Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 11).djvu/370



What are they, then?

There is something equivocal, something cryptic, lurking in and behind these busts—a secret something, that the people themselves cannot see

Indeed?

[Decisively.] I alone can see it. And it amuses me unspeakably.—On the surface I give them the "striking likeness," as they call it, that they all stand and gape at in astonishment— [''Lowers his voice''] —but at bottom they are all respectable, pompous horse-faces, and self-opinionated donkey-muzzles, and lop-eared, low-browed dog-skulls, and fatted swine-snouts—and sometimes dull, brutal bull-fronts as well

[Indifferently.] All the dear domestic animals, in fact.

Simply the dear domestic animals, Maia. All the animals which men have bedevilled in their own image—and which have bedevilled men in return. [''Empties his champagne-glass and laughs.''] And it is these double-faced works of art that our excellent plutocrats come and order