her weak for a man. When in repose, the
ensemble of his features was exceedingly pleasing and somehow reminded
one of Correggio's St. John. He had left his native land because he was
an ardent republican and was abstractly convinced that man, generically
and individually, lives more happily in a republic than in a monarchy.
He had anticipated with keen pleasure the large, freely breathing life
he was to lead in a land where every man was his neighbor's brother,
where no senseless traditions kept a jealous watch over obsolete
systems and shrines, and no chilling prejudice blighted the spontaneous
blossoming of the soul.

Halfdan was an only child. His father, a poor government official, had
died during his infancy, and his mother had given music lessons, and
kept boarders, in order to gain the means to give her son what is
called a learned education. In the Latin school Halfdan had enjoyed the
reputation of being a bright youth, and at the age of eighteen, he had
entered the university under the most promising auspices. He could make
very fair verses, and play all imaginable instruments with equal ease,
which made him a favorite in society. Moreover, he possessed that very
old-fashioned accomplishment of cutting silhouettes; and what was more,
he could draw the most charmingly fantastic arabesques for embroidery
patterns, and he even dabbled in portrait and landscape painting.
Whatever he turned his hand to, he did well, in fact, astonishingly
well for a dilettante, and yet not well enough to claim the title of an
artist. Nor did it ever occur to him to make such a claim. As one of
his fellow-students remarked in a fit of jealousy, "Once when Nature had
made three geniuses, a poet, a musician, and a painter, she took all the
remaining odds and ends and shook them together at random and the result
was Halfdan Bjerk." This agreeable melange of accomplishments, however,
proved very attractive to the ladies, who invited the possessor to
innumerable afternoon tea-parties, where they drew heavy drafts on his
unflagging patience, and kept him steadily engaged with patterns and
designs for embroidery, leather flowers, and other dainty knickknacks.
And in return for all his exertions they called him "sweet" and
"beautiful," and applied to him many other enthusiastic adjectives
seldom heard in connection with masculine names. In the university,
talents of this order gained but slight recognition, and when Halfdan
had for three yea