Yes, but that’s all right. That’s the very thing the public like. PETRA. And would you supply the public with such stuff? You don’t believe a word of it yourself. You know well enough that things do not really happen like that. HOVSTAD. Of course not; but an editor can’t always do as he likes. He has often to humour people’s fancies in minor matters. After all, politics is the chief thing in life—at any rate for a newspaper; and if I want the people to follow me along the path of emancipation and progress, I mustn’t scare them away. If they find a moral story like this down in the cellar,[11] they are all the more ready to take in what we tell them above—they feel themselves safer. PETRA. For shame! You’re not such a hypocrite as to set traps like that for your readers. You’re not a spider. HOVSTAD. [_Smiling._] Thanks for your good opinion. It’s true that the idea is Billing’s, not mine. PETRA. Mr. Billing’s! HOVSTAD. Yes, at least he was talking in that strain the other day. It was Billing that was so anxious to get the story into the paper; I don’t even know the book. PETRA. But how can Mr. Billing, with his advanced views—— HOVSTAD. Well, Billing is many-sided. He’s applying for the secretaryship to the Town Council, I hear. PETRA. I don’t believe that, Mr. Hovstad. How could he descend to such a thing? HOVSTAD. That you must ask him. PETRA. I could never have thought it of Billing! HOVSTAD. [_Looking more closely at her._] No? Is it such a surprise to you? PETRA. Yes. And yet—perhaps not. Oh, I don’t know—— HOVSTAD. We journalists are not worth much, Miss Petra. PETRA. Do you really say that? HOVSTAD. I think so, now and then. PETRA. Yes, in the little every-day squabbles—that I can understand. But now that you have taken up a great cause—— HOVSTAD. You mean this affair of your father’s? PETRA. Of course. I should think you must feel yourself worth more than the general run of people now. HOVSTAD. Yes, to-day I do feel something of the sort. PETRA. Yes, surely you must. Oh, it’s a glorious career you have chosen! To be the pioneer of unrecognised truths and new and daring ways of thought!—even, if that were all, to stand forth fearlessly in support of an injured man—— HOVSTAD.