I reflected sadly that I should never again see this man, who, the last twenty-four hours had shown me, was in extraordinary sympathy and agreement with me.
Separated from those dearest to me, the whole of the journey, for that matter, was a sort of self-torment to me, even though a profitable one. Like every other traveller, I had many a lonely hour, and plenty of time to ponder over my position and vocation in life. I summed up my impressions in the sentence: "The Powers have designated me the champion of great ideas against great talents, unfortunately greater than I."
X.
There was only one distinguished person outside my circle of acquaintance to whom I wished to bring my first descriptive book, as a mark of homage, Johanne Louise Heiberg, the actress. I had admired her on the stage, even if not to the same extent as Michael Wiehe; but to me she was the representative of the great time that would soon sink into the grave. In addition, I ventured to hope that she, being a friend of Frederik Paludan-Müller, Magdalene Thoresen and others who wished me well, would be at any rate somewhat friendly inclined towards me. A few years before, it had been rumoured in Copenhagen after the publication of my little polemical pamphlet against Nielsen, that at a dinner at the Heiberg's there had been a good deal of talk about me; even Bishop Martensen had expressed himself favourably, and it also attracted attention that a short time afterwards, in a note to his book On Knowledge and Faith, he mentioned me not unapprovingly, and contented himself with a reminder to me not to feel myself too soon beyond being surprised. When the Bishop of Zealand, one of the actress's most faithful adherents, had publicly spoken thus mildly of the youthful heretic, there was some hope that the lady herself would be free from prejudice. My friends also eagerly encouraged me to venture upon a visit to her home.
I was admitted and asked to wait in a room through the glass doors of which I was attentively observed for some time by the lady's adopted children. Then she came in, in indoor dress, with a stocking in her hand, at which she uninterruptedly continued to knit during the following conversation: She said: "Well! So you have collected your articles." I was simple enough to reply--as if that made any difference to the lady--that the greater part of the book had not been printed before. She turned the conversation upon Björnson's Fisher Girl, which had just been published, and which had been reviewed by The Fatherland the evening before, declaring that she disagreed altogether with the reviewer, who had admired in the Fisher Girl a psychological study of a scenic genius. "It is altogether a mistake," said Mrs. Heiberg, absorbed in counting her stitches, "altogether a mistake that genius is marked by restlessness, refractoriness, an irregular life, or the like. That is all antiquated superstition. True genius has no connection whatever with excesses and caprices, in fact, is impossible without the strict fulfilment of one's duty. (Knitting furiously.) Genius is simple, straightforward, domesticated, industrious." When we began to speak of mutual acquaintances, amongst others, Magdalene Thoresen, feeling very uncomfortable in the presence of the lady, I blurted out most tactlessly that I was sure that lady was much interested in me. It was a mere nothing, but at the moment sounded like conceit and boasting. I realised it the moment the words were out of my mouth, and instinctively felt that I had definitely displeased her. But the conversational material was used up and I withdrew. I never saw Johanne Louise Heiberg again; henceforth she thought anything but well of me.
XI.
Magdalene Thoresen was spending that year in Copenhagen, and our connection, which had been kept up by correspondence, brought with it a lively mutual interchange of thoughts and impressions. Our natures, it is true, were as much unlike as it was possible for them to be; but Magdalene Thoresen's wealth of moods and the overflowing warmth of her heart, the vivacity of her disposition, the tenderness that filled her soul, and the incessant artistic exertion, which her exhausted body could not stand, all this roused in me a sympathy that the mistiness of her reasoning, and the over-excitement of her intellectual life, could not diminish. Besides which, especially when she was away from Copenhagen, but when she was there, too, she needed a literary assistant who could look through her MSS. and negotiate over them with the publishers of anthologies, year-books, and weekly papers, and for this purpose she not infrequently seized upon me, innocently convinced, like everybody else for that matter, that she was the only person who made a similar demand upon me.
Still, it was rather trying that, when my verdict on her work did not happen to be what she wished, she saw in what I said an unkindness, for which she alleged reasons that had nothing whatever to do with Art.
Magdalene Thoresen could not be otherwise than fond of Rasmus Nielsen; they were both lively, easily enraptured souls, who breathed most freely in the fog. That, however, did not come between her and me, whom she often thought in the right. With regard to my newspaper activity, she merely urged the stereotyped but pertinent opinion, that I ought not to write so many small things; my nature could not stand this wasting, drop by drop.
I had myself felt for a long time that I ought to concentrate my forces on larger undertakings.