Jacob.  Oh, he looks mighty learned.  Rasmus Nielsen, who drove him, swears that he did nothing all the way but dispute with himself in Greek and Elamite; and sometimes with so much zeal that he struck Rasmus Nielsen in the back of the neck three or four times, with his clenched fist, shouting all the while, “Probe the Major!  Probe the Major!” I suppose he must have had a dispute with a major before he started out.  Part of the way he sat still and stared at the moon and the stars with such a rapt expression that he fell off the wagon three times and nearly broke his neck from sheer learning.  Rasmus Nielsen laughed at that, and said to himself, “Rasmus Berg may be a wise man in the heavens, but he is a fool on earth.”

Jeppe.  Let us go and meet him.  Come with us, dear Peer.  It may be that he has forgotten his Danish and won’t be able to talk anything but Latin.  In that case you can be interpreter.

Peer (aside).  Not if I know it! (Aloud.) I have other things to attend to.

ACT II

SCENE I

[A room in Jeppe’s house.  Montanus (whose stockings are falling down around his ankles).]

Montanus.  I have been away from Copenhagen only a day, and I miss it already.  If I didn’t have my good books with me, I couldn’t exist in the country.  Studia secundas res ornant, adversis solatium praebent.  I feel as if I had lost something, after going three days without a disputation.  I don’t know whether there are any learned folk in the village, but if there are, I shall set them to work, for I can’t live without disputation.  I can’t talk much to my poor parents, for they are simple folk and know hardly anything beyond their catechism; so I can’t find much comfort in their conversation.  The deacon and the schoolmaster are said to have studied, but I don’t know how much that has amounted to; still, I shall see what they are good for.  My parents were astonished to see me so early, for they had not expected me to travel by night from Copenhagen. (He strikes a match, lights his pipe, and puts the bowl of his pipe through a hole he has made in his hat.) That’s what they call smoking studentikos—­it’s a pretty good invention for any one who wants to write and smoke at the same time. (Sits down and begins to read.)

SCENE 2

(Enter Jacob.  He kisses his own hand and extends it to his brother.)

Jacob.  Welcome home again, my Latin brother!

Montanus.  I am glad to see you, Jacob.  But as for being your brother, that was well enough in the old days, but it will hardly do any more.

Jacob.  How so?  Aren’t you my brother?

Montanus.  Of course I don’t deny, you rogue, that I am your brother by birth, but you must realize that you are still a peasant boy, whereas I am a Bachelor of Philosophy.  But listen, Jacob,—­how are my sweetheart and her father?