ase, don't call me Chevalier. Everybody calls me Albin,
simply Albin, just because I look so young.

DUKE (smiling). Good.... But you must call me Emile--eh?

ALBIN. With pleasure, if you allow it, Emile.

[Illustration: HENRIK IBSEN.]

_Permission Albert Langen, Munich_
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"

DUKE. They have a sinister wit, have these people.

FRANCOIS. Why sinister? I find it quite reassuring. So long as the mob
is in the mood for jests, it will never come to anything serious.

DUKE. Only the jests are much too strange. I learnt a thing today that
gives food for thought.

FRANCOIS. Tell us.

FLIPOTTE and MICHETTE. Ay, tell us, sweet Duke!

DUKE. Do you know Lelange?

FRANCOIS. Of course--the village ... the Marquis de Montferrat has one
of his finest hunts there.

DUKE. Quite right; my brother is now at the castle with him, and he has
written home about the things I am going to tell you. They have a mayor
at Lelange who is very unpopular.

FRANCOIS. If you can tell me the name of one who is popular--

DUKE. Just listen. The women of the village paraded in front of the
mayor's house with a coffin.

FLIPOTTE. What? Did they carry it? Carry a coffin? I wouldn't like to
carry a coffin for anything in the world.

FRANCOIS. Hold your tongue. Nobody is asking you to carry a coffin.
(To the DUKE.) Well?

DUKE. And one or two of the women went into the mayor's house and
explained to him that he must die, but they would do him the honor of
burying him.

FRANCOIS. Well, have they killed him?

DUKE. No; at least, my brother doesn't write anything about it.

FRANCOIS. Well then ... blusterers, talkers, clowns--that's what they
are. Today they're roaring in Paris at the Bastille for a change, just
as they've already done half a dozen times before ...

DUKE. Well, if I were king I should have made an end of it long ago.

ALBIN. Is it true that the king is so good-natured?

DUKE. You have not yet been presented to His Majesty?

FRANCOIS. This is the first time the Chevalier has been in Paris.

DUKE. Yes, you are incredibly young. How old, if I may ask?

ALBIN. I only look so young; I am already seventeen.

DUKE. Seventeen!--how much is still in front of you! I am already
four-and-twenty!... I am beginning to regret how much of my youth I
have missed!

FRANCOIS (laughs). That is good. You, Duke--you count every day lost
in which you have not conquered a woman or killed a ma