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

Why should I lick him?--However, my hair turned grey that night, and I had to edit my entire life over again. You know how we used to live in an atmosphere of mutual admiration; how we regarded our family as better than all others, and how, in particular, our parents were looked up to with almost religious veneration. And then I had to paint new faces on them, strip them, drag them down, eliminate them. It was dreadful! Then the ghosts began to walk. The pieces of those smashed figures would come together again, but not properly, and the result would be a regular wax cabinet of monsters. All those grey-haired gentlemen whom we called uncles, and who came to our house to play cards and eat cold suppers, they were smugglers, and some of them had been in the pillory--Did you know that?