Ellida. Only that he went to sea very young; and that he had been on long voyages.
Wangel. Is there nothing more?
Ellida. No; we never spoke of such things.
Wangel. Of what did you speak, then?
Ellida. About the sea!
And she betrothed herself to him
Because he said I must.
Wangel. You must? Had you no will of your own, then?
Ellida. Not when he was near.
So, then, Ellida is forced to abandon Wangel for the reason that, previously to her marriage with him, she did not thoroughly know him, and she must go to ‘the stranger,’ of whom she knows nothing. Her marriage with Wangel is no marriage, because she did not enter into it with perfect freedom of will, but the marriage with ‘the stranger’ will be ‘perfect and pure,’ although when she betrothed herself to him she had ‘no will of her own.’ After this example of his mental maze, it is truly humiliating to be obliged to waste more words concerning the intellectual state of such a man. But since this man is foisted by fools and fanatics to the rank of a great moralist and poet of the future, the psychiatrical observer must not spare himself the labour of referring to his other absurdities.