Simultaneously came
the manifest success of _Brand_, and, for the first time, the Norwegian
press recognized the poet's merit. There was a general movement in his
favor; King Carl graciously received his petition of April 15, and on
May 10 the Storthing, almost unanimously, voted Ibsen a "poet's
pension," restricted in amount but sufficient for his modest needs.
The first use he made of his freedom was to move out of Rome, where he
found it impossible to write, and to settle at Frascati among the hills.
He hired a nest of cheap rooms in the Palazzo Gratiosi, two thousand
feet above the sea. Thither he came, with his wife and his little son,
and there he fitted himself up a study; setting his writing table at a
window that overlooked an immensity of country, and Mont Soracte closing
the horizon with its fiery pyramid. In his correspondence of this time
there are suddenly noticeable a gayety and an insouciance which are
elements wholly new in his letters. The dreadful burden was lifted; the
dreadful fear of sinking in a sea of troubles and being lost for ever,
the fear which animates his painful letter to King Carl, was blown away
like a cloud and the heaven of his temper was serene.
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