Chapter II

He passed his summers in Fredensborg, and his winters in the "Ny-Adelgade" in Copenhagen, and it sometimes occurred to me that this double place of residence corresponded with the different phases of his character and his poetry. He was well adapted to his summer home. There was something in his nature that was akin to the slender, proud alleys, and the pure air and perfect order of the regularly laid out gardens. The white statues of the un-Grecian Greek gods and goddesses among the trees were reminders of his mythologic poems, and harmonized with the character of the poet who has so often surprised and portrayed Venus and Aurora at their morning toilets. With all his great and rare poetic gifts, Paludan-Müller, in his poetry, lacked naïveté; he was never, properly speaking, the poet of nature; and, therefore, a garden was much better adapted to his poetic mood than a forest. The little castle, of which the new royal family promptly took possession, was very dear to him. He was devoted to royalty, as were but few of his contemporaries; he was as loyal as a citizen of the days of Frederick VI. He was rejoiced and felt honored when he received an occasional visit from the young princesses, whose amiability and simple manners won his heart; he was put in an especially good humor one day when the Princess Dagmar[1] sent him her portrait with a few friendly lines. Finally, the spot suited his need of living in retirement. He went to Fredensborg long before the other guests from Copenhagen, and remained there long after they had all departed; he always left the city when the calendar promised spring, and did not return until the last leaves had fallen. Thus he had an opportunity of enjoying profound solitude in his favorite retreat.

Any one who visited him during the winter in Copenhagen, found him in very different surroundings. His street was in one of the worst and most notorious quarters of the city at that time. The fact that he was not in very affluent circumstances had evidently been the cause of his settling in a place of the kind. It was a singular coincidence that the pure and rigorous author of "Kalanus" could never step to his door of a winter evening without having before his eye abundant and loud testimony of human shame and misery. Many an evening I have seen him in the streets of this vicinity, leaning on his cane, and looking neither to the right nor to the left, while numerous rude and noisy couples drifted past him. I would then remember that the author of "Kalanus" was also the author of "Adam Homo"; and were not these the accessory figures of "Adam Homo," the original of the beautiful Lina and the swarthy Trina which the poet had before his eyes day after day? Thus it was not an altogether incongruous decree of fate that located Paludan-Müller in the midst of the most wretched and hideous vices of Copenhagen. When the threshold of his house was once crossed, however, the repulsive neighborhood was wholly forgotten. The door to the peaceful dwelling, where everything was animated by the good genius and good humor of the poet, was usually opened by a faithful old maid-servant who was thoroughly devoted to her employer, and with whose favor no guest could dispense, since, according to the playful assertion of the poet, she tyrannized over his home.