That just what I do mean, and nothing else. We’ve done it already to plenty of folks. At Kongsberg[132] they do just the same with coin That’s been current so long that its impress is lost. PEER. But this is the wretchedest miserliness! My dear good friend, let me get off free;— A loopless button, a worn out farthing,— What is _that_ to a man in your Master’s position? THE BUTTON-MOULDER. Oh, so long as, and seeing, the spirit is in you, You always have value as so much metal. PEER. No, I say! No! With both teeth and claws I’ll fight against this! Sooner anything else! THE BUTTON-MOULDER. But what else? Come now, be reasonable. You know you’re not airy enough for heaven—— PEER. I’m not hard to content; I don’t aim so high;— But I won’t be deprived of one doit of my Self. Have me judged by the law in the old-fashioned way! For a certain time place me with Him of the Hoof;— Say a hundred years, come the worst to the worst; That, now, is a thing that one surely can bear; They say that the torment is moral no more, So it can’t be so pyramid-like after all. It is, as ’tis written, a mere transition; And as the fox said: One waits; there comes An hour of deliverance; one lives in seclusion, And hopes in the meantime for happier days.— But this other notion—to have to be merged, Like a mote, in the carcass of some outsider,— This casting-ladle business, this Gynt-cessation,— It stirs up my innermost soul in revolt! THE BUTTON-MOULDER. Bless me, my dear Peer, there is surely no need To get so wrought up about trifles like this. Yourself you never have been at all;— Then what does it matter, your dying right out? PEER. Have _I_ not been——? I could almost laugh! Peer Gynt, then, has been something else, I suppose! No, Button-moulder, you judge in the dark. If you could but look into my very reins, You’d find only Peer there, and Peer all through,— Nothing else in the world, no, nor anything more. THE BUTTON-MOULDER. It’s impossible. Here I have got my orders. Look, here it is written: Peer Gynt shalt thou summon. He has set at defiance his life’s design; Clap him into the ladle with other spoilt goods. PEER. What nonsense! They must mean some other person. Is it really Peer? It’s not Rasmus, or Jon? THE BUTTON-MOULDER. It is many a day since I melted them. So come quietly now, and don’t waste my time. PEER.