IV.
My maternal grandfather was quite different, entirely devoid of impetuosity, even-tempered, amiable, very handsome. He too had worked his way up from straightened circumstances; in fact, it was only when he was getting on for twenty that he had taught himself to read and write, well-informed though he was at the time I write of. He had once been apprentice to the widow of Möller the dyer, when Oehlenschläger and the Oersteds used to dine at the house. After the patriarchal fashion of the day, he had sat daily at the same table as these great, much-admired men, and he often told how he had clapped his hands till they almost bled at Oehlenschläger's plays, in the years when, by reason of Baggesen's attack, opinions about them at the theatre were divided.
My great-grandfather, the father of my mother's stepmother, who wore high boots with a little tassel in front, belonged to an even older generation. He used to say: "If I could only live to see a Danish man- o'-war close with an English ship and sink it, I should be happy; the English are the most disgraceful pack of robbers in the world." He was so old that he had still a vivid recollection of the battle in the roadstead and of the bombardment of Copenhagen.