hotel, there stood Madam Esselbach, of war renown, in the doorway, with
her hands on her hips, as in her portrait; she summed up the arrivals
with shrewd, sharp eyes, and exclaimed: "_Das ist ja das junge
Daenemark_." Inside, officers were sitting, playing cards. Major
Sommer promised us young men to show us Gottorp at 6 o'clock next
morning; we should then get a view of the whole of the town from
Hersterberg beforehand.

The Major, who was attacked in the newspapers after the war, and whose
expression "my maiden sword," was made great fun of, showed us younger
ones the magnificent church, and afterwards the castle, which, as a
barracks, was quite spoilt. He acted as the father of the regiment, and,
like Poul Moeller's artist, encouraged the efficient, and said hard words
to the slighty, praising or blaming unceasingly, chatted Danish to the
soldiers, Low German to the cook, High German to the little housekeeper
at the castle, and called the attention of his guests to the perfect
order and cleanliness of the stables. He complained bitterly that a
certain senior lieutenant he pointed out to us, who in 1848 had flung
his cockade in the gutter and gone over to the Germans, had been
reinstated in the regiment, and placed over the heads of brave second-
lieutenants who had won their crosses in the war.

Here I parted with my Grundtvigian friends. When I spoke of them to
Julius Lange on my return, he remarked: "They are a good sort, who wear
their hearts in their buttonholes as decorations."

The society I fell in with for the rest of my journey was very droll.
This consisted of Borup, later Mayor of Finance, and a journalist named
Falkman (really Petersen), even at that time on the staff of _The
Dally Paper_. I little guessed then that my somewhat vulgar