In the beginning of the year 1866 Ludvig David died suddenly in Rome,
of typhoid fever. His sorrowing parents founded in memory of him an
exhibition for law-students which bears and perpetuates his name. The
first executors of the fund were, in addition to his most intimate
friend, two young lawyers named Emil Petersen and Emil Bruun, who had
both been friends of his. The latter, who has not previously been
mentioned in these pages, was a strikingly handsome and clever young
man, remarkable for his calm and superior humour, and exceedingly
self-confident and virile. His attitude towards Ludvig David in his
early youth had been somewhat that of a protector. Unfortunately he was
seriously wounded during the first storming of the Dybböl redoubts by
the Germans; a bullet crushed one of the spinal vertebrae; gradually
the wound brought on consumption of the lungs and he died young.
Ludvig David's death was a great loss to his friends. It was not only
that he took such an affectionate interest in their welfare and
happiness, but he had a considerable gift for Mathematics and History,
and, from his home training, an understanding of affairs of state which
was considerably above that of most people. Peculiarly his own was a
combination of keen, disintegrating intelligence, and a tendency
towards comprehensive, rounded off, summarising. He had strong public
antipathies. In his opinion the years of peace that had followed the
first war in Slesvig had had an enervating effect; public speakers and
journalists had taken the places of brave men; many a solution of a
difficulty, announced at first with enthusiasm, had in course of time
petrified into a mere set phrase. He thought many of the leading men
among the Liberals superficial and devoid of character, and accused
them, with the pitilessness of youth, of mere verbiage. Influenced as
he was by Kierkegaard, such a man as Bille was naturally his aversion.
He considered--not altogether justly--that Bille cloaked himself in
false earnestness.
He himself was profoundly and actively philanthropic, with an
impulse--by no means universal--to relieve and help. Society life he
hated; to him it was waste of time and a torture to be obliged to
figure in a ballroom; he cared very little for his appearance, and was
by no means elegant in his dress. He was happy, however, in the
unconstrained society of the comrades he cared about, enjoyed a merry
chat or a frolicsome party, and in intimate conversation he would
reveal his inmost nature with modest unpretension, with good-natured
wit, directed against himself as much as against others, and with an
understanding and sympathetic eye for his surroundings. His warmest
outburst had generally a little touch of mockery or teasing about it,
as though he were repeating, half roguishly, the feelings of another,
rather than unreservedly expressing his own. But a heartfelt, steadfast
look would often come into his beautiful dark eyes.