g each
other but he spoiled their happiness. And when they became aware
of his invisible interference with their happiness; when they took
flight at last--a vain flight from the memories that pursued them,
from the liability they had left behind, from the public opinion
they could not face--and when they found themselves without the
strength needed to carry their own guilt, then they had to send
out into the fields for a scapegoat to be sacrificed. They were
free-thinkers, but they did not have the courage to step forward
and speak openly to him the words: "We love each other!" To sum it
up, they were cowards, and so the tyrant had to be slaughtered. Is
that right?

ADOLPH. Yes, but you forget that she educated me, that she filled
my head with new thoughts--

GUSTAV. I have not forgotten it. But tell me: why could she not
educate the other man also--into a free-thinker?

ADOLPH. Oh, he was an idiot!

GUSTAV. Oh, of course--he was an idiot! But that's rather an
ambiguous term, and, as pictured in her novel, his idiocy seems
mainly to have consisted in failure to understand her. Pardon me a
question: but is your wife so very profound after all? I have
discovered nothing profound in her writings.

ADOLPH. Neither have I.--But then I have also to confess a certain
difficulty in understanding her. It is as if the cogs of our brain
wheels didn't fit into each other, and as if something went to
pieces in my head when I try to comprehend her.

GUSTAV. Maybe you are an idiot, too?

ADOLPH. I don't _think_ so! And it seems to me all the time as if
she were in the wrong--Would you care to read this letter, for
instance, which I got today?

[Takes out a letter from his pocket-book.]

GUSTAV. [Glancing through the letter] Hm! The handwriting seems
strangely familiar.

ADOLPH. Rather masculine, don't you think?

GUSTAV. Well, I know at least _one_ man who writes that kind of
hand--She addresses you as "brother." Are you still playing
comedy to each other? And do you never permit yourselves any
greater familiarity in speaking to each other?

ADOLPH. No, it seems to me that all mutual respect is lost in that
way.

GUSTAV. And is it to make you respect her that she calls herself
your sister?

ADOLPH. I want to respect her more than myself. I want her to be
the better part of my own self.

GUSTAV. Why don't you be that better part yourself? Would it be
less convenient than to permit somebody else to fill the part?