and he thrusts his eyes down close to my hand. Couldn't he
give me a couple of halfpence for them?--whatever he thought
himself--quite according to his own judgment. "For the buttons?"--and
"Uncle" stares astonishedly at me--"for these buttons?" Only for a
cigar or whatever he liked himself; I was just passing, and thought I
would look in.

Upon this, the old pawnbroker burst out laughing, and returned to his
desk without saying a word. There I stood; I had not hoped for much,
yet, all the same, I had thought of a possibility of being helped. This
laughter was my death-warrant. It couldn't, I suppose, be of any use
trying with my eyeglasses either? Of course, I would let my glasses go
in with them; that was a matter of course, said I, and I took them off.
Only a penny, or if he wished, a halfpenny.

"You know quite well I can't lend you anything on your glasses," said
"Uncle"; I told you that once before."

"But I want a stamp," I said, dully. "I can't even send off the letters
I have written; a penny or a halfpenny stamp, just as you will."

"Oh, God help you, go your way!" he replied, and motioned me off with
his hands.

Yes, yes; well, it must be so, I said to myself. Mechanically, I put on
my glasses again, took the buttons in my hand, and, turning away, bade
him good-night, and closed the door after me as usual. Well, now, there
was nothing more to be done! To think he would not take them at any
price, I muttered. They are almost new buttons; I can't understand it.

Whilst I stood, lost in thought, a man passed by and entered the
office. He had given me a little shove in his hurry. We both made
excuses, and I turned round and looked after him.

"What! is that you?" he said, suddenly, when half-way up the steps. He
came back, and I recognized him. "God bless me, man, what on earth do
you look like? What were you doing in there?"

"Oh, I had business. You are going in too, I see."

"Yes; what were you in with?"

My knees trembled; I supported myself against the wall, and stretched
out my hand with the buttons in it.

"What the deuce!" he cried. "No; this is really going too far."

"Good-night!" said I, and was about to go; I felt the tears choking my
breast.

"No; wait a minute," he said.

What was I to wait for? Was he not himself on the road to my "Uncle,"
bringing, perhaps, his engagement ring--had been hungry, perhaps, for
several days--owed his landlady?

"Yes," I replied; "if you will be out soon...."

"Of course," he broke in, seizing hold of my arm; "but I may as well
tell you I don't believe you. You are such an idiot, that it's better
you come in along with me."

I understood what he meant, suddenly felt a little spark of pride, and
answered:

"I can't; I promised to be in Bernt Akers Street at half-past seven,
and...."

"Half-past seven, quite so; but it's eight now. Here I am, standing
with the watch in my hand that I'm going to pawn. So, in with you, you
hungry sinner! I'll get you five shillings anyhow," and he pushed me in.




Part III


A week passed in glory and gladness.

I had got over the worst this time, too. I had had food every day, and
my courage rose, and I thrust one iron after the other into the fire.

I was working at three or four articles, that plundered my poor brain
of every spark, every thought that rose in it; and yet I fancied that I
wrote with more facility than before.

The last article with which I had raced about so much, and upon which I
had built such hopes, had already been returned to me by the editor;
and, angry and wounded as I was, I had destroyed it immediately,
without even re-reading it again. In future, I would try another paper
in order to open up more fields for my work.

Supposing that writing were to fail, and the worst were to come to the
worst, I still had the ships to take to. The _Nun_ lay alongside the
wharf, ready to sail, and I might, perhaps, work my way out to
Archangel, or wherever else she might be bound; there was no lack of
openings on many sides. The last crisis had dealt rather roughly with
me. My hair fell out in masses, and I was much troubled with headaches,
particularly in the morning, and my nervousness died a hard death. I
sat and wrote during the day with my hands bound up in rags, simply
because I could not endure the touch of my own breath upon them. If
Jens Olaj banged the stable door underneath me, or if a dog came into
the yard and commenced to bark, it thrilled through my very marrow like
icy stabs piercing me from every side. I was pretty well played out.

Day after day I strove at my work, begrudging myself the short time it
took to swallow my food before I sat down again to write. At this time
both the bed and the little rickety table were strewn over with notes
and written pages, upon which I worked turn about, added any new ideas
which might have occurred to me during the day, erased, or quickened
here and there the dull points by a word of colour--fagged and toiled
at sentence after sentence, with the greatest of pains. One afternoon,
one of my articles being at length finished, I thrust it, contented and
happy, into my pocket, and betook myself to the "commandor." It was
high time I made some arrangement towards getting a little money again;
I had only a few pence left.

