On the cathedra stood Georg Brandes.
A tall, lithe figure, dressed simply but with scrupulous care. And what a wonderful face is his! Irregular features, some might even be called ugly; it seems impossible to say exactly what they are like, captivated as one is by their ever-changing expression—quiet thoughtfulness flashing into humour, tired melancholy breaking into a sunlit smile.
He speaks without pose and affectation, seems scarcely to raise his voice above the pitch of ordinary conversation, yet it carries each phrase to the furthest corner of the room. But behind the quietness is felt the quivering of a passionate nature, which now and then, when he is roused by some best loved or best hated theme, flashes on the audience with a suddenness that electrifies. Sometimes we would follow him with Goethe to the Court of Weimar, or another time he would reveal to us the gigantic fancy concealed behind the mountains of dull description in the works of Zola. With glowing words he would paint for us the poetry and romance of Polish literature, or illuminate for us the golden thoughts of Niezche, young Germany's ill-fated philosopher.
Winter after winter has passed, and youth has fled with the years. The sadness in his eyes has deepened, and his hair is touched with silver, but his vitality is still the same, his spiritual alertness as keen as ever. Still he gathers round him the young men and women of Copenhagen, and when he showers on them the sparks of his own rich personality, he sets aflame the smouldering fire of their natures, brings into bloom the flowers that lie sleeping in their souls.
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A favourite saying of Dr. Brandes' is "that men and women can be divided into three classes—those who command, those who obey, and those who can neither command nor obey and that theyought
