In Geneva, the news reached me that--in spite of a promise Hall, as
Minister, had given to Hauch, when the latter asked for it for me--I
was to receive no allowance from the Educational Department. To a
repetition of the request, Hall had replied: "I have made so many
promises and half-promises, that it has been impossible to remember or
to keep them." This disappointment hit me rather hard; I had in all
only about £50 left, and could not remain away more than nine weeks
longer without getting into debt, I, who had calculated upon staying a
whole year abroad. Circumstances over which I had no control later
obliged me, however, to remain away almost another year. But that I
could not foresee, and I had no means whatever to enable me to do so.
Several of my acquaintances had had liberal allowances from the
Ministry; Krieger and Martensen had procured Heegaard £225 at once,
when he had been anxious to get away from Rasmus Nielsen's influence.
It seemed to me that this refusal to give me anything augured badly for
the appointment I was hoping for in Denmark. I could only earn a very
little with my pen: about 11_s_. 3_d_. for ten folio pages, and as I
did not feel able, while travelling, to write anything of any value, I
did not attempt it. It was with a sort of horror that, after preparing
for long travels that were to get me out of the old folds, I thought of
the earlier, narrow life I had led in Copenhagen. All the old folds
seemed, at this distance, to have been the folds of a strait-waistcoat.