VII.
I had not left off my daily work in Paris, but had read industriously at the Imperial Library. I had also attended many lectures, some occasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Lévêque and Taine.
Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begun studying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of his that I read was The French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern. The book entranced me, and I determined to read every word that I could get hold of by the same author. In the Imperial Library in Paris I read first of all The History of English Literature, of which I had hitherto only been acquainted with a few fragments, which had appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Taine was to me an antidote to German abstraction and German pedantry. Through him I found the way to my own inmost nature, which my Dano-German University education had covered over.
Shortly after my arrival in Paris, therefore, I had written to Taine and begged for an interview. By a singular piece of ill-luck his reply to me was lost, and it was only at the very end of my stay that I received a second invitation to go to him. Although this one conversation could not be of any vast importance to me, it was nevertheless the first personal link between me and the man who was and remained my greatly loved master and deliverer, even though I mistrusted his essential teachings. I was afraid that I had created a bad impression, as I had wasted the time raising objections; but Taine knew human nature well enough to perceive the personality behind the clumsy form and the admiration behind the criticism. In reality, I was filled with passionate gratitude towards Taine, and this feeling remained unaltered until his latest hour.
During this my first stay in Paris I added the impression of Taine's personality to the wealth of impressions that I took back with me from Paris to Copenhagen.
[EARLY MANHOOD]
Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--My First Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of Modern Coercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Trip to Germany--Johanne Louise Heiberg--Magdalene Thoresen--Rudolph Bergh-- The Sisters Spang--A Foreign Element--The Woman Subject--Orla Lehmann-- M. Goldschmidt--Public Opposition--A Letter from Björnstjerne Björnson-- Hard Work.