"We are not going to the country after all," he said; "Hanka thought--In fact, I told her plainly that if she wanted to go she would have to go alone; I was too busy to think of getting off. Hanka was very nice about it; she agreed to stay in the city." The door opened and Milde entered. The corpulent chap beamed happily and shouted, full of the great sensation he was going to spring: "Congratulate me, good people, I have won the prize! Imagine, in its inscrutable wisdom the ministry has chosen to bestow the subsidy upon me!" "Have _you_ received the subsidy?" asked Irgens slowly. "Yes, can you understand it? How it happened I am at a loss to know. I got it from under your very noses! I hear that you, too, applied, Irgens?" Silence fell upon the crowd at the table. Nobody had expected that, and they were all wondering what influence had been brought to bear. Milde had got the subsidy--what next? "Well, I congratulate you!" said Tidemand, and gave Milde his hand. "Thank you," Milde replied. "I want you to lend me some money now, so that I can celebrate properly; you'll get it back when I cash in." Irgens looked at his watch as if he suddenly remembered something and got up. "I, too, congratulate you," he said. "I am sorry to have to leave at once; I have to--No; my object in applying was an entirely different one; I'll tell you about it later," he added in order to hide his disappointment. Irgens went home. So Milde had been chosen! That was the way Norway rewarded her talents. Here he had hurled his inspired lyric in their faces, and they did not even know what it was! _Whom_ had they preferred? None other than oil-painter Milde, collector of ladies' corsets! Of course, he knew how it had happened; Paulsberg was behind it. Paulsberg had supported Milde's application, and Milde had painted Paulsberg's picture. A simon-pure advertising conspiracy! And when Irgens passed the Arrow and saw the painting he spat contemptuously on the pavement. He had seen through this hypocritical scurviness. However, he would find means to make himself felt. But why in the world should Lars Paulsberg be allowed to dispose of these subsidies? True, he had never let slip an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the newspapers; he had his press-agents; he took good care that his name shouldn't be forgotten. But apart from that? Alas, a few novels in the style of the seventies, a popular and amateurish criticism of such a moss-grown dogma as the Atonement! What did it amount to when one looked at it critically? But the fact that he had the press behind him made his words carry weight. Yes, he was certainly a shrewd and thrifty soul, a real backwoods bargain-hunter. He knew what he was doing when he even allowed his wife to accept Journalist Gregersen's beer-perfumed attentions! Faugh, what a sordid mess!