I lay on the floor and writhed with feelings which could not find expression either in thoughts or words. The people and the social conditions in his dramas were just my circle, my social conditions, my world. Never before had I seen so clearly what it was that bound me down and thwarted me. I saw that I must get away, that I should have no peace if I remained. Go I must, and at once! I had no connections anywhere, and I was ignorant of the world, but I went with a desperate faith in the one thing that I possessed--my scrap of talent. If it had not been for Ibsen I should never have gone. I lived for years alone in a strange country among strangers, among people who were indifferent to me,--but I belonged to myself. I was free from the stupid tempers and prejudices of others. I read and thought about what I liked. I belonged to myself! I supported myself entirely, and felt my personality, both intellectual and spiritual, struggling towards freedom. I owed nothing to my surroundings or personal intercourse. Heyse and Ibsen were my awakeners and the guides of my life.” The curious thing in this life was that the influence of these two great antipodeans was held in the balance, and the one appeared as continuing the work begun by the other. One would have thought that it was impossible, and that the influence of the one would not have allowed itself to be ingrafted on the work of the other. Imagine Heyse’s refined sensualism beside Ibsen’s negation of the senses! Between the disciples of the one, a comprehensive sympathy; between the others--no mercy. That there is no mercy to be found amongst the people of our day--that each one is imprisoned in the iron harness of his own interests--that was just the terrible news that Ibsen imparted to us in his dramas, when he urged us to help ourselves because there was no other help to be had. Yet the figures of Ibsen’s principal women are to be found in Heyse, for before Ibsen Heyse had already met with and understood the apparitions with which Ibsen has revolutionised us; Heyse discovered the same highly developed type in a few solitary specimens which have only been discovered by Ibsen many years later.