onical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little
scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest
hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her
door and sings:--

_"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by,
And the next summer too, and the whole of the year;
But thou wilt come one day....
* * * * *
God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world!
God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!
Here will I await thee till thou comest again;
And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_

At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut
he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic,"
intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed
thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has
missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are
thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc.
Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle.
The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle,
for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy
sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such
men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go,
by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no
escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real
Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching
across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig
stands on the threshold.

As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to
denounce him, she sits down by his side and says--

"_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song.
Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!
Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!"

"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell
me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the
Button-Moulder listens behind the hut--

"_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?"

Solveig.--_Been_?

Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow;
Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth?
Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,--
_Go down