STYVER (Emerging bespectacled carrying an open book) :

              Oh pastor, go inside quick as you can

              Your children are crying –

CHILDREN (In the doorway) :         Daddy!

STYVER:                                                      The wife is waiting.              

              (STRÅMAND enters the house)

That woman turns all argument into prating!

(Puts the book and spectacles into his pocket and comes closer)

              Falk!

FALK:             Yes?

STYVER:                  You've come up with another plan?

FALK:       Why should I?

STYVER:                          It's become completely obvious.

              You must realize by now it's quite obnoxious

              To use what's said to you in confidence.

              It's just not done – in any circumstance!

FALK:   I have been told it could be hazardous.

STYVER:   Damnation, yes!

FALK:                                     For society's fat cats!

STYVER:   But also for all ranks of bureaucrats.

              You've no idea how it would reduce

              My prospects if my boss learned in due course

              My office stabled a lyric Pegasus

              Which during   working hours, whinnied in verse?

              The land of red tape adamantly denies

              The right of clerks to any Muse that flies.

              But worst of all is, were I to defy

              The first commandment of bureaucracy:

              “Never divulge a thing of consequence!”

FALK: How would they punish any such offence?

STYVER (Confidentially) : Suspicion alone compels a state official

              To offer to resign or face dismissal.

              For clerks like us it's one of the commands,

              To keep our mouths closed even among friends.

FALK:   This is the most flagrant of all tyrannies

              To seal the lips of clerks and secretaries!

STYVER (Shrugging his shoulders) : I'm afraid it's legal and must be obeyed.

              In any case, as the time is now approaching,

              When salaries are about to be reviewed,

              This is a subject best not to be broaching:

              This kind of rule we office staff are made

              To take for granted.   So I must beg you, please,

              A careless word could lose me –

  FALK:                                                        Your portfolio?

STYVER: It's called a copy book in officialese.

              A ledger, like a brooch, or a cameo,

              Adorns the bosom of the office dress;

              What lies beneath is not for you to guess.

FALK: But you yourself asked me to insinuate

              Some hint of the treasure hidden in your desk.

STYVER: How could I know the priest could sink of late

              So deep in error, from his blessedness:

              With his benefice, his children and his wife,

              And cash to face the adversities of life?

              If such a man can fall headlong to sin

              Think of the station a mere clerk is in!

              As I stand currently, I lack promotion,

              I have a fiancée and must soon face marriage,

              With the prospect of a family - all that baggage,

              Etcetera! -   (More vehemently)   If I'd a firmer position

              In life, I'd arm myself for doing battle

              Against the world and let it know my mettle.

              Or even if I were unattached, like you,

              You can believe I'd plough through rocks to clear

              A path where I would fight for the Idea.

FALK: Then save yourself, man!

STYVER:                                       What?

FALK:                                                          There's much to do.

              Why accept the world's slavish philosophy?

              A grub can flame into a butterfly!

STYVER (Stepping back) : You mean I should break off –

FALK:                                                                                     You would do well.

              The pearl has gone, why hold on to the shell?

STYVER:   A novice might consider that injunction;

              Not someone skilled in law's more rigid function.

              Leaving aside what Christian the Fifth decreed

              About betrothals   and how one should proceed,

              (An old provision not pertaining to

              “Law and Offences”, eighteen forty two).

              It's true it's far from being criminal,

              Entailing nothing to infringe legality –

FALK:   Well then, you're free –

STYVER:                                    Maybe so but still,        

              No exception's made to escape one's liability.

              In hard times we've stayed faithful to each other;

              She does not ask much from our life together;

              As for my own demands, what will suffice

              Lies snug between my family and my office.

              I leave to others to follow the swans' migration;

              My flights are limited to my narrow station.

              After all, what does the inestimable Goethe

              Tell us about the gleaming Milky Way?

                Its cream is not for skimming to convert a

              Portion into butter from the sky –

FALK:    What if that option's taken from your hands?

              The spirit can infuse even your bondage.

              A man might live as citizen of his age,

              Yet raise the level of what the age demands.

              I know there's beauty in the trivial;

              The trick is how to see and comprehend.

                Not everyone who cleans a filthy stall,

              Brings a Herculean labor to an end.

STYVER:   So let us peacefully go our humble way.

              We do not try to lead your feet astray .

              We walk the earth, you soar toward the skies.

              We tried that too, in youth, some time long past;

              But life's made up of workdays, not a songfest;              

              And then, according to how one lives, one dies.

              Our youthful life's no more than a great trial,

              An unsought and uncalled for inquisition.

              Settle, or it proceeds without   denial;

              And one's thing's certain: you lose the decision.

FALK (Boldly and confident, while glancing over to the summerhouse)

              No,   when the day of judgment comes around,

              Some mercy in the sentence will be found.

              I know that life here can be shared by two,

              With eagerness, with an integrity that's true.

              Your doctrine is our culture's feeble plea

              For whom the Ideal's claim is secondary.

STYVER: No, ‘primary', for it long has passed its prime,

              The fruit's arrived: it's no more blossom-time!

(Indoors, by the piano,   MISS SKJAERE is playing and singing ‘Ach du lieber, Augustin'

  STYVER stops and listens in silent emotion)

              She calls me with the same melodious greeting

              She sang then – on that first day of our meeting.

              (Lays his hand on   FALK's arm and looks into his eyes)

              Each time my darling's drawn to play that tune;

              It is her method by which we commune,

              Remembering her first ecstatic ‘yes'.

              And when the time comes that our passion ends,

              And dwindling, finds us reborn as good friends,

              That song will resurrect our former bliss.

              When my back's stooped from service at the desk,

              Just struggling against want's my daily task,

              I'll cheerfully return to my home's peace,

              Where music keeps alive our memories.

              If one such evening hour is guaranteed,

              I'm not ashamed to admit it's all I need.

(He goes into the house.   FALK turns towards the summer house.   SVANHILD approaches; she is pale and agitated.   They look at one another in silence for a moment and then violently rush into each other's arms)