Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/384

348 of care for your souls' weal. Has not the Galilean said that you shall possess neither silver nor gold? Has not your Master promised that you shall one day ascend to heaven? Ought you not, then, to thank me for making your rising as easy as possible?

Oh, incomparably answered!

Sire, you have robbed us of what is more precious than gold and silver. You have robbed us of God's own word. You have robbed us of our sacred scriptures.

I know you, hollow-eyed psalm-singer! Are not you Apollinaris? I believe if I take away your senseless books, you are capable of making up others, just as senseless, in their stead. But you are a pitiful bungler, let me tell you, both in prose and verse! By Apollo! no true Greek would suffer a line of yours to pass his lips. The pamphlet you sent me the other day, which you had the effrontery to entitle "The Truth," I have read, understood, and condemned.

'Tis possible you may have read it; but understood it you have not; for if you had, you would not have condemned it.

Ha-ha! the rejoinder I am preparing will prove that I understood it.—But as to those books whose