"No, for there are many people in Christiania who do not believe in God. But these poets do not even believe in the Devil!" Hans laughed like a child at the face that the chaplain made; the pastor looked severely at Hans, who cast down his eyes and was silent.
"Worthless fruit," sighed the chaplain. "Our poets have hitherto kept themselves free from these godless thoughts, even if they have not always had the right opinion of Christianity, and particularly have taken up with the confusions of Grundtvigianism; but now, now it has taken another path. Do you see the spirit of revolt, pastor? Do you hear how they rise and tear asunder all its bonds; how opposition arises against all that is high and holy, and they storm even against the foundations of society?"
"May God help us!" sighed the pastor. "It does not look right. Is there anything new in the newspapers?" he asked, as if to get away from a conversation that plainly oppressed him.
Hans ran out, and came quickly in again with the newspapers. Such of these as were French he took for himself, the rest he gave to Balle.
"Do you see, father?" said Hans with the mien of a schoolmaster. "If you will have politics, you must turn to France. All other politics are merely an echo of theirs. France is Europe. France is the world!"
"Do you hear, pastor?" said Balle. "Do you hear how the French spirit spreads and increases in power? the French spirit, which has always been one and the same with rationalism and revolution?"
"Here is an article that will do Balle good!" called out Hans. "It does not assume the good tone or prattle tediously like our Norse newspaper articles. There is fire and burning in it; you recognize something like a clenched fist back of the words, prepared for everything upon which it may hit. That is what I call politics!"
"Oh, you are a foolish fellow," said the pastor. "Come, out with it!"
Hans read an article against the priestly party or clericals, and the piece was severely radical. It was particularly to the effect that the clergy and Christianity must be ousted from the public schools, if thinkers were to be really for a genuine and sound popular education. Christianity had already done what it could do; hereafter it lay merely in the way. "Freedom and self-government" was the war-cry now, for this generation. They might be fair enough, many of the dreams which the new time compelled us to abandon; but light and life and truth were ten times fairer than all dreams.
The chaplain sat and sulked, and looked into one of the Norse papers. "Here stands the same," said he. "No, but—? Yes, the same, and yet not the same. The Norse paper has cut out or changed all that treats directly of Christianity; the rest is the same."