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SCENE FIFTH
[Whitsun Eve.-In the depths of the forest. To the back, in a clearing, is a hut with a pair of reindeer horns over the porch-gable.] [PEER GYNT is creeping among the undergrowth, gathering wild onions.] PEER
- Well, this is one standpoint. Where is the next?
- One should try all things and choose the best.
- Well, I have done so,-beginning from Caesar,
- and downwards as far as to Nebuchadnezzar.
- So I had, after all, to go through Bible history;-
- the old boy's had to take to his mother again.
- After all it is written: Of the earth art thou come.-
- The main thing in life is to fill one's belly.
- Fill it with onions? That's not much good;-
- I must take to cunning, and set out snares.
- There's water in the beck here; I shan't suffer thirst;
- and I count as the first 'mong the beasts after all.
- When my time comes to die-as most likely it will,-
- I shall crawl in under a wind-fallen tree;
- like the bear, I will heap up a leaf-mound above me,
- and I'll scratch in big print on the bark of the tree:
- Here rests Peer Gynt, that decent soul,
- Kaiser o'er all of the other beasts.-
- Kaiser?
- [Laughs inwardly.]
- Why, you old soothsayer-humbug!
