“One moment—let me finish, please. If the signorina were to act otherwise, she would not be the noble, lofty being I have imagined her, and then my offer would no longer exist. Do you understand? Am I not right?”
But Cassio answered never a word, and the Direttore turned toward the window. And the soul of each was full to overflowing. Cassio thought but of his happiness, and the Direttore reminded himself with bitterness that in any case his dream was lost to him forever.
RAILROAD AND CHURCHYARD
BY BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
Björnson, said to be the first great figure in Norway to teach the bourgeoisie to rise by their own efforts, was born in 1832. In 1860 appeared his epoch-making story of peasant life, “Arne,” and the trilogy, “Sigurd Slembe,” and other plays. Declaring for the separation of Norway and Sweden, he became chief of the Republican Party. The critic Brandes says: “The mention of his name among his countrymen is like running up the national flag.”
Two sharply marked periods appear in Björnson’s literary career—the first, romantic, religious, in which he wrote, among other things, Norway’s national hymn; the second, from 1874 on, being realistic, critical, aggressive. His vigorous imagination, love of truth, excessive yet sincere enthusiasm, are in a style so compressed as to be at times almost obscure. Björnson has been called the “Creator of the National Drama in Norway,” the “Great Rival of Ibsen,” the “Victor Hugo of Norway.”
RAILROAD AND CHURCHYARD
BY BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON