Gran. Listen to me for a moment! You used to overrate me in the hopes you had of me. You are overrating me now in your censure. You are overrating the effects of our failure—you never seem to be able to do anything but overshoot your mark. For that reason you are a danger to your friends. You lure them on. When things go well you lure them on to excess of activity; when things go ill, you turn their despondency into despair. Your inordinate enthusiasm obscures your wits. You are not called upon to sit in judgment upon any one; because you draw the pure truths that lie hidden in your soul into such a frenzied vortex of strife that you lose sight of them; and then they have so little of truth left in them that in your hands they can be answerable for crimes.
Flink. Oh, spare me your dialectics!—because any skill you have in them, I taught you! You cannot excuse your own sins by running over the list of mine; that is the only answer I have to make to you! I don't stand before you as the embodiment of truth; I am no braggart. No; but simply as one who has loved you deeply and now is as deeply offended by you, I ask this question of your conscience: What have you done with the love we had for one another? Where is the sacred cause we both used to uphold? Where is our honour—our friends—our future?
Gran. I feel respect for your sorrow. Can you not feel any for mine? Or do you suppose that I am not suffering?
Flink. You cannot act as you have done without bringing unhappiness upon yourself. But there are others to be considered besides you, and we have the right to call you to account. Answer me!
Gran. And is it really you—you, my old friend—that propose to do that?
Flink. God knows I would sooner some one else did it! But none can do it so fitly as I—because no one else has loved you as I have. I expected too much of you, you say? The only thing I wanted of you was that you should be faithful! I had so often been disappointed; but in you and your quiet strength I thought I had splendid security that, as long as you lived, our cause would bear itself proudly and confidently. It was your prestige that brought it into being; your wealth that supported it. It did not cry aloud for the blood of martyrs!—You were the happiness of my life; my soul renewed its strength from yours.
Gran. Old friend—!
Flink. I was old, and you were young! Your nature was a harmonious whole—it was what I needed to lean upon.
Gran. Flink, my dear old friend—!
Flink. And now, here you stand—a broken man, and our whole cause broken with you; all our lives broken—at least mine is—