Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/178

 'twas even that I dared not do. We of the disaffected party were then ill regarded by many timorous folk in the land. Had these learnt how things stood—oh, I know it!—to cripple the mother they had gladly meted to the child the fate that would have been King Christiern's had he not saved himself by flight.

But, besides that, the Danes, too, were active. They spared neither threats nor promises to force me to join them.

'Twas but reason. The eyes of all men were fixed on you as on the vane that should show them how to shape their course.

Then came Herlof Hyttefad's rising. Do you remember that time, Olaf Skaktavl? Was it not as though a new spring had dawned over the whole land! Mighty voices summoned me to come forth;—yet I dared not. I stood doubting—far from the strife—in my lonely castle. At times it seemed as though the Lord God himself were calling me; but then would come the killing dread again to benumb my will.