ill. The home seemed to be undergoing a process of dissolution, and

John's father had had many difficulties with the servants since his mother had been obliged to keep her bed. But she remained the servants' friend till death, and took their side by instinct, but they abused her partiality. It was strictly forbidden to excite the patient, but the servants intrigued against each other, and against their master. One day John had melted lead in a silver spoon. The cook blabbed of it to his mother, who was excited and told his father. But his father was only-annoyed with the tell-tale. He went to John and said in a friendly way, as though he were compelled to make a complaint: "You should not melt lead in silver spoons. I don't care about the spoon; that can be repaired; but this devil of a cook has excited mother. Don't tell the girls when you have done something stupid, but tell me, and we will put it right."

He and his father were now friends for the first time, and he loved him for his condescension.

One night his father's voice awoke him from sleep. He started up, and found it dark in the room. Through the darkness he heard a deep trembling voice, "Come to mother's death-bed!" It went through him like a flash of lightning. He froze and shivered while he dressed, the skin of his head felt ice-cold, his eyes were wide-open and streaming with tears, so that the flame of the lamp looked like a red bladder.

Then they stood round the sick-bed and wept for one, two, three hours. The night crept slowly onward. His mother was unconscious and knew no one. The death-struggle, with rattling in the throat, and cries for help, had commenced. The little ones were not aroused. John thought of all the sins which he had committed, and found no good deeds to counterbalance them. After three hours his tears ceased, and his thoughts began to take various directions. The process of dying was over. "How will it be," he asked himself, "when mother is no longer there?" Nothing but emptiness and desolation, without comfort or compensation--a deep gloom of wretchedness in which he searched for some point of light. His eye fell on his mother's chest of drawers, on which stood a plaster statuette of Linnæus with a flower in his hand. There was the only advantage which this boundless misfortune brought with it--he would get the ring. He saw it in imagination on his hand. "That is in memory of my mother," he would be able to say, and he would weep at the recollection of her, but he could not suppress the thought, "A gold ring looks fine after all." Shame! Who could entertain such thoughts at his mother's death-bed? A brain that was drunk with sleep? A child which had wept itself out? Oh, no, an heir. Was he more avaricious than others? Had he a natural tendency to greed? No, for then he would never have related the matter, but he bore it in memory his whole life long; it kept on turning up, and when he thought of it in sleepless nights, and hours of weariness, he felt the flush mount into his cheeks. Then he instituted an examination of himself and his conduct, and blamed himself as the meanest of all men. It was not till he was older and had come to know a great number of men, and studied the processes of thought, that he came to the conclusion that the brain is a strange thing which goes its own way, and there is a great similarity among men in the double life which they lead, the outward and the inward, the life of speech and that of thought.

John was a compound of romanticism, pietism, realism, and naturalism. Therefore he was never anything but a patchwork. He certainly did not exclusively think about the wretched ornament. The whole matter was only a momentary distraction of two minutes' duration after months of sorrow, and when at last there was stillness in the room, and his father said, "Mother is dead," he was not to be comforted. He shrieked like one drowning. How can death bring such profound despair to those who hope to meet again? It must needs press hard on faith when the annihilation of personality takes place with such inflexible consistency before our eyes. John's father, who generally had the outward imperturbability of the Icelander, was now softened. He took his sons by the hands and said: "God has visited us; we will now hold together like friends. Men go about in their self-sufficiency, and believe they are enough for themselves; then comes a blow, and we see how _we_ all need one another. We will be sincere and considerate with each other."

The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.

White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. "You need not go to school, if you don't want to," said his father. "If you don't want"--that was acknowledgment that he had a will of his own. Then came aunts, cousins, relations, nurses, old servants, and all called down blessings on the dead. All offered their help in making the mourning clothes--there were four small and three elder children. Young girls sat by the sickly light that fell through the sheeted windows and sewed, while they conversed in undertones. That was melancholy, and the period of mourning brought a whole chain of peculiar experiences with it. Never had the boy been the object of so much sympathy, never had he felt so many warm hands stretched out, nor heard so many friendly words.

On the next Sunday his father read a sermon of Wallin's on the text "Our friend is not dead, but she sleeps." With what extraordinary faith he took these words literally, and how well he understood how to open the wounds and heal them again! "She is not dead, but she sleeps," he repeated cheerfully. The mother really slept there in the cold anteroom, and no one expected to see her awake.

The time of burial approached; the place for the grave was bought. His father's sister-in-law helped to sew the suits of mourning; she sewed and sewed, the old mother of seven penniless children, the once rich burgher's wife, sewed for the children of the marriage which her husband had cursed.

One day she stood up and asked her brother-in-law to speak with her privately. She whispered with him in a corner of the room. The two old people embraced each other and wept. Then John's father told them that their mother would be laid in their uncle's family grave. This was a much-admired monument in the new churchyard, which consisted of an iron pillar surmounted by an urn. The boys knew that this was an honour for their mother, but they did not understand that by her burial there a family quarrel had been extinguished, and justice done after her death to a good and conscientious woman who had been despised because she became a mother before her marriage.

Now all was peace and reconciliation in the house, and they vied with one another in acts of friendliness. They looked frankly at each other, avoided anything that might cause disturbance, and anticipated each other's wishes.

Then came the day of the funeral. When the coffin had been screwed down and was carried through the hall, which was filled with mourners dressed in black, one of John's little sisters began to cry and flung herself in his arms. He took her up and pressed her to himself, as though he were her mother and wished to protect her. When he felt how her trembling little body clung close to him, he grew conscious of a strength which he had not felt for a long time. Comfortless himself he could bestow comfort, and as he quieted the child he himself grew calm. The black coffin and the crowd of people had frightened her--that was all; for the smaller children hardly missed their mother; they did not weep for her, and had soon forgotten her. The tie between mother and child is not formed so quickly, but only through long personal acquaintance. John's real sense of loss hardly lasted for a quarter of a year. He mourned for her indeed a long time, but that was more because he wished to continue in that mood, though it was only an expression of his natural melancholy, which had taken the special form of mourning for his mother.

After the funeral there followed a long summer of leisure and freedom. John occupied two rooms with his eldest brother, who did not return from business till the evening. His father was out the whole day, and when they met they were silent. They had laid aside enmity, but intimacy was impossible. John was now his own master; he came and went, and did what he liked. His father's housekeeper was sympathetic with him, and they never quarrelled. He avoided intercourse with his school-fellows, shut himself in his room, smoked, read, and meditated. He had always heard that knowledge was the best thing, a capital fund which could not be lost, and which afforded a footing, however low one might sink in the social scale. He had a mania for explaining and knowing everything. He had seen his eldest brother's drawings and heard them praised. In school he had drawn only geometrical figures. Accordingly, he wished to draw, and in the Christmas holidays he copied with furious diligence all his brother's drawings. The last in the collection was a horse. When he had finished it, and saw that it was unsatisfactory, he had done with drawing.

All the children except John could play some instrument. He heard scales and practising on the piano, violin, and violoncello, so that music was spoiled for him and became a nuisance, like the church-bells had formerly been. He would have gladly played, but he did not wish to practise scales. He took pieces of music when no one was looking and played them--as might be supposed--very badly, but it pleased him. As a compensation for his vanity, he determined to learn technically the pieces which his sisters played, so that he surpassed them in the knowledge of musical technique. Once they wanted someone to copy the music of the _Zauberflöte_ arranged for a quartette. John offered to do so.

"Can you copy notes?" he was asked.

"I'll try," he said.

He practised copying for a couple of days, and then copied out the four parts. It was a long, tedious piece of work, and he nearly gave it up, but finally completed it. His copy was certainly inaccurate in places, but it was usable. He had no rest till he had learned to know all the varieties of plants included in the Stockholm Flora. When he had done so he dropped the subject. A botanical excursion afforded him no more interest; roamings through the country showed him nothing new. He could not find any plant which he did not know. He also knew the few minerals which were to be found, and had an entomological collection. He could distinguish birds by their notes, their feathers, and their eggs. But all these were only outward phenomena, mere names for things, which soon lost their interest. He wanted to reach what lay behind them. He used to be blamed for his destructiveness, for he broke toys, watches, and everything that fell into his hands. Accidently he heard in the Academy of Sciences a lecture on Chemistry and Physics, accompanied by experiments. The unusual instruments and apparatus fascinated him. The Professor was a magician, but one who explained how the miracles took place. This was a novelty for him, and he wished himself to penetrate these secrets.

He talked with his father about his new hobby, and the latter, who had himself studied electricity in his youth, lent him books from his bookcase--Fock's _Physics_, Girardin's _Chemistry_, Figuier's _Discoveries and Inventions_, and the _Chemical Technology_ of Nyblæus. In the attic was also a galvanic battery constructed on the old Daniellian copper and zinc system. This he got hold of when he was twelve years old, and made so many experiments with sulphuric acid as to ruin handkerchiefs, napkins, and clothes. After he had galvanised everything which seemed a suitable object, he laid this hobby also aside. During the summer he took up privately the study of chemistry with enthusiasm. But he did not wish to carry out the experiments described in the text-book; he wished to make discoveries. He had neither money nor any chemical apparatus, but that did not hinder him. He had a temperament which must carry out its projects in spite of every difficulty, and on the spot. This was still more the case, since he had become his own master, after his mother's death. When he played chess, he directed his plan of campaign against his opponent's king. He went on recklessly, without thinking of defending himself, sometimes gained the victory by sheer recklessness, but frequently also lost the game.

"If I had had one move more, you would have been checkmated," he said on such occasions.

"Yes, but you hadn't, and therefore _you_ are checkmated," was the answer.

When he wished to open a locked drawer, and the key was not at hand, he took the tongs and broke the lock, so that, together with its screws, it came loose from the wood.

"Why did you break the lock?" they asked.

"Because I wished to get at the drawer."

This impetuosity revealed a certain pertinacity, but the latter only lasted while the fit was on him. For example: On one occasion he wished to make an electric machine. In the attic he found a spinning-wheel. From it he broke off whatever he did not need, and wanted to replace the wheel with a round pane of glass. He found a double window, and with a splinter of quartz cut a pane out. But it had to be round and have a whole in the middle. With a key he knocked off one splinter of glass after another, each not larger than a grain of sand, this took him several days, but at last he had made the pane round. But how was he to make a hole in it? He contrived a bow-drill. In order to get the bow, he broke an umbrella, took a piece of whale-bone out, and with that and a violin-string made his bow. Then he rubbed the glass with the splinter of quartz, wetted it with turpentine, and bored. But he saw no result. Then he lost patience and reflection, and tried to finish the job with a piece of cracking-coal. The pane of glass split in two. Then he threw himself, weak, exhausted, hopeless, on the bed. His vexation was intensified by a consciousness of poverty. If he had only had money. He walked up and down before Spolander's shop in the Vesterlanggata and looked at the various sets of chemical apparatus there displayed. He would have gladly ascertained their price, but dared not go in. What would have been the good? His father gave him no money.

When he had recovered from this failure, he wanted to make what no one has made hitherto, and no one can make--a machine to exhibit "perpetual motion." His father had told him that for a long time past a reward had been offered to anyone who should invent this impossibility. This tempted him. He constructed a waterfall with a "Hero's fountain,"[1] which worked a pump; the waterfall was to set the pump in motion, and the pump was to draw up the water again out of the "Hero's fountain." He had again to make a raid on the attic. After he had broken everything possible in order to collect material, he began his work. A coffee-making machine had to serve as a pipe; a soda-water machine as a reservoir; a chest of drawers furnished planks and wood; a bird-cage, iron wire; and so on. The day of testing it came. Then the housekeeper asked him if he would go with his brothers and sisters to their mother's grave. "No," he said, "he had no time." Whether his conscience now smote him, and spoiled his work, or whether he was nervous--anyhow, it was a failure. Then he took the whole apparatus, without trying to put right what was wrong in it, and hurled it against the tiled stove. There lay the work, on which so many useful things had been wasted, and a good while later on the ruin was discovered in the attic. He received a reproof, but that had no longer an effect on him.

In order to have his revenge at home, where he was despised on account of his unfortunate experiments, he made some explosions with detonating gas, and contrived a Leyden jar. For this he took the skin of a dead black cat which he had found on the Observatory Hill and brought home in his pocket-handkerchief. One night, when his eldest brother and he came home from a concert, they could find no matches, and did not wish to wake anyone. John hunted up some sulphuric acid and zinc, produced hydrogen, procured a flame by means of the electricity conductor, and lighted the lamp. This established his reputation as a scientific chemist. He also manufactured matches like those made at Jönkoping. Then he laid chemistry aside for a time.

His father's bookshelves contained a small collection of books which were now at his disposal. Here, besides the above-mentioned works on chemistry and physics, he found books on gardening, an illustrated natural history, Meyer's _Universum_, a German anatomical treatise with plates, an illustrated German history of Napoleon, Wallin's, Franzen's, and Tegner's poems, _Don Quixote_, Frederika Bremer's romances, etc.

Besides books about Indians and the _Thousand and One Nights_, John had hitherto no acquaintance with pure literature. He had looked into some romances and found them tedious, especially as they had no illustrations. But after he had floundered about chemistry and natural science, he one day paid a visit to the bookcase. He looked into the poets; here he felt as though he were floating in the air and did not know where he was. He did not understand it. Then he took Frederika Bremer's _Pictures from Daily Life._ Here he found domesticity and didacticism, and put them back. Then he seized hold of a collection of tales and fairy stories called _Der Jungfrauenturm_. These dealt with unhappy love, and moved him. But most important of all was the circumstance that he felt himself an adult with these adult characters. He understood what they said, and observed that he was no longer a child. He, too, had been unhappy in love, had suffered and fought, but he was kept back in the prison of childhood. And now he first became aware that his soul was in prison. It had long been fledged, but they had clipped its wings and put it in a cage. Now he sought his father and wished to talk with him as a comrade, but his father was reserved and brooded over his sorrow.

In the autumn there came a new throw-back and check for him. He was ripe for the highest class, but was kept back in the school because he was too young. He was infuriated. For the second time he was held fast by the coat when he wished to jump. He felt like an omnibus-horse continually pressing forward and being as constantly held back. This lacerated his nerves, weakened his will-power, and laid the foundation for lack of courage in the future. He never dared to wish anything very keenly, for he had seen how often his wishes were checked. He wanted to be industrious and press on, but industry did not help him; he was too young. No, the school course was too long. It showed the goal in the distance, but set obstacles in the way of the runners. He had reckoned on being a student when he was fifteen, but had to wait till he was eighteen. In his last year, when he saw escape from his prison so near, another year of punishment was imposed upon him by a rule being passed that they were to remain in the highest class for two years.

His childhood and youth had been extremely painful; the whole of life was spoiled for him, and he sought comfort in heaven.

[1] An artificial fountain of water, worked by pressure of air.

VI.

THE SCHOOL OF THE CROSS

Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real "horror vacui."

A twenty-years' marriage had come to an end. A comrade in the battle against the difficulties of life was lost; a wife, at whose side her husband had lived, had gone and left behind an old celibate; the manager of the house had quitted her post. Everything was in confusion. The small, black-dressed creatures, who moved everywhere like dark blots in the rooms and in the garden, kept the feeling of loss fresh. Their father thought they felt forlorn and believed them defenceless. He often came home from his work in the afternoon and sat alone in a lime-tree arbour, which looked towards the street. He had his eldest daughter, a child of seven, on his knee, and the others played at his feet. John often watched the grey-haired man, with his melancholy, handsome features, sitting in the green twilight of the arbour. He could not comfort him, and did not seek his company any more. He saw the softening of the old man's nature, which he would not have thought possible before. He watched how his fixed gaze lingered on his little daughter as though in the childish lines of her face he would reconstruct in imagination the features of the dead. From his window John often watched this picture between the stems of the trees down the long vista of the avenue; it touched him deeply, but he began to fear for his father, who no longer seemed to be himself.

Six months had passed, when his father one autumn evening came home with a stranger. He was an elderly man of unusually cheerful aspect. He joked good-naturedly, was friendly and kindly towards children and servants, and had an irresistible way of making people laugh. He was an accountant, had been a school friend of John's father, and was now discovered to be living in a house close by. The two old men talked of their youthful recollections, which afforded material to fill the painful void John's father felt. His stern, set features relaxed, as he was obliged to laugh at his friend's witty and humorous remarks. After a week he and the whole family were laughing as only those can who have wept for a long time. Their friend was a wit of the first water, and more, could play the violin and guitar, and sing Bellman's[1] songs. A new atmosphere seemed to pervade the house, new views of things sprang up, and the melancholy phantoms of the mourning period were dissipated. The accountant had also known trouble; he had lost his betrothed, and since then remained a bachelor. Life had not been child's play for him, but he had taken things as they came.

