The poet started for Egypt, by Dresden and Paris, on September 28. _The League of Youth_ was published on the 29th, and first performed on October 18; Ibsen, therefore, just missed the scandal and uproar caused by the play in Norway. In company with eighty-five other people, all illustrious guests of the Khedive, and under the care of Mariette Bey, Ibsen made a twenty-four days' expedition up the Nile into Nubia, and then back to Cairo and Port Said. There, on November 17, in the company of an empress and several princes of the blood, he saw the Canal formally opened and graced a grand processional fleet that sailed out from Port Said towards Ismaila. But on the quay at Port Said Ibsen's Norwegian mail was handed to him, and letters and newspapers alike were full of the violent scenes in the course of which _The League of Youth_ had been hissed down at Christiania. Then and there he sent his defiance back to Norway in _At Port Saïd_, one of the most pointed and effective of all his polemical lyrics. A version in literal prose must suffice, though it does cruel injustice to the venomous melody of the original:
The dawn of the Eastern Land Over the haven glittered; Flags from all corners of the globe Quivered from the masts. Voices in music Bore onward the cantata; A thousand cannon Christened the Canal.
The steamers passed on By the obelisk. In the language of my home Came to me the chatter of news. The mirror-poem which I had polished For masculine minxes Had been smeared at home By splutterings from penny whistles.
The poison-fly stung; It made my memories loathsome. Stars, be thanked!-- My home is what is ancient! We hailed the frigate From the roof of the river-boat; I waved my hat And saluted the flag.
To the feast, to the feast, In spite of the fangs of venomous reptiles! A selected guest Across the Lakes of Bitterness! At the close of day Dreaming, I shall slumber Where Pharaoh was drowned-- And when Moses passed over.
In this mood of defiance, with rage unabated, Ibsen returned home by Alexandria and Paris, and was in Dresden again in December.
The year of 1870 drove him out of Dresden, as the French occupation had driven him out of Rome. It was essential for him to be at rest in the midst of a quiet and alien population. He was drawn towards Denmark, partly for the sake of talk with Brandes, who had now become a factor in his life, partly to arrange about the performance of one of his early works, and in particular of _The Pretenders_. No definite plan, however, had been formed, when, in the middle of June, war was declared between Germany and France; but a fortnight later Ibsen quitted Saxony, and settled for three months in Copenhagen, where his reception was charmingly sympathetic. By the beginning of October, after the fall of Strasburg and the hemming in of Metz, however, it was plain on which side the fortunes of the war would lie, and Ibsen returned "as from a rejuvenating bath" of Danish society to a Dresden full of French prisoners, a Dresden, too, suffering terribly from the paralysis of trade, and showing a plentiful lack of enthusiasm for Prussia.