had a delightful stay of two months,
received from King Carl the order of the Wasa, was feted at banquets,
renewed his acquaintance with Snoilsky, and was treated everywhere with
the highest distinction. Ibsen and Bjoernson were how beginning to be
recognized as the two great writers of Norway, and their droll balance
as the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of letters was already becoming defined.
It was doubtless Bjoernson's emphatic attacks on Sweden that at this
moment made Ibsen so loving to the Swedes and so beloved. He was in such
clover at Stockholm that he might have lingered on there indefinitely,
if the Khedive had not invited him, in September, to be his guest at
the opening of the Suez Canal. This sudden incursion of an Oriental
potentate into the narrative seems startling until we recollect that
illustrious persons were invited from all countries to this ceremony.
The interesting thing is to see that Ibsen was now so fatuous as to be
naturally so selected; the only other Norwegian guest being Professor J.
D. C. Lieblein, the Egyptologist.

The poet started for Egypt, by Dresden and Paris, on September 28.
_The League of Youth_ was published on the 29th, and first performed on
October 18; Ibsen, therefore, just missed the scandal and uproar caused
by the play in Norway. In company with eighty-five other people, all
illustrious guests of the Khedive, and under the care of Mariette Bey,
Ibsen made a twenty-four days' expedition up the Nile into Nubia, and
then back to Cairo and Port Said. There, on November 17, in the company
of an empress and several princes of the blood, he saw the Canal
formally opened and graced a grand processional fleet that sailed out
from Port Said towards Ismaila. But on the quay at Port Said Ibsen's
Norwegian mail was handed to him, and letters and newspapers alike were
full of the violent scenes in the course of which _The League of Youth_
had been hissed down at Christiania. Then and there he sent his defiance
back to Norway in _At Port Said_, one of the most pointed and effective
of all his polemical lyrics. A version in literal prose must suffice,
though it does cruel injustice to the venomous melody of the original:

The dawn of the Eastern Land
Over the haven glittered;
Flags from all corners of the globe
Quivered from the masts.
Voices in music
Bore onward the cantata;
A thousand cannon
Christened the Canal.