He’s drunk! Turn him out! [_The drunken man is turned out._ DR. STOCKMANN. Can I speak? ASLAKSEN. [_Ringing the bell._] Dr. Stockmann will address the meeting. DR. STOCKMANN. A few days ago, I should have liked to see any one venture upon such an attempt to gag me as has been made here to-night! I would have fought like a lion for my sacred rights! But now I care little enough; for now I have more important things to speak of. [_The people crowd closer round him._ MORTEN KIIL _comes in sight among the bystanders._ DR. STOCKMANN. [_Continuing._] I have been pondering a great many things during these last days—thinking such a multitude of thoughts, that at last my head was positively in a whirl—— BURGOMASTER. [_Coughing._] H'm——! DR. STOCKMANN. But presently things seemed to straighten themselves out, and I saw them clearly in all their bearings. That is why I stand here this evening. I am about to make great revelations, my fellow citizens! I am going to announce to you a far-reaching discovery, beside which the trifling fact that our water-works are poisoned, and that our health-resort is built on pestilential ground, sinks into insignificance. MANY VOICES. [_Shouting._] Don’t speak about the Baths! We won’t listen to that! No more of that! DR. STOCKMANN. I have said I would speak of the great discovery I have made within the last few days—the discovery that all our sources of spiritual life are poisoned, and that our whole society rests upon a pestilential basis of falsehood. SEVERAL VOICES. [_In astonishment and half aloud._] What’s he saying? BURGOMASTER. Such an insinuation——! ASLAKSEN. [_With his hand on the bell._] I must call upon the speaker to moderate his expressions. DR. STOCKMANN. I have loved my native town as dearly as any man can love the home of his childhood. I was young when I left our town, and distance, home-sickness and memory threw, as it were, a glamour over the place and its people. [_Some applause and cries of approval._ DR. STOCKMANN. Then for years I was imprisoned in a horrible hole, far away in the north. As I went about among the people scattered here and there over the stony wilderness, it seemed to me, many a time, that it would have been better for these poor famishing creatures to have had a cattle-doctor to attend them, instead of a man like me. [_Murmurs in the room._ BILLING.