Part 3

Why did not God protect him from consumption? And how could God find it in His heart to give him the hair disease when he was so ill already? God was strange. He was Almighty, but He did not use His might to take care of Mr. Voltelen, who was so good and so clever, and so poor that he needed help more than anyone else. Mr. Nobel was kinder to Mr. Voltelen than God was. God was strange, too, in other ways; He was present everywhere, and yet Mother was cross and angry if you asked whether He was in the new moderator lamp, which burnt in the drawing-room with a much brighter light than the two wax candles used to give. God knew everything, which was very uncomfortable, since it was impossible to hide the least thing from Him. Strangest of all was it when one reflected that, if one knew what God thought one was going to say, one could say something else and His omniscience would be foiled. But of course one did not know what He thought would come next. The worst of all, though, was that He left Mr. Voltelen in the lurch so.

VI.

Some flashes of terrestrial majesty and magnificence shone on my modest existence. Next after God came the King. As I was walking along the street one day with my father, he exclaimed: "There is the King!" I looked at the open carriage, but saw nothing noticeable there, so fixed my attention upon the coachman, dressed in red, and the footman's plumed hat. "The King wasn't there!" "Yes, indeed he was--he was in the carriage." "Was that the King? He didn't look at all remarkable--he had no crown on." "The King is a handsome man," said Father. "But he only puts on his state clothes when he drives to the Supreme Court."

So we went one day to see the King drive to the Supreme Court. A crowd of people were standing waiting at the Naval Church. Then came the procession. How splendid it was! There were runners in front of the horses, with white silk stockings and regular flower-pots on their heads; I had never seen anything like it; and there were postillions riding on the horses in front of the carriage. I quite forgot to look inside the carriage and barely caught a glimpse of the King. And that glimpse made no impression upon me. That he was Christian VIII. I did not know; he was only "the King."

Then one day we heard that the King was dead, and that he was to lie in state twice. These lyings in state were called by forced, unnatural names, Lit de Parade and Castrum doloris; I heard them so often that I learnt them and did not forget them. On the Lit de Parade the body of the King himself lay outstretched; that was too sad for a little boy. But Castrum doloris was sheer delight, and it really was splendid. First you picked your way for a long time along narrow corridors, then high up in the black-draped hall appeared the coffin covered with black velvet, strewn with shining, twinkling stars. And a crowd of candles all round. It was the most magnificent sight I had ever beheld.

VII.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals. The country was not so far from town then as it is now. My paternal grandfather had a country-house a little way beyond the North gate, with fine trees and an orchard; it was the property of an old man who went about in high Wellington boots and had a regular collection of wax apples and pears--such a marvellous imitation that the first time you saw them you couldn't help taking a bite out of one. Driving out to the country-house in the Summer, the carriage would begin to lumber and rumble as soon as you passed through the North gate, and when you came back you had to be careful to come in before the gate was closed.

We lived in the country ourselves, for that matter, out in the western suburb, near the Black Horse (as later during the cholera Summer), or along the old King's Road, where there were beautiful large gardens. In one such a huge garden I stood one Summer day by my mother's side in front of a large oblong bed with many kinds of flowers. "This bed shall be yours," said Mother, and happy was I. I was to rake the paths round it myself and tend and water the plants in it. I was particularly interested to notice that a fresh set of flowers came out for every season of the year. When the asters and dahlias sprang into bloom the Summer was over. Still the garden was not the real country. The real country was at Inger's, my dear old nurse's. She was called my nurse because she had looked after me when I was small. But she had not fed me, my mother had done that.

Inger lived in a house with fields round it near High Taastrup. There was no railway there then, and you drove out with a pair of horses. It was only later that the wonderful railway was laid as far as Roskilde. So it was an unparalleled event for the children, to go by train to Valby and back. Their father took them. Many people thought that it was too dangerous. But the children cared little for the danger. And it went off all right and they returned alive.

Inger had a husband whose name was Peer. He was nice, but had not much to say. Inger talked far more and looked after everything. They had a baby boy named Niels, but he was in the cradle and did not count. Everything at Inger and Peer's house was different from the town. There was a curious smell in the rooms, with their chests of drawers and benches, not exactly disagreeable, but unforgettable. They had much larger dishes of curds and porridge than you saw in Copenhagen. They did not put the porridge or the curds on plates. Inger and Peer and their little visitor sat round the milk bowl or the porridge dish and put their spoons straight into it. But the guest had a spoon to himself. They did not drink out of separate glasses, but he had a glass to himself.

It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and milk warm from the cow. Inger used to churn, and there was buttermilk to drink. It was great fun for a little Copenhagen boy to roll about in the hay and lie on the hay-waggons when they were driven home. And every time I came home from a visit to Inger Mother would laugh at me the moment I opened my mouth, for, quite unconsciously, I talked just like Inger and the other peasants.

VIII.

In the wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by wooden bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment of being incarcerated there.

