from the liability they had left behind, from the public opinion
they could not face--and when they found themselves without the
strength needed to carry their own guilt, then they had to send
out into the fields for a scapegoat to be sacrificed. They were
free-thinkers, but they did not have the courage to step forward
and speak openly to him the words: "We love each other!" To sum it
up, they were cowards, and so the tyrant had to be slaughtered. Is
that right?

ADOLPH. Yes, but you forget that she educated me, that she filled
my head with new thoughts--

GUSTAV. I have not forgotten it. But tell me: why could she not
educate the other man also--into a free-thinker?

ADOLPH. Oh, he was an idiot!

GUSTAV. Oh, of course--he was an idiot! But that's rather an
ambiguous term, and, as pictured in her novel, his idiocy seems
mainly to have consisted in failure to understand her. Pardon me a
question: but is your wife so very profound after all? I have
discovered nothing profound in her writings.

ADOLPH. Neither have I.--But then I have also to confess a certain
difficulty in understanding her. It is as if the cogs of our brain
wheels didn't fit into each other, and as if something went to
pieces in my head when I try to comprehend her.

GUSTAV. Maybe you are an idiot, too?