I put the lamp down upon the floor.  In one bottle was ink, in the second paraffin, and in the third, a smaller one, cod-liver oil, which he probably took for his chest.

I remembered his clammy hand, his stopping, and heavy breathing on the stairs, and I felt thoroughly ashamed that I could have been such a wretch as to think the dear friend, I might also say ideal, of my youth, was no better than any scamp in vulgar life, who positively ought to be suspected.

I offered him, in silence, a penitent apology, while I read over the titles on the backs of the books, recognising one and another.  These shelves seemed to be the bookshelves of his student days.  I drew out a thick volume, old “Saxo Grammaticus,” which I remembered to have bought at an auction, and presented to him; but now I found something quite different to think about.

It happened with me as with a man who draws out a brick and suddenly finds a secret passage—­I all at once felt myself at the entrance to my friend’s secret, though, as yet, only before a deep, dark room through which my imagination might wander, but which I could not really see, unless my friend himself held the light for me.

What thus attracted my attention and rivetted my thought and recollection to the spot, was no hole, but the head of a violin, with a dusty neck, and a tangle of strings about the screws which was stuck up at the back of the shelf.  The fourth string hung loosely down; the over-stretched, broken first had curled up, and under the two whole strings the bridge lay flat, as I ascertained by taking several books out of the row and feeling for it.  I examined the violin, which I could easily remove, as carefully as if I had found a friend ill and starving; there was an unmended crack in the body.  Enchained by old memories, I could not help falling into a very sad frame of mind.

I put the books on the shelves again, replaced the lamp on the table, and sat myself on the sofa, where puffing away at the pipe (I found on it among others my own initials, cut by myself) I gave myself up to reflections, which I will here impart to the reader even at the risk of his thinking my friend is rather a long time getting the punch.  Through these reflections he will stand before the reader, as he did before my mind’s eye in the light of youthful recollections, and as the reader must know him, if he will understand him.

Our acquaintance as students arose naturally from the fact that we were both from Nordland.  He was three or four years older than I, and his being the trusted though anonymous theatrical reviewer on the H——­ paper, was enough of itself to give him, in my eyes, an official superiority, before which I bowed.