ASLAKSEN. Then I suppose we may venture to print it. DR. STOCKMANN. I should think so! HOVSTAD. It shall go in to-morrow. DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, plague take it, not a day must be lost. Look here, Mr. Aslaksen, this is what I wanted to ask you: won’t you take personal charge of the article? ASLAKSEN. Certainly I will. DR. STOCKMANN. Be as careful as if it were gold. No printers' errors; every word is important. I shall look in again presently; perhaps you’ll be able to let me see a proof.—Ah! I can’t tell you how I long to have the thing in print—to see it launched—— BILLING. Yes, like a thunderbolt! DR. STOCKMANN. ——and submitted to the judgment of every intelligent citizen. Oh, you have no idea what I have had to put up with to-day. I've been threatened with all sorts of things. I was to be robbed of my clearest rights as a human being—— BILLING. What! Your rights as a human being! DR. STOCKMANN. ——I was to humble myself, and eat the dust; I was to set my personal interests above my deepest, holiest convictions—— BILLING. Strike me dead, but that’s too outrageous! HOVSTAD. Oh, what can you expect from that quarter? DR. STOCKMANN. But they shall find they were mistaken in me; they shall learn that in black and white, I promise them! I shall throw myself into the breach every day in the _Messenger_, bombard them with one explosive article after another—— ASLAKSEN. Yes, but look here—— BILLING. Hurrah! It’s war! War! DR. STOCKMANN. I shall smite them to the earth, I shall crush them, I shall level their entrenchments to the ground in the eyes of all right-thinking men! That’s what I shall do! ASLAKSEN. But above all things be temperate, Doctor; bombard with moderation—— BILLING. Not at all, not at all! Don’t spare the dynamite! DR. STOCKMANN. [_Going on imperturbably._] For now it’s no mere question of water-works and sewers, you see. No, the whole community must be purged, disinfected—— BILLING. _There_ sounds the word of salvation! DR. STOCKMANN.