These publications won fame for Hebbel and yielded some immediate pecuniary gain.  But although he had reached the goal of his ambition in having become a poet, and a dramatist whose first play had appeared on the stage, he still lacked a settled occupation and a sure income.  Having been born a Danish subject, he conceived the idea of a direct appeal to Christian VIII. of Denmark for such an appointment as the king might be persuaded to give him.  In spite of the unacademic course of his studies and his lack of strictly professional training, he thought of a professorship of esthetics at Kiel.  Even in those days, when professorships could be had on easier terms than now, this was a wild dream.  But Hebbel did not appeal to his sovereign in vain.  He spent the winter of 1842-43 in Copenhagen, where the Danish-German dramatist Oehlenschlaeger smoothed his path to royal favor; and after two audiences with Christian VIII. he was granted a pension of six hundred thalers a year for two years, in order that by traveling he might learn more of the world and cultivate his poetic talents.  His first expression of gratitude for this privilege was the tragedy Maria Magdalena, begun at Hamburg in May, finished at Paris in December, 1843, and dedicated to the king.

Hebbel’s departure for Paris, in September, 1843, did not mean for him what Heine’s settlement there twelve years before had meant for Heine—­the beginning of a new life.  Hebbel’s knowledge of French was very imperfect, and he was as much isolated in Paris as he had been in Munich; he did not seek stimulus from without so much as freedom to develop the ideas that were teeming in his mind.  When he left Hamburg, however, he was destined never to return thither except as a visitor, and started on the long, roundabout way to an unforeseen new home in Vienna.  He had been but little over a month in Paris when he learned of the death of the little son that Elise had borne him three years before.  He was deeply grieved both for himself and for the despairing mother, to whom he offered all the comfort he could give, not excepting marriage, as soon as he should ever be able to provide for her.  In May, 1844, Elise bore him another son who, dying in 1847, was never seen by his father.  Hebbel did not forget what he owed to the mother of his children, but he felt the debt more and more as an obligation, in the fulfilment of which there was no prospect of satisfaction to either.  Despite the fact that she had a hundred times declared to him that he was free, all her dreaming and planning tended solely to keep him bound.  He, who had been her pupil, had now far outgrown her capacity to understand his endeavors and achievements; and he felt that he could sacrifice much for her, but not himself, his personality, and his mission.  And so the unwholesome relation wore on, with aggravating burdensomeness, to the inevitable crisis.