Soon after John's brother Gustav returned from Paris in uniform, mixing French words with Swedish in his talk, brisk and cheerful. His father received him with a kiss on the forehead, and was somewhat depressed again by the recollection that this son had not been at his mother's death-bed. But he soon cheered up again and the house grew lively. Gustav entered his father's business, and the latter had someone now with whom he could talk on matters which interested him.

One evening, late in autumn, after supper, when the accountant was present and the company sat together, John's father stood up and signified his wish to say a few words: "My boys and my friend," he began, and then announced his intention of giving his little children a new mother, adding that the time of youthful passion was past for him, and that only thoughts for the children had led to the resolve to make Fräulein--his wife.

She was the housekeeper. He made the announcement in a somewhat authoritative tone, as though he would say, "You have really nothing to do with it; however, I let you know." Then the housekeeper was fetched to receive their congratulations, which were hearty on the part of the accountant, but of a somewhat mixed nature on the part of the three boys. Two of them had rather an uncomfortable conscience on the matter, for they had strongly but innocently admired her; but the third, John, had latterly been on bad terms with her. Which of them was most embarrassed would be difficult to decide.

There ensued a long pause, during which the youths examined themselves, mentally settled their accounts, and thought of the possible consequences of this unexpected event. John must have been the first to realise what the situation demanded, for he went the same evening into the nursery straight to the housekeeper. It seemed dark before his eyes as he repeated the following speech, which he had hastily composed and learned by heart in his father's fashion:

"Since our relations with each other will hence-forward be on a different footing," he said, "allow me to ask you to forget the past and to be friends." This was a prudent utterance, sincerely meant, and had no _arrière pensée_ behind it. It was also a balancing of accounts with his father, and the expression of a wish to live harmoniously together for the future. At noon the next day John's father came up to his room, thanked him for his kindness towards the housekeeper, and, as a token of his pleasure at it, gave him a small present, but one which he had long desired. It was a chemical apparatus. John felt ashamed to take the present, and made little of his kindness. It was a natural result of his father's announcement, and a prudent thing to do, but his father and the housekeeper must have seen in it a good augury for their wedded happiness. They soon discovered their mistake, which was naturally laid at the boy's door.

There is no doubt that the old man married again for his children's sake, but it is also certain that he loved the young woman. And why should he not? It is nobody's affair except that of the persons concerned, but it is a fact of constant occurrence, both that widowers marry again, however galling the bonds of matrimony may have been, and that they also feel they are committing a breach of trust against the dead. Dying wives are generally tormented with the thought that the survivor will marry again.

The two elder brothers took the affair lightly, and accommodated themselves to it. They regarded their father with veneration, and never doubted the rightness of what he did. They had never considered that fatherhood is an accident which may happen to anyone.

But John doubted. He fell into endless disputes with his brothers, and criticised his father for becoming engaged before the expiration of the year of mourning. He conjured up his mother's shade, prophesied misery and ruin, and let himself go to unreasonable lengths.

The brothers' argument was: "We have nothing to do with father's acts." "It was true," retorted John, "that it was not their business to judge; still, it concerned them deeply." "Word-catcher!" they replied, not seeing the distinction.

One evening, when John had come home from school, he saw the house lit up and heard music and talking. He went to his room in order to study. The servant came up and said that his father wished him to come down as there were guests present.

"Who?" asked John.

"The new relations."

John replied that he had no time. Then one of his brothers appeared. He first abused John, then he begged him to come, saying that he ought to for his father's sake, even if it were only for a moment; he could soon go up again.

John said he would consider the matter.

At last he went down; he saw the room full of ladies and gentlemen: three aunts, a new grandmother, an uncle, a grandfather. The aunts were young girls. He made a bow in the centre of the room politely but stiffly.

His father was vexed, but did not wish to show it. He asked John whether he would have a glass of punch. John took it. Then the old man asked ironically whether he had really so much work for the school. John said "Yes," and returned to his room. Here it was cold and dark, and he could not work when the noise of music and dancing ascended to him. Then the cook came up to fetch him to supper. He would not have any. Hungry and angry he paced up and down the room. At intervals he wanted to go down where it was warm, light, and cheerful, and several times took hold of the door-handle. But he turned back again, for he was shy. Timid as he was by nature, this last solitary summer had made him still more uncivilised. So he went hungry to bed, and considered himself the most unfortunate creature in the world.

The next day his father came to his room and told him he had not been honest when he had asked the housekeeper's pardon.

"Pardon!" exclaimed John, "he had nothing to ask pardon for." But now his father wanted to humble him. "Let him try," thought John to himself. For a time no obvious attempts were made in that direction, but John stiffened himself to meet them, when they should come.

One evening his brother was reading by the lamp in the room upstairs. John asked, "What are you reading?" His brother showed him the title on the cover; there stood in old black-letter type on a yellow cover the famous title: _Warning of a Friend of Youth against the most Dangerous Enemy of Youth_.

"Have you read it?" asked Gustav.

John answered "Yes," and drew back. After Gustav had done reading, he put the book in his drawer and went downstairs. John opened the drawer and took out the mysterious work. His eyes glanced over the pages without venturing to fix on any particular spot. His knees trembled, his face became bloodless, his pulses froze. He was, then, condemned to death or lunacy at the age of twenty-five! His spinal marrow and his brain would disappear, his hair would fall out, his hands would tremble--it was horrible! And the cure was--Christ! But Christ could not heal the body, only the soul. The body was condemned to death at five-and-twenty; the only thing left was to save the soul from everlasting damnation.

This was Dr. Kapff's famous pamphlet, which has driven so many youths into a lunatic asylum in order to increase the adherents of the Protestant Jesuits. Such a dangerous work should have been prosecuted, confiscated, and burnt, or, at any rate, counteracted by more intelligent ones. One of the latter sort fell into John's hands later, and he did his best to circulate it, as it was excellent. The title was Uncle Palle's _Advice to Young Sinners,_ and its authorship was attributed to the medical councillor, Dr. Westrand. It was a cheerfully written book, which took the matter lightly, and declared that the dangers of the evil habit had been exaggerated; it also gave practical advice and hygienic directions. But even to the present time Kapff's absurd pamphlet is in vogue, and doctors are frequently visited by sinners, who with beating hearts make their confessions.[2]

For half a year John could find no word of comfort in his great trouble. He was, he thought, condemned to death; the only thing left was to lead a virtuous and religious life, till the fatal hour should strike. He hunted up his mother's pietistic books and read them. He considered himself merely as a criminal and humbled himself. When on the next day he passed through the street, he stepped off the pavement in order to make room for everyone he met. He wished to mortify himself, to suffer for the allotted period, and then to enter into the joy of his Lord.

One night he awoke and saw his brothers sitting by the lamplight. They were discussing the subject. He crept under the counterpane and put his fingers in his ears in order not to hear. But he heard all the same. He wished to spring up to confess, to beg for mercy and help, but dared not, to hear the confirmation of his death sentence. Had he spoken, perhaps he would have obtained help and comfort, but he kept silence. He lay still, with perspiration breaking out, and prayed. Wherever he went he saw the terrible word written in old black letters on a yellow ground, on the walls of the houses, on the carpets of the room. The chest of drawers in which the book lay contained the guillotine. Every time his brother approached the drawer he trembled and ran away. For hours at a time he stood before the looking-glass in order to see if his eyes had sunk in, his hair had fallen out, and his skull was projecting. But he looked ruddy and healthy.

He shut himself up in himself, was quiet and avoided all society. His father imagined that by this behaviour he wished to express his disapproval of the marriage; that he was proud, and wanted to humble him. But he was humbled already, and as he silently yielded to the pressure his father congratulated himself on the success of his strategy.

This irritated the boy, and sometimes he revolted. Now and then there arose a faint hope in him that his body might be saved. He went to the gymnasium, took cold baths, and ate little in the evening.

Through home-life, intercourse with school-fellows, and learning, he had developed a fairly complicated ego, and when he compared himself with the simpler egos of others, he felt superior. But now religion came and wanted to kill this ego. That was not so easy and the battle was fierce. He saw also that no one else denied himself. Why, then, in heaven's name, should he do so?

When his father's wedding-day came, he revolted. He did not go to kiss the bride like his brothers and sisters, but withdrew from the dancing to the toddy-drinkers, and got a little intoxicated. But a punishment was soon to follow on this, and his ego was to be broken.

He became a collegian, but this gave him no joy. It came too late, like a debt that had been long due. He had had the pleasure of it beforehand. No one congratulated him, and he got no collegian's cap. Why? Did they want to humble him or did his father not wish to sec an outward sign of his learning? At last it was suggested that one of his aunts should embroider the college wreath on velvet, which could then be sewn on to an ordinary black cap. She embroidered an oak and laurel branch, but so badly that his fellow-students laughed at him. He was the only collegian for a long time who had not worn the proper cap. The only one--pointed at, and passed over!

Then his breakfast-money, which hitherto had been five öre, was reduced to four. This was an unnecessary cruelty, for they were not poor at home, and a boy ought to have more food. The consequence was that John had no breakfast at all, for he spent his weekly money in tobacco. He had a keen appetite and was always hungry. When there was salt cod-fish for dinner, he ate till his jaws were weary, but left the table hungry. Did he then really get too little to eat? No; there are millions of working-men who have much less, but the stomachs of the upper classes must have become accustomed to stronger and more concentrated nourishment. His whole youth seemed to him in recollection a long fasting period.

Moreover, under the step-mother's rule the scale of diet was reduced, the food was inferior, and he could change his linen only once instead of twice a week. This was a sign that one of the lower classes was guiding the household. The youth was not proud in the sense that he despised the housekeeper's low birth, but the fact that she who had formerly been beneath him tried to oppress him, made him revolt--but now Christianity came in and bade him turn the other cheek.

He kept growing, and had to go about in clothes which he had outgrown. His comrades jeered at his short trousers. His school-books were old editions out of date, and this caused him much annoyance in the school.

"So it is in my book," he would say to the teacher.

"Show me your book."

Then the teacher was scandalised, and told him to get the newest edition, which he never did.

His shirt-sleeves reached only half-way down his arm and could not be buttoned. In the gymnasium, therefore, he always kept his jacket on. One day in his capacity as leader of the troop he was having a special lesson from the teacher of gymnastics.

"Take off your jackets, boys, we want to put our backs into it," said the instructor.

All besides John did so.

"Well, are you ready?"

"No, I am freezing," answered John.

"You will soon be warm," said the instructor; "off with your jacket."

He refused. The instructor came up to him in a friendly way and pulled at his sleeves. He resisted. The instructor looked at him. "What is this?" he said. "I ask you kindly and you won't oblige me. Then go!"

John wished to say something in his defence; he looked at the friendly man, with whom he had always been on good terms, with troubled eyes--but he kept silence and went. What depressed him was poverty imposed as a cruelty, not as a necessity. He complained to his brothers, but they said he should not be proud. Difference of education had opened a gulf between him and them. They belonged to a different class of society, and ranged themselves with the father who was of their class and the one in power.

Another time he was given a jacket which had been altered from a blue frock-coat with bright buttons. His school-fellows laughed at him as though he were pretending to be a cadet, but this was the last idea in his mind, for he always plumed himself on being rather than seeming. This jacket cost him untold suffering.

After this a systematic plan of humbling him was pursued. John was waked up early in the mornings to do domestic tasks before he went to school. He pleaded his school-work as an excuse, but it did not help him at all. "You learn so easily," he was told. This was quite unnecessary, as there was a man-servant, besides several other servants, in the house. He saw that it was merely meant as a chastisement. He hated his oppressors and they hated him.

Then there began a second course of discipline. He had to get up in the morning and drive his father to the town before he went to school, then return with the horse and trap, take out the horse, feed it, and sweep the stable. The same manoeuvre was repeated at noon. So, besides his school-work, he had domestic work and must drive twice daily to and from Riddarholm. In later years he asked himself whether this had been done with forethought; whether his wise father saw that too much activity of brain was bad for him, and that physical work was necessary. Or perhaps it was an economical regulation in order to save some of the man-servant's work time. Physical exertion is certainly useful for boys, and should be commended to the consideration of all parents, but John could not perceive any beneficent intention in the matter, even though it may have existed. The whole affair seemed so dictated by malice and an intention to cause pain, that it was impossible for him to discover any good purpose in it, though it may have existed along with the bad one.

In the summer holidays the driving out degenerated into stable-work. The horse had to be fed at stated hours, and John was obliged to stay at home in order not to miss them. His freedom was at an end. He felt the great change which had taken place in his circumstances, and attributed them to his stepmother. Instead of being a free person who could dispose of his own time and thoughts, he had become a slave, to do service in return for his food. When he saw that his brothers were spared all such work, he became convinced that it was imposed on him out of malice. Straw-cutting, room-sweeping, water-carrying, etc., are excellent exercises, but the motive spoiled everything. If his father had told him it was good for his health, he would have done it gladly, but now he hated it. He feared the dark, for he had been brought up like all children by the maid-servants, and he had to do violence to himself when he went up to the hay-loft every evening. He cursed it every time, but the horse was a good-natured beast with whom he sometimes talked. He was, moreover, fond of animals, and possessed canaries of which he took great care.

He hated his domestic tasks because they were imposed upon him by the former housekeeper, who wished to revenge herself on him and to show him her superiority. He hated her, for the tasks were exacted from him as payment for his studies. He had seen through the reason why he was being prepared for a learned career. They boasted of him and his learning; he was not then being educated out of kindness.

Then he became obstinate, and on one occasion damaged the springs of the trap in driving. When they alighted at Riddarhustorg, his father examined it. He observed that a spring was broken.

"Go to the smith's," he said.

John was silent.

"Did you hear?"

"Yes, I heard."

He had to go to the Malargata, where the smith lived. The latter said it would take three hours to repair the damage. What was to be done? He must take the horse out, lead it home and return. But to lead a horse in harness, while wearing his collegian's cap, through the Drottningsgata, perhaps to meet the boys by the observatory who envied him for his cap, or still worse, the pretty girls on the Norrtullsgata who smiled at him--No! he would do anything rather than that. He then thought of leading the horse through the Rorstrandsgata, but then he would have to pass Karlberg, and here he knew the cadets. He remained in the courtyard, sitting on a log in the sunshine and cursed his lot. He thought of the summer holidays which he had spent in the country, of his friends who were now there, and measured his misfortune by that standard. But had he thought of his brothers who were now shut up for ten hours a day in the hot and gloomy office without hope of a single holiday, his meditations on his lot would have taken a different turn; but he did not do that. Just now he would have willingly changed places with them. They, at any rate, earned their bread, and did not have to stay at home. They had a definite position, but he had not. Why did his parents let him smell at the apple and then drag him away? He longed to get away--no matter where. He was in a false position, and he wished to get out of it, to be either above or below and not to be crushed between the wheels.

Accordingly, one day he asked his father for permission to leave the school. His father was astonished, and asked in a friendly way his reason. He replied that everything was spoiled for him, he was learning nothing, and wished to go out into life in order to work and earn his own living.

"What do you want to be?" asked his father.

He said he did not know, and then he wept.

A few days later his father asked him whether he would like to be a cadet. A cadet! His eyes lighted up, but he did not know what to answer. To be a fine gentleman with a sword! His boldest dreams had never reached so far.

"Think over it," said his father. He thought about it the whole evening. If he accepted, he would now go in uniform to Karlberg, where he had once bathed and been driven away by the cadets. To become an officer--that meant to get power; the girls would smile on him and no one would oppress him. He felt life grow brighter, the sense of oppression vanished from his breast and hope awoke. But it was too much for him. It neither suited him nor his surroundings. He did not wish to mount and to command; he wished only to escape the compulsion to blind obedience, the being watched and oppressed. The stoicism which asks nothing of life awoke in him. He declined the offer, saying it was too much for him.

The mere thought that he could have been what perhaps all boys long to be, was enough for him. He renounced it, descended, and took up his chain again. When, later on, he became an egotistic pietist, he imagined that he had renounced the honour for Christ's sake. That was not true, but, as a matter of fact, there was some asceticism in his sacrifice. He had, moreover, gained clearer insight into his parents' game; they wished to get honour through him. Probably the cadet idea had been suggested by his stepmother.

But there arose more serious occasions of contention. John thought that his younger brothers and sisters were worse dressed than before, and he had heard cries from the nursery.

"Ah!" he said to himself, "she beats them."

Now he kept a sharp look-out. One day he noticed that the servant teased his younger brother as he lay in bed. The little boy was angry and spat in her face. His step-mother wanted to interfere, but John intervened. He had now tasted blood. The matter was postponed till his father's return. After dinner the battle was to begin. John was ready. He felt that he represented his dead mother. Then it began! After a formal report, his father took hold of Pelle, and was about to beat him. "You must not beat him!" cried John in a threatening tone, and rushed towards his father as though he would have seized him by the collar.

"What in heaven's name are you saying?"

