N. David was anxious to see. As he did not care to go alone, he
took me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreign
capital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I no longer, it is
true, had the same intense boyish impressionability as when I was in
Sweden for the first time, seven years before. The most trifling thing
then had been an experience. In Goeteborg I had stayed with a friend of
my mother's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, Bluma Alida, a wondrously
charming little maiden, had jokingly been destined by the two mothers
for my bride from the child's very birth. And at that time I had
assimilated every impression of people or scenery with a voracious
appetite which rendered these impressions ineffaceable all my life long.
That Summer month, my fancy had transformed every meeting with a young
girl into an adventure and fixed every landscape on my mental retina
with an affection such as the landscape painter generally only feels for
a place where he is specially at home. Then I had shared for a whole
month Goeteborg family and social life. Now I was merely travelling as a
tourist, and as the companion of a highly respected old man.
I was less entranced at Stockholm by the Industrial Exhibition than by
the National Museum and the Royal Theatre, where the lovely Hyasser
captivated me by her beauty and the keen energy of her acting.
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