Fieldbo! Be my friend as you used to be! We have not understood each other of late. You have wounded and repelled me with your ridicule and irony. Believe me, it was wrong of you. [_Embraces him._] Oh, my great God! how happy I am! FIELDBO. You too? So am I, so am I! STENSGÅRD. Yes, I should be the meanest hound on earth if all heaven’s bounty didn’t make me good and true. How have I deserved it, Fieldbo? What have I, sinner that I am, done to be so richly blessed? FIELDBO. There is my hand! This evening I am your friend indeed! STENSGÅRD. Thanks! Be faithful and true, as I shall be!—Oh, isn’t it an unspeakable joy to carry all that multitude away and along with you? How can you help becoming good from mere thankfulness? And how it makes you love all your fellow creatures! I feel as if I could clasp them all in one embrace, and weep, and beg their forgiveness because God has been so partial as to give me more than them. FIELDBO. [_Quietly._] Yes, treasures without price may fall to one man’s lot. This evening I would not crush an insect, not a green leaf upon my path. STENSGÅRD. You? FIELDBO. Never mind. That’s apart from the question. I only mean that I understand you. STENSGÅRD. What a lovely night! Listen to the music and merriment floating out over the meadows. And how still it is in the valley! I tell you the man whose life is not reconsecrated in such an hour, does not deserve to live on God’s earth! FIELDBO. Yes; but tell me now: what do you mean to build up out of it—to-morrow, and through the working-days to come? STENSGÅRD. To build up? We have to tear down first.— Fieldbo, I had once a dream—or did I see it? No; it was a dream, but such a vivid one! I thought the Day of Judgment was come upon the world. I could see the whole curve of the hemisphere. There was no sun, only a livid storm-light. A tempest arose; it came rushing from the west and swept everything before it: first withered leaves, then men; but they kept on their feet all the time, and their garments clung fast to them, so that they seemed to be hurried along sitting. At first they looked like townspeople running after their hats in a wind; but when they came nearer they were emperors and kings; and it was their crowns and orbs they were chasing and catching at, and seemed always on the point of grasping, but never grasped. Oh, there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and none of them understood in the least what was happening; but many bewailed themselves, and asked: “Whence can it come, this terrible storm?” Then there came the answer: “One Voice spoke, and the storm is the echo of that one Voice.”