Dialogue following No. 1
ERLING. That’s a typical instance of feminine perversity — doesn’t fall in love with me, which would be rational enough, but with the senseless inanimate work of my hands! My dear fellow (addressing statue), I little thought, when I cut you out, that in course of time you’d return the compliment!
Enter TORTENSSEN
TORTENSSEN. Erling, congratulate me! I’ve just received my patent of appointment as Personal Physician to His Majesty King Christian. I have let my house, sold my practice, and I start for Copenhagen this day week!
ERLING. My dear friend, I’m overjoyed. I’m in daily expectation of a Royal command to take up my office as Sculptor Extraordinary to the Royal Family — and we’ll travel together. Of course, you’ve heard that I’ve been promised a Countship?
TORTENSSEN. And I am to be created a Baron!
ERLING. You don’t say so! To think that we two, who have toiled in obscurity from boyhood for a bare subsistence, should both be raised at the same moment to such social and professional distinction!
TORTENSSEN. It seems incredible! It can’t be — but, no — that’s out of the question.
ERLING. What can’t be?
TORTENSSEN. It can’t be one of Governor Griffenfeld’s practical jokes?
ERLING. My dear fellow, don’t suggest such a thing. It would be too cruel — why, it would be our ruin!
TORTENSSEN. But he is cruel. When a scheme for a practical joke enters his head he sticks at nothing in its accomplishment. Why, he has caused the very soldiers of the garrison — war-worn veterans as they are — to be drilled as ballet-girls, and to perform all their evolutions to dance steps, simply in order to make them ridiculous in the eyes of the girls they’re engaged to!
ERLING. He’s a malicious devil enough, but he would hardly venture to play pranks in the name of his Sovereign. Besides, there’s the statue — a commission from the King.
TORTENSSEN. True. By the way, I suppose it is a commission from the King? That’s not one of his Excellency’s practical jokes?
ERLING. Nonsense! Now, does that look like a practical joke? Why, I’m to get ten thousand rix-dollars for it! Now, as you know, I love his daughter Nanna devotedly, and she has hitherto treated me with contempt, because, as she says, I’m a mere tuppenny-halfpenny stonecutter. Of course, that’s only her humorous way of putting it.
TORTENSSEN. And I adore Thora, who has always treated my pretensions with derision, because, as she says, I’m only a pitiful pill-roller. That’s her epigrammatic way of expressing it.
ERLING. But now that our positions are so immensely improved, surely we might renew our proposals with every prospect of success!
TORTENSSEN. The very idea that occurred to me! My incomparable Thora ——
ERLING. Your what!
TORTENSSEN. My incomparable Thora ——
ERLING. Ah — exactly! But — don’t think me inquisitive — why don’t you think Nanna incomparable?
TORTENSSEN. Why, my dear fellow, if for no other reason, because you do.
ERLING. What an obstinate dog you must be to refuse to consider her the divinest creature in the world, because I do! And you call yourself my friend!
TORTENSSEN. Well, but really
ERLING. It’s most unjust to the poor girl.
TORTENSSEN. But if I loved Nanna you’d call me out.
ERLING. What, you — call you out? Call out my old friend because he was of the same way of thinking as myself? — no!
TORTENSSEN. But suppose I were successful?
ERLING. Ah, but you wouldn’t be. That is a contingency that we need not consider. Now do give up Thora and love Nanna — do, to oblige me.
TORTENSSEN. Do you want everybody to love Nanna?
ERLING. Of course I do. What I want is that all the world shall go mad over her, and that I shall be triumphant. Surely that’s an intelligible position! Now mark: —