does not owe something to Georg Brandes. His honours lie in their gratitude, his kingdom in their hearts.
*****
Having taken his degree as a doctor at the University of Copenhagen, he has a right to lecture in the buildings of the University, and he has largely exercised that right. It was the 3rd of November 1871, after his return from a journey to Italy, that Georg Brandes gave his first lecture. Timidly, he had chosen the smallest room. But on his arrival he found people standing all down the staircase, and already the first evening the largest room had to be used. It is this room, No. 7, which has ever since been the forum whence his inspired words have gone forth.
It was here, through his lectures, even more than through his books, that he influenced the minds of young Danish men and women.
How well I remember those evenings, twice a week, when we stood together waiting outside the big door. It was not opened till seven o'clock, but to secure a seat we had to be there long before. All young, all enthusiastic, all dreaming of the possibilities life had in store for us, we stood there, crowded together on the steps leading to the portal. Round us the quiet square, clad in its robe of snow; behind us the dome, silent and solemn. Over us the moon and a thousand stars glittering with that cold radiance only known in the winter nights of the north.
Woe to the porter, if he did not open for us the minute the big clock sounded. How we used to hammer on the door, till it echoed through the old buildings. Then there was the run upstairs, the rush down the corridors, the crush and struggle, till at last one could breathe contentedly in one's favourite corner.
A few minutes after, a storm of clapping hands; then silence.On
