Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 6).djvu/54

 The Crowd.

[With growing enthusiasm.] Hurrah!

Stensgård.

We will have no more of these barren, white-chokered festivities! A golden harvest of deeds shall hereafter shoot up from each Seventeenth of May. May! Is it not the season of bud and blossom, the blushing maiden-month of the year? On the first of June I shall have been just two months among you; and in that time what greatness and littleness, what beauty and deformity, have I not seen?

The Chamberlain.

What on earth is he talking about, Doctor?

Fieldbo.

Aslaksen says it's the local situation.

Stensgård.

I have seen great and brilliant possibilities among the masses; but I have seen, too, a spirit of corruption brooding over the germs of promise and bringing them to nought. I have seen ardent and trustful youth rush yearning forth—and I have seen the door shut in its face.

Thora.

Oh, Heaven!

The Chamberlain.

What does he mean by that?

Stensgård.

Yes, my brothers and sisters in rejoicing! There hovers in the air an Influence, a Spectre