"Didn't you go to the church?"

"Yes, I did."

Hilde had just begun the chapter on the Renaissance when she heard her mother come in the front door. She looked at the clock. It was four in the afternoon.

"I forgot the time, Mom. I'm sorry, but I'm reading something terribly exciting."

"Your nightgown?"

"But I haven't… I'm just going to rest for a while, then I'll start fixing a great dinner. I managed to get hold of some strawberries."

… from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded…

Her mother could not help smiling.

"But… what did you wear?"

"It's a magic book," added Hilde.

"Hey, I don't know if I can take that phrase any more."

She let the ring binder fall into her lap and looked up at her mother.

Her mother left and Hilde read on.

"Okay. Happy birthday once again, Hilde!"

"It's an old stone church from the Middle Ages."

"What I'm wearing now."

"Hilde!"

Her mother ran upstairs and opened Hilde's door.

"Okay, I'll go on reading."

Sophie is following Hermes through the town. In Alberto's hall she finds another card from Lebanon. This, too, is dated June 15.

She jumped at every new card and birthday greeting that her father had stuck into the story. He got them to fall out of an exercise book, turn up inside a banana skin, and hide inside a computer program. Without the slightest effort, he could get Alberto to make a slip of the tongue and call Sophie Hilde. On top of everything else, he got Hermes to say "Happy birthday, Hilde!"

Hilde was just beginning to understand the system of the dates. The cards dated before June 15 are copies of cards Hilde had already received from her dad. But those with today's date are reaching her for the first time via the ring binder.

Dear Hilde, Now Sophie is coming to the philosopher's house. She will soon be fifteen, but you were fifteen yesterday. Or is it today, Hilde? If it is today, it must be late, then. But our watches do not always agree…

Hilde agreed with Alberto that he was going a bit too far, comparing himself with God and Providence. But whom was she actually agreeing with? Wasn't it her father who put those reproachful -- or self-reproachful -- words in Alberto's mouth? She decided that the comparison with God was not so crazy after all. Her father really was like an almighty God for Sophie's world.

Hilde read how Alberto told Sophie about the Renaissance and the new science, the seventeenth-century rationalists and British empiricism.

The chapter begins with Alberto and Sophie standing at the window, seeing the little plane with the long Happy Birthday streamer waving behind it. At the same time dark clouds begin to gather over the town.

Not so surprising that Sophie starts biting her nails. Nail-biting had never been one of Hilde's bad habits but she didn't feel particularly pleased with herself right now. Then finally it was all out in the open: "For us -- for you and me -- this 'will or spirit' that is the 'cause of everything in everything' could be Hilde's father."

When Alberto got to Berkeley, Hilde was at least as enthralled as Sophie had been. What would happen now? There had been all kinds of hints that something special was going to happen as soon as they got to that philosopher -- who had denied the existence of a material world outside human consciousness.

"So 'to be or not to be' is not the whole question. The question is also who we are. Are we really human beings of flesh and blood? Does our world consist of real things -- or are we encircled by the mind?"

"Are you saying he's been a kind of God for us?"

"She is an angel, Sophie."

"What about Hilde herself?"

"An angel?"

"To be perfectly candid, yes. He should be ashamed of himself!"

"Hilde is the one this 'spirit' turns to."

As she ran, one thought kept going round and round in her mind: "Tomorrow is my birthday*. Isn't it extra bitter to realize that life is only a dream on the day before your fifteenth birthday? It's like dreaming you won a million and then just as you're getting the money you wake up."

When they reached each other Sophie's mother put her arm around her.

Sophie ran across the squelching playing field. Minutes later she saw someone come running toward her. It was her mother. The sky was pierced again and again by angry darts of lightning.

"What's happening to us, little one?"

"I don't know," Sophie sobbed. "It's like a bad dream."

With that, Sophie tears herself away from Alberto and runs out into the storm. Could it be the same storm that raged over Bjerkely last night -- a few hours after Sophie ran through the town?

She tried to be the grateful birthday girl all through dinner. But her thoughts were with Sophie and Alberto all the time.

But she was sure, she was perfectly sure, that her reflection had winked with both eyes.

Hilde felt the tears start. "To be or not to be -- that is the question." She threw the ring binder to the end of the bed and stood up. She walked back and forth across the floor. At last she stopped in front of the brass mirror, where she remained until her mother came to say dinner was ready. When Hilde heard the knock on the door, she had no idea how long she had been standing there.

