Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/268



''Whitsun Eve.—In the depths of the forest. To the back, in a clearing, is a hut with a pair of reindeer horns over the porch-gable.''

 is creeping among the undergrowth, gathering wild onions.

Well, this is one standpoint. Where is the next? One should try all things and choose the best. Well, I have done so,—beginning from Cæsar, And downwards as far as to Nebuchadnezzar. So I've had, after all, to go through Bible history;— The old boy has come back to his mother again. After all it is written: Of the earth art thou come.— The main thing in life is to fill one's belly. Fill it with onions? That's not much good;— I must take to cunning, and set out snares. There's water in the beck here; I shan't suffer thirst; And I count as the first 'mong the beasts after all. When my time comes to die—as most likely it will,— I shall crawl in under a wind-fallen tree; Like the bear, I will heap up a leaf-mound above me, And I'll scratch in big print on the bark of the tree: Here rests Peer Gynt, that decent soul Kaiser o'er all of the other beasts.— Kaiser? [Laughs inwardly. Why, you old soothsayer's-dupe!