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- Have me judged by the law in the old-fashioned way!
- For a certain time place me with Him of the Hoof;-
- say a hundred years, come the worst to the worst;
- that, now, is a thing that one surely can bear;
- for they say the torment is only moral,
- so it can't after all be so pyramidal.
- It is, as 'tis written, a mere transition;
- and as the fox said: One waits; there comes
- an hour of deliverance; one lives in seclusion,
- and hopes in the meantime for happier days.-
- But this other notion-to have to be merged,
- like a mote, in the carcass of some outsider,-
- this casting-ladle business, this Gynt-cessation,-
- it stirs up my innermost soul in revolt!
THE BUTTON-MOULDER
- Bless me, my dear Peer, there is surely no need
- to get so wrought up about trifles like this.
- Yourself you never have been at all;-
- then what does it matter, your dying right out?
PEER
- Have I not been-? I could almost laugh!
- Peer Gynt, then, has been something else, I suppose!
- No, Button-moulder, you judge in the dark.
- If you could but look into my very reins,
- you'd find only Peer there, and Peer all through,-
- nothing else in the world, no, nor anything more.
THE BUTTON-MOULDER
- It's impossible. Here I have got my orders.
- Look, here it is written: Peer Gynt shalt thou summo