How would things go for them now that they knew it was Hilda's father who decided everything? Although "knew" was perhaps an exaggeration. It was nonsense to think they knew anything at all. Wasn't it only her father who let them know things?

She almost choked on a mouthful of food as she suddenly realized that the same problem possibly applied to her own world too. People had progressed steadily in their understanding of natural laws. Could history simply continue to all eternity once the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle of philosophy and science had fallen into place? Wasn't there a connection between the development of ideas and science on the one hand, and the greenhouse effect and deforestation on the other? Maybe it was not so crazy to call man's thirst for knowledge a fall from grace?

Still, the problem was the same however you looked at it. As soon as Sophie and Alberto "knew" how everything hung together, they were in a way at the end of the road.

Her mother looked at her with an enigmatic expression.

"No way."

"Yes, if you like."

"I can't find my gold crucifix anywhere."

"I know it sounds a bit crazy, but all I want to do is read my present from Dad."

Hilde suddenly thought of the way Sophie spoke to her mother. Dad had hopefully not written any of Hilde's mother into the character of the other mother? Just to make sure, she decided not to mention the white rabbit being pulled out of the top hat. Not today, at least.

"We could share a pizza while we watch that mystery on TV."

The question was so huge and so terrifying that Hilde tried to forget it again. She would probably understand much more as she read further in her father's birthday book.

"Well, as long as he doesn't make you completely delirious."

"By the way," she said as she was leaving the table.

"What?"

"Happy birthday to you…," sang her mother when they were done with their ice cream and Italian strawberries. "Now we'll do whatever you choose."

"I found it down by the dock weeks ago. You must have dropped it, you untidy scamp."

"Did you mention it to Dad?"

"Let me think… yes, I believe I may have."

"Where is it then?"

"Right now I can't seem to find it."

Her mother got up and went to get her own jewelry case. Hilde heard a little cry of surprise from the bedroom. She came quickly back into the living room.

She gave her mother a hug and ran upstairs to her room. At last -- now she could read on about Sophie and Alberto. She sat up on the bed as before with the heavy ring binder resting against her knees and began the next chapter.

"I thought as much."

Sophie woke up the next morning when her mother came into the room carrying a tray loaded with birthday presents. She had stuck a flag in an empty soda bottle.

Sophie rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She tried to remember what had happened the night before. But it was all like jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One of the pieces was Alberto, another was Hilde and the major. A third was Berkeley, a fourth Bjerkely. The blackest piece of all was the violent storm. She had practically been in shock. Her mother had rubbed her dry with a towel and simply put her to bed with a cup of hot milk and honey. She had fallen asleep immediately.

"Happy birthday, Sophie!"

"I think I'm still alive," she said weakly.

"Are you quite sure?"

"Of course you're alive! And today you are fifteen years old."

She put the tray of presents on a chair and disappeared out of the room for a second. When she came back she was carrying another tray with rolls and soda. She put it on the end of the bed.

"Quite sure. Shouldn't a mother know when her only child was born? June 15, 1975… and half-past one, Sophie. It was the happiest moment of my life."

"Are you sure it isn't all only a dream?"

"It must be a good dream to wake up to rolls and soda and birthday presents."

It was the signal for the traditional birthday morning ritual, with the unpacking of presents and her mother's sentimental flights back to her first contractions fifteen years ago. Her mother's present was a tennis racket. Sophie had never played tennis, but there were some open-air courts a few minutes from Clover Close. Her father had sent her a mini-TV and FM radio. The screen was no bigger than an ordinary photograph. There were also presents from old aunts and friends of the family.

"The major didn't spare any ammunition last night."

"That is the finest virtue a genuine philosopher can have. I am proud of how much you have learned in such a short time."

"You were very upset yesterday. If it goes on, I think we should make an appointment to see a psychiatrist."

"It's not anybody's 'fault' that I'm taking a course in philosophy in my leisure time. Just go to work. School doesn't start till ten, and we're only getting our grades and sitting around."

"Ah."

Not long after her mother had gone the telephone rang.

"This is Alberto."

Presently her mother said, "Do you think I should stay home from work today?"

"I was thinking of you running around town to meet some mysterious person… Maybe it's my fault."

"More than I got last semester at any rate."

"Sophie Amundsen."

"I don't know what to think."

"What about you? You said: What's happening to us, little one?"

"No, why should you?"

"What do you mean."

"The thunderstorm, Sophie."

