I sat and saw it
with my own eyes, and I understood it at once, right at a despairing
moment where I sat and added up sixteenths. How could I explain this to
myself?
I went to the window and gazed out; it looked out into Vognmandsgade. Some
children were playing down on the pavement; poorly dressed children in the
middle of a poor street. They tossed an empty bottle between them and
screamed shrilly. A load of furniture rolled slowly by; it must belong to
some dislodged family, forced to change residence between "flitting time."
[Footnote: In Norway, l4th of March and October.] This struck me at once.
Bed-clothes and furniture were heaped on the float, moth-eaten beds and
chests of drawers, red-painted chairs with three legs, mats, old iron, and
tin-ware. A little girl--a mere child, a downright ugly youngster, with a
running cold in her nose--sat up on top of the load, and held fast with
her poor little blue hands in order not to tumble off. She sat on a heap
of frightfully stained mattresses, that children must have lain on, and
looked down at the urchins who were tossing the empty bottle to one
another....
I stood gazing at all this; I had no difficulty in apprehending everything
that passed before me. Whilst I stood there at the window and observed
this, I could hear my landlady's servant singing in the kitchen right
alongside of my room. I knew the air she was singing, and I listened to
hear if she would sing false, and I said to myself that an idiot could not
have done all this.
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