"You should not touch him. He is innocent."

"Come in here and let me talk to you; you are certainly mad," said his father.

"Yes, I will come," said the generally timid John, as though he were possessed.

His father hesitated somewhat on hearing his confident tone, and his sound intelligence must have told him that there was something queer about the matter.

"Well, what have you to say to me?" asked his father, more quietly but still distrustfully.

"I say that it is Karin's fault; she did wrong, and if mother had lived----"

That struck home. "What are you talking nonsense about your mother for? You have now a new mother. Prove what you say. What has Karin done?"

That was just the trouble; he could not say it, for he feared by doing so to touch a sore point. He was silent. A thousand thoughts coursed through his mind. How should he express them? He struggled for utterance, and finally came out with a stupid saying which he had read somewhere in a school-book.

"Prove!" he said. "There are clear matters of fact which can neither be proved nor need to be proved." (How stupid! he thought to himself, but it was too late.)

"Now you are simply stupid," said his father.

John was beaten, but he still wished to continue the conflict. A new repartee learned at school occurred to him.

"If I am stupid, that is a natural fault, which no one has the right to reproach me with."

"Shame on you for talking such rubbish! Go out and don't let me see you any more!" And he was put out.

After this scene all punishments took place in John's absence. It was believed he would spring at their throats if he heard any cries, and that was probable enough.

There was yet another method of humbling him--a hateful method which is often employed in families. It consisted of arresting his mental and moral growth by confining him to the society of his younger brothers and sisters. Children are often obliged to play with their brothers and sisters whether they are congenial to them or not. That is tyranny. But to compel an elder child to go about with the younger ones is a crime against nature; it is the mutilation of a young growing tree. John had a younger brother, a delightful child of seven, who trusted everyone and worried no one. John loved him and took good care that he was not ill-treated. But to have intimate intercourse with such a young child, who did not understand the talk and conversation of its elders, was impossible.

But now he was obliged to do so. On the first of May, when John had hoped to go out with his friends, his father said, as a matter of course, "Take Pelle and go with him to the Zoölogical Gardens, but take good care of him." There was no possibility of remonstrance. They went into the open plain, where they met some of his comrades, and John felt the presence of his little brother like a clog on his leg. He took care that no one hurt him, but he wished the little boy was at home. Pelle talked at the top of his voice and pointed with his finger at passers-by; John corrected him, and as he felt his solidarity with him, felt ashamed on his account. Why must he be ashamed because of a fault in etiquette which he had not himself committed? He became stiff, cold, and hard. The little boy wanted to see some sight but John would not go, and refused all his little brother's requests. Then he felt ashamed of his hardness; he cursed his selfishness, he hated and despised himself, but could not get rid of his bad feelings. Pelle understood nothing; he only looked troubled, resigned, patient, and gentle. "You are proud," said John to himself; "you are robbing the child of a pleasure." He felt remorseful, but soon afterwards hard again.

At last the child asked him to buy some gingerbread nuts. John felt himself insulted by the request. Suppose one of his fellow-collegians who sat in the restaurant and drank punch saw him buying gingerbread nuts! But he bought some, and stuffed them in his brother's pocket. Then they went on. Two cadets, John's acquaintances, came towards him. At this moment a little hand reached him a gingerbread nut--"Here's one for you, John!" He pushed the little hand away, and simultaneously saw two blue faithful eyes looking up to him plaintively and questioningly. He felt as if he could weep, take the hurt child in his arms, and ask his forgiveness in order to melt the ice which had crystallised round his heart. He despised himself for having pushed his brother's hand away. They went home.

He wished to shake the recollection of his misdeed from him, but could not. But he laid the blame of it partly at the door of those who had caused this sorry situation. He was too old to stand on the same level with the child, and too young to be able to condescend to it.

His father, who had been rejuvenated by his marriage with a young wife, ventured to oppose John's learned authorities, and wished to humble him in this department also. After supper one evening, they were sitting at table, his father with his three papers, the _Aftonbladet, Allehanda_, and _Post-tidningen_, and John with a school-book. Presently his father stopped reading.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

"Philosophy."

A long pause. The boys always used to call logic "philosophy."

"What is philosophy, really?"

"The science of thought."

"Hm! Must one learn how to think? Let me see the book." He put his pince-nez on and read. Then he said, "Do you think the peasant members of the Riks-Dag"[3] (he hated the peasants, but now used them for the purpose of his argument) "have learned philosophy? I don't, and yet they manage to corner the professors delightfully. You learn such a lot of useless stuff!" Thus he dismissed philosophy.

His father's parsimoniousness also sometimes placed John in very embarrassing situations. Two of his friends offered during the holidays to give him lessons in mathematics. John asked his father's permission.

"All right," he said, "as far as I am concerned."

When the time came for them to receive an honorarium, his father was of the opinion that they were so rich that one could not give them money.

"But one might make them a present," said John.

"I won't give anything," was the answer.

John felt ashamed for a whole year and realised for the first time the unpleasantness of a debt. His two friends gave at first gentle and then broad hints. He did not avoid them, but crawled after them in order to show his gratitude. He felt that they possessed a part of his soul and body; that he was their slave and could not be free. Sometimes he made them promises, because he imagined he could fulfil them, but they could not be fulfilled, and the burden of the debt was increased by their being broken. It was a time of infinite torment, probably more bitter at the time than it seemed afterwards.

Another step in arresting his progress was the postponement of his Confirmation. He learned theology at school, and could read the Gospels in Greek, but was not considered mature enough for Confirmation.

He felt the grinding-down process at home all the more because his position in the school was that of a free man. As a collegian he had acquired certain rights. He was not made to stand up in class, and went out when he wished without asking permission; he remained sitting when the teachers asked questions, and disputed with them. He was the youngest in the class but sat among the oldest and tallest. The teacher now played the part of a lecturer rather than of a mere hearer of lessons. The former ogre from the Clara School had become an elderly man who expounded Cicero's _De Senectute_ and _De Amicitia_ without troubling himself much about the commentaries. In reading Virgil, he dwelt on the meeting of Æneas and Dido, enlarged on the topic of love, lost the thread of his discourse, and became melancholy. (The boys found out that about this time he had been wooing an old spinster.) He no longer assumed a lofty tone, and was magnanimous enough to admit a mistake he had made (he was weak in Latin) and to acknowledge that he was not an authority in that subject. From this he drew the moral that no one should come to school without preparation, however clever he might be. This produced a great effect upon the boys. He won more credit as a man than he lost as a teacher.

John, being well up in the natural sciences, was the only one out of his class elected to be a member of the "Society of Friends of Science." He was now thrown with school-fellows in the highest class, who the next year would become students. He had to give a lecture, and talked about it at home. He wrote an essay on the air, and read it to the members. After the lecture, the members went into a restaurant in the Haymarket and drank punch. John was modest before the big fellows, but felt quite at his ease. It was the first time he had been lifted out of the companionship of those of his own age. Others related improper anecdotes; he shyly related a harmless one. Later on, some of the members visited him and took away some of his best plants and chemical apparatus.

By an accident John found a new friend in the school. When he was top of the first class the Principal came in one day with a tall fellow in a frock-coat, with a beard, and wearing a pince-nez.

"Here, John!" he said, "take charge of this youth; he is freshly come from the country, and show him round." The wearer of the pince-nez looked down disdainfully at the boy in the jacket. They sat next each other; John took the book and whispered to him; the other, however, knew nothing, but talked about cards and cafés.

One day John played with his friend's pince-nez and broke the spring. His friend was vexed. John promised to have it repaired, and took the pince-nez home. It weighed upon his mind, for he did not know whence he should get the money in order to have it mended. Then he determined to mend it himself. He took out the screws, bored holes in an old clock-spring, but did not succeed. His friend jogged his memory; John was in despair. His father would never pay for it. His friend said, "I will have it repaired, and you must pay." The repair cost fifty öre. On Monday John handed over twelve coppers, and promised to pay the rest the following Monday. His friend smelt a rat. "That is your breakfast-money," he said; "do you get only twelve coppers a week?" John blushed and begged him to take the money. The next Monday he handed over the remainder. His friend resisted, but he pressed it on him.

The two continued together as school-fellows till they went to the university at Upsala and afterwards. John's friend had a cheerful temperament and took the world as it came. He did not argue much with John, but always made him laugh. In contrast to his dreary home, John found the school a cheerful refuge from domestic tyranny. But this caused him to lead a double life, which was bound to produce moral dislocation.

[1] Famous Swedish poet.

[2] In a later work, _Legends_ (1898), Strindberg says: "When I wrote that youthful confession (_The Son of a Servant_) the liberal tendency of that period seems to have induced me to use too bright colours, with the pardonable object of freeing from fear young men who have fallen into precocious sin."

[3] The Swedish Parliament.

VII

FIRST LOVE

If the character of a man is the stereotyped rôle which he plays in the comedy of social life, John at this time had no character, _i.e._, he was quite sincere. He sought, but found nothing, and could not remain in any fixed groove. His coarse nature, which flung off all fetters that were imposed upon it, could not adapt itself; and his brain, which was a revolutionary's from birth, could not work automatically. He was a mirror which threw back all the rays which struck it, a compendium of various experiences, of changing impressions, and full of contradictory elements. He possessed a will which worked by fits and starts and with fanatical energy; but he really did not will anything deeply; he was a fatalist, and believed in destiny; he was sanguine, and hoped all things. Hard as ice at home, he was sometimes sensitive to the point of sentimentality; he would give his last shirt to a poor man, and could weep at the sight of injustice. He was a pietist, and as sincere an one as is possible for anyone who tries to adopt an old-world point of view. His home-life, where everything threatened his intellectual and personal liberty, compelled him to be this. In the school he was a cheerful worldling, not at all sentimental, and easy to get on with. Here he felt he was being educated for society and possessed rights. At home he was like an edible vegetable, cultivated for the use of the family, and had no rights.

He was also a pietist from spiritual pride, as all pietists are. Beskow, the repentant lieutenant, had come home from his pilgrimage to the grave of Christ. His _Journal_ was read at home by John's step-mother, who inclined to pietism. Beskow made pietism gentlemanly, and brought it into fashion, and a considerable portion of the lower classes followed this fashion. Pietism was then what spiritualism is now--a presumably higher knowledge of hidden things. It was therefore eagerly taken up by all women and uncultivated people, and finally found acceptance at Court.

Did all this spring from some universal spiritual need? Was the period so hopelessly reactionary that one had to be a pessimist? No! The king led a jovial life in Ulriksdal, and gave society a bright and liberal tone. Strong agitations were going on in the political world, especially regarding representation in parliament. The Dano-German war aroused attention to what was going on beyond our boundaries; the volunteer movement awoke town and country with drums and music; the new Opposition papers, _Dagens Nyheter_ and the powerful _Sondags-Nisse_, were vent-holes for the confined steam which must find an outlet; railways were constructed everywhere, and brought remote and sparsely inhabited places into connection with the great motor nerve-centres. It was no melancholy age of decadence, but, on the contrary, a youthful season of hope and awakening. Whence then, came this strong breath of pietism? Perhaps it was a short-cut for those who were destitute of culture, by which they saved themselves from the pressure of knowledge from above; there was a certain democratic element in it, since all high and low had thereby access to a certain kind of wisdom which abolished class-distinctions. Now, when the privileges of birth were nearing their end, the privileges of culture asserted themselves, and were felt to be oppressive. But it was believed that they could be nullified at a stroke through pietism.

John became a pietist from many motives. Bankrupt on earth, since he was doomed to die at twenty-five without spinal marrow or a nose, he made heaven the object of his search. Melancholy by nature, but full of activity, he loved what was melancholy. Tired of text-books, which contained no living water because they did not come into contact with life, he found more nourishment in a religion which did so at every turn. Besides this, there was the personal motive, that his stepmother, aware of his superiority in culture, wished to climb above him on the Jacob's ladder of religion. She conversed with his eldest brother on the highest subjects, and when John was near, he was obliged to hear how they despised his worldly wisdom. This irritated him, and he determined to catch up with them in religion. Moreover, his mother had left a written message behind in which she warned him against intellectual pride. The end was that he went regularly every Sunday to church, and the house was flooded with pietistic writings.

His step-mother and eldest brother used to go over afterwards in memory the sermons they had heard in church. One Sunday after service John wrote out from memory the whole sermon which they admired. He could not deny himself the pleasure of presenting it to his step-mother. But his present was not received with equal pleasure; it was a blow for her. However, she did not yield a hair-breadth. "God's word should be written in the heart and not on paper," she said. It was not a bad retort, but John believed he detected pride in it. She considered herself further on in the way of holiness than he, and as already a child of God.

He began to race with her, and frequented the pietist meetings. But his attendance was frowned upon, for he had not yet been confirmed, and was not therefore ripe for heaven. John continued religious discussions with his elder brother; he maintained that Christ had declared that even children belonged to the kingdom of heaven. The subject was hotly contested. John cited Norbeck's _Theology_, but that was rejected without being looked at. He also quoted Krummacher, Thomas à Kempis, and all the pietists on his side. But it was no use. "It must be so," was the reply. "How?" he asked. "As I have it, and as you cannot get it." "As I!" There we have the formula of the pietists--self-righteousness.

One day John said that all men were God's children. "Impossible!" was the reply; "then there would be no difficulty in being saved. Are all going to be saved?"

"Certainly!" he replied. "God is love and wishes no one's destruction."

"If all are going to be saved, what is the use of chastising oneself?"

"Yes, that is just what I question."

"You are then a sceptic, a hypocrite?"

"Quite possibly they all are."

John now wished to take heaven by storm, to become a child of God, and perhaps by doing so defeat his rivals. His step-mother was not consistent. She went to the theatre and was fond of dancing. One Saturday evening in summer it was announced that the whole family would make an excursion into the country the next day--Sunday. All were expected to go. John considered it a sin, did not want to go, and wished to use the opportunity and seek in solitude the Saviour whom he had not yet found. According to what he had been told, conversion should come like a flash of lightning, and be accompanied by the conviction that one was a child of God, and then one had peace.

While his father was reading his paper in the evening, John begged permission to remain at home the next day.

"Why?" his father asked in a friendly tone.

John was silent. He felt ashamed to say.

"If your religious conviction forbids you to go, obey your conscience."

His step-mother was defeated. She had to desecrate the Sabbath, not he.

The others went. John went to the Bethlehem Church to hear Rosenius. It was a weird, gloomy place, and the men in the congregation looked as if they had reached the fatal twenty-fifth year, and lost their spinal marrow. They had leaden-grey faces and sunken eyes. Was it possible that Dr. Kapff had frightened them all into religion? It seemed strange.

Rosenius looked like peace itself, and beamed with heavenly joy. He confessed that he had been an old sinner, but Christ had cleansed him, and now he was happy. He looked happy. Is it possible that there is such a thing as a happy man? Why, then, are not all pietists?

In the afternoon John read à Kempis and Krummacher. Then he went out to the Haga Park and prayed the whole length of the Norrtullsgata that Jesus would seek him. In the Haga Park there sat little groups of families picnicking, with the children playing about. Is it possible that all these must go to hell? he thought. Yes, certainly. "Nonsense!" answered his intelligence. But it is so. A carriage full of excursionists passed by: and these are all condemned already! But they seemed to be amusing themselves, at any rate. The cheerfulness of other people made him still more depressed, and he felt a terrible loneliness in the midst of the crowd. Wearied with his thoughts, he went home as depressed as a poet who has looked for a thought without being able to find one. He laid down on his bed and wished he was dead.

In the evening his brothers and sisters came home joyful and noisy, and asked him if he had had a good time.

"Yes," he said. "And you?"

They gave him details of the excursion, and each time he envied them he felt a stab in his heart. His step-mother did not look at him, for she had broken the Sabbath. That was his comfort. He must by this time soon have detected his self-deceit and thrown it off, but a new powerful element entered into his life, which stirred up his asceticism into fanaticism, till it exploded and disappeared.

His life during these years was not so uniformly monotonous as it appeared in retrospect later on, when there were enough dark points to give a grey colouring to the whole. His boyhood, generally speaking, was darkened by his being treated as a child when arrived at puberty, the uninteresting character of his school-work, his expectation of death at twenty-five, the uncultivated minds of those around him, and the impossibility of being understood.

His step-mother had brought three young girls, her sisters, into the house. They soon made friends with the step-sons, and they all took walks, played games, and made sledging excursions together. The girls tried to bring about a reconciliation between John and his step-mother. They acknowledged their sister's faults before him, and this pacified him so that he laid aside his hatred. The grandmother also played the part of a mediator, and finally revealed herself as a decided friend of John's. But a fatal chance robbed him of this friend also. His father's sister had not welcomed the new marriage, and, as a consequence, had broken off communications with her brother. This vexed the old man very much. All intercourse ceased between the families. It was, of course, pride on his sister's part. But one day John met her daughter, an elegantly-dressed girl, older than himself, on the street. She was eager to hear something of the new marriage, and walked with John along the Drottningsgata.

