VII.
A month after the Students' Meeting, at the invitation of my friend Jens
Paludan-Mueller, I spent a few weeks at his home at Nykjoebing, in the
island of Falster, where his father, Caspar Paludan-Mueller, the
historian, was at the time head master of the Grammar-school. Those were
rich and beautiful weeks, which I always remembered later with
gratitude.
The stern old father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed
one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the
world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the
house likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known in
Danish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Goeiske. Jens was a cordial and
attentive host, the daughters were all of them women out of the
ordinary, and bore the impress of belonging to a family of the highest
culture in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second,
with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in a
manner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiable
young girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony of
provincial life, and their release came when their father was appointed
to a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of manner
and a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family.
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