Ticket No. "9672"

CHAPTER XVII.

Chris­tia­nia, though it is the largest city in Nor­way, would be con­sid­ered a small town in ei­ther Eng­land or France; and were it not for fre­quent fires, the place would present very much the same ap­pear­ance that it did in the eleventh cen­tu­ry. It was re­al­ly re­built in 1624, by King Chris­tian, how­ev­er; and its name was then changed from Op­so­lo, as it had been pre­vi­ous­ly called, to Chris­tia­nia, in hon­or of its roy­al ar­chi­tect.

It is sym­met­ri­cal­ly laid out with broad, straight streets: and the hous­es are gen­er­al­ly of gray stone or red brick. In the cen­ter of a fine gar­den stands the roy­al palace, known as the Os­car­lot, a large quad­ran­gu­lar build­ing, de­void of beau­ty, though built in the Ion­ic style of ar­chi­tec­ture. There are a few church­es, in which the at­ten­tion of wor­shipers is not dis­tract­ed by any mar­vels of art; sev­er­al mu­nic­ipal and gov­ern­ment build­ings, and one im­mense bazaar, con­struct­ed in the form of a ro­tun­da, and stocked with both na­tive and for­eign goods.

There is noth­ing very re­mark­able about all this, but one thing the trav­el­er can cer­tain­ly ad­mire with­out stint, and that is the site of the city, which is en­cir­cled by moun­tains so var­ied in shape and as­pect as to form a most su­perb frame for Chris­tia­nia.

Though the city is near­ly flat in the new and wealthy quar­ter, the hilly por­tions, where the poor­er class­es live, are cov­ered with brick or wood­en huts of gaudy tints that as­ton­ish rather than charm the be­hold­er.

Like all cities sit­uat­ed up­on the wa­ter's edge, and up­on fer­tile hills, Chris­tia­nia is ex­treme­ly pic­turesque, and it would not be un­just to com­pare its fiord to the fa­mous Bay of Naples. Its shores, like those of Sor­ren­to and Castel­la­mare, are dot­ted with chalets and vil­las, half hid­den in the dark, rich ver­dure of the pines, and en­veloped in the light mist that im­parts such a won­der­ful soft­ness to north­ern land­scapes.

Sylvius Hogg had at last re­turned to Chris­tia­nia, though un­der con­di­tions that he lit­tle dreamed of at the be­gin­ning of his in­ter­rupt­ed jour­ney. Oh, well, he would try that again an­oth­er year! He could think on­ly of Joel and Hul­da Hansen now. Had there been time to pre­pare for them, he would cer­tain­ly have tak­en them to his own home, where old Fink and old Kate would have made them hearti­ly wel­come; but un­der the cir­cum­stances, the pro­fes­sor had thought it ad­vis­able to take them to the Ho­tel du Nord, where, as pro­tegees of Sylvius Hogg, they were sure of ev­ery at­ten­tion, though he had care­ful­ly re­frained from giv­ing their names, for there had been so much talk about the broth­er and sis­ter, and es­pe­cial­ly about the young girl, that it would be very em­bar­rass­ing for her if her ar­rival in Chris­tia­nia should be­come known.

It had been de­cid­ed that Sylvius Hogg should not see them again un­til break­fast the next day, that is to say, be­tween eleven and twelve o'clock, as he had some busi­ness mat­ters to at­tend to that would en­gross his at­ten­tion all the forenoon. He would then re­join them and re­main with them un­til three o'clock, the hour ap­point­ed for the draw­ing of the lot­tery.

Joel, as soon as he rose the next morn­ing, tapped at the door of his sis­ter's room, and be­ing anx­ious to di­vert her thoughts, which were like­ly to be more melan­choly than ev­er on such a day, he pro­posed that they should walk about the town un­til break­fast-​time, and Hul­da, to please her broth­er, con­sent­ed.

It was Sun­day, but though the streets of north­ern cities are usu­al­ly qui­et and well-​nigh de­sert­ed on that day, an air of un­usu­al bus­tle and an­ima­tion per­vad­ed the scene, for not on­ly had the towns­peo­ple re­frained from go­ing to the coun­try, as usu­al, but peo­ple from the sur­round­ing towns and coun­try was pour­ing in in such num­bers that the Lake Miosen Rail­road had been obliged to run ex­tra trains.

The num­ber of dis­in­ter­est­ed per­sons anx­ious to at­tend the draw­ing of the fa­mous lot­tery was even greater than the num­ber of tick­et-​hold­ers, con­se­quent­ly the streets were thronged with peo­ple. Whole fam­ilies, and even whole vil­lages, had come to the city, in the hope that their jour­ney would not be in vain. On­ly to think of it! one mil­lion tick­ets had been sold, and even if they should win a prize of on­ly one or two hun­dred marks, how many good peo­ple would re­turn home re­joic­ing!

