Langeland.

Except for the fact that Egelykke was far from Copenhagen, Grundtvig soon
became quite satisfied with his new position. Both the manor and its
surroundings were extremely beautiful, and his work was congenial. His
employer, a former naval officer, proved to be a rough, hard-drinking
worldling; but his hostess, Constance Leth, was a charming, well-educated
woman whose cultural interests made the manor a favored gathering place
for a group of like-minded ladies from the neighborhood. And with these
cultured women, Grundtvig soon felt himself much more at home than with
his rough-spoken employer and hard-drinking companions.

But if Grundtvig unexpectedly was beginning to enjoy his stay at
Egelykke, this enjoyment vanished like a dream when he suddenly
discovered that he was falling passionately in love with his attractive
hostess. It availed him nothing that others as he well knew might have
accepted such a situation with complacence; to him it appeared an
unpardonable reproach both to his intelligence and his honor. Having
proudly asserted the ability of any intelligent man to master his
passions, he was both horrified and humiliated to discover that he could
not control his own.

Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig

Grundtvig never consciously revealed his true sentiment to Constance
Leth. At the cost of an intense struggle, he managed outwardly to
maintain his code of honorable conduct. But he still felt humbled and
shaken by his inability to suppress his inner and as he saw it guilty
passion. And under this blow to his proud self-sufficiency, he felt,
perhaps for the first time in his life, the need for a power greater than
his own. "To win in this struggle," he wrote in his diary, "lies beyond
my own power. I must look for help from above or sink as the stone sinks
while the lightly floating leaves mock it and wonder why it cannot float
as they do."

The struggle against his passion engendered a need for work. "In order to
quiet the storm within me," he writes, "I forced my mind to occupy itself
with the most difficult labor." Although he had paid small attention to
the suggestion at the time, he now remembered and began to read some of
the authors Steffens had recommended in his lectures: Goethe, Schiller,
Schelling, Fichte, Shakespeare and others. He also studied the work of
newer Danish writers, such as Prof. Jens Moeller, a writer on Northern
mythology, and Adam Oehlenschlaeger