"Exactly so," answered John, "but you have judged it by the standard of our time and all succeeding times, and therefore you are wrong. But even with regard to its own time the work is not an epoch-making one; it is not in advance of its period, but belongs strictly to it, or rather lags behind it. It is a linguistic monument for Italy, nothing more, and should never be read in a Swedish university, because the language is antiquated, and finally because it is too insignificant to be regarded as a link in the development of culture."
The result of the controversy was that John was regarded as shameless and half-cracked.
After this explosion he was exhausted and incapable of work. The whole of the life in a town where he did not feel at home was distasteful to him. His companions advised him to take a thorough rest, for he had worked too hard, and so, as a matter of fact, he had. Various schemes again presented themselves to his mind, but without result. The grey dirty town vexed him, the scenery around depressed him; he lay on a sofa and looked at the illustrations in a German newspaper. Views of foreign scenery had the same effect as music on his mind and he felt a longing to see green trees and blue seas; he wished to go into the country but it was still only February, the sky was as grey as sack-cloth, the streets and roads were muddy. When he felt most depressed, he went to his friend the natural science student. It refreshed him to see his herbarium and microscope, his aquarium and physiological preparations. Most of all he found a pleasure in the society of the quiet, peaceable atheist, who let the world go its way, for he knew that he worked better for the future, in his small measure, than the poet with his excitable outbreaks. He had a little of the artist left in him and painted in oils. To think that he could call up as if by enchantment a green landscape amid the mists of this wintry spring and hang it on his wall!
"Is painting difficult?" he asked his friend.
"No, indeed! It is easier than drawing. Try it!"
John, who had already, with the greatest calm, composed a song with a guitar-accompaniment, thought it not impossible for him to paint, and he borrowed an easel, colours, and a paint-brush. Then he went home and shut himself up in his room. From an illustrated paper he copied a picture of a ruined castle. When he saw the clear blue of the sky he felt sentimental, and when he had conjured up green bushes and grass he felt unspeakably happy as though he had eaten haschish. His first effort was successful. But now he wished to copy a painting. That was harder. Everything was green and brown. He could not make his colours harmonise with the original and felt in despair.
One day when he had shut himself up he heard a visitor talking with his friend in the next room. They whispered as though they were near a sick person. "Now he is actually painting," said his friend in a depressed tone.
What did that mean? Did they consider him cracked? Yes. He began to think about himself, and like all brooders came to the conclusion that he was cracked. What was to be done? If they shut him up, he would certainly go quite mad. "Better anticipate them," he thought, and as he had heard of private asylums in the country, where the patients could walk about and work in the garden, he wrote to the director of one of them. After some time he received a friendly answer advising him to be quiet. His correspondent had received information about John through his friend and understood his state of mind. He told him it was only a crisis which all sensitive natures must pass through, etc.
That danger, then, was over. But he wished to get out into active life when ever it might be.
One day he heard that a travelling theatrical company had come to the town. He wrote a letter to the manager and solicited an engagement, but he received no answer and did not call on the manager. Thus he was tossed to and fro, till at last fate intervened and set him free. Three months had passed and he had received no money from the court-treasurer. His companions advised him to write and make a polite inquiry. In reply he was told that it had never been his Majesty's intention to pay him a regular pension, but only a single donation. However, in consideration of his needy circumstances, by way of exception, he had made him a grant of 200 kronas, which would shortly be sent.