father having suffered great business losses, and no longer being able
to give me the same help as before, Ludvig David invited me to go and
live altogether at his father's house, and be like a son there--an offer
which I of course refused, but which affected me deeply, especially when
I learnt that it had only been made after the whole family had been
consulted.


X.

In November, 1859, at exactly the same time as Kappers' "literary and
scientific" society was started, a fellow-student named Groenbeck, from
Falster, who knew the family of Caspar Paludan-Mueller, the historian,
proposed my joining another little society of young students, of whom
Groenbeck thought very highly on account of their altogether unusual
knowledge of books and men.

In the old Students' Union in Boldhusgade, the only meeting-place at
that time for students, which was always regarded in a poetic light, I
had not found what I wanted. There was no life in it, and at the
convivial meetings on Saturday night the punch was bad, the speeches
were generally bad, and the songs were good only once in a way.

I had just joined one new society, but I never rejected any prospect of
acquaintances from whom I could learn anything, and nothing was too much
for me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I was
introduced to the society so extolled by Groenbeck, which called itself
neither "literary" nor "scientific," had no other object than
sociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a young
philological student, Frederik Nutzhorn.