Rummel (in a low voice, to BERNICK): This is the basest treachery--!
Sandstad (also in an undertone): So you have been fooling us!
Vigeland: Well, then, devil take--! Good Lord, what am I saying?
(Cheers are heard without.)
Bernick: Silence, gentlemen. I have no right to this homage you offer me; because the decision I have just come to does not represent what was my first intention. My intention was to keep the whole thing for myself; and, even now, I am of opinion that these properties would be worked to best advantage if they remained in one man's hands. But you are at liberty to choose. If you wish it, I am willing to administer them to the best of my abilities.
Voices: Yes, yes, yes!
Bernick: But, first of all, my fellow townsmen must know me thoroughly. And let each man seek to know himself thoroughly, too; and so let it really come to pass that tonight we begin a new era. The old era--with its affectation, its hypocrisy and its emptiness, its pretence of virtue and its miserable fear of public opinion--shall be for us like a museum, open for purposes of instruction; and to that museum we will present--shall we not, gentlemen?--the coffee service, and the goblet, and the album, and the Family Devotions printed on vellum, and handsomely bound.
Rummel: Oh, of course.
Vigeland (muttering): If you have taken everything else, then--
Sandstad: By all means.