been killed, if two young gentlemen had not darted forward
below and caught him in their arms. Once more set the right way up,
Ibsen softly thanked his saviours with much frugality of phrase--"Tak,
mine Herrer!"--tenderly touched an abraded surface of his top-hat, and
marched forth homeward, unperturbed.

His silence had a curious effect on those in whose company he feasted;
it seemed to hypnotise them. The great Danish actress, Mrs. Heiberg,
herself the wittiest of talkers, said that to sit beside Ibsen was to
peer into a gold-mine and not catch a glitter from the hidden treasure.
But his dumbness was not so bitterly ironical as it was popularly
supposed to be. It came largely from a very strange passivity which
made definite action unwelcome to him. He could never be induced to pay
visits, yet he would urge his wife and his son to accept invitations,
and when they returned he would insist on being told every
particular--who was there, what was said, even what everybody wore.
He never went to a theatre or concert-room, except on the very rare
occasions when he could be induced to be present at the performance of
his own plays. But he was extremely fond of hearing about the stage. He
had a memory for little things and an observation of trifles which was
extraordinary. He thought it amazing that people could go into a room
and not notice the pattern of the carpet, the color of the curtains,
the objects on the walls; these being details which he could not help
observing and retaining. This trait comes out in his copious and minute
stage directions.

Ibsen was simplicity itself; no man was ever less affected. But his
character was closed; he was perpetually on the defensive. He was seldom
confidential, he never "gave way"; his emotions and his affections
were genuine, but his heart was a fenced city. He had little sense of
domestic comfort; his rooms were bare and neat, with no personal objects
save those which belonged to his wife. Even in the days of his wealth,
in the fine house on Drammensvej, there was a singular absence of
individuality about his dwelling rooms. They might have been prepared
for a rich American traveller in some hotel. Through a large portion of
his career in Germany he lived in furnished rooms, not because he did
not possess furniture of his own, which was stored up, but because he
paid no sort of homage to his own penates. He had friends, but he did
not cultivate them; he rather permitted them, a