" [Note: _Samliv med Ibsen_,
1906, p. 30.]
And now the celebrated afternoons at the cafes had begun. In Rome Ibsen
had his favorite table, and he would sit obliquely facing a mirror in
which, half hidden by a newspaper and by the glitter of his gold
spectacles, he could command a sight of the whole restaurant, and
especially of the door into the street. Every one who entered, every
couple that conversed, every movement of the scene, gave something to
those untiring eyes. The newspaper and the cafe mirror--these were the
books which, for the future, Ibsen was almost exclusively to study; and
out of the gestures of a pair of friends at a table, out of a paragraph
in a newspaper, even out of the terms of an advertisement, he could
build up a drama. Incessant observation of real life, incessant capture
of unaffected, unconsidered phrases, actual living experience leaping in
his hands like a captive wild animal, this was now the substance from
which all Ibsen's dreams and dramas were woven. Concentration of
attention on the vital play of character, this was his one interest.
Out of this he was roused by a sudden determination to go at last and
see for himself what life in Norway was really like.
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