When he got home, his grandmother rebuked him sharply for not having saluted her when she passed, but, of course, she added, he had been in too grand company to take notice of an old woman! He protested his innocence, but in vain. Since he had only a few friends, the loss of her friendship was painful to him.

One summer he spent with his step-mother at one of her relatives', a farmer in Östergötland. Here he was treated like a gentleman, and lived on friendly terms with his step-mother. But it did not last long, and soon the flames of strife were stirred up again between them. And thus it went on, up and down, and to and fro.

About this time, at the age of fifteen, he first fell in love, if it really was love, and not rather friendship. Can friendship commence and continue between members of opposite sexes? Only apparently, for the sexes are born enemies and remain always opposed to each other. Positive and negative streams of electricity are mutually hostile, but seek their complement in each other. Friendship can exist only between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view. Therefore a friendship between the sexes can arise only in marriage where the interests are the same. This, however, can be only so long as the wife devotes her whole interest to the family for which the husband works. As soon as she gives herself to some object outside the family, the agreement is broken, for man and wife then have separate interests, and then there is an end to friendship. Therefore purely spiritual marriages are impossible, for they lead to the slavery of the man, and consequently to the speedy dissolution of the marriage.

The fifteen-year old boy fell in love with a woman of thirty. He could truthfully assert that his love was entirely ideal. How came he to love her? As generally is the case, from many motives, not from one only.

She was the landlord's daughter, and had, as such, a superior position; the house was well-appointed and always open for visitors. She was cultivated, admired, managed the house, and spoke familiarly to her mother; she could play the hostess and lead the conversation; she was always surrounded by men who courted her. She was also emancipated without being a man-hater; she smoked and drank, but was not without taste. She was engaged to a man whom her father hated and did not wish to have for his son-in-law. Her _fiancé_ stayed abroad and wrote seldom. Among the visitors to this hotel were a district judge, a man of letters, students, clerics, and townsmen who all hovered about her. John's father admired her, his step-mother feared her, his brothers courted her. John kept in the background and observed her. It was a long time before she discovered him. One evening, after she had set all the hearts around her aflame, she came exhausted into the room in which John sat.

"Heavens! how tired I am!" she said to herself, and threw herself on a sofa.

John made a movement and she saw him. He had to say something.

"Are you so unhappy, although you are always laughing? You are certainly not as unhappy as I am."

She looked at the boy; they began a conversation and became friends. He felt lifted up. From that time forward she preferred his conversation to that of others. He felt embarrassed when she left a circle of grown men to sit down near him. He questioned her regarding her spiritual condition, and made remarks on it which showed that he had observed keenly and reflected much. He became her conscience. Once, when she had jested too freely, she came to the youth to be punished. That was a kind of flagellation as pleasant as a caress. At last her admirers began to tease her about him.

"Can you imagine it," she said one evening, "they declare I am in love with you!"

"They always say that of two persons of opposite sexes who are friends."

"Do you believe there can be a friendship between man and woman?"

"Yes, I am sure of it," he answered.

"Thanks," she said, and reached him her hand. "How could I, who am twice as old as you, who am sick and ugly, be in love with you? Besides, I am engaged."

After this she assumed an air of superiority and became motherly. This made a deep impression on him; and when later on she was rallied on account of her liking for him, she felt herself almost embarrassed, banished all other feelings except that of motherliness, and began to labour for his conversion, for she also was a pietist.

They both attended a French conversation class, and had long walks home together, during which they spoke French. It was easier to speak of delicate matters in a foreign tongue. He also wrote French essays, which she corrected. His father's admiration for the old maid lessened, and his step-mother did not like this French conversation, which she did not understand. His elder brother's prerogative of talking French was also neutralised thereby. This vexed his father, so that one day he said to John, that it was impolite to speak a foreign language before those who did not understand it, and that he could not understand that Fräulein X., who was otherwise so cultivated, could commit such a _bêtise_. But, he added, cultivation of the heart was not gained by book-learning.

They no longer endured her presence in the house, and she was "persecuted." At last her family left the house altogether, so that now there was little intercourse with them. The day after their removal, John felt lacerated. He could not live without her daily companionship, without this support which had lifted him out of the society of those of his own age to that of his elders. To make himself ridiculous by seeking her as a lover--that he could not do. The only thing left was to write to her. They now opened a correspondence, which lasted for a year. His step-mother's sister, who idolised the clever, bright spinster, conveyed the letters secretly. They wrote in French, so that their letters might remain unintelligible if discovered; besides, they could express themselves more freely in this medium. Their letters treated of all kinds of subjects. They wrote about Christ, the battle against sin, about life, death and love, friendship and scepticism. Although she was a pietist, she was familiar with free-thinkers, and suffered from doubts on all kinds of subjects. John was alternately her stern preceptor and her reprimanded son. One or two translations of John's French essays will give some idea of the chaotic state of the minds of both.

_Is Man's Life a Life of Sorrow_? 1864

"Man's life is a battle from beginning to end. We are all born into this wretched life under conditions which are full of trouble and grief. Childhood to begin with has its little cares and disagreeables; youth has its great temptations, on the victorious resistance to which the whole subsequent life depends; mature life has anxieties about the means of existence and the fulfilment of duties; finally, old age has its thorns in the flesh, and its frailty. What are all enjoyments and all joys, which are regarded by so many men as the highest good in life? Beautiful illusions! Life is a ceaseless struggle with failures and misfortunes, a struggle which ends only in death.

"But we will consider the matter from another side. Is there no reason to be joyful and contented? I have a home and parents who care for my future; I live in fairly favourable circumstances, and have good health--ought I not then to be contented and happy? Yes, and yet I am not. Look at the poor labourer, who, when his day's work is done, returns to his simple cottage where poverty reigns; he is happy and even joyful. He would be made glad by a trifle which I despise. I envy thee, happy man, who hast true joy!

"But I am melancholy. Why? 'You are discontented,' you answer. No, certainly not; I am quite contented with my lot and ask for nothing. Well, what is it then? Ah! now I know; I am not contented with myself and my heart, which is full of anger and malice. Away from me, evil thoughts! I will, with God's help, be happy and contented. For one is happy only when one is at peace with oneself, one's heart, and one's conscience."

John's friend did not approve of his self-contentment, but asserted in contradiction to the last sentence, that one ought to remain discontented with life. She wrote: "We are not happy till our consciousness tells us that we have sought and found the only Good Physician, who can heal the wounds of all hearts, and when we are ready to follow His advice with sincerity."

This assertion, together with long conversations, caused the rapid conversion of the youth to the true faith, _i.e._, that of his friend, and gave occasion for the following effusion in which he expressed his idea of faith and works:

_No Happiness without Virtue; no Virtue without Religion_. 1864

"What is happiness? Most worldlings regard the possession of great wealth and worldly goods, happiness, because they afford them the means of satisfying their sinful desires and passions. Others who are not so exacting find happiness in a mere sense of well-being, in health, and domestic felicity. Others, again, who do not expect worldly happiness at all, and who are poor, and enjoy but scanty food earned by hard work, are yet contented with their lot, and even happy. They can even think 'How happy I am in comparison with the rich, who are never contented.' Meanwhile, _are_ they really happy, because they are contented? No, there is no happiness without virtue. No one is happy except the man who leads a really virtuous life. Well, but there are many really virtuous men. There are men who have never fallen into gross sin, who are modest and retiring, who injure no one, who are placable, who fulfil their duties conscientiously, and who are even religious. They go to church every Sunday, they honour God and His Holy Word, but yet they have not been born again of the Holy Spirit. Now, are they happy, since they are virtuous? There is no virtue without _real religion_. These virtuous worldlings are, as a matter of fact, much worse than the most wicked men. They slumber in the security of mere morality. They think themselves better than other men, and righteous in the eyes of the Most Holy. These Pharisees, full of self-love, think to win everlasting salvation by their good deeds. But what are our good deeds before a Holy God? Sin, and nothing but sin. These self-righteous men are the hardest of all to convert, because they think they need no Mediator, since they wish to win heaven by their deeds. An 'old sinner,' on the other hand, once he is awakened, can realise his sinfulness and feel his need of a Saviour. True happiness consists in having 'Peace in the heart with God through Jesus Christ.' One can find no peace till one confesses that one is the chief of sinners, and flies to the Saviour. How foolish of us to push such happiness away! We all know where it is to be found, but instead of seeking it, seek unhappiness, under the pretence of seeking happiness."

Under this his friend wrote: "Very well written." They were her own thoughts, or, at any rate, her own words which she had read.

But sometimes doubt worried him, and he examined himself carefully. He wrote as follows on a subject which he had himself chosen:

_Egotism is the Mainspring of all our Actions_

"People commonly say, 'So-and-so is so kind and benevolent towards his neighbours; he is virtuous, and all that he does springs from compassion and love of the true and right.' Very well, open your heart and examine it. You meet a beggar in the street; the first thought that occurs to you is certainly as follows: 'How unfortunate this man is; I will do a good deed and help him.' You pity him and give him a coin. But haven't you some thought of this kind?--'Oh, how beautiful it is to be benevolent and compassionate; it does one's heart good to give alms to a poor man.' What is the real motive of your action? Is it really love or compassion? Then your dear 'ego' gets up and condemns you. You did it for your own sake, in order to set at rest _your_ heart and to placate _your_ conscience.

"It was for some time my intention to be a preacher, certainly a good intention. But what was my motive? Was it to serve my Redeemer, and to work for Him, or only out of love to Him? No, I was cowardly, and I wished to escape my burden and lighten my cross, and avoid the great temptations which met me everywhere. I feared men--that was the motive. The times alter. I saw that I could not lead a life in Christ in the society of companions to whose godless speeches I must daily listen, and so I chose another path in life where I could be independent, or at any rate----"

Here the essay broke off, uncorrected. Other essays deal with the Creator, and seem to have been influenced by Rousseau, extracts from whose works were contained in Staaff's _French Reading Book_. They mention, for example, flocks and nightingales, which the writer had never seen or heard.

He and his friend also had long discussions regarding their relation to one another. Was it love or friendship? But she loved another man, of whom she scarcely ever spoke. John noticed nothing in her but her eyes, which were deep and expressive. He danced with her once, but never again. The tie between them was certainly only friendship, and her soul and body were virile enough to permit of a friendship existing and continuing. A spiritual marriage can take place only between those who are more or less sexless, and there is always something abnormal about it. The best marriages, _i.e._, those which fulfil their real object the best, are precisely those which are "_mal assortis_."

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love. Diverse intelligences and characters can produce the best endowed children, who inherit the qualities of both.

* * * * *

In the meantime his Confirmation approached. It had been postponed as long as possible, in order to keep him back among the children. But the Confirmation itself was to be used as a means of humiliating him. His father, at the same time that he announced his decision that it should take place, expressed the hope that the preparation for it might melt the ice round John's heart.

So John found himself again among lower-class children. He felt sympathy with them, but did not love them, nor could nor would be on intimate terms with them. His education had alienated him from them, as it had alienated him from his family.

He was again a school-boy, had to learn by heart, stand up when questioned, and be scolded along with the rest. The assistant pastor, who taught them, was a pietist. He looked as though he had an infectious disease or had read Dr. Kapff. He was severe, merciless, emotionless, without a word of grace or comfort. Choleric, irritable, nervous, this young rustic was petted by the ladies.

He made an impression by dint of perpetual repetition. He preached threateningly, cursed the theatre and every kind of amusement. John and his friend resolved to alter their lives, and not to dance, go to the theatre, or joke any more. He now infused a strong dash of pietism into his essays, and avoided his companions in order not to hear their frivolous stories.

"Why, you are a pietist!" one of his school-fellows said one day to him.

"Yes, I am," he answered. He would not deny his Redeemer. The school grew intolerable to him. He suffered martyrdom there, and feared the enticements of the world, of which he was already in some degree conscious. He considered himself already a man, wished to go into the world and work, earn his own living and marry. Among his other dreams he formed a strange resolve, which was, however, not without its reasons; he resolved to find a branch of work which was easy to learn, would soon provide him with a maintenance, and give him a place where he would not be the last, nor need he stand especially high--a certain subordinate place which would let him combine an active life in the open air with adequate pecuniary profit. The opportunity for plenty of exercise in the open air was perhaps the principal reason why he wished to be a subaltern in a cavalry regiment, in order to escape the fatal twenty-fifth year, the terrors of which the pastor had described. The prospect of wearing a uniform and riding a horse may also have had something to do with it. He had already renounced the cadet uniform, but man is a strange creature.

His friend strongly dissuaded him from taking such a step; she described soldiers as the worst kind of men in existence. He stood firm, however, and said that his faith in Christ would preserve him from all moral contagion, yes! he would preach Christ to the soldiers and purify them all. Then he went to his father. The latter regarded the whole matter as a freak of imagination, and exhorted him to be ready for his approaching final examination, which would open the whole world to him.

A son had been born to his step-mother. John instinctively hated him as a rival to whom his younger brothers and sisters would have to yield. But the influence of his friend and of pietism was so strong over him, that by way of mortifying himself he tried to love the newcomer. He carried him on his arm and rocked him.

"Nobody saw you do it," said his step-mother later on, when he adduced this as a proof of his goodwill. Exactly so; he did it in secret, as he did not wish to gain credit for it, or perhaps he was ashamed of it. He had made the sacrifice sincerely; when it became disagreeable, he gave it up.

The Confirmation took place, after countless exhortations in the dimly-lit chancel, and a long series of discourses on the Passion of Christ and self-mortification, so that they were wrought up to a most exalted mood. After the catechising, he scolded his friend whom he had seen laughing.

On the day on which they were to receive the Holy Communion, the senior pastor gave a discourse. It was the well-meaning counsel of a shrewd old man to the young; it was cheering and comforting, and did not contain threats or denunciations of past sins. Sometimes during the sermon John felt the words fall like balm on his wounded heart, and was convinced that the old man was right. But in the act of Communion, he did not get the spiritual impression he had hoped for. The organ played and the choir sang, "O Lamb of God, have mercy upon us!" The boys and girls wept and half-fainted as though they were witnessing an execution. But John had become too familiar with sacred things in the parish-clerk's school. The matter seemed to him driven to the verge of absurdity. His faith was ripe for falling. And it fell.

* * * * *

He now wore a high hat, and succeeded to his elder brother's cast-off clothes. Now his friend with the pince-nez took him in hand. He had not deserted him during his pietistic period. He treated the matter lightly and good-humouredly, with a certain admiration of John's asceticism and firm faith. But now he intervened. He took him for a mid-day walk, pointed out by name the actors they saw at the corner of the Regeringsgata, and the officers who were reviewing the troops. John was still shy, and had no self-reliance.

It was about twelve o'clock, the time for going to the gymnasium. John's friend said, "Come along! we will have lunch in the 'Three Cups.'"

"No," said John, "we ought to go to the Greek class."

"Ah! we will dispense with Greek to-day."

It would be the first time he cut it, thought John, and he might take a little scolding for once. "But I have no money," he said.

"That does not matter; you are my guest;" his friend seemed hurt. They entered the restaurant. An appetising odour of beefsteaks greeted them; the waiter received their coats and hung up their hats.

"Bring the bill of fare, waiter," said his friend in a confident tone, for he was accustomed to take his meals here. "Will you have beefsteak?"

"Yes," answered John; he had tasted beefsteak only twice in his life.

His friend ordered butter, cheese, brandy and beer, and without asking, filled John's glass with brandy.

"But I don't know whether I ought to," said John.

"Have you never drunk it before?"

"No."

"Oh, well, go ahead! it tastes good."

He drank. Ah! his body glowed, his eyes watered, and the room swam in a light mist; but he felt an access of strength, his thoughts worked freely, new ideas rose in his mind, and the gloomy past seemed brighter. Then came the juicy beefsteak. That was something like eating! His friend ate bread, butter, and cheese with it. John said, "What will the restaurant-keeper say?"

His friend laughed, as if he were an elderly uncle.

"Eat away; the bill will be just the same."

"But butter and cheese with beef-steak! That is too luxurious! But it tastes good all the same." John felt as though he had never eaten before. Then he drank beer. "Is each of us to drink half a bottle?" he asked his friend. "You are really mad!"

But at any rate it was a meal,--and not such an empty enjoyment either, as anæmic ascetics assert. No, it is a real enjoyment to feel strong blood flowing into one's half-empty veins, strengthening the nerves for the battle of life. It is an enjoyment to feel vanished virile strength return, and the relaxed sinews of almost perished will-power braced up again. Hope awoke, and the mist in the room became a rosy cloud, while his friend depicted for him the future as it is imagined by youthful friendship. These youthful illusions about life, from whence do they come? From superabundance of energy, people say. But ordinary intelligence, which has seen so many childish hopes blighted, ought to be able to infer the absurdity of expecting a realisation of the dreams of youth.

