Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 6).djvu/102

 Stensgård.

Pooh! that sort of talk won't do with me. Your motive is mere self-interest! It gratifies your petty vanity to imagine yourself cock-of-the-walk in this house; and so I am to be kept outside the pale.

Fieldbo.

That is the best thing that could happen to you. Here you are standing on hollow ground.

Stensgård.

Am I indeed? Many thanks! I shall manage to prop it up.

Fieldbo.

Try; but I warn you, it will fall through with you first.

Stensgård.

Ho-ho! So you are intriguing against me, are you? I'm glad I have found it out. I know you now; you are my enemy, the only one I have here.

Fieldbo.

Indeed I am not.

Stensgård.

Indeed you are! You have always been so, ever since our school-days. Just look around here and see how every one appreciates me, stranger as I am. You, on the other hand, you who know me, have never appreciated me. That is the radical weakness of your character—you can never appreciate any one. What did you do in Christiania but go about from tea-party to tea-party, spreading yourself out in little witticisms? That sort of thing brings its own punishment! You dull your sense for all that makes life worth living, for all