Gregers. What? Why, they say this dinner is given in my honor, and I shouldn’t have my best, my only friend?
Hjalmar. But I don’t think your father likes it. I never come to this house.
Gregers. So I hear. But I must see you and talk to you, for I shall certainly go away again soon. Yes, we two old school-fellows, we have surely been separated long enough, we’ve not seen one another now for sixteen—seventeen years.
Hjalmar. Is it so long?
Gregers. Yes, it is. Well, how are things going with you? You look well. You’ve grown almost stout and portly.
Hjalmar. H’m, one can hardly call it portly, but I daresay I look rather more manly than I did then.
Gregers. Indeed you do; your outer man hasn’t suffered.
Hjalmar (gloomily). But the inner man! Believe me, that is very different. You know what terrible trouble has come to me and mine since we two met.
Gregers (in a lower tone). How is your father getting on now?
Hjalmar. Dear friend, don’t let us speak of that. My poor, unhappy father of course lives at home with me. Why, he has no one else on earth to cling to. But it is such bitter pain for me to speak of this, you see. Tell me, rather, how you have got on up there at the Works.