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fumblingly, either because she did not understand what she was reading, or because a layer of dew had coated her eyelashes, brought about by an unendurable and glaringly unjust drowsiness that was blinding her like tears, so that she could not see clearly but had to look for the words, one by one. ‘Relling (goes up to Gregers and says): No-one shall ever fool me into thinking that this was an accident. Gregers (who has stood horror-stricken, twitching convulsively): Nobody can say for certain how this terrible thing happened. Relling: The wadding has burned her bodice. She must have pressed the pistol straight at her breast and fired. Gregers: Hedvig has not died in vain. Did you not see how grief released the greatness in him? Relling: Most people show a certain greatness when they stand grieving over a dead body. But how long, do you think, this nobility of his will last? Gregers: Why shouldn’t it last and grow all his life! Relling: Within nine months little Hedvig will be nothing more to him than a fine pretext for speechifying. Gregers: You dare say that about Hjalmar Ekdal! Relling: We’ll talk again when the first grass has withered on her grave. Then you will hear him spouting phrases like “the child prematurely torn from the paternal bosom”, then you can watch him wallowing in sentiment, self-admiration and self-pity. Wait and see! Gregers: If you are right and I am wrong, life is not worth living. Relling: Oh, life can still be quite alright, if only we could be left alone by these damn bill collectors who force themselves on poor people with this so-called claim of the ideal. Gregers (with a vacant look in his eyes): In that case I’m glad my destiny is what it is. Relling: What, then, is your destiny, if I may ask? Gregers (about to leave): To be the thirteenth at table. Relling: The hell it is.’
    He listened to this rather stammering reading with increasing irritation and became completely paralysed. Not because of the reading, but because of the aggressive, suppressed groan heard in the classroom right before the girl began to read. Which he had not remarked upon. It so paralysed him that he was unable to say ‘Thank you’ when at last she reached Gregers Werle’s epoch-making words, which for him had now become the key to the play and, more, were the entrance to that clearing where the tracks he believed to have discovered were to be found and, pointing further inward, were the reasons why he had asked these lines to be read anew, because he hoped that when he got to that remark again, he would once more see this clearing and be able to follow the tracks inward. But when she got there he could not bring himself to stop her and let her go on, in her stammering fashion, to read the final, concluding exchanges in The Wild Duck as well. He was so vexed that he did not manage to concentrate on the play. That suppressed groan. Aggressive in all its youthful intensity. Which he had pretended not to hear. It was humiliating, although he hoped the pupils attributed his non-censure to his being so patronising that he did not bother about such trifles. But that was not the reason, as he knew in his bones . He had simply not dared to speak up, and the moment that dawned on him he had felt utterly paralysed and incapable of thinking clearly. Damn it all! He would not have dared protest against it under any circumstances, that he had to admit. And it wasn’t the first time – every time the class had got to the point where one or more of them burst out in that way, giving vent to their inward righteous indignation, he gave a start and pretended not to hear it. Because he feared it. That youthful, self-righteous groan. He was afraid of what it could trigger if he rose up against it. He simply had to realise that he was afraid of them and did not dare to criticise a pupil who groaned at his teaching. He simply had to realise that he did not dare look sharply at the pupil who had taken the liberty of heaving