But the last straw was a sentence which followed:
I should often have liked to talk all this over with you, when last I
was in Copenhagen, but I noticed I was so pried after by gossips that I
gave it up.
The last time Bjoernson was in Copenhagen he had written that article
against me. Besides, I had been told that some few times he had read my
first articles aloud in public in friends' houses, and made fun of their
forced and tyro-like wording. And now he wanted me to believe that he
had at that time been thinking of visiting me, in order to come to an
understanding with me. And worse still, the fear of gossip had
restrained him! This hero of will-power so afraid of a little gossip! He
might go on as he liked now, I had done with him. He did go on, both
cordially and gracefully, but condescendingly, quite incapable of seeing
how wounding the manner of his advances was. He wished to make advances
to me and yet maintain a humiliating attitude of condescension:
There are not many of us in literature who are in earnest; the few who
are ought not to be daunted by the accidental separation that opposed
opinions can produce, when there is a large field for mutual
understanding and co-operation. I sometimes get violently irate for a
moment; if this in lesser men, in whom there really is something base,
brings about a lifelong separation, it does not greatly afflict me.
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