cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

Unfortunately, that is what my mother-in-law recently told me.
ADOLF.
However, for several years I have not thought about her at all. The unfriendliness that
existed between my father and my aunt's husband excluded me from her vicinity, so until
now I have not made her personal acquaintance, and perhaps once again shall not
succeed. You know that I have lived somewhat giddily . . . . Six months ago for the first
time it was as if all the old memories, everything that I had heard my mother say so often,
suddenly awakened, and restored my cousin's picture in my soul, and endowed it once
again with all the beauty and charm which in younger years I had attached to it. And you
know who I can thank that these pleasant memories awoke in me again?
No, how should I know . . . .
You, my friend, and nobody else.
Me?
BRANDT.
ADOLF.
BRANDT.
ADOLF.
Don't you remember, that six months ago you wrote me a letter, in which among other
things you mentioned a daughter of a factory owner who had recently died, from whose
widow you intended to take over the management of the factory. This young girl was
precisely the cousin I had already heard so much about. The warmth with which you
mentioned her, a warmth I had never expected of you, had a contagious effect on me.
Since then I have had no peace. More than once I resolved to ask permission to convince
myself with my own eyes of my cousin's charms. Finally I made up my mind to have
patience until the time of the maneuvers, and to secure myself a billetting in my aunt's
house, in order to be able, quite without suspicion, to undertake my observations in the
vicinity and now . . . here I am, and I have decided, if my cousin Louise corresponds to
my conception of her, to fall in love with her and . . . to propose.
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