Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 4

There was a report that a rich benefactor, named Nobel, had offered to send him to Italy, that he might recover in the warmer climate of the South. It was generous of Mr. Nobel, and Mr. Voltelen was thinking of starting. Then he caught another complaint. He had beautiful, brown, curly hair. One day he stayed away; he had a bad head, he had contracted a disease in his hair from a dirty comb at a bathing establishment. And when he came again I hardly recognised him. He wore a little dark wig. He had lost every hair on his head, even his eyebrows had disappeared. His face was of a chalky pallor, and he coughed badly too.
Why did not God protect him from consumption? And how could God find it in His heart to give him the hair disease when he was so ill already? God was strange. He was Almighty, but He did not use His might to take care of Mr. Voltelen, who was so good and so clever, and so poor that he needed help more than anyone else. Mr. Nobel was kinder to Mr. Voltelen than God was. God was strange, too, in other ways; He was present everywhere, and yet Mother was cross and angry if you asked whether He was in the new moderator lamp, which burnt in the drawing-room with a much brighter light than the two wax candles used to give. God knew everything, which was very uncomfortable, since it was impossible to hide the least thing from Him. Strangest of all was it when one reflected that, if one knew what God thought one was going to say, one could say something else and His omniscience would be foiled. But of course one did not know what He thought would come next. The worst of all, though, was that He left Mr. Voltelen in the lurch so.
VI.
Some flashes of terrestrial majesty and magnificence shone on my modest existence. Next after God came the King. As I was walking along the street one day with my father, he exclaimed: "There is the King!" I looked at the open carriage, but saw nothing noticeable there, so fixed my attention upon the coachman, dressed in red, and the footman's plumed hat. "The King wasn't there!" "Yes, indeed he was--he was in the carriage." "Was that the King? He didn't look at all remarkable--he had no crown on." "The King is a handsome man," said Father. "But he only puts on his state clothes when he drives to the Supreme Court."
So we went one day to see the King drive to the Supreme Court. A crowd of people were standing waiting at the Naval Church. Then came the procession. How splendid it was! There were runners in front of the horses, with white silk stockings and regular flower-pots on their heads; I had never seen anything like it; and there were postillions riding on the horses in front of the carriage. I quite forgot to look inside the carriage and barely caught a glimpse of the King. And that glimpse made no impression upon me. That he was Christian VIII. I did not know; he was only "the King."
Then one day we heard that the King was dead, and that he was to lie in state twice. These lyings in state were called by forced, unnatural names, Lit de Parade and _Castrum doloris_; I heard them so often that I learnt them and did not forget them. On the Lit de Parade the body of the King himself lay outstretched; that was too sad for a little boy. But Castrum doloris was sheer delight, and it really was splendid. First you picked your way for a long time along narrow corridors, then high up in the black-draped hall appeared the coffin covered with black velvet, strewn with shining, twinkling stars. And a crowd of candles all round. It was the most magnificent sight I had ever beheld.
VII.
I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals. The country was not so far from town then as it is now. My paternal grandfather had a country-house a little way beyond the North gate, with fine trees and an orchard; it was the property of an old man who went about in high Wellington boots and had a regular collection of wax apples and pears--such a marvellous imitation that the first time you saw them you couldn't help taking a bite out of one. Driving out to the country-house in the Summer, the carriage would begin to lumber and rumble as soon as you passed through the North gate, and when you came back you had to be careful to come in before the gate