742 THE DRAMA 



peace without seeing him, the intrepid priest, with no reason to cross 

 to-day rather than to-morrow, save that each day is a day to be de- 

 voted to his mission, pursues his way. 



No physical suffering moves him. He passes untouched through 

 the starving town, where the blue-grey ring round every hollow eye 

 shows that death is holding his assize, and is only moved to a deeper 

 ecorn when he sees that the scourge brings out the brute rather than 

 the angel in the sufferers. But a tale of the mental anguish of a 

 father who has slain his child that he might not see it starve, and 

 now himself lies dying, stirs him to deepest compassion, and in a storm 

 through which even the wife of the dying man dare not venture with 

 him, he crosses the fiord in an open boat to stand by the bed of the 

 murderer and suicide as the messenger of God. 



Then the call comes to him to relinquish all this thoughts of a cru- 

 sading march through his land, and an attack in the face of all the 

 world upon the idols it serves, and to bury himself in a sunless town 

 on a remote fiord, where the memory of his lonely childhood broods 

 like night over his soul, where his miserly mother, who bartered away 

 her soul for wealth in her early days, and hopes to save it in her old age 

 by dedicating her son to the Church, oppresses him with her unre- 

 claimed sordidness, and where every influence seems most hostile to 

 his life-work. 



And yet in truth the sacrifice is no sacrifice at all. For Agnes has 

 already convinced him that his crusade must be fought out at home 

 and not abroad. 



And who is Agnes? We see her first, with her lover, Einar, the 

 painter and poet, in the sunshine and beauty of the morning on the 

 hill-side. 



Einar. Agnes, my beautiful butterfly, thee will I capture in sport! I am 

 weaving a net with meshes so fine, and the meshes so fine are my songs. 



Agnes [dancing back before Mm and darting out of his reach]. If I'm a but- 

 terfly little and fine, then let me still sip from the ling-bloom ; and if you are a 

 boy that delights in his game, then chase me, but catch me not ever. 



Einar. Agnes, my beautiful butterfly, now have I woven the meshes; sure 

 your fluttering flight will avail you naught soon you sit in the net fairly 

 captured. 



Agnes. If I'm a butterfly young and bright, rejoicing I swing in the sport; 

 but should I be caught 'neath your woven net, then brush not against my wings. 



Einar. Nay! With such care on my hand will I lift thee, and lock thee 

 right into my heart; and there shalt thou play thy whole life long the gladest 

 of games thou e'er knewest. 



But when Agnes hears Brand speak of the feebleness and poverty 

 of the age and of the stern gospel it needs, she wakes from her but- 

 terfly existence as from a dream. It is in vain that Einar strives to 

 pick up the thread of sport where they dropped it. Agnes answers 

 him without hearing, and in her turn asks, without looking at him, 