John had not learned to expect from life anything more than freedom from tyranny and the means of existence. That would be enough for him. He was no Aladdin and did not believe in luck. He had plenty of power, but did not know it. His friend had to discover him to himself.

"You should come and amuse yourself with us," he said, "and not sit in a corner at home."

"Yes, but that costs money, and I don't get any."

"Give lessons."

"Lessons! What? Do you think I could give lessons?"

"You know a lot. You would not find it difficult to get pupils."

He knew a lot! That was a recognition or a piece of flattery, as the pietists call it, and it fell on fertile soil.

"Yes, but I have no acquaintances or connections."

"Tell the headmaster! I did the same!"

John hardly dared to believe that he could get the chance of earning money. But he felt strange when he heard that others could, and compared himself with them. _They_ certainly had luck. His friend urged him on, and soon he obtained a post as teacher in a girls' school.

Now his self-esteem awoke. The servants at home called him Mr. John, and the teachers in the school addressed the class as "Gentlemen." At the same time he altered his course of study at school. He had for a long time, but in vain, asked his father to let him give up Greek. He did it now on his own responsibility, and his father first heard of it at the examination. In its place he substituted mathematics, after he had learned that a Latin scholar had the right to dispense with a testamur in that subject. Moreover, he neglected Latin, intending to revise it all a month before the examination. During the lessons he read French, German, and English novels. The questions were asked each pupil in turn, and he sat with his book in his hand till the questions came and he could be ready for them. Modern languages and natural science were now his special subjects.

Teaching his juniors was a new and dangerous retrograde movement for him, but he was paid for it. Naturally, the boys who required extra lessons were those with a certain dislike of learning. It was hard work for his active brain to accommodate himself to them. They were impossible pupils, and did not know how to attend. He thought they were obstinate. The truth was they lacked the will-power to become attentive. Such boys are wrongly regarded as stupid. They are, on the contrary, wide awake. Their thoughts are concerned with realities, and they seem already to have seen through the absurdity of the subjects they are taught. Many of them became useful citizens when they grew up, and many more would have become so if they had not been compelled by their parents to do violence to their natures and to continue their studies.

Now ensued a new conflict with his lady friend against his altered demeanour. She warned him against his other friend who, she said, flattered him, and against young girls of whom he spoke enthusiastically. She was jealous. She reminded him of Christ, but John was distracted by other subjects, and withdrew from her society.

He now led an active and enjoyable life. He took part in evening concerts, sang in a quartette, drank punch, and flirted moderately with waitresses. All this time religion was in abeyance, and only a weak echo of piety and asceticism remained. He prayed out of habit, but without hoping for an answer, since he had so long sought the divine friendship which people say is so easily found, if one but knocks lightly at the door of grace. Truth to say, he was not very anxious to be taken at his word. If the Crucified had opened the door and bidden him enter, he would not have rejoiced. His flesh was too young and sound to wish to be mortified.

VIII

THE SPRING THAW

The school educates, not the family. The family is too narrow; its aims are too petty, selfish, and anti-social. In the case of a second marriage, such abnormal relations are set up, that the only justification of the family comes to an end. The children of a deceased mother should simply be taken away, if the father marries again. This would best conduce to the interests of all parties, not least to those of the father, who perhaps is the one who suffers most in a second marriage.

In the family there is only one (or two) ruling wills without appeal; therefore justice is impossible. In the school, on the other hand, there is a continual watchful jury, which rigorously judges boys as well as teachers. The boys become more moral; brutality is tamed; social instincts awaken; they begin to see that individual interests must be generally furthered by means of compromises. There cannot be tyranny, for there usually are enough to form parties and to revolt. A teacher who is badly treated by a pupil can soonest obtain justice by appealing to the other pupils. Moreover, about this time there was much to arouse their sympathy in great universal interests.

During the Danish-German War of 1864 a fund was raised in the school for the purchase of war-telegrams. These were fastened on the blackboard and read with great interest by both teachers and pupils. They gave rise to familiar talks and reflections on the part of the teachers regarding the origin and cause of the war. They were naturally all one-sidedly Scandinavian, and the question was judged from the point of view of the students' union. Seeds of hatred towards Russia and Germany for some future war were sown, and at the burial of the popular teacher of gymnastics, Lieutenant Betzholtz, this reached a fanatical pitch.

The year of the Reform Bill,[1] 1865, approached. The teacher of history, a man of kindliness and fine feeling, and an aristocrat of high birth, tried to interest the pupils in the subject. The class had divided into opposite parties, and the son of a speaker in the Upper House, a Count S., universally popular, was the chief of the opposition against reform. He was sprung from an old German family of knightly descent; was poor, and lived on familiar terms with his classmates, but had a keen consciousness of his high birth. Battles more in sport than in earnest took place in the class, and tables and forms were thrown about indiscriminately.

The Reform Bill passed. Count S. remained away from the class. The history teacher spoke with emotion of the sacrifice which the nobility had laid upon the altar of the fatherland by renouncing their privileges. The good man did not know yet that privileges are not rights, but advantages which have been seized and which can be recovered like other property, even by illegal means.

The teacher bade the class to be modest over their victory and not to insult the defeated party. The young count on his return to the class was received with elaborate courtesy, but his feelings so overcame him at the sight of the involuntary elevation of so many pupils of humble birth, that he burst into tears and had to leave the class again.

John understood nothing of politics. As a topic of general interest, they were naturally banished from family discussions, where only topics of private interest were regarded, and that in a very one-sided way. Sons were so brought up that they might remain sons their whole lives long, without any regard to the fact that some day they might be fathers. But John already possessed the lower-class instinct which told him, with regard to the Reform Bill, that now an injustice had been done away with, and that the higher scale had been lowered, in order that it might be easier for the lower one to rise to the same level. He was, as might be expected, a liberal, but since the king was a liberal, he was also a royalist.

Parallel with the strong reactionary stream of pietism ran that of the new rationalism, but in the opposite direction. Christianity, which, at the close of the preceding century, had been declared to be mythical, was again received into favour, and as it enjoyed State protection, the liberals could not prevent themselves being reinoculated by its teaching. But in 1835 Strauss's _Life of Christ_ had made a new breach, and even in Sweden fresh water trickled into the stagnant streams. The book was made the subject of legal action, but upon it as a foundation the whole work of the new reformation was built up by self-appointed reformers, as is always the case.

Pastor Cramer had the honour of being the first. As early as 1859 he published his _Farewell to the Church_, a popular but scientific criticism of the New Testament. He set the seal of sincerity on his belief by seceding from the State Church and resigning his office. His book produced a great effect, and although Ingell's writings had more vogue among the theologians, they did not reach the younger generation. In the same year appeared Rydberg's _The Last Athenian_. The influence of this book was hindered by the fact that it was hailed as a literary success, and transplanted to the neutral territory of belles-lettres. Ryllberg's _The Bible Doctrine of Christ_ made a deeper impression. Renan's _Life of Jesus_ in Ignell's translation had taken young and old by storm, and was read in the schools along with Cramer, which was not the case with _The Bible Doctrine of Christ_. And by Boström's attack on the _Doctrine of Hell_ (1864), the door was opened to rationalism or "free-thought," as it was called. Boström's really insignificant work had a great effect, because of his fame as a Professor at Upsala and former teacher in the Royal Family. The courageous man risked his reputation, a risk which no one incurred after him, when it was no longer considered an honour to be a free-thinker or to labour for the freedom and the right of thinking.

In short, everything was in train, and it needed only a breath to blow down John's faith like a house of cards. A young engineer crossed his path. He was a lodger in the house of John's female friend. He watched John a long while before he made any approaches. John felt respect for him, for he had a good head, and was also somewhat jealous. John's friend prepared him for the acquaintance he was likely to make, and at the same time warned him. She said the engineer was an interesting man of great ability, but dangerous. It was not long before John met him. He hailed from Wermland, was strongly built, with coarse, honest features, and a childlike laugh, when he did laugh, which occurred rarely. They were soon on familiar terms. The first evening only a slight skirmish took place on the question of faith and knowledge. "Faith must kill reason," said John (echoing Krummacher). "No," replied his friend. "Reason is a divine gift, which raises man above the brutes. Shall man lower himself to the level of the brutes by throwing away this divine gift?"

"There are things," said John (echoing Norbeck), "which we can very well believe, without demanding a proof for them. We believe the calendar, for example, without possessing a scientific knowledge of the movement of the planets."

"Yes," answered his friend, "we believe it, because our reason does not revolt against it."

"But," said John, "in Galileo's time they revolted against the idea that the earth revolves round the sun. 'He is possessed by a spirit of contradiction,' they said, 'and wishes to be thought original.'"

"We don't live in Galileo's age," returned his friend, "and the enlightened reason of our time rejects the Deity of Christ and everlasting punishment."

"We won't dispute about these things," said John.

"Why not?"

"They are out of the reach of reason."

"Just what I said two years ago when I was a believer."

"You have been----a pietist?"

"Yes."

"Hm! and now you have peace?"

"Yes, I have peace."

"How is that?"

"I learned through a preacher to realise the spirit of true Christianity."

"You are a Christian then?"

"Yes, I acknowledge Christ."

"But you don't believe that he was God?"

"He never said so himself. He called himself God's son, and we are all God's sons."

John's lady friend interrupted the conversation, which was a type of many others in the year 1865. John's curiosity was aroused. There were then, he said to himself, men who did not believe in Christ and yet had peace. Mere criticism would not have disturbed his old ideas of God; the "horror vacui" held him back, till Theodore Parker fell into his hands. Sermons without Christ and hell were what he wanted. And fine sermons they were. It must be confessed that he read them in extreme haste, as he was anxious that his friends and relatives should enjoy them that he might escape their censures. He could not distinguish between the disapproval of others and his own bad conscience, and was so accustomed to consider others right that he fell into conflict with himself.

But in his mind the doctrine of Christ the Judge, the election of grace, the punishments of the last day, all collapsed, as though they had been tottering for a long time. He was astonished at the rapidity of their disappearance. It was as though he laid aside clothes he had outgrown and put on new ones.

One Sunday morning he went with the engineer to the Haga Park. It was spring. The hazel bushes were in bloom, and the anemones were opening. The weather was fairly clear, the air soft and mild after a night's rain. He and his friend discussed the freedom of the will. The pietists had a very wavering conception of the matter. No one had, they said, the power to become a child of God of his own free will. The Holy Spirit must seek one, and thus it was a matter of predestination. John wished to be converted but he could not. He had learned to pray, "Lord, create in me a new will." But how could he be held responsible for his evil will? Yes, he could, answered the pietist, through the Fall, for when man endowed with free will chose the evil, his posterity inherited his evil will, which became perpetually evil and ceased to be free. Man could be delivered from this evil will only through Christ and the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. The New Birth, however, did not depend upon his own will, but on the grace of God. Thus he was not free and at the same time was responsible! Therein lay the false inference.

Both the engineer and John were nature worshippers. What is this nature worship which in our days is regarded as so hostile to culture? A relapse into barbarism, say some; a healthy reaction against over-culture, say others. When a man has discovered society to be an institution based on error and injustice, when he perceives that, in exchange for petty advantages society suppresses too forcibly every natural impulse and desire, when he has seen through the illusion that he is a demi-god and a child of God, and regards himself more as a kind of animal--then he flees from society, which is built on the assumption of the divine origin of man, and takes refuge with nature. Here he feels in his proper environment as an animal, sees himself as a detail in the picture, and beholds his origin--the earth and the meadow. He sees the interdependence of all creation as if in a summary--the mountains becoming earth, the sea becoming rain, the plain which is a mountain crumbled, the woods which are the children of the mountains and the water. He sees the ocean of air which man and all creatures breathe, he hears the birds which live on the insects, he sees the insects which fertilise the plants, he sees the mammalia which supply man with nourishment, and he feels at home. And in our time, when all things are seen from the scientific point of view, a lonely hour with nature, where we can see the whole evolution-history in living pictures, can be the only substitute for divine worship.

But our optimistic evolutionists prefer a meeting in a large hall where they can launch their denunciations against this same society which they admire and despise. They praise it as the highest stage of development, but wish to overthrow it, because it is irreconcilable with the true happiness of the animal. They wish to reconstruct and develop it, say some. But their reconstruction involves the destruction of all existing arrangements. Do not these people recognise that society as it exists is a case of miscarriage in evolution, and is itself simultaneously hostile to culture and to nature?

Society, like everything else, is a natural product, they say, and civilisation is nature. Yes, but it is degenerate nature, nature on the down-grade, since it works against its own object--happiness. It was, however, the engineer, John's leader, and a nature-worshipper like himself, who revealed to him the defects of civilised society, and prepared the way for his reception of the new views of man's origin. Darwin's _Origin of Species_ had appeared as early as 1859, but its influence had not yet penetrated far, much less had it been able to fertilise other minds.[2] Moleschott's influence was then in the ascendant, and materialism was the watchword of the day. Armed with this and with his geology, the engineer pulled to pieces the Mosaic story of the Creation. He still spoke of the Creator, for he was a theist and saw God's wisdom and goodness reflected in His works.

While they were walking in the park, the church bells in the city began to ring. John stood still and listened. There were the terrible bells of the Clara Church, which rang through his melancholy childhood; the bells of the Adolf-Fredrik, which had frightened him to the bleeding breast of the Crucified, and the bells of St. John's, which, on Saturdays, when he was in the Jacob School, had announced the end of the week. A gentle south wind bore the sound of the bells thither from the city, and it echoed like a warning under the high firs.

"Are you going to church?" asked his friend.

"No," answered John, "I am not going to church any more."

"Follow your conscience," said the engineer.

It was the first time that John had remained away from church. He determined to defy his father's command and his own conscience. He got excited, inveighed against religion and domestic tyranny, and talked of the church of God in nature; he spoke with enthusiasm of the new gospel which proclaimed salvation, happiness, and life to all. But suddenly he became silent.

"You have a bad conscience," said his friend.

"Yes," answered John; "one should either not do what one repents of, or not repent of what one does."

"The latter is the better course."

"But I repent all the same. I repent a good deed, for it would be wrong to play the hypocrite in this old idol-temple. My new conscience tells me that I am wrong. I can find no more peace."

And that was true. His new ego revolted against this old one, and they lived in discord, like an unhappy married couple, during the whole of his later life, without being able to get a separation.

The reaction in his mind against his old views, which he felt should be eradicated, broke out violently. The fear of hell had disappeared, renunciation seemed silly, and the youth's nature demanded its rights. The result was a new code of morality, which he formulated for himself in the following fashion: What does not hurt any of my fellow-men is permitted to me. He felt that the domestic pressure at home did him harm, and no one else any good, and revolted against it. He now showed his real feelings to his parents, who had never shown him love, but insisted on his being grateful, because they had given him his legal rights as a matter of favour, and accompanied by humiliations. They were antipathetic to him, and he was cold to them. To their ceaseless attacks on free-thinking he gave frank and perhaps somewhat impertinent answers. His half-annihilated will began to stir, and he saw that he was entitled to make demands of life.

The engineer was regarded as John's seducer, and was anathematised. But he was open to the influence of John's lady friend, who had formed a friendship with his step-mother. The engineer was not of a radical turn of mind; he had accepted Theodore Parker's compromise, and still believed in Christian self-denial. One should, he said, be amiable and patient, follow Christ's example, and so forth. Urged on by John's lady friend, for whom he had a concealed tenderness, and alarmed by the consequences of his own teaching, he wrote John the following letter. It was inspired by fear of the fire which he had kindled, by regard for the lady, and by sincere conviction:

"To MY FRIEND JOHN,--How joyfully we greet the spring when it appears, to intoxicate us with its wealth of verdure and its divine freshness! The birds begin their light and cheerful melodies, and the anemones peep shyly forth under the whispering branches of the pines----"

"It is strange," thought John, "that this unsophisticated man, who talks so simply and sincerely, should write in such a stilted style. It rings false."

The letter continued: "What breast, whether old or young, does not expand in order to inhale the fresh perfumes of the spring, which spread heavenly peace in each heart, accompanied by a longing which seems like a foretaste of God and of His love? At such a time can any malice remain in our hearts? Can we not forgive? Ah yes, we must, when we see how the caressing rays of the spring sun have kissed away the icy cover from nature and our hearts. Just as we expect to see the ground, freed from snow, grow green again, so we long to see the warmth of a kindly heart manifest itself in loving deeds, and peace and happiness spread through all nature----"

"Forgive?" thought John. "Yes, certainly he would, if they would only alter their behaviour and let him be free. But _they_ did not forgive him. With what right did they demand forbearance on his part? It must be mutual."

