Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/230

 PEER
 * My story, Sir Pen, is, to put it briefly:
 * I'm a blank sheet of paper that no one will write on.

HUSSEIN
 * No man understands in the least what I'm good for;
 * they all want to use me for scattering sand with!

PEER
 * I was in a woman's keeping a silver-clasped book;-
 * it's one and the same misprint to be either mad or sane!

HUSSEIN [with high leap].
 * Just fancy, what an exhausting life:
 * to be a pen and never taste the edge of a knife!

PEER
 * Just fancy, for a reindeer to leap from on high-
 * to fall and fall-and never feel the ground beneath your
 * hoofs!

HUSSEIN
 * A knife! I am blunt;-quick, mend me and slit me!
 * The world will go to ruin if they don't mend my point for me! !

PEER
 * A pity for the world which, like other self-made things,
 * was reckoned by the Lord to be so excellently good.