Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 8).djvu/14

 'The doctor says' Nothing more. Fru Ibsen showed it laughingly to Sigurd, and said, 'Now we will tease your father a little when he comes back. He will be horrified to find that we know anything of his play.' When Ibsen entered the carriage his wife looked at him roguishly, and said, 'What doctor is it that figures in your new piece? I am sure he must have many interesting things to say.' But if she could have foreseen the effect of her innocent jest, Fru Ibsen would certainly have held her tongue. For Ibsen was speechless with surprise and rage. When at last he recovered his speech, it was to utter a torrent of reproaches. What did this mean? Was he not safe in his own house? Was he surrounded with spies? Had his locks been tampered with, his desk rifled? And so forth, and so forth. His wife, who had listened with a quiet smile to the rising tempest of his wrath, at last handed him the scrap of paper. 'We know nothing more than what is written upon this slip which you let fall. Allow me to return it to you.' There stood Ibsen crestfallen. All his suspicions had vanished into thin air. The play on which he was occupied proved to be An Enemy of the People, and the doctor was none other than our old friend Stockmann, the good-hearted and muddleheaded reformer, for whom Jonas Lie partly served as a model."

The indignation which glows in An Enemy of the People was kindled, in the main, by the attitude adopted towards Ghosts by the Norwegian Liberal press and the "compact majority" it represented. But the image on which the play rings the changes was present to the poet's long before Ghosts was written. On December 19, 1879—a fortnight after the publication of A Doll's House—Ibsen wrote to Professor Dietrichson: "It appears to me doubtful whether better artistic