Stranger monologue (Act 5) — Plays by August Strindberg, Third Series

[_Dragging his words_] That's the place--such a tiny place for such a lot of destinies! There's the dining-room with the frescoed walls: palms, and cypresses, and a temple beneath a rose-coloured sky--that's the way I dreamt the world would look the moment I got away from home. And the stove with its pale blossoms growing out of conches. And the chimney cupboard with its metal doors--I remember as a child, when we had just moved in, somebody had scratched his name on the metal, and then grandmother told us it was the name of a man who had killed himself in that very room. I quickly forgot all about it, but when I later married a niece of the same man, it seemed to me as if my destiny had been foretold on that plate of metal.--You don't believe in that kind of thing, do you?--However, you know how my marriage ended!