Pelle the Conqueror, vol 4 | Page 7

those three whose welfare had been entrusted to him accused him of having failed them? He had often enough tried to stifle their accusing voices, but in there it was not possible to stifle anything into silence.
Pelle still had no doubt that he was chosen to accomplish something for the masses, but it had become of such secondary importance when he recollected that he had neglected his share of that which was the duty of every one. He had mistaken small for great, and believed that when he accomplished something that no one else could do, he might in return pay less attention to ordinary every-day duties; but the fates ordained that the burden of life should be laid just where every one could help. And now he was coming back like a poor beggar, who had conquered everything except the actual, and therefore possessed nothing, and had to beg for mercy. Branded as a criminal, he must now begin at the beginning, and accomplish that which he had not been able to do in the days of his power. It would be difficult to build his home under these circumstances, and who was there to help him? Those three who could have spoken for him he had left to their own devices as punishment for an offence which in reality was his own.
He had never before set out in such a poverty-stricken state. He did not even come like one who had something to forgive: his prison-cell had left him nothing. He had had time enough there to go carefully over the whole matter, and everything about Ellen that he had before been too much occupied to notice or had felt like a silent opposition to his projects, now stood out clearly, and formed itself, against his will, into the picture of a woman who never thought of herself, but only of the care of her little world and how she could sacrifice herself. He could not afford to give up any of his right here, and marshalled all his accusations against her, bringing forward laws and morals; but it all failed completely to shake the image, and only emphasized yet more the strength of her nature. She had sacrificed everything for him and the children, her one desire being to see them happy. Each of his attacks only washed away a fresh layer of obstructing mire, and made the sacrifice in her action stand out more clearly. It was because she was so unsensual and chaste that she could act as she had done. Alas! she had had to pay dearly for his remissness; it was the mother who, in their extreme want, gave her own body to nourish her offspring.
Pelle would not yield, but fought fiercely against conviction. He had been robbed of freedom and the right to be a human being like others, and now solitude was about to take from him all that remained to sustain him. Even if everything joined together against him, he was not wrong, he would not be wrong. It was he who had brought the great conflict to an end at the cost of his own--and he had found Ellen to be a prostitute! His thoughts clung to this word, and shouted it hoarsely, unceasingly--prostitute! prostitute! He did not connect it with anything, but only wanted to drown the clamor of accusations on all sides which were making him still more naked and miserable.
At first letters now and then came to him, probably from old companions- in-arms, perhaps too from Ellen: he did not know, for he refused to take them. He hated Ellen because she was the stronger, hated in impotent defiance everything and everybody. Neither she nor any one else should have the satisfaction of being any comfort to him; since he had been shut up as an unclean person, he had better keep himself quite apart from them. He would make his punishment still more hard, and purposely increased his forlornness, kept out of his thoughts everything that was near and dear to him, and dragged the painful things into the foreground. Ellen had of course forgotten him for some one else, and had perhaps turned the children's thoughts from him; they would certainly be forbidden to mention the word "father." He could distinctly see them all three sitting happily round the lamp; and when some turn in the conversation threatened to lead it to the subject of himself, a coldness and stillness as of death suddenly fell upon them. He mercilessly filled his existence with icy acknowledgment on all points, and believed he revenged himself by breathing in the deadly cold.
After a prolonged period of this he was attacked with frenzy, dashed himself blindly against the walls, and shouted that he wanted to get out. To