You? Allow me to ask, Miss Hessel, what you will do in our Society?
Lona.
I will let in fresh air, Pastor.
[21]. “Gjort umyndig” = placed under a legal interdict.
[22]. When this play was written, Ministers did not sit in the Storthing, and were not responsible to it. This state of things was altered—as Ibsen here predicts—in the great constitutional struggle of 1872-84, which ended in the victory of the Liberal party, their leader, Johan Sverdrup, becoming Prime Minister.
[23]. “Havetrappe” here seems to imply a light of steps with so wide a landing at the top as practically to form a verandah, under the sun-shade. In subsequent stage directions, the word is rendered by “verandah.”
ACT SECOND.
The garden-room in Consul Bernick’s house.
Mrs. Bernick is sitting alone at the work-table, sewing. In a little while Consul Bernick enters from the right, with his hat and gloves on, and a stick in his hand.