The door opened and Milde entered. The corpulent chap beamed happily and shouted, full of the great sensation he was going to spring:
"Congratulate me, good people, I have won the prize! Imagine, in its inscrutable wisdom the ministry has chosen to bestow the subsidy upon me!"
"Have you received the subsidy?" asked Irgens slowly.
"Yes, can you understand it? How it happened I am at a loss to know. I got it from under your very noses! I hear that you, too, applied, Irgens?"
Silence fell upon the crowd at the table. Nobody had expected that, and they were all wondering what influence had been brought to bear. Milde had got the subsidy—what next?
"Well, I congratulate you!" said Tidemand, and gave Milde his hand.
"Thank you," Milde replied. "I want you to lend me some money now, so that
I can celebrate properly; you'll get it back when I cash in."
Irgens looked at his watch as if he suddenly remembered something and got up.
"I, too, congratulate you," he said. "I am sorry to have to leave at once; I have to—No; my object in applying was an entirely different one; I'll tell you about it later," he added in order to hide his disappointment.
Irgens went home. So Milde had been chosen! That was the way Norway rewarded her talents. Here he had hurled his inspired lyric in their faces, and they did not even know what it was! Whom had they preferred? None other than oil-painter Milde, collector of ladies' corsets!