ry my public with me on the
path that leads to liberty and progress, I must not frighten them away.
If they find a moral tale of this sort in the serial at the bottom of
the page, they will be all the more ready to read what is printed above
it; they feel more secure, as it were.

Petra. For shame! You would never go and set a snare like that for your
readers; you are not a spider!

Hovstad (smiling). Thank you for having such a good opinion of me. No;
as a matter of fact that is Billing's idea and not mine.

Petra. Billing's!

Hovstad. Yes; anyway, he propounded that theory here one day. And it is
Billing who is so anxious to have that story in the paper; I don't know
anything about the book.

Petra. But how can Billing, with his emancipated views--

Hovstad. Oh, Billing is a many-sided man. He is applying for the post
of secretary to the Bench, too, I hear.

Petra. I don't believe it, Mr. Hovstad. How could he possibly bring
himself to do such a thing?

Hovstad. Ah, you must ask him that.

Petra. I should never have thought it of him.

Hovstad (looking more closely at her). No? Does it really surprise you
so much?

Petra. Yes. Or perhaps not altogether. Really, I don't quite know

Hovstad. We journalists are not much worth, Miss Stockmann.

Petra. Do you really mean that?

Hovstad. I think so sometimes.

Petra. Yes, in the ordinary affairs of everyday life, perhaps; I can
understand that. But now, when you have taken a weighty matter in hand--

Hovstad. This matter of your father's, you mean?

Petra. Exactly. It seems to me that now you must feel you are a man
worth more than most.

Hovstad. Yes, today I do feel something of that sort.

Petra. Of course you do, don't you? It is a splendid vocation you have
chosen--to smooth the way for the march of unappreciated truths, and
new and courageous lines of thought. If it were nothing more than
because you stand fearlessly in the open and take up the cause of an
injured man--

Hovstad. Especially when that injured man is--ahem!--I don't rightly
know how to--

Petra. When that man is so upright and so honest, you mean?

Hovstad (more gently). Especially when he is your father I meant.

Petra (suddenly checked). That?

Hovstad. Yes, Petra--Miss Petra.

Petra. Is it that, that is first and foremost with you? Not the matter
itself? Not the truth?--not my father's big generous heart?

Hovstad. Certainly--of course--that too.

Petra. No, thank