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,