Relling. Yes, with your permission; that’s how the idol before which you lie prostrate, looks from within.
Gregers. Yet I don’t think I am altogether blind either.
Relling. Oh! you’re not so very far from it. For you are a sick man too, you see.
Gregers. There you are right.
Relling. Exactly. You are suffering from a complicated complaint. First, there’s that troublesome virtue-fever; and what’s worse, you’re always working yourself up into a delirium of hero-worship. You must always have something to admire outside yourself.
Gregers. Yes, indeed, I must seek it outside myself.
Relling. But you make such woeful blunders about the mighty paragons you think you see and hear about you. Here you’ve been visiting a farmer’s cottage again with your claims of the ideal; but the people in this house aren’t solvent.
Gregers. If you haven’t a better opinion of Hjalmar Ekdal than that, what pleasure can you find in being so constantly in his company?
Relling. Good heavens, I’m ashamed to say I’m supposed to be a sort of a kind of doctor, and so I must look after the poor diseased folk living in the same house.
Gregers. Indeed! Is Hjalmar Ekdal diseased, too?