Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/280

 f.
 * Have me judged by the law in the old-fashioned way!
 * For a certain time place me with Him of the Hoof;-
 * say a hundred years, come the worst to the worst;
 * that, now, is a thing that one surely can bear;
 * for they say the torment is only moral,
 * so it can't after all be so pyramidal.
 * It is, as 'tis written, a mere transition;
 * and as the fox said: One waits; there comes
 * an hour of deliverance; one lives in seclusion,
 * and hopes in the meantime for happier days.-
 * But this other notion-to have to be merged,
 * like a mote, in the carcass of some outsider,-
 * this casting-ladle business, this Gynt-cessation,-
 * it stirs up my innermost soul in revolt!

THE BUTTON-MOULDER
 * Bless me, my dear Peer, there is surely no need
 * to get so wrought up about trifles like this.
 * Yourself you never have been at all;-
 * then what does it matter, your dying right out?

PEER
 * Have I not been-? I could almost laugh!
 * Peer Gynt, then, has been something else, I suppose!
 * No, Button-moulder, you judge in the dark.
 * If you could but look into my very reins,
 * you'd find only Peer there, and Peer all through,-
 * nothing else in the world, no, nor anything more.

THE BUTTON-MOULDER
 * It's impossible. Here I have got my orders.
 * Look, here it is written: Peer Gynt shalt thou summo