At school, I had known a score of boys of my own age, and naturally
found few amongst them who could be anything to me. Among the
advantages that the freedom of student life afforded was that of coming
in contact all at once with hundreds of similarly educated young men of
one's own age. Young men made each other's acquaintance at lectures and
banquets, were drawn to one another, or felt themselves repulsed, and
elective affinity or accident associated them in pairs or groups for a
longer or shorter period.
A young fellow whose main passion was a desire for intellectual
enrichment was necessarily obliged to associate with many of the other
young men of his own age, in order to learn to know them, in order,
externally and internally, to gain as much experience as possible and
thereby develop himself.
In the case of many of them, a few conversations were enough to prove
that any fruitful intimacy was out of the question. I came into
fleeting contact with a number of suave, or cold, or too ordinary young
students, without their natures affecting mine or mine theirs. But
there were others who, for some months, engaged my attention to a
considerable extent.
The first of these was a type of the student of the time. Vilsing was
from Jutland, tall, dark, neither handsome nor plain, remarkable for
his unparalleled facility in speaking. He owed his universal popularity
to the fact that at students' Parties he could at any time stand up and
rattle off at a furious rate an apparently unprepared speech, a sort of
stump speech in which humorous perversions, distortions, lyric remarks,
clever back-handed blows to right and left, astonishing incursions and
rapid sorties, were woven into a whole so good that it was an
entertaining challenge to common sense.
The starting point, for instance, might be some travesty of Sibbern's
whimsical definition of life, which at that time we all had to learn by
heart for the examination. It ran:
"Life altogether is an activity and active process, preceding from an
inner source and working itself out according to an inner impulse,
producing and by an eternal change of matter, reproducing, organising
and individualising, and, since it by a certain material or substratum
constitutes itself a certain exterior, within which it reveals itself,
it simultaneously constitutes itself as the subsisting activity and
endeavour in this, its exterior, of which it may further be inquired
how far a soul can be said to live and subsist in it, as a living
entity--appearing in such a life."
It is not difficult to conceive what delightful nonsense this barbaric
elucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkenness
were defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks on
earlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one
of the bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could read in the play of
their features: "Forget me not! I, too, was an orator."
Vilsing, who had been studying for some years already, paid a freshman
a compliment by desiring his acquaintance and seeking his society. He
frequented the Students' Union, was on terms of friendship with those
who led the fashion, and was a favourite speaker. It was a species of
condescension on his part to seek out a young fellow just escaped from
school, a fellow who would have sunk into the earth if he had had to
make a speech, and who had no connection with the circle of older
students.
Vilsing was a young man of moods, who, like many at that time, like
Albrecht, the chief character in Schandorph's [Footnote: Sophus
Schandorph, b. 1820, d. 1901; a prominent Danish novelist, who
commenced his literary activity in the sixties.--[Translator's note.]]
_Without a Centre_, would exhibit all the colours of the rainbow in one
morning. He would give himself, and take himself back, show himself
affectionate, cordial, intimate, confidential, full of affectionate
anxiety for me his young friend, and at the next meeting be as cursory
and cool as if he scarcely remembered having seen me before; for he
would in the meantime have been attacked by vexation at his too great
friendliness, and wish to assert himself, as knowing his own value.
He impressed me, his junior, by revealing himself, not precisely as a
man of the world, but as a much sought after society man. He told me
how much he was asked out, and how he went from one party and one ball
to another, which, to me, with my hankering after experiences, seemed
to be an enviable thing. But I was more struck by what Vilsing told me
of the favour he enjoyed with the other sex. One girl--a charming
girl!--he was engaged to, another loved him and he her; but those were
the least of his erotic triumphs; wherever he showed himself, he
conquered. And proofs were to hand. For one day, when he had dragged me
up to his room with him, he bewildered me by shaking out before my eyes
a profusion of embroidered sofa-cushions, fancy pillows, cigar-cases,
match-holders, crocheted purses, worked waistcoats, etc.; presents from
every description of person of the feminine gender. In every drawer he
pulled out there were presents of the sort; they hung over chairs and
on pegs.
I was young enough to feel a certain respect for a man so sought after
by the fair sex, although I thought his frankness too great. What first
began to undermine this feeling was not doubt of the truth of his
tales, or the genuineness of the gifts, but the fact that one after
another of my comrades, when the first cool stages of acquaintance were
passed, invariably found a favourable opportunity of confidentially
informing me--he could not explain why it was himself, but it was a
fact--that wherever he showed himself women were singularly fascinated
by the sight of him; there must be something about him which vanquished
them in spite of him. When at last one evening the most round-backed of
all of them, a swain whose blond mustache, of irregular growth,
resembled an old, worn-out toothbrush more than anything else, also
confided in me that he did not know how it was, or what could really be
the cause of it, but there must be something about him, etc.,--then my
belief in Vilsing's singularity and my admiration for him broke down.
It must not be supposed that Vilsing regarded himself as a sensual
fiend. He did not pose as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and
instinct with feeling. He was studying theology, and cherished no
dearer wish than eventually to become a priest. He constantly
alternated between contrition and self-satisfaction, arrogance and
repentance, enjoyed the consciousness of being exceptionally clever, an
irresistible charmer, and a true Christian. It seemed to him that, in
the freshman whom he had singled out from the crowd and given a place
at his side, he had found an intellectual equal, or even superior, and
this attracted him; he met with in me an inexperience and unworldliness
so great that the inferiority in ability which he declared he perceived
was more than counterbalanced by the superiority he himself had the
advantage of, both in social accomplishments and in dealing with women.
It thus seemed as though many of the essential conditions of a
tolerably permanent union between us were present. But during the first
conversation in which he deigned to be interested in my views, there
occurred in our friendship a little rift which widened to a chasm.
Vilsing sprang back horrified when he heard how I, greenhorn though I
was, regarded life and men and what I considered right. "You are in the
clutches of Evil, and your desire is towards the Evil. I have not time
or inclination to unfold an entire Christology now, but what you reject
is the Ideal, and what you appraise is the Devil himself. God! God! How
distressed I am for you! I would give my life to save you. But enough
about it for the present; I have not time just now; I have to go out to
dinner."
This was our last serious conversation. I was not saved. He did not
give his life. He went for a vacation tour the following Summer
holidays, avoided me on his return, and soon we saw no more of each
other.