The "commandor" requested me to sit down for a moment; he would be
disengaged immediately, and he continued writing.

I looked about the little office--busts, prints, cuttings, and an
enormous paper-basket, that looked as if it might swallow a man, bones
and all. I felt sad at heart at the sight of this monstrous chasm, this
dragon's mouth, that always stood open, always ready to receive
rejected work, newly crushed hopes.

"What day of the month is it?" queried the "commandor" from the table.

"The 28th," I reply, pleased that I can be of service to him, "the
28th," and he continues writing. At last he encloses a couple of
letters in their envelopes, tosses some papers into the basket, and
lays down his pen. Then he swings round on his chair, and looks at me.
Observing that I am still standing near the door, he makes a
half-serious, half-playful motion with his hand, and points to a chair.

I turn aside, so that he may not see that I have no waistcoat on, when
I open my coat to take the manuscript out of my pocket.

"It is only a little character sketch of Correggio," I say; "but
perhaps it is, worse luck, not written in such a way that...."

He takes the papers out of my hand, and commences to go through them.
His face is turned towards me.

And so it is thus he looks at close quarters, this man, whose name I
had already heard in my earliest youth, and whose paper had exercised
the greatest influence upon me as the years advanced? His hair is
curly, and his beautiful brown eyes are a little restless. He has a
habit of tweaking his nose now and then. No Scotch minister could look
milder than this truculent writer, whose pen always left bleeding scars
wherever it attacked. A peculiar feeling of awe and admiration comes
over me in the presence of this man. The tears are on the point of
coming to my eyes, and I advanced a step to tell him how heartily I
appreciated him, for all he had taught me, and to beg him not to hurt
me; I was only a poor bungling wretch, who had had a sorry enough time
of it as it was....

He looked up, and placed my manuscript slowly together, whilst he sat
and considered. To make it easier for him to give me a refusal, I
stretch out my hand a little, and say:

"Ah, well, of course, it is not of any use to you," and I smile to give
him the impression that I take it easily.

"Everything has to be of such a popular nature to be of any use to us,"
he replies; "you know the kind of public we have. But can't you try and
write something a little more commonplace, or hit upon something that
people understand better?"

His forbearance astonishes me. I understand that my article is
rejected, and yet I could not have received a prettier refusal. Not to
take up his time any longer, I reply:

"Oh yes, I daresay I can."

I go towards the door. Hem--he must pray forgive me for having taken up
his time with this ... I bow, and turn the door handle.

"If you need it," he says, "you are welcome to draw a little in
advance; you can write for it, you know."

Now, as he had just seen that I was not capable of writing, this offer
humiliated me somewhat, and I answered:

"No, thanks; I can pull through yet a while, thanking you very much,
all the same. Good-day!"

"Good-day!" replies the "commandor," turning at the same time to his
desk again.

He had none the less treated me with undeserved kindness, and I was
grateful to him for it--and I would know how to appreciate it too. I
made a resolution not to return to him until I could take something
with me, that satisfied me perfectly; something that would astonish the
"commandor" a bit, and make him order me to be paid half-a-sovereign
without a moment's hesitation. I went home, and tackled my writing once
more.

During the following evenings, as soon as it got near eight o'clock and
the gas was lit, the following thing happened regularly to me.

As I come out of my room to take a walk in the streets after the labour
and troubles of the day, a lady, dressed in black, stands under the
lamp-post exactly opposite my door.

She turns her face towards me and follows me with her eyes when I pass
her by--I remark that she always has the same dress on, always the same
thick veil that conceals her face and falls over her breast, and that
she carries in her hand a small umbrella with an ivory ring in the
handle. This was already the third evening I had seen her there, always
in the same place. As soon as I have passed her by she turns slowly and
goes down the street away from me. My nervous brain vibrated with
curiosity, and I became at once possessed by the unreasonable feeling
that I was the object of her visit. At last I was almost on the point
of addressing her, of asking her if she was looking for any one, if she
needed my assistance in any way, or if I might accompany her home.
Badly dressed, as I unfortunately was, I might protect her through the
dark streets; but I had an undefined fear that it perhaps might cost me
something; a glass of wine, or a drive, and I had no money left at all.
My distressingly empty pockets acted in a far too depressing way upon
me, and I had not even the courage to scrutinize her sharply as I
passed her by. Hunger had once more taken up its abode in my breast,
and I had not tasted food since yesterday evening. This, 'tis true, was
not a long period; I had often been able to hold out for a couple of
days at a time, but latterly I had commenced to fall off seriously; I
could not go hungry one quarter as well as I used to do. A single day
made me feel dazed, and I suffered from perpetual retching the moment I
tasted water. Added to this was the fact that I lay and shivered all
night, lay fully dressed as I stood and walked in the daytime, lay blue
with cold, lay and froze every night with fits of icy shivering, and
grew stiff during my sleep. The old blanket could not keep out the
draughts, and I woke in the mornings with my nose stopped by the sharp
outside frosty air which forced its way into the dilapidated room.

