Well, so be it. But then, when our dear, sweet Hialmar went to college, he at once passed for the great light of the future amongst his comrades too! He was handsome, the rascal—red and white—a shop-girl’s dream of manly beauty; and with his superficially emotional temperament, and his sympathetic voice, and his talent for declaiming other people’s verses and other people’s thoughts—— GREGERS. [_Indignantly._] Is it Hialmar Ekdal you are talking about in this strain? RELLING. Yes, with your permission; I am simply giving you an inside view of the idol you are grovelling before. GREGERS. I should hardly have thought I was quite stone blind. RELLING. Yes you are—or not far from it. You are a sick man, too, you see. GREGERS. You are right there. RELLING. Yes. Yours is a complicated case. First of all there is that plaguy integrity-fever; and then—what’s worse—you are always in a delirium of hero-worship; you must always have something to adore, outside yourself. GREGERS. Yes, I must certainly seek it outside myself. RELLING. But you make such shocking mistakes about every new phœnix you think you have discovered. Here again you have come to a cotter’s cabin with your claim of the ideal; and the people of the house are insolvent. GREGERS. If you don’t think better than that of Hialmar Ekdal, what pleasure can you find in being everlastingly with him? RELLING. Well, you see, I'm supposed to be a sort of a doctor—save the mark! I can’t but give a hand to the poor sick folk who live under the same roof with me. GREGERS. Oh, indeed! Hialmar Ekdal is sick too, is he! RELLING. Most people are, worse luck. GREGERS. And what remedy are you applying in Hialmar’s case? RELLING. My usual one. I am cultivating the life-illusion[19] in him. GREGERS. Life—illusion? I didn’t catch what you said. RELLING. Yes, I said illusion. For illusion, you know, is the stimulating principle. GREGERS. May I ask with what illusion Hialmar is inoculated? RELLING. No, thank you; I don’t betray professional secrets to quacksalvers. You would probably go and muddle his case still more than you have already. But my method is infallible. I have applied it to Molvik as well. I have made him “dæmonic.” That’s the blister I have to put on his neck. GREGERS. Is he not really dæmonic then? RELLING.