Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 11).djvu/300



You and he are included in what I mean when I say myself.

And what about the hundreds of others, then—the people you are said to have ruined?

[More vehemently.] I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry—I alone had ears for it.

Yes, to the branding of the name of Borkman.

If the others had had the power, do you think they would not have acted exactly as I did?

No one, no one but you would have done it!

Perhaps not. But that would have been because they had not my brains. And if they had done it, it would not have been with my aims in view. The act would have been a different act. In short, I have acquitted myself.