I go down the street and think over what I am to do to keep myself
alive until I get my next article finished. If I only had a candle I
would try to fag on through the night; it would only take a couple of
hours if I once warmed to my work, and then tomorrow I could call on
the "commandor."


I go without further ado into the Opland Cafe and look for my young
acquaintance in the bank, in order to procure a penny for a candle. I
passed unhindered through all the rooms; I passed a dozen tables at
which men sat chatting, eating, and drinking; I passed into the back of
the cafe, ay, even into the red alcove, without succeeding in finding
my man.

Crestfallen and annoyed I dragged myself out again into the street and
took the direction to the Palace.

Wasn't it now the very hottest eternal devil existing to think that my
hardships never would come to an end! Taking long, furious strides,
with the collar of my coat hunched savagely up round my ears, and my
hands thrust in my breeches pockets, I strode along, cursing my unlucky
stars the whole way. Not one real untroubled hour in seven or eight
months, not the common food necessary to hold body and soul together
for the space of one short week, before want stared me in the face
again. Here I had, into the bargain, gone and kept straight and
honourable all through my misery--Ha! ha! straight and honourable to
the heart's core. God preserve me, what a fool I had been! And I
commenced to tell myself how I had even gone about conscience-stricken
because I had once brought Hans Pauli's blanket to the pawn-broker's. I
laughed sarcastically at my delicate rectitude, spat contemptuously in
the street, and could not find words half strong enough to mock myself
for my stupidity. Let it only happen now! Were I to find at this moment
a schoolgirl's savings or a poor widow's only penny, I would snatch it
up and pocket it; steal it deliberately, and sleep the whole night
through like a top. I had not suffered so unspeakably much for
nothing--my patience was gone--I was prepared to do anything.

I walked round the palace three, perhaps four, times, then came to the
conclusion that I would go home, took yet one little turn in the park
and went back down Carl Johann. It was now about eleven. The streets
were fairly dark, and the people roamed about in all directions, quiet
pairs and noisy groups mixed with one another. The great hour had
commenced, the pairing time when the mystic traffic is in full
swing--and the hour of merry adventures sets in. Rustling petticoats,
one or two still short, sensual laughter, heaving bosoms, passionate,
panting breaths, and far down near the Grand Hotel, a voice calling
"Emma!" The whole street was a swamp, from which hot vapours exuded.

I feel involuntarily in my pockets for a few shillings. The passion
that thrills through the movements of every one of the passers-by, the
dim light of the gas lamps, the quiet pregnant night, all commence to
affect me--this air, that is laden with whispers, embraces, trembling
admissions, concessions, half-uttered words and suppressed cries. A
number of cats are declaring their love with loud yells in Blomquist's
doorway. And I did not possess even a florin! It was a misery, a
wretchedness without parallel to be so impoverished. What humiliation,
too; what disgrace! I began again to think about the poor widow's last
mite, that I would have stolen a schoolboy's cap or handkerchief, or a
beggar's wallet, that I would have brought to a rag-dealer without more
ado, and caroused with the proceeds.

In order to console myself--to indemnify myself in some measure--I take
to picking all possible faults in the people who glide by. I shrug my
shoulders contemptuously, and look slightingly at them according as
they pass. These easily-pleased, confectionery-eating students, who
fancy they are sowing their wild oats in truly Continental style if
they tickle a sempstress under the ribs! These young bucks, bank
clerks, merchants, flâneurs--who would not disdain a sailor's wife;
blowsy Molls, ready to fall down in the first doorway for a glass of
beer! What sirens! The place at their side still warm from the last
night's embrace of a watch-man or a stable-boy! The throne always
vacant, always open to newcomers! Pray, mount!

