priest? With our intimate friend? 

 Manders. All the more on that account; you should thank God that I possessed the necessary strength of mind—that I was able to turn you from your outrageous intention, and that it was vouchsafed to me to succeed in leading you back into the path of duty, and back to your lawful husband. 

 Mrs. Alving. Yes, Mr. Manders, that certainly was your doing. 

 Manders. I was but the humble instrument of a higher power. And is it not true that my having been able to bring you again under the yoke of duty and obedience sowed the seeds of a rich blessing on all the rest of your life? Did things not turn out as I foretold to you? Did not your husband turn from straying in the wrong path, as a man should? Did he not, after that, live a life of love and good report with you all his days? Did he not become a benefactor to the neighbourhood? Did he not so raise you up to his level, so that by degree you became his fellow-worker in all his undertakings—and a noble fellow-worker, too. I know, Mrs. Alving; that praise I will give you. But now I come to the second serious false step in your life. 

 Mrs. Alving. What do you mean? 

 Manders, Just as once you forsook your duty as a wife, so, since then, you have forsaken your duty as a mother. 

 Mrs. Alving. Oh—! 

 Manders. You have been overmastered all your life by a disastrous spirit of willfulness. All your impulses have led you towards what is undisciplined and lawless. You have never been willing to submit to any restraint. Anything in life that has seemed irksome to you, you have thrown aside recklessly and unscrupulously, as if it were a burden that you were free to rid yourself of if you would. It did not please you to be a wife any longer, and so you left your husband. Your duties as a mother were irksome to you, so you sent your child away among strangers. 

 Mrs. Alving. Yes, that is true; I did that. 

 Menders. And that is why you have become a stranger to him. 

 Mrs. Alving. No, no, I am not that! 

 Manders. You are; you must be. And what sort of a son is it that you have got back? Think over it seriously, Mrs. Alving. You erred grievously in your husband's case—you acknowledge as much, by erecting this memorial to him. Now you are bound to acknowledge how 

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