Just about this time a foreign element entered the circle of Copenhagen
students to which I belonged. One day there came into my room a youth
with a nut-brown face, short and compactly built, who after only a few
weeks' stay in Copenhagen could speak Danish quite tolerably. He was a
young Armenian, who had seen a great deal of the world and was of very
mixed race. His father had married, at Ispahan, a lady of Dutch-German
origin. Up to his seventh year he had lived in Batavia. When the family
afterwards moved to Europe, he was placed at school in Geneva. He had
there been brought up, in French, to trade, but as he revealed an
extraordinary talent for languages, was sent, for a year or eighteen
months at a time, to the four German universities of Halle, Erlangen,
Göttingen and Leipzig. Now, at the age of 22, he had come to Copenhagen
to copy Palahvi and Sanscrit manuscripts that Rask and Westergaard had
brought to Europe. He knew a great many languages, and was moreover
very many-sided in his acquirements, sang German student songs
charmingly, was introduced and invited everywhere, and with his foreign
appearance and quick intelligence was a great success. He introduced
new points of view, was full of information, and brought with him a
breath from the great world outside. Industrious though he had been
before, Copenhagen social life tempted him to idleness. His means came
to an end; he said that the annual income he was in the habit of
receiving by ship from India had this year, for some inexplicable
reason, failed to arrive, dragged out a miserable existence for some
time under great difficulties, starved, borrowed small sums, and
disappeared as suddenly as he had come.