In spite of his intelligence and his activity, Christian was several times overtaken by poverty. The life of the traveller is a series of Godsends and losses, of unexpected successes, and desperate disasters. He earned enough to live upon from day to day, by selling game and fish, and by exchanging commodities transported over great distances with incredible courage and resolution. And yet the young baron, careless, confident, and generous as he was, had not been born a merchant, and his troubles and anxieties could not transform the aristocratic liberality of his character.
Unavoidable accidents, moreover, often defeated his wisest calculations; and one day, he found that his own life must be governed by the ideal of heroic desperation with which he had entertained Major Larrson on the mountain of Blaakdal. Like Gustavus Wasa, he became a workman in the mines, and, as with that hero of a romantic epopée, he was soon recognized as an extraordinary workman, not so much on account of the embroidered collar of his shirt, but rather from the authority of his language and his haughty expression.
Christian, at this time, was in the mines of Roraas, in the highest mountains of Norway, at about ten leagues from the Swedish frontier. He had been working like a common day-laborer for eight days, but with a skill and vigor that had procured him the respect of his companions, when he received a letter from M. Goefle to the following purport:
“All is lost. I have seen the king, and he is a charming man—but nothing more! I made known to him who you are: I laid all my proofs before him; I told him how you felt, and how useful you could be to a philosophical and courageous prince who wished to establish equality of rights in the nation. After listening to me with an attention and comprehending with a lucidity that I have never encountered in any judge, he replied:
“‘Unfortunately, Monsieur Advocate, it is a great task to do justice to the oppressed, and one beyond my strength. I should be crushed in attempting it, like my poor father, whom the nobility doomed to perish of weariness and grief.’
“Gustavus is feeble and good; he does not wish to die! We flattered ourselves in vain that he would smite the senate with heavy blows. Sweden is lost, and our suit also!
“Come back to me, Christian. I love and respect you. I have a little fortune, and no children. Say the word, and I will make you my partner. You speak Swedish captivatingly; you are eloquent. You shall study law, and be my successor. I await you.”
“No!” cried Christian, kissing the letter of his generous friend; “I understand better than he thinks how limited the resources of this country are, and what great sacrifices such an association would condemn this noble man to make. And then it would take years to study law, and, during all that time, I should have to be supported—young and strong as I am—by one who, after a laborious and anxious life, deserves now to enjoy comfort and repose! No no! I have my hands, and I shall use them, until destiny shows me some better way than this of making my talents available.”
While thus reflecting, he returned to the gallery where it was his duty to excavate one of the veins of copper distributed through the rocks, by the light of a little lamp, and amid the sulphureous emanations rising from the mine.
But after a few days Christian’s position was materially improved. The superintendent of the mines noticed him, and put him at the head of certain works, which he was fitted by education and capacity to direct, as he had shown, without any pretence or affectation, when an opportunity occurred. Learned, modest, and industrious, he spent his leisure hours in instructing the miners. In the evenings he delivered a course of gratuitous lectures on elementary mineralogy, and was listened to by these rude men, who respected him as an industrious comrade, and looked up to him as an original and cultivated thinker. His lecture-room was one of the great metallic caverns to which miners love to give high-sounding names. His chair was a block of naked copper.