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years, and there can be little doubt that her influence, exercised partly directly and partly indirectly through Fru Ibsen, had helped to change Ibsen's own attitude on this question of the status of

women.

She had seen at once the full significance of "A Doll's House," and had greatly rejoiced over it.

Ibsen was very much taken up at this time with reading J. P. Jacobsen's 'Niels Lyhne,' which, says Paulsen, he enjoyed slowly in small portions. One evening he fetched the book and read aloud several passages, closing it with the remark, "There's style!" The fact that he was reading was another sign, in addition to his social activities, that Ibsen was just now resting in his own labours.

Among others who arrived for the Carnival festivities were the Princes Oscar and Karl from Stockholm: and thereby hangs a tale. First the Club gave a masked ball in their honour. Then the SwedishNorwegian ambassador-himself of course a Swede-issued invitations for a dinner. But the invited guests were all people of rank, to the exclusion of the distinguished artists and writers of the Club. Even Ibsen was only asked to come in to meet the Princes at tea after the dinner. His answer

to

the tactless ambassador was his visiting-card with the written words, "I never drink tea."

At Easter Paulsen suddenly took himself off to Sorrento

It is only

for a fortnight. from one of his later books that we learn the reason. The fact was that Paulsen, like his great prototype the real Boswell, had just fallen under the lash of his hero in a most unexpected and horrible fashion. At the Ibsens' supper-table the evening before there had been present two elderly gentlemen and Paulsen. When Ibsen came in it was plain that something had put him in a black humour. One of the guests unluckily started a very delicate subject-the propriety or otherwise of literary men accepting Orders from kings and others. Fru Ibsen in vain tried to turn the conversation, while Ibsen remained dead silent. Pursuing his theme the speaker, apparently forgetting that Ibsen had accepted many Orders, and that this had been one of the foolish causes of the quarrel between him and Bjórnson, expressed his own very adverse opinion, and ended with a comment on the vulgar cheapness of the things: "Why, I met Professor X lately with a whole chain of them." "Yes, but Professor X is court - painter," said Paulsen innocently. This was the drop that made the cup of Ibsen's wrath flow over. "What do you mean?" cried he, with a bang on the table. "Out with it! I suppose you think I am court-poet? This is not the first time you have alluded to my Orders: I will beg you in future to spare me. Not that I see why you of all people should concern yourself with

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such a matter. You are not ly honoured guest at Ibsen's likely ever to be tempted by the offer of an Order.' The rest of the evening was extremely uncomfortable. Ibsen made some friendly half-apologetic remarks, and Fru Ibsen did her best as hostess. Next day Paulsen sent her a bouquet of violets, and vanished. Returning to his room in Rome in the middle of May, Paulsen found the kindest of invitations from the Ibsens to keep Constitution Day-May 17-with them. But first he went to the Café at a time when he was sure Ibsen would be there. He approached nervously, knowing Ibsen's dislike of being disturbed. But the poet was up in a moment, warmly pressed his hand, and insisted on his joining him at his table. Thus was the trouble handsomely smoothed over.

This particular 17th May was a memorable one. Fru Collett was daughter of Nicolai Wergeland, one of the members of the Eidsvold Convention that ratified the Constitution of 1814, while on this very day her brother Henrik Wergeland's statue was being unveiled by Bjórnson in Christiania. She was therefore the high

With Paulsen's departure from Italy in the month of June in this year, 1881, we are unfortunately at the end of his intercourse with Ibsen. The poet himself presently went to Sorrento, and there finished "Ghosts." The play was published in December, and was received with a blind fury of abuse that now seems almost incredible. Ibsen was not the man to be browbeat. Within a year he had returned to the charge with "An Enemy of the People." The opposition were now on the horns of a dilemma. The argument of the new work was unanswerable. Yet, as far as argument went, the two plays stood or fell together. So there had to be some rather shamefaced reconsidering of opinions too hastily formed and too violently expressed. Meantime it is pleasant to remember that the chivalrous manner in which Bjórnson took up the cudgels for Ibsen in the fight that raged round "Ghosts" marked the beginning of the end of the long and lamentable estrangement between the two

men.

GRANVILLE SHARP.

A STUDIO IN MATARIA.

MY hostesses and their studio - assistant met me at the station, mounted on white donkeys caparisoned in red and wearing necklets of shells and many - coloured beads, brass chains and coins and what not.

They had provided a donkey for me also, and were attended by a Liliputian escort of donkeyboys, carefully picked for their small stature and running and staying powers, so that our progress was not unlike that of some kindergarten in training for a Marathon race, with the donkeys in front to set the pace.

We set off on our ride to the village, cantering along with a "rings-on-their- fingers-andbells-on-their-toes" effect, produced by the merry jingle of the donkeys' trinkets.

A double line of acacias kept the road, their green and massy heads overshadowing it most pleasantly, and between their trunks we caught delightful glimpses of the country as we rode. The normal landscape in Lower Egypt is not, as many suppose, a stretch of yellow sand, with palm-trees like overgrown feather dusters sticking forlornly out of it here and there, but a vast green plain, whose colour is transparent and luminous as an emerald, and altogether wonderful. The absence of any visible division between fields and properties gives a striking effect of space and largeness of plan to English

eyes.

