"Yes," said she, "a new English fire-engine and Pastor² Bastholm's library," and those probably were all the lions in the city. A few officers of the Lancers composed the fine-gentleman world. Everybody knew what was done in everybody's house, whether a scholar was elevated or degraded in his class, and the like. A private theatre, to which, at general rehearsal⁴, the scholars of the grammar school and the maid-servants of the town had free entrance, furnished rich material for conversation. The place was remote from woods, and still farther from the coast; but the great post-road went through the city, and the post-horn resounded⁶ from the rolling carriage.

 

I boarded with a respectable widow of the educated class, and had a little chamber⁷ looking out into the garden and field. My place in the school was in the lowest class, among little boys:—I knew indeed nothing at all.

 

I was actually like a wild bird which is confined in a cage; I had the greatest desire to learn, but for the moment I floundered about, as if I had been thrown into the sea; the one wave followed another; grammar, geography, mathematics—I felt myself overpowered by them, and feared that I should never be able to acquire all these. The rector, who took a peculiar⁸ delight in turning everything to ridicule⁹, did not, of course, make an exception in my case. To me he stood then as a divinity; I believed unconditionally¹⁰ every word which he spoke¹¹. One day, when I had replied incorrectly to his question, and he said that I was stupid, I mentioned it to Collin, and told him my anxiety, lest I did not deserve all that people had done for me; but he consoled me. Occasionally, however, on some subjects of instruction, I began to receive a good certificate, and the teachers were

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