Furthermore Bernick, so as to make himself pose as a self-sacrificing, deeply injured man, has insinuated that Johan was an embezzler as well as an immoral man. About the figure of the Consul there cluster several admirable hypocrites: Rector Rörlund, who keeps Bernick upon his pinnacle of self-righteousness; Hilmar Tönnessen, who goes about sniffing out other people's soul maladies and carrying with peevish pride the "banner of the ideal"; and several merchants, who are in with the Consul whenever a "deal," public or private, is possible. The minor characters, the women in particular, are individually outlined from the shipbuilder Aune, with his sturdy adherence to the interests of the Bernick house and his weak-kneed code of morals, to the veriest sketch of a clerk--all are human, brimming over with selfish humanity. The catastrophe is led up to with a masterly gradation of incident. Confronted by Lona when in his darkest hour of despair and need, Bernick has the lying garments in which he invests himself for his family and friends torn away by the fearless words of Lona. She does not accuse him of committing the one unforgivable, biblical sin which Ella Rentheim throws at the desperate head of John Gabriel Borkman. No, Lona does not say, "You slew the love that was in me;" she tears up two incriminating letters, she declares that with Johan and Dina she will return to America; but--but Bernick must escape from the cage of lies in which, like a monstrous master-spider, he has been spinning a network of falsehoods for the world. He groans out that it is too late, that he must "sink along with the whole of the bungled social system"--he is not the first, nor the last man, who has attempted to shift upon society his individual sins. He calls himself the tool, not the pillar, of society, and you seem to see, as he talks, the plaster flaking off in great patches, and the ugly stains coming into view. A grand demonstration by the town is made: torchlight, music, speeches, a presentation, and all the rest of the cheap, vain humbug of which we all disapprove so heartily in America--and indulge in it about once every hour. Bernick tells the truth, confesses that he is the real sinner, not Johan, and shocks his world immeasurably, especially the priggish Rörlund. That worthy rector, who would marry Dina in a pitying, pardoning way, is flouted by her. She leaves with Johan. Then, it may be confessed, there is a flat, conventional conclusion, "docked of its natural, tragic ending," as Allan Monkhouse truthfully declares. Bernick is in reality re-whitewashed at the close of this powerful, picturesque play.