He’ll soon drop from his perch with his whole apparatus.—
H’m, I’m not over-safe in the saddle either;
I’m expelled, one may say, from self-owning nobility.[[145]]
[A shooting star is seen; he nods after it.
Greet all friends from Peer Gynt, Brother Starry-Flash!
To flash forth, to go out, and be naught at a gulp—
[Pulls himself together as though in terror, and goes deeper in among the mists; stillness for awhile; then he cries:
Is there no one, no one in all the whirl,—
In the void no one, and no one in heaven—!
[He comes forward again further down, throws his hat upon the ground, and tears at his hair. By degrees a stillness comes over him.