Relling. Oh! Individuality—he! If he ever had any tendencies to the abnormal developments that you call individuality, they were extirpated, root and branch, while he was yet a boy; I can assure you of that.
Gregers. That would be strange after the loving care with which he was brought up.
Relling. You mean by those two affected, hysterical maiden aunts?
Gregers. I may tell you they were women who never lost sight of the claims of the ideal—ah! you’ll gibe at me again, I suppose?
Relling. No, I’m in no humor for that. Moreover, I know it all, for he has poured forth any amount of rhetoric about his “two spiritual-mothers.” But I don’t think he has much to thank them for. It is Ekdal’s misfortune that in his circle he has always been taken for a shining light——
Gregers. And isn’t he one? In depth of soul I mean.
Relling. I’ve never noticed anything of the sort. That his father should have believed this—well and good; for the old lieutenant has been a blockhead all his life.
Gregers. All his life he has been a man with a child-like mind—that is what you can not understand.
Relling. Tut, tut! But as soon as the dear, sweet Hjalmar went to college, his fellow students instantly took him for the coming man. He was good looking, the rascal—red and white—just the sort of thing to delight a school girl—and as he had that mobile temperament and that sympathetic voice, and was so clever at declaiming the verses and ideas of others——
Gregers (indignantly). Is it of Hjalmar Ekdal you are speaking like this?