o endless conversation.
The episode was strange, the passion improbable, incomprehensible,
profoundly natural and true. Perhaps, until they parted in the last days
of September, neither the old man nor the young girl realized what their
relations had meant to each. Youth secured its revenge, however; Miss
Bardach soon wrote from Vienna that she was now more tranquil, more
independent, happy at last. Ibsen, on the other hand, was heart-broken,
quivering with ecstasy, overwhelmed with joy and despair.

It was the enigma in his "princess," as he called her; that completed
Miss Bardach's sorcery over the old poet. She seems to have been no
coquette; she flung her dangerous fascinations at his feet; she broke
the thread which bound the charms of her spirit and poured them over
him. He, for his part, remaining discreet and respectful, was shattered
with happiness. To a friend of mine, a young Norwegian man of letters,
Ibsen said about this time: "Oh, you can always love, but I am happier
than the happiest, for I am beloved." Long afterwards, on his seventieth
birthday, when his own natural force was failing, he wrote to Miss
Bardach, "That summer at Gossensass was the most beautiful and the most
harmonious portion of my whole existence. I scarcely venture to think
of it, and yet I think of nothing else. Ah! forever!" He did not dare to
send her _The Master-Builder_, since her presence interpenetrated every
line of it like a perfume, and when, we are told, she sent him her
photograph, signed "Princess of Orangia," her too-bold identification
of herself with Hilda Wangel hurt him as a rough touch, that finer tact
would have avoided. There can be no doubt at all that while she was
now largely absorbed by the compliment to her own vanity, he was still
absolutely enthralled and bewitched, and that what was fun to her made
life and death to him.

This very curious episode [Note: It was quite unknown until the
correspondence--which has not been translated into English--was
published by Georg Brandes at the desire of the lady herself (September,
1906).], which modifies in several important respects our conception
of the dramatist's character, is analogous with the apparent change
of disposition which made Renan surprise his unthinking admirers so
suddenly at the epoch of _L'Eau de Jouvence_ and _L'Abbesse de Jouarre_.
It was founded, of course, on that dangerous susceptibility to which
an elderly man of genius, whose life had been s