not find it expedient to engage until affairs had taken such a
turn that there was no longer any danger involved in the attack.
It should also be remembered that there are few individuals in
history whose renown has been more completely in the hands of
enemies than that of Catiline.

My drama was written during the hours of the night. The leisure
hours for my study I practically had to steal from my employer, a
good and respectable man, occupied however heart and soul with
his business, and from those stolen study hours I again stole
moments for writing verse. There was consequently scarcely
anything else to resort to but the night. I believe this is the
unconscious reason that almost the entire action of the piece
transpires at night.

Naturally a fact so incomprehensible to my associates as that I
busied myself with the writing of plays had to be kept secret;
but a twenty-year old poet can hardly continue thus without
anybody being privy to it, and I confided therefore to two
friends of my own age what I was secretly engaged upon.

The three of us pinned great expectations on _Catiline_ when
it had been completed. First and foremost it was now to be
copied in order to be submitted under an assumed name to the
theater in Christiania, and furthermore it was of course to be
published. One of my faithful and trusting friends undertook to
prepare a handsome and legible copy of my uncorrected draft, a
task which he performed with such a degree of conscientiousness
that he did not omit even a single one of the innumerable dashes
which I in the heat of composition had liberally interspersed