Rosmer. A new summer has blossomed in my heart--my eyes have regained the clearness of youth. And, accordingly, I am now standing where--Kroll. Where? Where are you standing?
Rosmer. Where your children are standing.
Kroll. You? You! The thing is impossible! Where do you say you are standing?
Rosmer. On the same side as Laurits and Hilda.
Kroll (letting his head drop). An apostate. John Rosmer an apostate.
Rosmer. What you are calling apostasy ought to have made me feel sincerely happy and fortunate; but for all that I have suffered keenly, because I knew quite well it would cause you bitter sorrow.
Kroll. Rosmer, Rosmer, I shall never get over this. (Looks at him sadly.) To think that you, too, could bring yourself to sympathise with and join in the work of disorder and ruin that is playing havoc with our unhappy country.
Rosmer. It is the work of emancipation that I sympathise with.
Kroll. Oh yes, I know all about that. That is what it is called, by both those who are leading the people astray and by their misguided victims. But, be sure of this--you need expect no emancipation to be the result of the spirit that relies on the poisoning of the whole of our social life.
Rosmer. I do not give my allegiance to the spirit that is directing this, nor to any of those who are leading the fight. Iwant to try to bring men of all shades of opinion together--as many as I can reach--and bind them as closely together as I can.
I want to live for and devote all the strength that is in me to one end only--to create a real public opinion in the country.
Kroll. So you do not consider that we have sufficient public opinion! I, for my part, consider that the whole lot of us are on the high road to be dragged down into the mire where otherwise only the common people would be wallowing.
Rosmer. It is just for that reason that I have made up my mind as to what should be the real task of public opinion.
Kroll. What task?
Rosmer. The task of ****** all our fellow-countrymen into men of nobility.
Kroll. All our fellow-countrymen--!
Rosmer. As many as possible, at all events.
Kroll. By what means?
Rosmer. By emancipating their ideas and purifying their aspirations, it seems to me.
Kroll. You are a dreamer, Rosmer. Are you going to emancipate them? Are you going to purify them?
Rosmer. No, my dear fellow--I can only try to awake the desire for it in them. The doing of it rests with themselves.
Kroll. And do you think they are capable of it?
Rosmer. Yes.
Kroll. Of their own power?
Rosmer. Yes, of their own power. There is no other that can do it.
Kroll (getting up). Is that speaking as befits a clergyman?
Rosmer. I am a clergyman no longer.
Kroll. Yes, but--what of the faith you were brought up in?
Rosmer. I have it no longer.
Kroll. You have it no longer?
Rosmer (getting up). I have given it up. I had to give it up, Kroll.
Kroll (controlling his emotion). I see. Yes, yes. The one thing implies the other. Was that the reason, then, why you left the service of the Church?
Rosmer. Yes. When my mind was clearly made up--when I felt the certainty that it Was not merely a transitory temptation, but that it was something that I would neither have the power nor the desire to dismiss from my mind--then I took that step.
Kroll. So it has been fermenting in your mind as long as that.
And we--your friends--have never been allowed to know anything of it. Rosmer, Rosmer--how could you hide the sorrowful truth from us!
Rosmer. Because I considered it was a matter that only concerned myself; and therefore I did not wish to cause you and my other friends any unnecessary pain. I thought I should be able to live my life here as I have done hitherto--peacefully and happily. Iwanted to read, and absorb myself in all the works that so far had been sealed books to me--to familiarise myself thoroughly with the great world of truth and ******* that has been disclosed to me now.
Kroll. An apostate. Every word you say bears witness to that.
But, for all that, why have you made this confession of your secret apostasy? Or why just at the present moment?
Rosmer. You yourself have compelled me to it, Kroll.
Kroll. I? I have compelled you?