Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/83

] is marked out for me. I will not go thither, I tell you. Oh, God of Hosts—I on the imperial throne! No, no, no!

Ha-ha; well acted, mummer!

Ay, you may scoff, since you know not what has happened. Myself, I scarcely know. Oh, Agathon—if this head were to be anointed! Would it not be an apostasy—a deadly sin? Would not the Lord's holy oil burn me like molten lead?

Were that so, then were our august kinsman balder than Julius Caesar.

Beware how you speak! Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's

My father's bloodyour father's and your mother's!

Oh, what know we of those horrors? We were children then. The soldiers were chiefly to blame; it was the rebels—evil counsellors

[Laughing.] The Emperor's successor rehearses his part!