The house belonged to my father's father, and had been in his
possession some twenty years. My parents lived on the second floor. It
was situated in the busy part of the town, right in the heart of
Copenhagen. On the first floor lived a West Indian gentleman who spoke
Danish with a foreign accent; sometimes there came to see him a Danish
man of French descent, Mr. Lafontaine, who, it was said, was so strong
that he could take two rifles and bayonets and hold them out
horizontally without bending his arm. I never saw Mr. Lafontaine, much
less his marvellous feat of strength, but when I went down the stairs I
used to stare hard at the door behind which these wonderful doings went
on.
In the basement lived Niels, manservant to the family, who, besides his
domestic occupations, found time to develop a talent for business. In
all secrecy he carried on a commerce, very considerable under the
circumstances, in common watches and in mead, two kinds of wares that
in sooth had no connection with each other. The watches had no
particular attraction for a little boy, but the mead, which was kept in
jars, on a shelf, appealed to me doubly. It was the beverage the old
Northmen had loved so much that the dead drank it in Valhalla. It was
astonishing that it could still be had. How nice it must be! I was
allowed to taste it and it surpassed all my expectations. Sweeter than
sugar! More delicious than anything else on earth that I had tasted!
But if you drank more than a very small glass of it, you felt sick.
And I profoundly admired the dead warriors for having been able to toss
off mead from large drinking-horns and eat fat pork with it. What a
choice! And they never had stomach-ache!