This was the man most beloved of the previous
generation, whose star had certainly declined since the war, but whose
name was still one to conjure with, Orla Lehmann.
I had made his acquaintance when I was little more than a boy, in a very
curious way.
In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C.N. David's house, on
Runeberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and Lehmann
houses, despite the political differences between them, were closely
related one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla Lehmann had
heard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he had just
founded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremely
conservative Society of August, and, looking out for lecturers for it,
hit upon the twenty-three-year-old speaker as upon a possibility.
I was then living in a little cupboard of a room on the third floor in
Crystal Street, and over my room was one, in the attic, inhabited by my
seventeen-year-old brother, who had not yet matriculated.
Orla Lehmann, who had been told that the person he was seeking lived
high up, rapidly mounted the four storeys, and knocked, a little out of
breath, at the schoolboy's door. When the door opened, he walked in, and
said, still standing:
"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann." Without heeding the surprise he read in
the young fellow's face, he went on:
"I have come to ask you to give a lecture to the People's Society in the
Casino's big room.
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