Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/407

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Can you? Then tell me—! Who shall conquer? The Emperor or the Galilean?

Both the Emperor and the Galilean shall succumb.

Succumb? Both?

Both. Whether in our times or in hundreds of years, I know not; but so it shall be when the right man comes.

And who is the right man?

He who shall swallow up both Emperor and Galilean.

You solve the riddle by a still darker riddle.

Hear me, brother and friend of truth! I say you shall both succumb—but not that you shall perish.

Does not the child succumb in the youth, and the youth in the man? Yet neither child nor youth perishes.

Oh, my best-loved pupil—have you forgotten all our discourse in Ephesus about the three empires?