The King. Every one has their own point of view. A scheme of life, to satisfy me, must have its greatest happiness hidden away at its core; in my case that would be to have a house of my own—all to myself, like any other citizen—from which I should go away to my work, and come back to as to a safe refuge. That is the button on the electric wire, do you understand? It is the little pressure on it that I am waiting for. (A pause.)
Clara. Have you read my father's book, Democratic Monarchy?
The King. Yes.
Clara. He wrote it when I was a child; and so I may say that I grew up amongst ideas like—like those I have heard from you to-day. All the friends that came to our house used to talk to me about it.
The King. Then no doubt you heard the crown prince talked about, too!
Clara. I think I heard his name oftener mentioned at home than any one's. I believe the book was written expressly for you.
The King. I can feel that when I read it. If only I had been allowed to read it in those days! Do you remember how in it your father maintains, too, that all reform depends on the beating down of the hedge that surrounds royalty?—on a king's becoming, as he says, "wedded to his people" in the fullest sense of the word, not irregularly or surreptitiously? No king can share his people's thoughts if he lives apart from them in a great palace, married to a foreign princess. There is no national spirit behind a complicated court life of outlandish ceremonial.
Clara (turning away her head). You should have heard how vehemently my father used to assert those ideas.
The King. And yet he abandoned them.
Clara. Became a republican, you mean?