Constable monologue (Act 5) — Master Olof: A Drama in Five Acts

You should have broken loose from your dreams earlier. But calm yourself! Your life is still ahead of you. The past has been a school--hard, to be sure, but all the more wholesome. Hitherto you have given your life to whims and follies. Now you have some inkling of what reality demands of you. Outside that door your creditors are waiting with their claims. Here are their bills. The clergy of the young Church demand that you live to finish what you have begun so splendidly. The City Corporation demands its secretary for the Council. The congregation demands its shepherd. The children of the confirmation class demand their teacher. Those are your legal creditors. But there is one more waiting outside, to whom perhaps you owe more than all the rest, and who yet demands nothing at all--your young wife. You have torn her from her father's side and set her adrift in the storm. You have broken down her childhood faith and filled her mind with restlessness. Your reckless deeds have goaded the brutal mob into driving her out of her own home. Yet she does not even demand your love: all she asks of you is permission to spend a life of suffering by your side.--Now you can see that we, too, give a little consideration to other people, although you call us selfish.--Let me open this door, which will lead you back into the world. Discipline your heart before it hardens, and thank God for granting you more time to work for mankind.