closed by a barrier of kindness.




IV


Pelle was like a man returning home after years of exile, and trying to
bring himself into personal relations with everything; the act of
oblivion was in force only up to the threshold; the real thing he had to
see to himself. The land he had tilled was in other hands, he no longer
had any right to it; but it was he who had planted, and he must know how
it had been tended and how it had thriven.

The great advance had taken on a political character. The Movement had
in the meantime let the demand of the poorest of the people for bread
drop, and thrown them over as one would throw over ballast in order to
rise more quickly. The institutions themselves would be won, and then
they would of course come back to the starting-point and begin again
quite differently. It might be rather convenient to turn out those who
most hindered the advance, but would it lead to victory? It was upon
them indeed that everything turned! Pelle had thoroughly learned the
lesson, that he who thinks he will outwit others is outwitted himself.
He had no faith in those who would climb the fence where it was lowest.

The new tactics dated from the victorious result of the great conflict.
He had himself led the crowds in triumph through the capital, and if he
had not been taken he would probably now be sitting in parliament as one
of the labor members and symbolizing his promotion to citizenship. But