"But tell us, then, what the book is about?" said the pastor.
"It is about—that married people shall love each other," said Hans stoutly.
"Oho! free love!" called out the chaplain.
"Certainly! Free love! 'All true love is free,' says the fool-hardy fellow of a poet."
"Do you hear that, pastor?" said Balle.
"If our own poets also take it up, let us have a care! Then he recognizes 'free thought'; and what then?" asked the chaplain.
"That is true," replied Hans. "'All thoughts are free,' he says, 'and not merely duty free.'"
"Of course he does not believe in God?"
"I doubt it; but even that is not the worst."
"Not the—"