Which rocked up and down with every step I took across it, seemed like a gasping, sinister coffin. The ever- increasing noise in the streets lured me out. It promised to be a clear day-autumn, that tender, cool time of the year, when all things change their colour, and die, had come to us. I leant with my elbows resting on the window-frame and gazed into open space. Farther away lay the ruins of a burnt-out smithy, which some labourers were busy clearing away. From where I was standing I had a view of a clothes, line and an open field. I heard the clock below strike eight as I got up and put on my clothes. I could even make out the grinning lean letters of "winding- sheets to be had at Miss Andersen's" on the right of it. It grew lighter and lighter, and I took to reading the advertisements near the door. Now and then, when luck had favoured me, I had managed to get five shillings for a feuilleton from some newspaper or other. A few times I had kept my bed for the day with vertigo. I had been somewhat hard-up lately, and one after the other of my belongings had been taken to my "Uncle." I had grown nervous and irritable. The instant I opened my eyes I began, from sheer force of habit, to think if I had anything to rejoice over that day. By the door where the wall of the room was papered with old numbers of the Morgenbladet, I could distinguish clearly a notice from the Director of Lighthouses, and a little to the left of that an inflated advertisement of Fabian Olsens' new-baked bread.
It was already broad daylight, and people had begun to go up and down the stairs. I was lying awake in my attic and I heard a clock below strike six.
It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.
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