John Gabriel Borkman

by Henrik Ibsen

ELLA RENTHEIM. [To herself.] The cupboard we used to hide in when we were little.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Nods.] And now and then—late in the evening—I can hear him come down as though to go out. But he always stops when he is halfway downstairs, and turns back—straight back to the gallery.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Quietly.] Do none of his old friends ever come up to see him?

MRS. BORKMAN.
He has no old friends.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
He had so many—once.

MRS. BORKMAN. H'm! He took the best possible way to get rid of them. He was a dear friend to his friends, was John Gabriel.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Oh, yes, that is true, Gunhild.

MRS. BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] All the same, I call it mean, petty, base, contemptible of them, to think so much of the paltry losses they may have suffered through him. They were only money losses, nothing more.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Not answering her.] So he lives up there quite alone.
Absolutely by himself.

MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, practically so. They tell me an old clerk or copyist or something comes out to see him now and then.