XVI.
There was one of the political figures of the time whom I often met during these years. This was the man most beloved of the previous generation, whose star had certainly declined since the war, but whose name was still one to conjure with, Orla Lehmann.
I had made his acquaintance when I was little more than a boy, in a very curious way.
In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C.N. David's house, on Runeberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and Lehmann houses, despite the political differences between them, were closely related one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla Lehmann had heard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he had just founded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremely conservative Society of August, and, looking out for lecturers for it, hit upon the twenty-three-year-old speaker as upon a possibility.
I was then living in a little cupboard of a room on the third floor in Crystal Street, and over my room was one, in the attic, inhabited by my seventeen-year-old brother, who had not yet matriculated.
Orla Lehmann, who had been told that the person he was seeking lived high up, rapidly mounted the four storeys, and knocked, a little out of breath, at the schoolboy's door. When the door opened, he walked in, and said, still standing:
"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann." Without heeding the surprise he read in the young fellow's face, he went on:
"I have come to ask you to give a lecture to the People's Society in the Casino's big room."
As the addressee looked about to speak, he continued, drowning every objection, "I know what you are going to say. That you are too young. Youth is written in your face. But there is no question of seniority here. I am accustomed to accomplish what I determine upon, and I shall take no notice of objections. I know that you are able to give lectures, you have recently given proof of it."
At last there was a minute's pause, permitting the younger one to interpose: