THE CHAMBERLAIN. [_To the_ DOCTOR.] Who is this obstreperous personage? FIELDBO. Mr. Stensgård. THE CHAMBERLAIN. Oh, it’s he, is it? STENSGÅRD. Listen to me, my glad-hearted brothers and sisters! Hear me, all you who have in your souls—though it may not reach your lips—the exultant song of the day, the day of our freedom! I am a stranger among you—— ASLAKSEN. No! STENSGÅRD. Thanks for that “No!” I take it as the utterance of a longing, an aspiration. A stranger I am, however; but this I swear, that I come among you with a great and open-hearted sympathy for your sorrows and your joys, your victories and defeats. If it lay in my power—— ASLAKSEN. It does, it does! LUNDESTAD. No interruptions! You have no right to speak. STENSGÅRD. You still less! I abolish the Committee! Freedom on the day of freedom, boys! THE YOUNG MEN. Hurrah for freedom! STENSGÅRD. They deny you the right of speech! You hear it—they want to gag you! Away with this tyranny! I won’t stand here declaiming to a flock of dumb animals. I will talk; but you shall talk too. We will talk to each other, from the heart! THE CROWD. [_With growing enthusiasm._] Hurrah! STENSGÅRD. We will have no more of these barren, white-chokered festivities! A golden harvest of deeds shall hereafter shoot up from each Seventeenth of May. May! Is it not the season of bud and blossom, the blushing maiden-month of the year? On the first of June I shall have been just two months among you; and in that time what greatness and littleness, what beauty and deformity, have I not seen? THE CHAMBERLAIN. What on earth is he talking about, Doctor? FIELDBO. Aslaksen says it’s the local situation. STENSGÅRD. I have seen great and brilliant possibilities among the masses; but I have seen, too, a spirit of corruption brooding over the germs of promise and bringing them to nought. I have seen ardent and trustful youth rush yearning forth—and I have seen the door shut in its face. THORA. Oh, Heaven! THE CHAMBERLAIN. What does he mean by that? STENSGÅRD. Yes, my brothers and sisters in rejoicing! There hovers in the air an Influence, a Spectre from the dead and rotten past, which spreads darkness and oppression where there should be nothing but buoyancy and light. We must lay that Spectre; down with it! THE CROWD. Hurrah! Hurrah for the Seventeenth of May!