These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returned
from travels abroad, during which his emotions had been doubly stirred,
for the first time, by feminine affection and by enthusiasm for a
woman. They influenced me the more strongly because they were Danish,
and because I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to the
monuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, man
or woman, who was foreign to Denmark.
But in the midst of all these visitations of calf-love, and their
vibrations among undefined sensations, I was pulled back with a jerk,
as it were, to my earlier and deepest impression, that of the
loveliness and exalted person of the young Spaniard. Letters from Paris
furrowed my mind like steamers the waters of a lake, made it foam, and
the waves run high, left long streaks across its wake. Not that Mlle.
Mathilde sent letters to me herself, but her Italian lady and gentlemen
friends wrote for her, apparently in her name, loudly lamenting my
unreasonable departure, wishing and demanding my return, telling me how
she missed me, sometimes how angry she was.
I was too poor to be able to return at once. I did what I could to
procure money, wrote to those of my friends whom I thought could best
afford it and on whom I relied most, but met with refusals, which made
me think of the messages Timon of Athens received in response to
similar requests. Then I staked in the lottery and did not win.
Urged from France to return, and under the high pressure of my own
romantic imagination, it seemed clear to me all at once that I ought to
unite my lot for good to that of this rare and beautiful woman, whom,
it is true, I had never spoken to one minute alone, who, moreover, had
scarcely anything in common with me, but who, just by the dissimilarity
of her having been born of Spanish parents in Rio, and I of a Danish
father and mother in Copenhagen, seemed destined by Fate for me, as I
for her. The Palm and the Fir-tree had dreamed of one another, and
could never meet; but men and women could, however far apart they might
have been born. In the middle of the Summer of 1867 I was as though
possessed by the thought that she and I ought to be united.
The simplest objection of all, namely, that I, who was scarcely able to
support myself, could not possibly support a wife, seemed to me
altogether subordinate. My motives were purely chivalric; I could not
leave her in the lurch, as the miserable hero of Andersen's _Only a
Player_ did Noomi. And a vision of her compelling loveliness hovered
before my eyes.
The whole of the month of July and part of the month of August I was on
the rack, now passionately desiring a successful issue of my plans, now
hoping just as ardently that they would be stranded through the
opposition of the foreign family; for I was compelled to admit to
myself that the beautiful Spaniard would be very unsuited to
Copenhagen, would freeze there, mentally as well as literally. And I
said to myself every day that supposing the war expected in Denmark
were to break out again, and the young men were summoned to arms, the
most insignificant little Danish girl would make me a better Valkyrie;
all my feelings would be foreign to her, and possibly she would not
even be able to learn Danish. Any other woman would understand more of
my mind than she. And yet! Yet she was the only one for me.
Thus I was swayed by opposing wishes the whole of the long time during
which the matter was pending and uncertain. I was so exhausted by
suspense that I only kept up by taking cold baths twice a day and by
brisk rides. The mere sight of a postman made my heart beat fast. The
scorn heaped upon me in the Danish newspapers had a curious effect upon
me under these circumstances; it seemed to me to be strangely far away,
like blows at a person who is somewhere else.
I pondered all day on the painful dilemma in which I was placed; I
dreamt of my Dulcinea every night, and began to look as exhausted as I
felt. One day that I went to Fredensborg, in response to an invitation
from Frederik Paludan-Müller, the poet said to me: "Have you been ill
lately? You look so pale and shaken." I pretended not to care; whatever
I said or did in company was incessant acting.
I experienced revulsions of feeling similar to those that troubled Don
Quixote. Now I saw in my distant Spanish maiden the epitome of
perfection, now the picture melted away altogether; even my affection
for her then seemed small, artificial, whimsical, half-forgotten. And
then again she represented supreme happiness.
When the decision came, when,--as everyone with the least experience of
the world could have foretold,--all the beautiful dreams and audacious
plans collapsed suddenly, I felt as though this long crisis had thrown
me back indescribably; my intellectual development had been at a
standstill for months. It was such a feeling as when the death of some
loved person puts an end to the long, tormenting anxiety of the
foregoing illness. I, who had centred everything round one thought,
must now start joylessly along new paths. My outburst,--which
astonished myself,--was:
"How I wanted a heart!"