nn was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
was excitement, there was danger--and yet he lay so comfortably in his
good and beloved bed in Upsala.

One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
his portrait in the assembly-room.

From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place--that is to
say, its open burial-place--the great library. We wander from hall to
hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
man, the librarian, Professor Schroeder. He smiles and nods as he hears
how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
"Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke." We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
translation of the "Four Evangelists."[Q] Gold and silver letters
glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
spirit, and longs to be out in the free air--and we are there; by
Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
stands--the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
leads us close past Upsala's old hills--Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
graves, as they are called.

[Footnote Q: A Gothic translation of