Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 4

the tutor ate and drank with a relish that I
had never seen anyone show over eating and drinking before. The very
way in which he took his sugar--more sugar than Father or Mother
took--and dissolved it in the coffee before he poured in the cream,
showed what a treat the cup of coffee was to him.
Mr. Voltelen had a delicate chest, and sometimes the grown-up people
said they were afraid he could not live. 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