Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/466



Even tho' you crush another's happiness?

I plant the flower of knowledge in its place.

[Smiling.

If, by the way, you have not ceased to think Of the Gazette—

Ah, that was all a joke?

Yes, pluck up courage, that will turn to smoke; I break the ice in action, not in ink.

But even though you spare me, sure enough There's one who won't so lightly let me off; He has the advantage, and he won't forego it, That lawyer's clerk—and 'tis to you I owe it; You raked the ashes of our faded flames, And you may take your oath he won't be still If once I mutter but a syllable Against the brazen bluster of his claims. These civil-service gentlemen, they say, Are very potent in the press to-day. A trumpery paragraph can lay me low, Once printed in that Samson-like Gazette That with the jaw of asses fells its foe, And runs away with tackle and with net, Especially towards the quarter day—