Olof (irritated and humiliated). I weakened for a moment.

Lars. So you are human, after all? I thank you for it!

Olof. Are you mocking my weakness?

Lars. I am praising it.

Olof. And I am cursing it!--G.o.d in heaven, am I not right?

Lars. No, you are wrong.

[Enter Christine while Lars is still speaking.]

Christine. You are too much in the right!

Olof. Christine, what are you doing here?

Christine. It was so silent and lonesome at home.

Olof. I asked you not to come here.

Christine. I thought I might be of some use, but I see now--Another time I shall stay at home.

Olof. You have been awake all night?

Christine. That is nothing! I will go now if you tell me to!

Olof. Go in there and rest a little while we talk. (Christine begins absentmindedly to extinguish the candles.)

Olof. What are you doing, dear?

Christine. Why, it is full daylight.

(Lars gives Olof a significant glance.)

Olof. My mother is dead, Christine.

Christine (as she goes to Olof to let him kiss her on the forehead, the look on her face is compa.s.sionate but cold). I am sorry for your loss.

[Exit Christine.]

(Pause. The brothers look for a moment in the direction where she disappeared, then at each other.)

Lars. I beg you, Olof, as your friend and brother, don't go on as you have been doing.

Olof. The old story! But he who has put his axe to the tree cannot draw back until the tree is down. The King has betrayed our cause. Now I will see what I can do for it.

Lars. The King is wise.

Olof. He is a miser, a traitor, and a protector of the n.o.bility. First he uses me to hunt his game, and then he wants to kick me out.

Lars. He sees farther than you do. If you were to go to three million people, telling them: "Your faith is false; believe my words instead"--do you think it possible that they would at once cast aside their most intimate and most keenly experienced conviction, which until then had been a support to them in sorrow as well as in joy? No, the life of the soul would be in a bad condition, indeed, if all the old things could be disposed of so quickly.

Olof. But it is not so. The whole people is full of doubt. Among the priests there is hardly one who knows what to believe--if he cares to believe anything at all. Everything is ready for the new, and it is only you who are to blame--you weaklings whose consciences will not permit you to sow doubt where nothing but a feeble faith remains.

Lars. Look out, Olof! You wish to play the part of G.o.d.

Olof. Well, that is what we must do, for I don't think that He Himself intends to conic down to us any more.

Lars. You are tearing down and tearing down, Olof, so that soon there will be nothing left, and when people ask, "What do we get instead?"

you always answer, "Not this," "Not that," but never once do you answer, "This."

Olof. Presumptuous man! Do you think faith can be given by one to another? Do you think that Luther has given us anything new? No! He has merely torn away the screens that had been placed around the light. The new that I want is doubt of the old, not because it is old, but because it is decaying. (Lars points toward their mother's body.) I know what you mean. She was too old, and I thank G.o.d that she is dead. Now I am free--only now! G.o.d has willed it!

Lars. Either you have lost your senses, or you are a wicked man!

Olof. Don't reproach me! I have as much respect for our mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pa.s.s right through them, because they must get up!

Lars. You are right to a certain extent.--Olof, you broke the laws of the Church during a time of lawlessness and unrest. What could be forgiven then must be punished now. Don't force the King to appear worse than he is. Don't let your scorn for the law and your wilfulness force him to punish a man to whom he acknowledges himself indebted.

Olof. Nothing is more wilful than his own rule, and he must learn to tolerate the same thing in others. Tell me you have taken service with the King--are you going to work against me?

Lars. I am.

Olof. Then we are enemies, and that is what I need, for the old ones have disappeared.

Lars. But the tie of blood, Olof--

Olof. I know it only in its source, which is the heart.

Lars. Yet you wept for our mother.

Olof. Weakness, or perhaps a touch of old devotion and grat.i.tude, but not because of the tie of blood. What is it, anyhow?

Lars. You are tired out, Olof.

Olof. Yes, I feel exhausted; I have been awake all night.

Lars. You were so late in coming.

Olof. I was out.

Lars. Your doings seem to shun the daylight.

Olof. The daylight shuns my doings.

Lars. Beware of false apostles of freedom!

Olof (struggling with sleepiness and fatigue). That's a self-contradictory term. Oh, don't talk to me--I can't stand any more.