lly occupied me too
much, my brain was absolutely inflated by this singular monstrosity of
a creature, and I worked for two hours, without a pause, at my drama.
When I had finished half-a score of pages, perhaps twelve, often with
much effort, at times with long intervals, in which I wrote in vain and
had to tear the page in two, I had become tired, quite stiff with cold
and fatigue, and I arose and went out into the street. For the last
half-hour, too, I had been disturbed by the crying of the children
inside the family room, so that I could not, in any case, have written
any more just then. So I took a long time up over Drammensveien, and
stayed away till the evening, pondering incessantly, as I walked along,
as to how I would continue my drama. Before I came home in the evening
of this day, the following happened:

I stood outside a shoemaker's shop far down in Carl Johann Street,
almost at the railway square. God knows why I stood just outside this
shoemaker's shop. I looked into the window as I stood there, but did
not, by the way, remember that I needed shoes then; my thoughts were
far away in other parts of the world. A swarm of people talking
together passed behind my back, and I heard nothing of what was said.
Then a voice greeted me loudly:

"Good-evening."

It was "Missy" who bade me good-evening! I answered at random, I looked
at him, too, for a while, before I recognized him.

"Well, how are you getting along?" he inquired.

"Oh, always well ... as usual."

"By the way, tell me," said he, "are you, then, still with Christie?"

"Christie?"

"I thought you once said you were book-keeper at Christie's?"

"Ah, yes. No; that is done with. It was impossible to get along with
that fellow; that came to an end very quickly of its own accord."

"Why so?"

"Well, I happened to make a mis-entry one day, and so--"

"A false entry, eh?"

False entry! There stood "Missy," and asked me straight in the face if
I had done this thing. He even asked eagerly, and evidently with much
interest. I looked at him, felt deeply insulted, and made no reply.

"Yes, well, Lord! that might happen to the best fellow," he said, as if
to console me. He still believed I had made a false entry designedly.

"What is it that, 'Yes, well, Lord! indeed might happen to the best
fellow'?" I inquired. "To do that. Listen, my good man. Do you stand
there and really believe that I could for a moment be guilty of such a
mean trick as