On the subject of Napoleon III. grandfather and grandson could not possibly agree. But this was the only subject on which we ever had any dispute.
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.
V.
School and Home were two different worlds, and it often struck me that I led a double life. Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school.
On Oct. 1st, 1849, I was taken to school, led in through the sober- looking doorway, and up into a classroom, where I was received by a kindly man, the arithmetic master, who made me feel at my ease. I noticed at once that when the master asked a boy anything which another knew, this other had a right to publish his knowledge by holding up a finger--a right of which I myself made an excessive use in the first lessons, until I perceived the sense of not trying, in season and out of season, to attract attention to my knowledge or superiority, and kept my hands on the table in front of me.
VI.
Suddenly, with surprising vividness, a little incident of my childhood rises up before me. I was ten years old. I had been ill in the Winter and my parents had boarded me out in the country for the Summer holidays; all the love of adventure in me surged up. At the Straw Market a fat, greasy, grinning peasant promised to take me in his cart as far as the little town of Farum, where I was to stay with the schoolmaster. He charged two dalers, and got them. Any sum, of course, was the same to me. I was allowed to drive the brown horses, that is to say, to hold the reins, and I was in high glee. Where Farum was, I did not know and did not care, but it was a new world. Until now I, who was a town child, had seen nothing of the country except my nurse's house and land at Glostrup,--but what lay in front of me was a village, a schoolhouse, a large farm, in short an adventure in grand style.
I had my shirts and blouses and stockings in a portmanteau, and amongst them a magnificent garment, never yet worn, a blue cloth jacket, and a white waistcoat belonging to it, with gold buttons, which my mother had given me permission to wear on Sundays. For days, I always wore blouses, so the jacket implied a great step forward. I was eager to wear it, and regretted profoundly that it was still only Monday.