But there was something of the chieftain, something of the
prophet, about him. He hated priests. He read deep philosophical works,
forbade his family to go to church, and had been visited by Bjornson
himself. It was good to have him on your side; to have him against you
was fatal--you might just as well clear out of the town altogether. He
had a finger in everything that went on; it was as if he owned the whole
town. He had been known to meet a youth he had never spoken to before in
the street and accost him with a peremptory "Understand me, young man;
you will marry that girl." Yet for all this, Lorentz Uthoug was not
altogether content. True, he was head and shoulders above all the
Ringeby folks, but what he really wanted was to be the biggest man in a
place a hundred times as large.
And now that he had found a son-in-law, he seemed as it were to be
walking quietly round this stranger from the great world, taking his
measure, and asking in his thoughts: "Who are you at bottom? What have
you seen? What have you read? Are you progressive or reactionary? Have
you any proper respect for what I have accomplished here, or are you
going about laughing in your sleeve and calling me a whale among the
minnows?"
Every morning when Peer woke in his room at the hotel he rubbed his
eyes. On the table beside his bed stood a photograph of a young girl.
What? Is it really you, Peer, that have found someone to stand close to
you at last? Someone in the world who cares about you.
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