to know a little about anything
you are fond of.

Hamar. And one would need no great knowledge of business to condemn the
way Moeller went on. It was obvious to every one. And the way his family
went on, too! Who went the pace as much as the Moellers? Think of his
daughter's toilettes!

Valborg. His daughter is my best friend. I don't want to hear her
abused.

Hamar. Your Highness will admit that it is possible to be the daughter
of a _very_ rich man without being as proud and as vain as--as the lady
I am not allowed to mention!

Valborg. Nanna is neither proud nor vain. She is absolutely genuine.
She had the aptitude for being exactly what she thought she was--a rich
man's daughter.

Hamar. Has she the "aptitude" for being a bankrupt's daughter now?

Valborg. Certainly. She has sold all her trinkets, her dresses--every
single thing she had. What she wears, she has either paid for herself or
obtained by promising future payment.

Hamar. May I ask if she kept her stockings?

Valborg. She sent everything to a sale.

Hamar. If I had known that I would certainly have attended it!

Valborg. Yes, I daresay there was plenty to make fun of, and plenty of
idle loafers, too, who were not ashamed to do so.

Mrs. Tjaelde. Children, children!

Hamar. May I ask if Miss Nanna sent her own idleness to the sale with
her other effects?--because I have never known any one with a finer
supply of it!

Valborg. She never thought she would need to work.

Tjaelde (coming forward to VALBORG). To take up the thread of what we
were saying: you don't understand what a business-man's hope is from one
day to the other--always a renewed hope. That fact does not make him a
swindler. He may be unduly sanguine, perhaps--a poet, if you like, who
lives in a world of dreams--or he may be a real genius, who sees land
ahead when no one else suspects it.

Valborg. I don't think I misunderstand the real state of affairs. But
perhaps you do, father. Because is not what you call hope, poetry,
genius, merely speculating with what belongs to others, when a man knows
that he owes more than he has got?

Tjaelde. It may be very difficult to be certain even whether he does
that or not.

Valborg. Really? I should have thought his books would tell him--

Tjaelde. About his assets and his liabilities, certainly. But values are
fluctuating things; and he may always have in hand some venture which,
though it cannot be specified, may alter the whole