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This Resolution is accepted by the Government then in office: Lovenskiold, Krog, Sibbern, Schmidt, Pettersen, Herm. Foss and Fr. Stang and by the members then forming the Section of the Cabinet Council, Due, J. H. Vogt and Fleischer.

I had also attended many lectures, some occasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Leveque and Taine. Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begun studying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of his that I read was The French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern.

The tiring night-journey, with its full four hours' wait at Liege, was all pure enjoyment to me, and in a mood of mild ecstasy, at last, at half-past ten on the morning of November 11th 1866, I made my entry into Paris, and was received cordially by the proprietors of a modest but clean little hotel which is still standing, No. 20 Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, by the proprietors, two simple Lorrainers, Francois and Mueller, to whom Gabriel Sibbern, who was staying there, had announced my arrival.

I had quite a talk with Sibbern, the Swedish minister, who was very friendly and sympathetic, not only at our leaving the Foreign Office, but at the extreme discomfort of moving in such frightfully cold weather. He was wrapped in furs, as if he were going to the North Pole.

Then I begged Gabriel Sibbern to furnish a thorough criticism of Nielsen's books, but he declined. I began to doubt whether I should be able to persuade the elder men to speak. A review in The Fatherland of the first part of Nielsen's Logic of Fundamental Ideas roused my indignation.

The same morning Sibbern guided my first steps to one of Pasdeloup's great classical popular concerts.

Meanwhile, I pursued my studies with ardour and enjoyment, read a very great deal of belles-lettres, and continued to work at German philosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plunged into a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much more stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism. It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance.

It was very funny that, whereas Hauch remarked that he himself had wished to give me the prize with an although in the criticism, but that Sibbern had been against it, Sibbern declared exactly the reverse; in spite of all its faults he had wanted to award the medal, but Hauch had expressed himself adverse.

The Louvre and the Luxembourg, the Theatre Francais and the Gymnase were immense treasuries that tempted me. In the Autumn of 1866, when Gabriel Sibbern started to Paris, somewhat before I myself could get away, my last words to him: "Till we meet again in the Holy City!" were by no means a jest.

Old before his time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a most abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyes and independent thoughts, was an emancipating phenomenon. He had divested himself of all Danish prejudices. "There is still a great deal of phlogiston in our philosophy," he used to say sometimes.