JACOB. Can't we talk of something else? Please, let us!
ERIC. That's what the King always says when I go after him, and for that reason I hate him still more—as he hates me! Do you know that it was your father who brought my mother to him from Lauenburg?[2]
JACOB. No, I didn't know that.
ERIC. Yes, but the marriage turned out badly. They hated each other beyond all bounds—and one day [he rises in a state of great agitation] I saw him raise his stick against her—[roaring out the words] against my mother—and he struck her! That day I lost my youth[3]—and I can never forgive him—never!
JACOB. [Leaps to his feet and put his arms about Eric] Look at me, Eric! Look at me! I have a stepmother, too—who is always tormenting me when I am at home—but hush, hush! If it can help you to hear that I am worse off than you—very much worse—then—you know it now! Remember that it won't last for ever, as we are growing up to freedom....
ERIC. And you don't hate her?
JACOB. Such a feeling has no place beside the new one that is now filling my soul.
ERIC. That means—you are in love.
JACOB. That's what we may call it.... And when your own time comes, you, too, will see your hatred change form and vanish.
ERIC. I wonder!—Perhaps you are right The lovelessness in which I was born and brought up has turned into a flame that is consuming my soul. My blood was poisoned at my birth, and I doubt the existence of an antidote.... Why do you leave me?