Several times already his anxious mother has sent the housemaid to ask whether he will beg pardon yet, and he has only shaken his head. He is hungry; for he was brought up here immediately after school. But he will not give in, for he is in the right. It is not his fault that the grown-up people cannot understand him. They do not know that what he is suffering now is nothing to what he has had to suffer. It is true that he would not go with the nurse and his little brother into the King's Gardens. But what do Father and Mother know of the ignominy of hearing all day from the other schoolboys: "Oh! so you are fetched by the nurse!" or "Here comes your nurse to fetch you!" He is overwhelmed with shame at the thought of the other boys' scorn. She is not his nurse, she is his brother's. He could find his way home well enough, but how can he explain to the other boys that his parents will not trust him with the little one yet, and so send for them both at the same time! Now there shall be an end to it; he will not go to the King's Gardens with the nurse again.

It is the housemaid, once more, come to ask if he will not beg pardon now. In vain. Everything has been tried with him, scolding, and even a box on the ear; but he has not been humbled. Now he stands here; he will not give in.

But this time his kind mother has not let the girl come empty-handed. His meal is passed through the bars and he eats it. It is so much the easier to hold out. And some hours later he is brought down and put to bed without having apologised.

Before I had so painfully become aware of the ignominy of going with the maid to the King's Gardens, I had been exceedingly fond of the place. What gardens they were for hide and seek, and puss in the corner! What splendid alleys for playing Paradise, with Heaven and Hell! To say nothing of playing at horses! A long piece of tape was passed over and under the shoulders of two playfellows, and you drove them with a tight rein and a whip in your hand. And if it were fun in the old days when I only had tape for reins, it was ever so much greater fun now that I had had a present from my father of splendid broad reins of striped wool, with bells, that you could hear from far enough when the pair came tearing down the wide avenues.

I was fond of the gardens, which were large and at that time much larger than they are now; and of the trees, which were many, at that time many more than now. And every part of the park had its own attraction. The Hercules pavilion was mysterious; Hercules with the lion, instructive and powerful. A pity that it had become such a disgrace to go there!

I had not known it before. One day, not so long ago, I had felt particularly happy there. I had been able for a long time to read correctly in my reading-book and write on my slate. But one day Mr. Voltelen had said to me: "You ought to learn to read writing." And from that moment forth my ambition was set upon reading writing, an idea which had never occurred to me before. When my tutor first showed me writing, it had looked to me much as cuneiform inscriptions and hieroglyphics would do to ordinary grown-up people, but by degrees I managed to recognize the letters I was accustomed to in this their freer, more frivolous disguise, running into one another and with their regularity broken up. In the first main avenue of the King's Gardens I had paced up and down, in my hand the thin exercise-book, folded over in the middle,--the first book of writing I had ever seen,--and had already spelt out the title, "Little Red Riding-Hood." The story was certainly not very long; still, it filled several of the narrow pages, and it was exciting to spell out the subject, for it was new to me. In triumphant delight at having conquered some difficulties and being on the verge of conquering others, I kept stopping in front of a strange nurse-girl, showed her the book, and asked: "Can you read writing?"

Twenty-three years later I paced up and down the same avenue as a young man, once more with a book of manuscript, that I was reading, in my hand. I was fixing my first lecture in my mind, and I repeated it over and over again to myself until I knew it almost by heart, only to discover, to my disquiet, a few minutes later, that I had forgotten the whole, and that was bad enough; for what I wished to say in my lecture were things that I had very much at heart.

The King's Garden continued to occupy its place in my life. Later on, for so many years, when Spring and Summer passed by and I was tied to the town, and pined for trees and the scent of flowers, I used to go to the park, cross it obliquely to the beds near the beautiful copper beeches, by the entrance from the ramparts, where there were always flowers, well cared for and sweet scented. I caressed them with my eyes, and inhaled their perfume leaning forward over the railings.

But just now I preferred to be shut up in the wood-loft to being fetched by the nurse from school to the Gardens. It was horrid, too, to be obliged to walk so slowly with the girl, even though no longer obliged to take hold of her skirt. How I envied the boys contemptuously called street boys! They could run in and out of the courtyard, shout and make as much noise as they liked, quarrel and fight out in the street, and move about freely. I knew plenty of streets. If sent into the town on an errand I should be able to find my way quite easily.

And at last I obtained permission. Happy, happy day! I flew off like an arrow. I could not possibly have walked. And I ran home again at full galop. From that day forth I always ran when I had to go out alone. Yes, and I could not understand how grown-up people and other boys could walk. I tried a few steps to see, but impatience got the better of me and off I flew. It was fine fun to run till you positively felt the hurry you were in, because you hit your back with your heels at every step.

My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.

IX.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain and Father and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, of course, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, more hard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired any terror. They were in the main protecting powers.

The terrifying power at this first stage was supplied by the bogey-man. He came rushing suddenly out of a corner with a towel in front of his face and said: "Bo!" and you jumped. If the towel were taken away there soon emerged a laughing face from behind it. That at once made the bogey-man less terrible. And perhaps that was the reason Maren's threat: "Now, if you are not good, the bogey-man will come and take you," quickly lost its effect. And yet it was out of this same bogey-man, so cold-bloodedly shaken off, that at a later stage a personality with whom there was no jesting developed, one who was not to be thrust aside in the same way, a personality for whom you felt both fear and trembling--the Devil himself.

But it was only later that he revealed himself to my ken. It was not he who succeeded first to the bogey-man. It was--the police. The police was the strange and dreadful power from which there was no refuge for a little boy. The police came and took him away from his parents, away from the nursery and the drawing-room, and put him in prison.