arments of innocence and shaved your hair so
that no one may see how you have grown gray in sin! Or have you no stone
ready, perhaps? Alas for you, then! What have you done with those
you were to hand the people when they were crying for bread? Have you
already given them all away?--Step forward, you highly respectable
citizen. (To Windrank, who is asleep on the floor.) You, who are
sleeping the sleep of a brute, why don't you wake up and fling your
knife at her?--Do you see how he is blushing? Can it be from shame at
the bad company you have brought him into, or from carnal desire? (The
crowd mutters disapprovingly.) You are muttering! Is that because you
are ashamed of my words or of yourselves? Why don't you cast the stones?
Oh, you haven't any. Well, open that door. Summon the people outside and
hand this woman over to them. If you don't think fifty men have power
enough to tear her to pieces, you maybe sure that five hundred women
will avail. Well? You are silent?--Rise up, woman! You have been
acquitted. Go and sin no more. But don't show yourself to the priests,
for they will deliver you up to the women!

Marten (who has tried to interrupt Olof several times, but has been held
back by the German, now displays a document). This man, to whom you have
been listening, is a heretic, as you may have heard from his talk,
and he has also been t excommunicated. Here you can see! Read for
yourselves! (He takes one of the candles from the nearest table and
throws it on the floor.) "As this candle, that we here cast out, is
extinguished, so shall be extinguished all his happiness and weal and
whatsoever good may come to him from God!"

Crowd (draws back, making the sign of the cross, so that Olof is left
alone with the Harlot in the middle of the room). Anathema!

Marten (to the Harlot). There you can hear how much Master Olof's
absolution avails you.

Olof (who has been taken aback for a moment). Do you still dare to
trust my word, woman? Are you not afraid of me? Can you not hear the
lightnings of the ban hissing around our heads? Why don't you join
these twenty righteous ones who still remain within the refuge of Holy
Church?--Answer me! Do you think the Lord has cast me out as these have
done?

Harlot. No!

Olof (seizing the letter of excommunication). Well, then! The great
bishop of the small city of Linkoeping has sold my soul to Satan for the
term of my life--for farther than that his power does not reach--and