On leav­ing the ho­tel, Joel and Hul­da first paid a vis­it to the wharves that line the har­bor. Here the crowd was not so great ex­cept about the tav­erns, where huge tankards of beer were be­ing con­tin­ual­ly called for to moist­en throats that seemed to be in a state of con­stant thirst.

As the broth­er and sis­ter wan­dered about among the long rows of bar­rels and box­es, the ves­sels which were an­chored both near and far from the shore came in for a lib­er­al share of their at­ten­tion, for might there not be some from the port of Bergen where the “Viking” would nev­er more be seen?

“Ole! my poor Ole!” sighed Hul­da, and hear­ing this pa­thet­ic ex­cla­ma­tion, Joel led her gen­tly away from the wharves, and up in­to the city prop­er.

There, from the crowds that filled the streets and the pub­lic squares, they over­heard more than one re­mark in re­la­tion to them­selves.

“Yes,” said one man; “I hear that ten thou­sand marks have been of­fered for tick­et 9672.”

“Ten thou­sand!” ex­claimed an­oth­er. “Why, I hear that twen­ty thou­sand marks, and even more, have been of­fered.”

“Mr. Van­der­bilt, of New York, has of­fered thir­ty thou­sand.”

“And Messrs. Bar­ing, of Lon­don, forty thou­sand.”

“And the Roth­schilds, six­ty thou­sand.”

So much for pub­lic ex­ag­ger­ation. At this rate the prices of­fered would soon have ex­ceed­ed the amount of the cap­ital prize.

But if these gos­sips were not agreed up­on the sum of­fered to Hul­da Hansen, they were all of one mind in re­gard to the usurer of Dram­men.

“What an in­fer­nal scoundrel Sand­go­ist must be. That ras­cal who showed those poor peo­ple no mer­cy.”

“Yes; he is de­spised through­out the Tele­mark, and this is not the first time he has been guilty of sim­ilar acts of ras­cal­ity.”

“They say that no­body will buy Ole Kamp's tick­et of him, now he has got it.”

“No; no­body wants it now.”

“That is not at all sur­pris­ing. In Hul­da Hansen's hands the tick­et was valu­able.”

“And in Sand­go­ist's it seems worth­less.”

“I'm glad of it. He'll have it left on his hands, and I hope he'll lose the fif­teen thou­sand marks it cost him.”

“But what if the scoundrel should win the grand prize?”

“He? Nev­er!”

“He had bet­ter not come to the draw­ing.”

“No. If he does he will be rough­ly han­dled. There is no ques­tion about that.”

These and many oth­er equal­ly un­com­pli­men­ta­ry re­marks about the usurer were freely bandied about.

It was ev­ident that he did not in­tend to be present at the draw­ing, as he was at his house in Dram­men the night be­fore; but feel­ing his sis­ter's arm trem­ble in his, Joel led her swift­ly on, with­out try­ing to hear any more.

As for Sylvius Hogg, they had hoped to meet him in the street; but in this they were dis­ap­point­ed, though an oc­ca­sion­al re­mark sat­is­fied them that the pub­lic was al­ready aware of the pro­fes­sor's re­turn, for ear­ly in the morn­ing he had been seen hur­ry­ing to­ward the wharves, and af­ter­ward in the di­rec­tion of the Naval De­part­ment.

Of course, Joel might have asked any­body where Pro­fes­sor Sylvius Hogg lived. Any one would have been on­ly too de­light­ed to point out the house or even to ac­com­pa­ny him to it; but he did not ask, for fear of be­ing in­dis­creet, and as the pro­fes­sor had promised to meet them at the ho­tel, it would be bet­ter to wait un­til the ap­point­ed hour.

Af­ter a time Hul­da be­gan to feel very tired, and re­quest­ed her broth­er to take her back to the ho­tel, es­pe­cial­ly as these dis­cus­sions, in which her name was fre­quent­ly men­tioned, were very try­ing to her, and on reach­ing the house she went straight up to her own room to await the ar­rival of Sylvius Hogg.

Joel re­mained in the read­ing-​room, on the low­er floor, where he spent his time in me­chan­ical­ly look­ing over the Chris­tia­nia pa­pers. Sud­den­ly he turned pale, a mist ob­scured his vi­sion, and the pa­per fell from his hands.

In the “Mor­gen-​Blad,” un­der the head­ing of Mar­itime In­tel­li­gence, he had just seen the fol­low­ing ca­ble­gram from New­found­land:

“The dis­patch-​boat 'Tele­graph' has reached the lo­cal­ity where the 'Viking' is sup­posed to have been lost, but has found no trace of the wreck. The search on the coast of Green­land has been equal­ly un­suc­cess­ful, so it may be con­sid­ered al­most cer­tain that none of the un­for­tu­nate ship's crew sur­vived the catas­tro­phe.”