his self-mastery and her power over him to the test. As it happened
to be his birthday, she rolled into his study a small keg of brandy,
and then withdrew. She returned some time after wards to find that
he had broached the keg, and lay insensible on the floor. In this
anecdote we cannot but recognise the germ, not only of Hedda's
temptation of Lovborg, but of a large part of her character.

"Thus," says Dr. Brandes, "out of small and scattered traits of
reality Ibsen fashioned his close-knit and profoundly thought-out
works of art."

For the character of Eilert Lovborg, again, Ibsen seem unquestionably
to have borrowed several traits from a definite original. A young
Danish man of letters, whom Dr. Brandes calls Holm, was an
enthusiastic admirer of Ibsen, and came to be on very friendly terms
with him. One day Ibsen was astonished to receive, in Munich, a
parcel addressed from Berlin by this young man, containing, without
a word of explanation, a packet of his (Ibsen's) letters, and a
photograph which he had presented to Holm. Ibsen brooded and brooded
over the incident, and at last came to the conclusion that the young
man had intended to return her letters and photograph to a young lady
to whom he was known to be attached, and had in a fit of aberration
mixed up the two objects of his worship. Some time after, Holm
appeared at Ibsen's rooms. He talked quite rationally, but professed
to have no knowledge whatever of the letter-incident, though he
admitted the truth of Ibsen's conjecture that the "belle dame sans
merci" had demanded the return of her letters and portrait. Ibsen
was determined to get at the root of the mystery; and a little inquiry
into his young friend's habits revealed the fact that he broke his
fast on a bottle of port wine, consumed a bottle of Rhine wine at