OSWALD. Well?
MANDERS. Lives with--his children's mother!
OSWALD. Yes. Would you have him turn his children's mother out of doors?
MANDERS. Then it is illicit relations you are talking of! Irregular
marriages, as people call them!
OSWALD. I have never noticed anything particularly irregular about the
life these people lead.
MANDERS. But how is it possible that a--a young man or young woman with
any decency of feeling can endure to live in that way?--in the eyes of
all the world!
OSWALD. What are they to do? A poor young artist--a poor girl--marriage
costs a great deal. What are they to do?
MANDERS. What are they to do? Let me tell you, Mr. Alving, what they
ought to do. They ought to exercise self-restraint from the first; that
is what they ought to do.
OSWALD. That doctrine will scarcely go down with warm-blooded young
people who love each other.
MRS. ALVING. No, scarcely!
MANDERS. [Continuing.] How can the authorities tolerate such things!
Allow them to go on in the light of day! [Confronting MRS. ALVING.] Had
I not cause to be deeply concerned about your son? In circles where open
immorality prevails, and has even a sort of recognised position--!
OSWALD. Let me tell you, sir, that I have been in the habit of spending
nearly all my Sundays in one or two such irregular homes--
MANDERS. Sunday of all days!
OSWALD. Isn't that the day to enjoy one's self? Well, never have I heard
an offensive word, and still less have I witnessed anything that could
be called immoral. No; do you know when and where I have come across
immorality in artistic circles?
MANDERS. No, thank heaven, I don't!
OSWALD. Well, then, allow me to inform you. I have met with it when one
or other of our pattern husbands and fathers has come to Paris to have
a look round on his own account, and has done the artists the honour of
visiting their humble haunts. They knew what was what. These gentlemen
could tell us all about places and things we had never dreamt of.
MANDERS. What! Do you mean to say that respectable men from home here
would--?
OSWALD. Have you never heard these respectable men, when they got home
again, talking about the way in which immorality runs rampant abroad?