It is unnecessary to point out to readers of the present day how
incomplete and arbitrary this attempt at a dissection of Danish
literature was. I started from the conviction that modern intellectual
life in Europe, in different countries, must necessarily in all
essentials traverse the same stages, and as I was able to find various
unimportant points of similarity in support of this view, I quite
overlooked the fact that the counterbalancing weight of dissimilarities
rendered the whole comparison futile.
IX.
As, during my first stay in Paris, I had frequently visited Madame
Victorine, the widow of my deceased uncle, and her children, very
cordial relations had since existed between us, especially after my
uncle's faithless friend had been compelled to disgorge the sums sent
from Denmark for her support, which he had so high-handedly kept back.
There were only faint traces left of the great beauty that had once been
hers; life had dealt hardly with her. She was good and tender-hearted,
an affectionate mother, but without other education than was usual in
the Parisian small bourgeois class to which she belonged. All her
opinions, her ideas of honour, of propriety, of comfort and happiness,
were typical of her class.
Partly from economy, partly from a desire not to waste the precious
time, I often, in those days, restricted my midday meal.
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