I spat out over the pavement, without troubling if it hit any one. I
felt enraged; filled with contempt for these people who scraped
acquaintanceship with one another, and paired off right before my eyes.
I lifted my head, and felt in myself the blessing of being able to keep
my own sty clean. At Stortingsplads (Parliament Place) I met a girl who
looked fixedly at me as I came close to her.

"Good-night!" said I.

"Good-night!" She stopped.

Hum! was she out walking so late? Did not a young lady run rather a
risk in being in Carl Johann at this time of night? Really not? Yes;
but was she never spoken to, molested, I meant; to speak plainly, asked
to go along home with any one?

She stared at me with astonishment, scanned my face closely, to see
what I really meant by this, then thrust her hand suddenly under my
arm, and said:

"Yes, and we went too!"

I walked on with her. But when we had gone a few paces past the
car-stand I came to a standstill, freed my arm, and said:

"Listen, my dear, I don't own a farthing!" and with that I went on.

At first she would not believe me; but after she had searched all my
pockets, and found nothing, she got vexed, tossed her head, and called
me a dry cod.

"Good-night!" said I.

"Wait a minute," she called; "are those eyeglasses that you've got
gold?"

"No."

"Then go to blazes with you!" and I went.

A few seconds after she came running behind me, and called out to me:

"You can come with me all the same!"

I felt humiliated by this offer from an unfortunate street wench, and I
said "No." Besides, it was growing late at night, and I was due at a
place. Neither could she afford to make sacrifices of that kind.

"Yes; but now I will have you come with me."

"But I won't go with you in this way."

"Oh, naturally; you are going with some one else."

"No," I answered.

But I was conscious that I stood in a sorry plight in face of this
unique street jade, and I made up my mind to save appearances at least.

"What is your name?" I inquired. "Mary, eh? Well, listen to me now,
Mary!" and I set about explaining my behaviour. The girl grew more and
more astonished in measure as I proceeded. Had she then believed that
I, too, was one of those who went about the street at night and ran
after little girls? Did she really think so badly of me? Had I perhaps
said anything rude to her from the beginning? Did one behave as I had
done when one was actuated by any bad motive? Briefly, in so many
words, I had accosted her, and accompanied her those few paces, to see
how far she would go on with it. For the rest, my name was
So-and-so--Pastor So-and-so. "Good-night; depart, and sin no more!"
With these words I left her.

I rubbed my hands with delight over my happy notion, and soliloquized
aloud, "What a joy there is in going about doing good actions." Perhaps
I had given this fallen creature an upward impulse for her whole life;
save her, once for all, from destruction, and she would appreciate it
when she came to think over it; remember me yet in her hour of death
with thankful heart. Ah! in truth, it paid to be honourable, upright,
and righteous!

My spirits were effervescing. I felt fresh and courageous enough to
face anything that might turn up. If I only had a candle, I might
perhaps complete my article. I walked on, jingling my new door-key in
my hand; hummed, and whistled, and speculated as to means of procuring
a candle. There was no other way out of it. I would have to take my
writing materials with me into the street, under a lamp-post. I opened
the door, and went up to get my papers. When I descended once more I
locked the door from the outside, and planted myself under the light.
All around was quiet; I heard the heavy clanking footstep of a
constable down in Taergade, and far away in the direction of St. Han's
Hill a dog barked. There was nothing to disturb me. I pulled my coat
collar up round my ears, and commenced to think with all my might.

It would be such an extraordinary help to me if I were lucky enough to
find a suitable winding up for this little essay. I had stuck just at a
rather difficult point in it, where there ought to be a quite
imperceptible transition to something fresh, then a subdued gliding
finale, a prolonged murmur, ending at last in a climax as bold and as
startling as a shot, or the sound of a mountain avalanche--full stop.
But the words would not come to me. I read over the whole piece from
the commencement; read every sentence aloud, and yet failed absolutely
to crystallize my thoughts, in order to produce this scintillating
climax. And into the bargain, whilst I was standing labouring away at
this, the constable came and, planting himself a little distance away
from me, spoilt my whole mood. Now, what concern was it of his if I
stood and strove for a striking climax to an article for the
_Commandor_? Lord, how utterly impossible it was for me to keep my head
above water, no matter how much I tried! I stayed there fo

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