Meanwhile he reached Odense, came to Korsör and soon afterwards to Copenhagen. It was evening and he sent a messenger to the family where his wife generally stayed. Since she had not come to the Arreskov Lake, she must be in Copenhagen. On the visiting-card which he sent he only wrote: "A somewhat strange question: where is my wife?"
The man who has not waited for an hour and a half on a pavement does not know how long this time can be. But this interval of waiting was abridged by the hope that after a silence-cure of eight days in Hamburg, five weeks of simple imprisonment at Rügen, and a week of the nethermost hell at Fünen, he would see his wife again. After an hour and a half the messenger returned with another visiting-card on which was written: "She left this morning for Fünen in order to meet you."
A miss again! "I begin to find this monotonous even when regarded as a plot," he said to himself.
If one had used it for the plan of a novel, the reader would throw the book away and exclaim: "No! that is too thick! And as a farce it isn't cheerful enough!"
Nevertheless, it was a fact! The next minute he thought: "My poor, unfortunate wife is going straight into the lion's den. Now she will get blows." For her father's anger was now unbounded, and his mother-in-law had said during the last days of his stay: "If she comes now, he will beat her." Therefore he telegraphed to the old lady to say that his wife was coming, and asked indulgence for her.
It would take four days for her to return. In order not to remain in Copenhagen where his wedding journey had been reported in the papers, he stayed in a village outside the town where an old friend of his lived with his family. In the boarding-house where he stayed the same hog's-wash regime prevailed as in Rügen. In two days he lost as much strength as though he had had an attack of typhus. One chewed till one's jaws were weary, went hungry to table, and rose again tired and hungry.
His friend was not the same as before. Rendered melancholy by disappointments he seemed to find this a favourable opportunity to display a visible satisfaction at seeing the well-known author in such a sorry plight. His sympathy took the heartiest, and at the same time the most insulting forms. When the Norwegian related his adventures on the wedding journey, his hearer stared at him in such a way that he made a hasty end of his narrative in order not to be stigmatised as a liar.
The village was on marshy ground, and over-shadowed by very old trees; one became melancholy there without knowing why. When he walked down one of the streets of the village he was astonished to see people at the windows regarding him furtively with wild, distracted looks, and immediately afterwards shyly hiding themselves behind the curtains. This disquieted him and he wondered whether a false report had been spread that he was mad. When he asked his friend about it, the latter answered: "Don't you know where you are?"
The question sounded strangely, and might mean: "Are you so confused that you have lost consciousness?"
"I am in X——" he answered, in order not to betray his suspicion.