Here and there a mud village, mirrored in its stagnant pond, rises out of the plain, and here and there a farmhouse in an orange grove, a group of palms growing beside a vine - shaded water - wheel, give contrast to the close-growing crops of barley, wheat, and burseem that cover the earth as with a carpet. And these palm-trees are not like feather dusters at all, but graceful in form and harmonious in their quiet tones of grey and silver. For the rest, the greenness appears to be without beginning or end, and to be bounded by nothing but the curve of the earth and the melting of bluish distant fields and trees into the grey-mauve of the sky at the horizon. Lovely in itself, this spacious simple landscape forms a quite ideal background for the peasants working in the fields, assisted by the muchenduring camels and donkeys, that in this roadless land of narrow field-paths perform the office of carts and wheelbarrows. Even the unromantic garb of our modern country folk at home cannot destroy the picturesqueness of the labours of the field, but here, where the people's clothes are beautiful, it is a very different thing. The fellaheen are, physically, very fine types of the human race, and their simple garments are most admirably designed to half conceal and half reveal the shapely forms that they adorn. The women, statuesque and

dignified in their flowing robes of blue or sable, their sober wimples of deep black falling almost to the ground, move with a freedom and grace that it is a constant delight to

behold.

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The men, broad chested, strong-limbed, and of a glorious bronze colour, wear outwardly a cotton garment something like a shirt, but better designed than the European variety and ampler. It is wide-sleeved and collarless, with a triangular opening in the front, through which there usually appears a waistcoat of contrasting hue, with a row of little buttons jostling one another up and down it. The shirt itself is often white, occasionally black, and may be of any colour; but for beauty none can compare with the commonest kind of all, which is blue as the petals of a forget-me-not, and one of the most delightful things in Egypt. From the deep sapphire or the brilliant turquoise of its early bloom, it passes through countless transition stages that mark the course of time and circumstance and denote the action of sun and soap. Finally it reaches a most refined and delicate shade of azure, which combines alike with the tender green of the unripe corn, the gold of the harvest-field, to make pictures that are exquisite beyond telling. But the spirit of modern progress is at work in Egypt as elsewhere, and we may look for the disappearance of the galabiah and the reduction of all to the commonplace ugliness with which this spirit

is rapidly making dull even the remoter parts of this once interesting planet. Already elasticsided brown boots, and socks with the shameless mechanism of the suspender showing halfway up a leg that might have posed for Mercury's, are common sights even in the rural districts. The next stage is the substitution of a second-hand tram-conductor's jacket or a soldier's cast-off khaki tunic for the stately abaya or sleeveless cloak; a little later trousers are adopted and the cotton robes laid aside; then the cool and patriarchal-looking turban has to go, and is replaced by a hard and skimpy fez, and the dignified Egyptian has become a mean-looking ugly rascal. His composite costume suggests merely that he is one of the scum of the earth, and that it would be more tedious than interesting to find out to what nationality he belongs. Therefore, let all come quickly who would see him working, sickle in hand, among his crops, with the skirts of his blue galabiah carefully tucked up high above his neat brown legs and fantastically-shaped white under

wear.

Soon we reached the main street of the village, which is also the highroad to Cairo, and a place of contrasts, more curious than beautiful, as such contrasts always are, between East and West, and between old ways and new. Beyond the village are some places of interest known to Baedeker, to visit which is incumbent on every tourist worthy of the name, So out there comes,

driving the whole way from Cairo, all through the winter, an interminable procession of people from all parts of the world, in every variety of cotton suit, sun helmet, and blue goggles, blow the wind never so chill, and be the sun never so hidden from the world. Why do people, presumably of sound mind and otherwise free from hallucinations, dress as if they were just going off to discover the Equator, whereas they are merely going for a drive in the outskirts of a modern town in a landau? We met a very typical party on their return journey-Papa, Mamma, Miss Snooks, and little Georgy. They looked dusty and hot and rather tired, but on the box was a dragoman, and on their faces a look as of who should say, "Now we have been to the end of the world, and won't we tell them all about it when we get home!"

We slackened speed as we entered the village, for the traffic is incessant and very varied, and no one ever thinks of getting out of the way of anybody else. At a narrow narrow turn in the road, where a café juts out to chat with a little shop across the street (an emporium of tomatoes and coloured handkerchiefs), we came upon a smart new motor-car, in which sat two thinly veiled Turkish ladies. It was a Limousine of the very latest design, just arrived from Paris, and it was fuming and snorting and quivering with indignation at being held up by something which we could not see. The obstruction turned out to be a

camel, who, equally indignant, was dancing a strange and ungainly pas seul in the middle of the street, apparently as a protest against vehicular traffic in general and smart Parisian motors in particular. His load of broad-leafed sugar-cane was nodding and rustling far aloft, like the topmost boughs of a tree in a gale of wind, as he danced. This comedy seemed likely to be protracted indefinitely, as both parties were determined not to give way, but suddenly, as we looked, the camel slipped upon some mud, the waving branches heeled over, tottered for a moment, and then with a crash the whole thing came violently to the ground, camel, sugar-cane and all, amid the voluble comments, pious ejaculations, and advice of the bystanders. The motor, with a triumphant toot of its horn, glided disdainfully past the prostrate foe, who lay where he had fallen, murmuring and swearing loudly in his pre-hieroglyphic tongue. Next we met, tearing along towards Cairo on a free-wheel, a typical young Egyptian of the present. day. The tide of fashion has engulfed him up to the neck, and he is nothing if not European, from his too-yellow boots to his bright-green tie whereon the rosebuds bloom. Light is reflected from that crowning glory a stiff white collar, that loses nothing of its brilliance by contrast with his complexion. "A little blackish," to quote one of his countrymen, is the latter. A hat is the headgear of the Christian, never worn by the Moslem in this country, so

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