"John," went on the letter, "you think you have attained to a higher conception of God through the study of nature and through reason than when you believed in the Deity of Christ and the Bible, but you do not realise the tendency of your own thoughts. You think that a true thought can of itself ennoble a man, but in your better moments you see that it cannot. You have only grasped the shadow which the light throws, but not the chief matter, not the light itself. When you held your former views you could pass over a fault in one of your fellow-men, you could take a charitable view of an action in spite of appearances, but how is it with you now? You are violent and bitter against a loving mother; you condemn and are discontented with the actions of a tender, experienced, grey-headed father----"

(As a matter of fact, when he held his former views, John could not pardon a fault in anyone, least of all in himself. Sometimes, indeed, he did pardon others; but that was stupid, that was lax morality. A loving mother, forsooth! Yes, very loving! How did his friend Axel come to think so? And a tender father? But why should he not judge his actions? In self-defence one must meet hardness with hardness, and no more turn the left cheek when the right cheek is smitten.)

"Formerly you were an unassuming, amiable child, but now you are an egotistical, conceited youth----"

("Unassuming!" Yes, and that was why he had been trampled down, but now he was going to assert his just claims. "Conceited!" Ha! the teacher felt himself outstripped by his ungrateful pupil.)

"The warm tears of your mother flow over her cheeks----"

("Mother!" he had no mother, and his stepmother only cried when she was angry! Who the deuce had composed the letter?)

"--when she thinks in solitude about your hard heart----"

(What the dickens has she to do with my heart when she has the housekeeping and seven children to look after?)

"--your unhappy spiritual condition----"

(That's humbug! My soul has never felt so fresh and lively as now.)

"--and your father's heart is nearly breaking with grief and anxiety----"

(That's a lie. He is himself a theist and follows Wallin; besides, he has no time to think about me. He knows that I am industrious and honest, and not immoral. Indeed, he praised me only a day or two ago.)

"You do not notice your mother's sad looks----"

(There are other reasons for that, for her marriage is not a happy one.)

"--nor do you regard the loving warnings of your father. You are like a crevasse above the snow-line, in which the kiss of the spring sun cannot melt the snow, nor turn a single atom of ice into a drop of water----"

(The writer must have been reading romances. As a matter of fact John was generally yielding towards his school-fellows. But towards his domestic enemies he had become cold. That was their fault.)

"What can your friends think of your new religion, when it produces such evil fruit? They will curse it, and your views give them the right to do so----"

(Not the right, but the occasion.)

"They will hate the mean scoundrel who has instilled the hellish poison of his teaching into your innocent heart----"

(There we have it! The mean scoundrel!)

"Show now by your actions that you have grasped the truth better than heretofore. Try to be forbearing----"

(That's the step-mother!)

"Pass over the defects and failings of your fellow-men with love and gentleness----"

(No, he would not! They had tortured him into lying; they had snuffed about in his soul, and uprooted good seeds as though they were weeds; they wished to stifle his personality, which had just as good a right to exist as their own; they had never been forbearing with his faults, why should he be so with theirs? Because Christ had said.... That had become a matter of complete indifference, and had no application to him now. For the rest, he did not bother about those at home, but shut himself up in himself. They were unsympathetic to him, and could not obtain his sympathy. That was the whole thing in a nutshell. They had faults and wanted him to pardon them. Very well, he did so, if they would only leave him in peace!)

"Learn to be grateful to your parents, who spare no pains in promoting your true welfare and happiness (hm!), and that this may be brought about through love to God your Creator, who has caused you to be born in this improving (hm! hm!) environment, for obtaining peace and blessedness is the prayer of your anxious but hopeful

"AXEL."

"I have had enough of father confessors and inquisitors," thought John; he had escaped and felt himself free. They stretched their claws after him, but he was beyond their reach. His friend's letter was insincere and artificial; "the hands were the hands of Esau." He returned no answer to it, but broke off all intercourse with both his friends.

They called him ungrateful. A person who insists on gratitude is worse than a creditor, for he first makes a present on which he plumes himself, and then sends in the account--an account which can never be paid, for a service done in return does not seem to extinguish the debt of gratitude; it is a mortgage on a man's soul, a debt which cannot be paid, and which stretches over the whole subsequent life. Accept a service from your friend, and he will expect you to falsify your opinion of him and to praise his own evil deeds, and those of his wife and children.

But gratitude is a deep feeling which honours a man and at the same time humiliates him. Would that a time may come when it will not be necessary to fetter ourselves with gratitude for a benefit, which perhaps is a mere duty.

John felt ashamed of the breach with his friends, but they hindered and oppressed him. After all, what had they given him in social intercourse which he had not given back?

Fritz, as his friend with the pince-nez was called, was a prudent man of the world. These two epithets "prudent" and "man of the world" had a bad significance at that time. To be prudent in a romantic period, when all were a little cracked, and to be cracked was considered a mark of the upper classes, was almost synonymous with being bad. To be a man of the world when all attempted, as well as they could, to deceive themselves in religion, was considered still worse. Fritz was prudent. He wished to lead his own life in a pleasant way and to make a career for himself. He therefore sought the acquaintance of those in good social position. That was prudent, because they had power and money. Why should he not seek them? How did he come to make friends with John? Perhaps through a sort of animal sympathy, perhaps through long habit. John could not do any special service for him except to whisper answers to him in the class and to lend him books. For Fritz did not learn his lessons, and spent in punch the money which was intended for books.

Now when he saw that John was inwardly purified, and that his outer man was presentable, he introduced him to his own coterie. This was a little circle of young fellows, some of them rich and some of them of good rank belonging to the same class as John. The latter was a little shy at first, but soon stood on a good footing with them. One day, at drill time, Fritz told him that he had been invited to a ball.

"I to a ball? Are you mad? I would certainly be out of place there."

"You are a good-looking fellow, and will have luck with the girls."

Hm! That was a new point of view with regard to himself. Should he go? What would they say at home, where he got nothing but blame?

He went to the ball. It was in a middle-class house. Some of the girls were anæmic; others red as berries. John liked best the pale ones who had black or blue rings round their eyes. They looked so suffering and pining, and cast yearning glances towards him. There was one among them deathly pale, whose dark eyes were deep-set and burning, and whose lips were so dark that her mouth looked almost like a black streak. She made an impression on him, but he did not venture to approach her, as she already had an admirer. So he satisfied himself with a less dazzling, softer, and gentler girl. He felt quite comfortable at the ball and in intercourse with strangers, without seeing the critical eyes of any relative. But he found it very difficult to talk with the girls.

"What shall I say to them?" he asked Fritz.

"Can't you talk nonsense with them? Say 'It is fine weather. Do you like dancing? Do you skate?' One must learn to be versatile."

John went and soon exhausted his repertoire of conversation. His palate became dry, and at the third dance he got tired of it. He felt in a rage with himself and was silent.

"Isn't dancing amusing?" asked Fritz. "Cheer up, old coffin-polisher!"

"Yes, dancing is all right, if one only had not to talk. I don't know what to say."

So it was, as a matter of fact. He liked the girls, and dancing with them seemed manly, but as to talking with them!--he felt as though he were dealing with another kind of the species _Homo_, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired his gentle little partner, and would have liked her for a wife.

His fondness for reflection and his everlasting criticism of his thoughts had robbed him of the power of being simple and direct. When he talked with a girl, he heard his own voice and words and criticised them. This made the whole ball seem tedious. And then the girls? What was it really that they lacked? They had the same education as himself; they learned history and modern languages, read Icelandic, studied algebra, etc. They had accordingly the same culture, and yet he could not talk with them.

"Well, talk nonsense with them," said Fritz.

But he could not. Besides, he had a higher opinion of them. He wanted to give up the balls altogether, since he had no success, but he was taken there in spite of himself. It flattered him to be invited, and flattery has always something pleasant about it. One day he was paying a visit to an aristocratic family. The son of the house was a cadet. Here he met two actresses. With them he felt he could speak. They danced with him but did not answer him. So he listened to Fritz's conversation. The latter said strange things in elegant phrases, and the girls were delighted with him. That, then, was the way to get on with them!

The balls were followed by serenades and "punch evenings." John had a great longing for strong drinks; they seemed to him like concentrated liquid nourishment. The first time he was intoxicated was at a students' supper at Djurgårdsbrunn. He felt happy, joyful, strong, and mild, but far from mad. He talked nonsense, saw pictures on the plates and made jokes. This behaviour made him for the moment like his elder brother, who, though deeply melancholy in his youth, had a certain reputation afterwards as a comic actor. They had both played at acting in the attic; but John was embarrassed; he acted badly and was only successful when he was given the part of some high personage to play. As a comic actor he was impossible.

About this time there entered two new factors into his development--Art and Literature.

John had found in his father's bookcase Lenstrom's _Æsthetics_, Boije's _Dictionary of Painters,_ and Oulibischeff's _Life of Mozart_, besides the authors previously mentioned. Through the scattering of the family of a deceased relative, a large number of books came into the house, which increased John's knowledge of belles-lettres. Among them were several copies of Talis Qualis's poems, which he did not enjoy; he found no pleasure in Strandberg's translation of Byron's _Don Juan_, for he hated descriptive poetry; he always skipped verse quotations when they occurred in books. Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_, in Kullberg's translation, he found tedious; Karl von Zeipel's _Tales_, impossible. Sir Walter Scott's novels were too long, especially the descriptions. He therefore did not understand at first the greatness of Zola, when many years later he read his elaborate descriptions; the perusal of Lessing's _Laokoön_ had already convinced him that such descriptions cannot convey an adequate impression of the whole. Dickens infused life even into inanimate objects and harmonised the scenery and situations with the characters. That he understood better. He thought Eugène Sue's _Wandering Jew_ magnificent; he did not regard it as a novel; for novels, he thought, were only to be found in lending libraries. This, on the other hand, was a historical poem of universal interest, whose Socialistic teaching he quickly imbibed. Alexandre Dumas's works seemed to him like the boys' books about Indians. These he did not care for now; he wanted books with some serious purpose. He swallowed Shakespeare whole, in Hagberg's translation. But he had always found it hard to read plays where the eye must jump from the names of the _dramatis personæ_, to the text. He was disappointed in _Hamlet_, of which he had expected much, and the comedies seemed to him sheer nonsense.

John could not endure poetry. It seemed to him artificial and untrue. Men did not speak like that, and they seldom thought so beautifully. Once he was asked to write a verse in Fanny's album.

"You can screw yourself up to do that," said his friend.

John sat up at night, but only managed to hammer out two lines. Besides, he did not know what to say. One could not expose one's feelings to common observation. Fritz offered his help, and together they produced six or eight rhyming lines, for which Snoilsky's _A Christmas Eve in Rome_ supplied the motive.

"Genius" often formed the subject of their discussions. Their teacher used to say "Geniuses" ranked above all else, like "Excellencies." John thought much about this, and believed that it was possible without high birth, without money, and without a career to get on the same level as Excellencies. But what a genius was he did not know. Once in a weak moment he said to his lady friend that he would rather be a genius than a child of God, and received a sharp reproof from her. Another time he told Fritz that he would like to be a professor, as they can dress like scarecrows and behave as they like without losing respect. But when someone else asked him what he wished to be, he said, "A clergyman"; for all peasants' sons can be that, and it seemed a suitable calling for him also. After he had become a free-thinker, he wished to take a university degree. But he did not wish to be a teacher on any account.

In the theatre _Hamlet_ made a deeper impression on him than Offenbach's operas, which were then being acted. Who is this Hamlet who first saw the footlights in the era of John III., and has still remained fresh? He is a figure which has been much exploited and used for many purposes. John forthwith determined to use him for his own.

The curtain rises to the sound of cheerful music, showing the king and his court in glittering array. Then there enters the pale youth in mourning garb and opposes his step-father. Ah! he has a step-father. "That is as bad as having a stepmother," thought John. "That's the man for me!" And then they try to oppress him and squeeze sympathy out of him for the tyrant. The youth's ego revolts, but his will is paralysed; he threatens, but he cannot strike.

Anyhow, he chastises his mother--a pity that it was not his step-father. But now he goes about with pangs of conscience. Good! Good! He is sick with too much thought, he gropes in his in-side, inspects his actions till they dissolve into nothing. And he loves another's betrothed; that resembles John's life completely. He begins to doubt whether he is an exception after all. That, then, is a common story in life! Very well! He did not need then to worry about himself, but he had lost his consciousness of originality. The conclusion, which had been mangled, was unimpressive, but was partly redeemed by the fine speech of Horatio. John did not observe the unpardonable mistake of the adapter in omitting the part of Fortinbras, but Horatio, who was intended to form a contrast to Hamlet, was no contrast. He is as great a coward as the latter, and says only "yes" and "no." Fortinbras was the man of action, the conqueror, the claimant to the throne, but he does not appear, and the play ends in gloom and desolation.

But it is fine to lament one's destiny, and to see it lamented. At first Hamlet was only the step-son; later on he becomes the introspective brooder, and lastly the son, the sacrifice to family tyranny. Schwarz had represented him as the visionary and idealist who could not reconcile himself to reality, and satisfied contemporary taste accordingly. A future matter-of-fact generation, to whom the romantic appears simply ridiculous, may very likely see the part of Hamlet, like that of Don Quixote, taken by a comic actor. Youths like Hamlet have been for a long time the subject of ridicule, for a new generation has secretly sprung up, a generation which thinks without seeing visions, and acts accordingly. The neutral territory of belles-lettres and the theatre, where morality has nothing to say, and the unrealities of the drama with its reconstruction of a better world than the present, were taken by John as something more than mere imagination. He confused poetry and reality, while he fancied that life outside his parent's house was ideal and that the future was a garden of Eden.

The prospect of soon going to the University of Upsala seemed to him like a flight into liberty. There one might be ill-dressed, poor, and still a student, _i.e._, a member of the higher classes; one could sing and drink, come home intoxicated, and fight with the police without losing one's reputation. That is an ideal land! How had he found that out? From the students' songs which he sang with his brother. But he did not know that these songs reflected the views of the aristocracy; that they were listened to, piece by piece, by princes and future kings; that the heroes of them were men of family. He did not consider that borrowing was not so dangerous, when there was a rich aunt in the background; that the examination was not so hard if one had a bishop for an uncle; and that the breaking of a window had not got to be too dearly paid for if one moved in good society. But, at any rate, his thoughts were busy with the future; his hopes revived, and the fatal twenty-fifth year did not loom so ominously before him.

About this time the volunteer movement was at its height. It was a happy idea which gave Sweden a larger army than she had hitherto had--40,000 men instead of 37,000. John went in for it energetically, wore a uniform, drilled, and learned to shoot. He came thereby into contact with young men of other classes of society. In his company there were apprentices, shop attendants, office clerks, and young artists who had not yet achieved fame. He liked them, but they remained distant. He sought to approach them, but they did not receive him. They had their own language, which he did not understand. Now he noticed how his education had separated him from the companions of his childhood. They took for granted that he was proud. But, as a matter of fact, he looked up to them in some things. They were frank, fearless, independent, and pecuniarily better circumstanced than himself, for they always had money.

Accompanying the troops on long marches had a soothing effect on him. He was not born to command, and obeyed gladly, if the person who commanded did not betray pride or imperiousness. He had no ambition to become a corporal, for then he would have had to think, and what was still worse, decide for others. He remained a slave by nature and inclination, but he was sensitive to the injustice of tyrants, and observed them narrowly.

At one important manoeuvre he could not help expostulating with regard to certain blunders committed, _e.g._, that the infantry of the guard should be ranged up at a landing-place against the cannon of the fleet which covered the barges on which they were standing. The cannon played about their ears from a short distance, but they remained unmoved. He expostulated and swore, but obeyed, for he had determined beforehand to do so.

On one occasion, while they were halting at Tyreso, he wrestled in sport with a comrade. The captain of the company stepped forward and forbade such rough play. John answered sharply that they were off duty, and that they were playing.

"Yes, but play may become earnest," said the captain.

"That depends on us," answered John, and obeyed. But he thought him fussy for interfering in such trifles, and believed that he noticed a certain dislike in his superior towards himself. The former was called "magister," because he wrote for the papers, but he was not even a student. "There it is," he thought, "he wants to humiliate me." And from that time he watched him closely. Their mutual antipathy lasted through their lives.

The volunteer movement was in the first place the result of the Danish-German War, and, though transitory, was in some degree advantageous. It kept the young men occupied, and did away, to a certain extent, with the military prestige of the army, as the lower classes discovered that soldiering was not such a difficult matter after all. The insight thus gained caused a widespread resistance to the introduction of the Prussian system of compulsory service which was much mooted at the time, since Oscar II., when visiting Berlin, had expressed to the Emperor William his hope that Swedish and Prussian troops would once more be brothers-in-arms.

[1] See _Encyclopedia Britannica_, art. "Sweden."

[2] In 1910 Strindberg wrote: "I keep my Bible Christianity for private use, to tame my somewhat barbarised nature--barbarised by the veterinary philosophy of Darwinism, in which, as a student. I was educated."--_Tal till Svenska nationen_.

IX

WITH STRANGERS

One of his bold dreams had been fulfilled: he had found a situation for the summer. Why had he not found one sooner? He had not dared to hope for it, and, therefore, had never sought it, from fear of meeting with a refusal. A disappointed hope was the worst thing he could imagine. But now, all at once, Fortune shook her cornucopia over him; the post he had obtained was in the finest situation that he knew--the Stockholm archipelago--on the most beautiful of all the islands, Sotaskär. He now liked aristocrats. His step-mother's ill-treatment of him, his relations' perpetual watching to discover arrogance in him, where there was only superiority of intelligence, generosity, and self-sacrifice, the attempts of his volunteer comrades to oppress him, had driven him out of the class to which he naturally belonged. He did not think or feel any more as they did; he had another religion, and another view of life. The well-regulated behaviour and confident bearing of his aristocratic friends satisfied his æsthetic sense; his education had brought him nearer to them, and alienated him from the lower classes. The aristocrats seemed to him less proud than the middle class. They did not oppress, but prized culture and talent; they were democratic in their behaviour towards him, for they treated him as an equal, whereas his own relatives regarded him as a subordinate and inferior. Fritz, for example, who was the son of a miller in the country, visited at the house of a lord-in-waiting, and played in a comedy with his sons before the director of the Theatre Royal, who offered him an engagement. No one asked whose son he was. But when Fritz came to a dance at John's house, he was carefully inspected behind and before, and great satisfaction was caused when some relative imparted the information that his father had once been a miller's servant.

John had become aristocratic in his views, without, however, ceasing to sympathise with the lower classes, and since about the year 1865 the nobility were fairly liberal in politics, condescending and popular for the time, he let himself be duped.

Fritz began to give him instructions how he should behave. One should not be cringing, he said, but be yielding; should not say all that one thought, for no one wished to know that; it was good if one could say polite things, without indulging in too gross flattery; one should converse, but not argue, above all things not dispute, for one never got the best of it. Fritz was certainly a wise youth. John thought the advice terribly hard, but stored it up in his mind. What he wanted to get was a salary, and perhaps the chance of a tour abroad to Rome or Paris with his pupils; that was the most he hoped for from his noble friends, and what he intended to aim at.

One Sunday he visited the wife of the baron, his future employer, as she was in the town. She seemed like the portrait of a mediæval lady; she had an aquiline nose, great brown eyes, and curled hair, which hung over her temples. She was somewhat sentimental, talked in a drawling manner, and with a nasal twang. John did not think her aristocratic, and the house was a poorer one than his own home, but they had, besides, an estate and a castle. However, she pleased him, for she had a certain resemblance to his mother. She examined him, talked with him, and let her ball of wool fall. John sprang up and gave it to her, with a self-satisfied air which seemed to say, "I can do that, for I have often picked up ladies' handkerchiefs." Her opinion of him after the examination was a favourable one, and he was engaged. On the morning of the day on which they were to leave the city he called again. The royal secretary, for so the gentleman of the house was called, was standing in his shirt-sleeves before the mirror and tying his cravat. He looked proud and melancholy, and his greeting was curt and cold. John took a seat uninvited, and tried to commence a conversation, but was not particularly successful in keeping it up, especially as the secretary turned his back to him, and gave only short answers.

"He is not an aristocrat," thought John; "he is a boor."

The two were antipathetic to each other, as two members of the lower class, who looked askance at each other in their clamber laboriously upwards.

The carriage was before the door; the coachman was in livery, and stood with his hat in his hand. The secretary asked John whether he would sit in the carriage or on the box, but in such a tone that John determined to be polite and to accept the invitation to sit on the box. So he sat next the coachman. As the whip cracked, and the horses started, he had only one thought, "Away from home! Out into the world!"

At the first halting-place John got down from the box and went to the carriage window. He asked in an easy, polite, perhaps somewhat confidential tone, how his employers were. The baron answered curtly, in a tone in a way which cut off all attempts at a nearer approach. What did that mean?

They took their seats again. John lighted a cigar, and offered the coachman one. The latter, however, whispered in reply that he dared not smoke on the box. He then pumped the coachman, but cautiously, regarding the baron's friends, and so on. Towards evening they reached the estate. The house stood on a wooded hill, and was a white stone building with outside blinds. The roof was flat, and its rounded comers gave the building a somewhat Italian aspect, but the blinds, with their white and red borders, were elegance itself. John, with his three pupils, was installed in one wing, which consisted of an isolated building with two rooms; the other of which was occupied by the coachman.

After eight days John discovered that he was a servant, and in a very unpleasant position. His father's man-servant had a better room all to himself; and for several hours of the day was master of his own person and thoughts. But John was not. Night and day he had to be with the boys, teach them, and play and bathe with them. If he allowed himself a moment's liberty, and was seen about, he was at once asked, "Where are the children?" He lived in perpetual anxiety lest some accident should happen to them. He was responsible for the behaviour of four persons--his own and that of his three pupils. Every criticism of them struck him. He had no companion of his own age with whom he could converse. The steward was almost the whole day at work, and hardly ever visible.

But there were two compensations: the scenery and the sense of being free from the bondage in his parent's house. The baroness treated him confidentially, almost in a motherly way; she liked discussing literature with him. At such times he felt on the same level with her, and superior to her in point of erudition, but as soon as the secretary came home he sank to the position of children's nurse again.

The scenery of the islands had for him a greater charm than the banks of the Mälar, and his magic recollections of Drottningholm faded. In the past year he had climbed up a hill in Tyreso with the volunteer sharpshooters. It was covered with a thick fir-wood. They crawled through bilberry and juniper bushes till they reached a steep, rocky plateau. From this they viewed a panorama which thrilled him with delight: water and islands, water and islands stretched away into infinite distance. Although born in Stockholm he had never seen the islands, and did not know where he was. The view made a deep impression on him, as if he had rediscovered a land which had appeared to him in his fairest dreams or in a former existence--in which he believed, but about which he knew nothing. The troop of sharpshooters drew off into the wood, but John remained upon the height and worshipped--that is the right word. The attacking troop approached and fired; the bullets whistled about his ears; he hid himself, but he could not go away. That was his land-scape and proper environment--barren, rugged gray rocks surrounding wide stormy bays, and the endless sea in the distance as a background. He remained faithful to this love, which could not be explained by the fact that it was his first love. Neither the Alps of Switzerland, nor the olive groves of the Mediterranean, nor the steep coast of Normandy, could dethrone this rival from his heart.

Now he was in Paradise, though rather too deep in it; the shore of Sotaskär consisted of green pasturage overshadowed by oaks, and the bay opened out to the fjord in the far distance. The water was pure and salt; that was something new. In one of his excursions with his rifle, the dogs, and the boys, he came one fine sunny day down to the water's edge. On the other side of the bay stood a castle, a large, old-fashioned stone edifice. He had discovered that his employer only rented the estate.

"Who lives in the castle?" he asked the boys.

"Uncle Wilhelm," they answered.

"What is his title?"

"Baron X."

"Do you never go there?"

"Oh, yes; sometimes."

So there was a castle here with a baron! John's walks now regularly took the direction of the shore, from which he could see the castle. It was surrounded by a park and garden. At home they had no garden.

One fine day the baroness told him that he must accompany the boys on the morrow to the baron's, and remain there for the day. She and her husband would stay at home; "he would therefore represent the house," she added jestingly.

Then he asked what he was to wear. He could go in his summer suit, she said, take his black coat on his arm, and change for dinner in the little tapestry-room on the ground floor. He asked whether he should wear gloves. She laughed, "No, he needed no gloves." He dreamt the whole night about the baron, the castle, and the tapestry-room. In the morning a hay-waggon came to the house to fetch them. He did not like this; it reminded him of the parish clerk's school.

And so they went off. They came to a long avenue of lime trees, drove into the courtyard, and stopped before the castle. It was a real castle, and looked as if it had been built in the Middle Ages. From an arbour there came the well-known click of a draught-board. A middle-aged gentleman in an ill-fitting, holland suit came out. His face was not aristocratic, but rather of the middle-class type, with a seaman's beard of a gray-yellow colour. He also wore earrings. John held his hat in his hand and introduced himself. The baron greeted him in a friendly way, and bade him enter the arbour. Here stood a table with a draught-board, by which sat a little old man who was very amiable in his manner. He was introduced as the pastor of a small town. John was given a glass of brandy, and asked about the Stockholm news. Since he was familiar with theatrical gossip and similar things, he was listened to with greater attention. "There it is," he thought, "the real aristocrats are much more democratic than the sham ones."

"Oh!" said the Baron. "Pardon me, Mr.----, I did not catch the name. Yes, that is it. Are you related to Oscar Strindberg?"

"He is my father."

"Good heavens! is it possible? He is an old friend of mine from my youthful days, when I was pilot on the Strengnas."

John did not believe his ears. The baron had been pilot on a steamer! Yes, indeed, he had. But he wished to hear about his friend Oscar. John looked around him, and asked himself if this really was the baron. The baroness now appeared; she was as simple and friendly as the baron. The bell rang for dinner. "Now we will get something to drink," said the baron. "Come along."

John at first made a vain attempt to put on his frock-coat behind a door in the hall, but finally succeeded, as the baroness had said that he ought to wear it. Then they entered the dining-hall. Yes, that was a real castle; the floor was paved with stone, the ceiling was of carved wood; the window-niches were so deep that they seemed to form little rooms; the fire place could hold a barrow-load of wood; there was a three-footed piano, and the walls were covered with dark paintings.

John felt quite at home during dinner. In the afternoon he played with the baron, and drank toddy. All the courteous usages he had expected were in evidence, and he was well pleased with the day when it was over. As he went down the long avenue, he turned round and contemplated the castle. It looked now less stately and almost poverty stricken. It pleased him all the better, though it had been more romantic to look at it as a fairy-tale castle from the other shore. Now he had nothing more to which he could look up. But he himself, on the other hand, was no more below. Perhaps, after all, it is better to have something to which one _can_ look up.

When he came home, he was examined by the baroness. "How did he like the baron?" John answered that he was pleasant and condescending. He was also prudent enough to say nothing of the baron's friendship with his father. "They will learn it anyhow," he thought. Meanwhile he already felt more at home, and was no more so timid. One day he borrowed a horse, but he rode it so roughly that he was not allowed to borrow one again. Then he hired one from a peasant. It looked so fine to sit high on a horse and gallop; he felt his strength grow at the same time.

His illusions were dispelled, but to feel on the same level with those about him, without wishing to pull anyone down, that had something soothing about it. He wrote a boasting letter to his brother at home, but received an answer calculated to set him down. Since he was quite alone, and had no one with whom he could talk, he wrote letters in diary-form to his friend Fritz. The latter had obtained a post with a merchant by the Mälar Lake, where there were young girls, music, and good eating. John sometimes wished to be in his place. In his diary-letter he tried to idealise the realities around him, and succeeded in arousing his friend's envy.

The story of the baron's acquaintance with John's father spread, and the baroness felt herself bound to speak ill of her brother. John had, nevertheless, intelligence enough to perceive that here there was something to do with the tragedy of an estate in tail. Since he had nothing to do with the matter, he took no trouble to inquire into it.

During a visit which John paid to the pastor's house, the assistant pastor happened to hear of his idea of being a pastor himself. Since the senior pastor, on account of old age and weakness, no longer preached, his assistant was John's only acquaintance. The assistant found the work heavy, so he was very glad to come across young students who wished to make their debuts as preachers. He asked John whether he would preach. Upon John's objecting that he was not a student yet, he answered, "No matter." John said he would consider.

The assistant did not let him consider long. He said that many students and collegians had preached here before, and that the church had a certain fame since the actor Knut Almlöf had preached here in his youth. John had seen him act as Menelaus in _The Beautiful Helen_, and admired him. He consented to his friend's request, began to search for a text, borrowed some homilies, and promised to have his trial sermon ready by Friday. So, then, only a year after his Confirmation, he would preach in the pulpit, and the baron and the ladies and gentlemen would sit as devout hearers! So soon at the goal, without a clerical examination--yes, even without his final college examination! They would lend him a gown and bands; he would pray the Lord's Prayer and read the Commandments! His head began to swell, and he walked home feeling a foot taller, with the full consciousness that he was no longer a boy.

But as he came home he began to think seriously. He was a free-thinker. Is it honourable to play the hypocrite? No, no. But must he then give up the sermon? That would be too great a sacrifice. He felt ambitious, and perhaps he would be able to sow some seeds of free-thought, which would spring up later. Yes, but it was dishonest. With his old egotistic morality he always regarded the motive of the actor, not the beneficial or injurious effect of the action. It was profitable for him to preach; it would not hurt others to hear something new and true. But it was not honest. He could not get away from that objection. He took the baroness into his confidence.

"Do you believe that preachers believe all they say?" she asked.

That was the preachers' affair, but John could not act a double part. Finally, he walked to the assistant pastor's house, and consulted him. It vexed the assistant to have to hear about it.

"Well," he said, "but you believe in God, I suppose?"

"Yes, certainly I do."

"Very well! don't speak of Christ. Bishop Wallin never mentioned the name of Christ in his sermons. But don't bother any more. I don't want to hear about it."

"I will do my best," said John, glad to have saved his honesty and his prospect of distinction at the same time. They had a glass of wine, and the matter was settled.

There was something intoxicating for him in sitting over his books and homilies, and in hearing the baron ask for him, and the servant answer: "The tutor is writing his sermon."

He had to expound the text: "Jesus said, Now is the son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him."

That was all. He turned the sentence this way and that, but could find no meaning in it. "It is obscure," he thought. But it touched the most delicate point--the Deity of Christ. If he had the courage to explain away that, he would certainly have done something important. The prospect enticed him, and with Theodore Parker's help he composed a prose poem on Christ as the Son of God, and then put forward very cautiously the assertion that we are all God's sons, but that Christ is His chosen and beloved Son, whose teaching we must obey. But that was only the introduction, and the gospel is read after the introduction. About what, then, should he preach? He had already pacified his conscience by plainly stating his views regarding the Deity of Christ. He glowed with excitement, his courage grew, and he felt that he had a mission to fulfil. He would draw his sword against dogmas, against the doctrine of election and pietism.

When he came to the place where, after reading the text, he ought to have said, "The text we have read gives us occasion for a short time to consider the following subject," he wrote: "Since the text of the day gives no further occasion for remark, we will, for a short time, consider what is of greater importance." And so he dealt with God's work in conversion. He made two attacks: one on the custom of preaching from the text, and the second against the Church's teaching on the subject of grace.

First he spoke of conversion as a serious matter, which required a sacrifice, and depended on the free-will of man (he was not quite clear about that). He ignored the doctrine of election, and finally flung open for all the doors of the kingdom of heaven: "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden." "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." That is the gospel of Christ for all, and no one is to believe that the key of heaven is committed to him (that was a hit at the pietists), but that the doors of grace are open for all without exception.

He was very much in earnest, and felt like a missionary. On Friday he betook himself to the church, and read certain passages of his sermon from the pulpit. He chose the most harmless ones. Then he repeated the prayers, while the assistant pastor stood under the choir gallery and called to him, "Louder! Slower!" He was approved, and they had a glass of wine together.

On Sunday the church was full of people. John put on his gown and bands in the vestry. For a moment he felt it comical, but then was seized with anxiety. He prayed to the only true God for help, now that he was to draw the sword against age-long error, and when the last notes of the organ were silent, he entered the pulpit with confidence.

Everything went well. But when he came to the place, "Since the text of the day gives no occasion for remark," and saw a movement among the faces of the congregation, which looked like so many white blurs, he trembled. But only for a moment. Then he plucked up courage and read his sermon in a fairly strong and confident voice. When he neared the end, he was so moved by the beautiful truths which he proclaimed, that he could scarcely see the writing on the paper for tears. He took a long breath, and read through all the prayers, till the organ began and he left the pulpit. The pastor thanked him, but said one should not wander from the text; it would be a bad look-out if the Church Consistory heard of it. But he hoped no one had noticed it. He had no fault to find with the contents of the sermon. They had dinner at the pastor's house, played and danced with the girls, and John was the hero of the day. The girls said, "It was a very fine sermon, for it was so short." He had read much too fast, and had left out a prayer.

In the autumn John returned with the boys to the town, in order to live with them and look after their school-work. They went to the Clara School, so that, like a crab, he felt he was going backwards. The same school, the same headmaster, the same malicious Latin teacher. John worked conscientiously with his pupils, heard their lessons, and could swear that they had been properly learned. None the less, in the report books which they took home, and which their father read, it was stated that such and such lessons had not been learned.

"That is a lie," said John.

"Well, but it is written here," answered the boys' father.

It was hard work, and he was preparing at the same time for his own examination. In the autumn holidays they went back to the country. They sat by the stove and cracked nuts, a whole sackful, and read the _Frithiof Saga, Axel_, and _Children of the Lord's Supper_.[1] The evenings were intolerably long. But John discovered a new steward, who was treated almost like a servant. This provoked John to make friends with him, and in his room they brewed punch and played cards. The baroness ventured to remark that the steward was not a suitable friend for John.

"Why not?" asked the latter.

"He has no education."

"That is not so dangerous."

She also said that she preferred that the tutor should spend his time with the family in the evening, or, at any rate, stay in the boys' room. He chose the latter, for it was very stuffy in the drawing-room, and he was tired of the reading aloud and the conversation. He now stayed in his own and the boys' room. The steward came there, and they played their game of cards. The boys asked to be allowed to take a hand. Why should they not? John had played whist at home with his father and brothers, and the innocent recreation had been regarded as a means of education for teaching self-discipline, carefulness, attention, and fairness; he had never played for money; each dishonest trick was immediately exposed, untimely exultation at a victory silenced, sulkiness at a defeat ridiculed.

At that time the boys' parents made no objections, for they were glad that the youngsters were occupied. But they did not like their being on intimate terms with the steward. John had, in the summer, formed a little military troop from his pupils and the workmen's children, and drilled them in the open air. But the baroness forbade this close intercourse with the latter. "Each class should keep to itself," she said.

But John could not understand why that should be, since in the year 1865 class distinctions had been done away with.

In the meantime a storm was brewing, and a mere trifle was the occasion of its outbreak.

One morning the baron was storming about a pair of his driving-gloves which had disappeared. He suspected his eldest boy. The latter denied having taken them, and accused the steward, specifying the time when he said he had taken them. The steward was called.

"You have taken my driving-gloves, sir! What is the meaning of this?" said the baron.

"No, sir, I have not."

"What! Hugo says you did."

John, who happened to be present, stepped forward unsolicited, and said, "Then Hugo lies. He himself has had the gloves."

"What do you say?" said the baron, motioning to the steward to go.

"I say the truth."

"What do you mean, sir, by accusing my son in the presence of a servant?"

"Mr. X. is not a servant, and, besides, he is innocent."

"Yes, very innocent--playing cards together and drinking with the boys! That's a nice business, eh?"

"Why did you not mention it before? Then you would have found out that I do not drink with the boys."

"'You,' you d--d hobbledehoy! What do you mean by calling me 'you.'"

"Mr. Secretary can look for another 'hobbledehoy' to teach his boys, since Mr. Secretary is too covetous to engage a grown person." So saying, John departed.

On the next day they were to return to the town, for the Christmas holidays were at an end. So he would have to go home again--back into hell, to be despised and oppressed, and it would be a thousand times worse after he had boasted of his new situation, and compared it with his parents' house to the disadvantage of the latter. He wept for anger, but after such an insult there was no retreat.

He was summoned to the baroness, but said she must wait awhile. Then a messenger came again for him. In a sullen mood he went up to her. She was quite mild, and asked him to stay some days with them till they had found another tutor. He promised, since she had asked him so pressingly. She said she would drive with the boys into the town.

The sleigh came to the door, and the baron stood by, and said, "You can sit on the box."

"I know my place," said John. At the first halting-place the baroness asked him to get into the sleigh, but he would not.

They stayed in the town eight days. In the meanwhile John had written a somewhat arrogant letter, in an independent tone, home, which did not please his father, although he had flattered him in it. "I think you should have first asked if you could come home," he said. In that he was right. But John had never thought otherwise of his parents' house than of an hotel, where he could get board and lodging without paying.

So he was home again. Through an incomprehensible simplicity he had let himself be persuaded to continue to go through his former pupils' school-work with them, though he received nothing for it. One evening Fitz wanted to take him to a café.

"No," said John, "I must give some lessons."

"Where?"

"To the Secretary's boys."

"What! haven't you done with them yet?"

"No, I have promised to help them till they get a new teacher."

"What do you get for it?"

"What do I get? I have had board and lodging."

"Yes, but what do you get now, when you don't board and lodge with them?"

"Hm! I didn't think of that."

"You are a lunatic--teaching rich peoples' children gratis. Well, you come along with me, and don't cross their threshold again."

John had a struggle with himself on the pavement. "But I promised them."

"You should not promise. Come now and write a letter withdrawing your offer."

"I must go and take leave of them."

"It is not necessary. They promised you a present at Christmas, but you got nothing; and now you let yourself be treated like a servant. Come now and write."

He was dragged to the café. The waitress brought paper and ink, and, at his friend's dictation, he wrote a letter to the effect that, in consequence of his approaching examination, he would have no more leisure for teaching.

He was free! "But I feel ashamed," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I have been impolite."

"Rubbish! Waitress, bring half a punch."

[1] Three poems by Tegner--the last translated by Longfellow.

X

CHARACTER AND DESTINY

About this time the free-thought movement was at its height. After preaching his sermon, John believed it was his mission and duty to spread and champion the new doctrines. He therefore began to stay away from prayers, and stayed behind when the rest of the class went to the prayer-room. The headmaster came in and wished to drive him, and those who had remained with him, out. John answered that his religion forbade him to take part in an alien form of worship. The headmaster said one must observe law and order. John answered that Jews were excused attendance at prayers. The headmaster then asked him for the sake of example and their former friendship to be present. John yielded. But he and those who shared his views did not take part in the singing of the psalms. Then the headmaster was infuriated, and gave them a scolding; he especially singled out John, and upbraided him. John's answer was to organise a strike. He and those who shared his views came regularly so late to school that prayers were over when they entered. If they happened to come too early, they remained in the corridor and waited, sitting on the wooden boxes and chatting with the teachers. In order to humble the rebels, the headmaster hit upon the idea, at the close of prayers, when the whole school was assembled, to open the doors and call them in. These then defiled past with an impudent air and under a hail of reproaches through the prayer-room without remaining there. Finally, they became quite used to enter of their own accord, and take their scolding as they walked through the room. The headmaster conceived a spite against John, and seemed to have the intention of making him fail in his examination. John, on the other hand, worked day and night in order to be sure of succeeding.

His theological lessons degenerated into arguments with his teacher. The latter was a pastor and theist, and tolerant of objections, but he soon got tired of them, and told John to answer according to the text-book.

"How many Persons are in the Godhead?" he asked.

"One," answered John.

"What does Norbeck say?"

"Norbeck says three!"

"Well, then, you say three, too!"

At home things went on quietly. John was left alone. They saw that he was lost, and that it was too late for any effectual interference. One Sunday his father made an attempt in the old style, but John was not at a loss for an answer.

"Why don't you go to church any more?" his father asked.

"What should I do there?"

"A good sermon can always do one some good."

"I can make sermons myself."

And there was an end of it.

The pietists had a special prayer offered for John in the Bethlehem Church after they had seen him one Sunday morning in volunteer uniform.

In May, 1867, he passed his final examination. Strange things came to light on that occasion. Great fellows with beards and pince-nez called the Malay Peninsula Siberia, and believed that India was Arabia. Some candidates obtained a testimonial in French who pronounced "en" like "y," and could not conjugate the auxiliary verbs. It was incredible. John believed he had been stronger in Latin three years before this. In history everyone of them would have failed, if they had not known the questions beforehand. They had read too much and learned too little.

The examination closed with a prayer which a free-thinker was obliged to offer. He repeated the Lord's Prayer stammeringly, and this was wrongly attributed to his supposed state of excitement. In the evening John was taken by his companions to Storkyrkobrinken, where they bought him a student's white cap, for he had no money. Then he went to his father's office to give him the good news. He met him in the hall.

"Well! Have you passed?" said his father.

"Yes."

"And already bought the cap."

"I got it on credit."

"Go to the cashier, and have it paid for."

So they parted. No congratulation! No pressure of the hand! That was his father's Icelandic nature which could not give vent to any expressions of tenderness.

John came home as they were all sitting at supper. He was in a merry mood, and had drunk punch. But his spirits were soon damped. All were silent. His brothers and sisters did not congratulate him. Then he became out of humour and silent also. He left the table and went to rejoin his comrades in the town. There there was joy, childish, exaggerated joy, and all too great hopes.

During the summer he remained at home and gave lessons. With the money earned he hoped to go in the autumn to the University at Upsala. Theology attracted him no more. He had done with it, and, moreover, it went against his conscience to take the ordination vow.

In the autumn he went to Upsala. Old Margaret packed his box, and put in cooking utensils, and a knife and fork. Then she obliged him to borrow fifteen kronas[1] from her. From his father he got a case of cigars, and an exhortation to help himself. He himself had eighty kronas, which he had earned by giving lessons, and with which he must manage to get through his first term at the university.

The world stood open for him; he had the ticket of admission in his hand. He had nothing to do but to enter. Only that!

* * * * *

"A man's character is his destiny." That was then a common and favourite proverb. Now that John had to go into the world, he employed much time in attempting to cast his horoscope from his own character, which he thought was already fully formed. People generally bestow the name of "a character" on a man who has sought and found a position, taken up a rôle, excogitated certain principles of behaviour, and acts accordingly in an automatic way.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life; he has determined to cherish perpetually certain fixed opinions of certain matters; and in order not to be accused of "lack of character," he never changes his opinion, however foolish or absurd it may be. Consequently, a man with a character is generally a very ordinary individual, and what may be called a little stupid. "Character" and automaton seem often synonymous. Dickens's famous characters are puppets, and the characters on the stage must be automata. A well-drawn character is synonymous with a caricature. John had formed the habit of "proving himself" in the Christian fashion, and asked himself whether he had such a character as befitted a man who wished to make his way in the world.

In the first place, he was revengeful. A boy had once openly said, by the Clara Churchyard, that John's father had stood in the pillory. That was an insult to the whole family. Since John was weaker than his opponent, he caused his elder brother to execute vengeance with him on the culprit, by bombarding him with snowballs. They carried out their revenge so thoroughly, that they thrashed the culprit's younger brother who was innocent.

So he must be revengeful. That was a serious charge. He began to consider the matter more closely. Had he revenged himself on his father or his step-mother for the injustice they had done him? No; he forgot all, and kept out of the way.

Had he revenged himself on his school teachers by sending them boxes full of stones at Christmas? No. Was he really so severe towards others, and so hair-splitting in his judgment of their conduct towards him? Not at all; he was easy to get on with, was credulous, and could be led by the nose in every kind of way, provided he did not detect any tyrannous wish to oppress in the other party. By various promises of exchange his school-fellows had cajoled away from him his herbarium, his collection of beetles, his chemical apparatus, his adventure books. Had he abused or dunned them for payment? No; he felt ashamed on their account, but let them be. At the end of one vacation the father of a boy whom John had been teaching forgot to pay him. He felt ashamed to remind him, and it was not till half a year had elapsed, that, at the instigation of his own father, he demanded payment.

It was a peculiar trait of John's character, that he identified himself with others, suffered for them, and felt ashamed on their behalf. If he had lived in the Middle Ages, he would have been marked with the stigmata. If one of his brothers did something vulgar or stupid, John felt ashamed for him. In church he once heard a boys' choir sing terribly out of tune. He hid himself in the pew with a feeling of vicarious shame.

Once he fought with a school-fellow, and gave him a violent blow on the chest, but when he saw the boy's face distorted with pain, he burst into tears and reached him his hand. If anyone asked him to do something which he was very unwilling to do, he suffered on behalf of the one with whose request he could not comply.

He was cowardly, and could let no one go away unheard for fear of causing discontent. He was still afraid of the dark, of dogs, horses, and strangers. But he could also be courageous if necessary, as he had shown by rebelling in school, when the matter concerned his final examination, and by opposing his father.

"A man without religion is an animal," say the old copybooks. Now that it has been discovered that animals are the most religious of creatures, and that he who has knowledge does not need religion, the practical efficacy of the latter has been much reduced. By placing the source of his strength outside himself, he had lost strength and faith in himself. Religion had devoured his ego. He prayed always, and at all hours, when he was in need. He prayed at school when he was asked questions; at the card-table when the cards were dealt out. Religion had spoilt him, for it had educated him for heaven instead of earth; family life had ruined him by educating him for the family instead of for society; and school had educated him for the university instead of for life.

He was irresolute and weak. When he bought tobacco, he asked his friend what sort he should buy. Thus he fell into his friends' power. The consciousness of being popular drove away his fear of the unknown, and friendship strengthened him.

He was a prey to capricious moods. One day, when he was a tutor in the country, he came into the town in order to visit Fritz. When he got there he did not proceed any further, but remained at home, debating with himself whether he should go to Fritz or not. He knew that his friend expected him, and he himself much wished to see him. But he did not go. The next day he returned to the country, and wrote a melancholy letter to his friend, in which he tried to explain himself. But Fritz was angry, and did not understand caprices.

In all his weakness he sometimes was aware of enormous resources of strength, which made himself believe himself capable of anything. When he was twelve his brother brought home a French boys' book from Paris. John said, "We will translate that, and bring it out at Christmas." They did translate it, but as they did not know what further steps to take, the matter dropped.

An Italian grammar fell into his hands, and he learned Italian. When he was a tutor in the country, as there was no tailor there, he undertook to alter a pair of trousers. He opened the seams, altered and stitched the trousers, and ironed them with the great stable key. He also mended his boots. When he heard his sisters and brothers play in a quartette, he was never satisfied with the performance. He would have liked to jump up, to snatch the instruments from them, and to show them how they ought to play.

John had learned to speak the truth. Like all children, he lied in his defence or in answer to impertinent questions, but he found a brutal enjoyment, during a conversation, when people were trying to conceal the truth, to say exactly what all thought. At a ball, where he was very taciturn, a lady asked him if he liked dancing.

"No, not at all," he answered.

"Well, then, why do you dance?"

"Because I am obliged to."

He had stolen apples, like all boys, and that did not trouble him; he made no secret of it. It was a prescriptive right. In the school he had never done any real mischief. Once, on the last day before the close of the term, he and some other boys had broken off some clothes-pegs and torn up some old exercise-books. He was the only one seized on the occasion. It was a mere outbreak of animal spirits, and was not taken seriously.

Now, when he was passing his own character under review, he collected other people's judgments on himself, and was astonished at the diversity of opinion displayed. His father considered him hard; his step-mother, malicious; his brothers, eccentric. Every servant-maid in the house had a different opinion of him; one of them liked him, and thought that his parents treated him ill; his lady friend thought him emotional; the engineer regarded him as an amiable child, and Fritz considered him melancholy and self-willed. His aunts believed he had a good heart; his grandmother that he had character; the girl he loved idolised him; his teachers did not know what to make of him. Towards those who treated him roughly, he was rough; towards his friends, friendly.

John asked himself whether it was he that was so many-sided, or the opinions about him. Was he false? Did he behave to some differently from what he did to others? "Yes," said his step-mother. When she heard anything good about him, she always declared that he was acting a part.

Yes, but all acted parts! His step-mother was friendly towards her husband, hard towards her step-children, soft towards her own child, humble towards the landlord, imperious towards the servants, polite to the powerful, rough to the weak.

That was the "law of accommodation," of which John was as yet unaware. It was a trait in human nature, a tendency to adapt oneself--to be a lion towards enemies, and a lamb towards friends,--which rested on calculation.

But when is one true, and when is one false? And where is to be found the central "ego,"--the core of character? The "ego" was a complex of impulses and desires, some of which were to be restrained, and others unfettered. John's individuality was a fairly rich but chaotic complex; he was a cross of two entirely different strains of blood, with a good deal of book-learning, and a variety of experience. He had not yet found what rôle he was to play, nor his position in life, and therefore continued to be characterless. He had not yet determined which of his impulses must be restrained, and how much of his "ego" must be sacrificed for the society into which he was preparing to enter.

If he had really been able to view himself objectively, he would have found that most of the words he spoke were borrowed from books or from school-fellows, his gestures from teachers and friends, his behaviour from relatives, his temperament from his mother and wet-nurse, his tastes from his father, perhaps from his grandfather. His face had no resemblance to that of his father or mother. Since he had not seen his grand-parents, he could not judge whether there was any resemblance to them. What, then, had he of his own? Nothing. But he had two fundamental characteristics, which largely determined his life and his destiny.

The first was Doubt. He did not receive ideas without criticism, but developed and combined them. Therefore he could not be an automaton, nor find a place in ordered society.

The second was--Sensitiveness to pressure. He always tried to lessen this last, in the first place, by raising his own level; in the second, by criticising what was above him, in order to observe that it was not so high after all, nor so much worth striving after.

So he stepped out into life--in order to develop himself, and still ever to remain as he was!

[1] A krona is worth about twenty-seven cents.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Son of a Servant, by August Strindberg