"Do you know what you're going to get?"

"Was it the storm -- or was it Alberto?"

"That won't be necessary."

"Are you sitting comfortably? We're going to have to spend some time on this, you understand."

"Yes…"

"I think, therefore I am?"

"That's called existential angst, or dread, and is as a rule only a stage on the way to new consciousness."

"I think I need a break from the course."

"I am scared that nothing is real."

"Our last chance for what?"

"I'm sitting down."

"You remember Descartes?"

Sophie started to laugh. Alberto continued: "I think it would be better to persevere. Happy birthday, by the way. We must complete the course by Midsummer Eve. It's our last chance."

"With regard to our own methodical doubt, we are right now starting from scratch. We don't even know whether we think. It may turn out that we are thoughts, and that is quite different from thinking. We have good reason to believe that we have merely been invented by Hilde's father as a kind of birthday diversion for the major's daughter from Lillesand. Do you see?"

"But therein also lies a built-in contradiction. If we are fictive, we have no right to 'believe' anything at all. In which case this whole telephone conversation is purely imaginary."

"Are there that many frogs in the garden at the moment?"

"No, now you're oversimplifying things."

"And we haven't the tiniest bit of free will because it's the major who plans everything we say and do. So we can just as well hang up now."

"Explain it, then."

"Would you claim that people plan everything they dream? It may be that Hilde's father knows everything we do. It may be just as difficult to escape his omniscience as it is to run away from your own shadow. However -- and this is where I have begun to devise a plan -- it is not certain that the major has already decided on everything that is to happen. He may not decide before the very last minute -- that is to say, in the moment of creation. Precisely at such moments we may possibly have an initiative of our own which guides what we say and do. Such an initiative would naturally constitute extremely weak impulses compared to the major's heavy artillery. We are very likely defenseless against intrusive external forces such as talking dogs, messages in bananas, and thunderstorms booked in advance. But we cannot rule out our stubbornness, however weak it may be."

"I think I see where you're going with this."

"Or our free will?"

"Who said we don't exist? The question is not whether we are, but what we are and who we are. Even if it turns out that we are merely impulses in the major's dual personality, that need not take our little bit of existence away from us."

"The trick would be if we could manage to do something all on our own -- something the major would not be able to discover."

"How can we do that if we don't even exist?"

"The major naturally knows everything about our little world, but that doesn't mean he is all powerful. At any rate we must try to live as if he is not."

"An Archimedian point?"

"But Hilde's father must be fully aware that you are working on it."

"I'm working on it, Sophie."

"Decidedly so. But he doesn't know what the actual plan is. I am attempting to find an Archimedian point."

"Archimedes was a Greek scientist who said 'Give me a firm point on which to stand and I will move the earth.' That's the kind of point we must find to move ourselves out of the major's inner universe."

"How could that be possible?"

"That would be quite a feat."

"But we won't manage to slip away before we have finished the philosophy course. While that lasts he has much too firm a grip on us. He has clearly decided that I am to guide you through the centuries right up to our own time. But we only have a few days left before he boards a plane somewhere down in the Middle East. If we haven't succeeded in detaching ourselves from his gluey imagination before he arrives at Bjerkely, we are done for."

"You're frightening me!"

"First of all I shall give you the most important facts about the French Enlightenment. Then we shall take the main outline of Kant's philosophy so that we can get to Romanticism. Hegel will also be a significant part of the picture for us. And in talking about him we will unavoidably touch on Kierkegaard's indignant clash with Hegelian philosophy. We shall briefly talk about Marx, Darwin, and Freud. And if we can manage a few closing comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation."

"That's an awful lot for one week."

"drop it. If we are only fictive, it's pure imagination that candy and soda have any taste."

"But you'd better go to school before we meet. It might have a bad influence on Hilde if you cut your last school-day. She probably goes to school even on her birthday. She is an angel, you know."

"We can meet at the major's cabin."

"So I'll come straight from school."

"The major's cabin?"

"I'm sorry."

"That's why we must begin at once. Can you come over right away?"

"I have to go to school. We are having a class get-together and then we get our grades."

"Sophie, either you are living in a wondrous universe on a tiny planet in one of many hundred billion galaxies -- or else you are the result of a few electromagnetic impulses in the major's mind. And you are talking about grades! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

Hilde let the ring binder slide into her lap. Her father had given her conscience a dig there -- she did cut her last day at school. How sneaky of him!

… Click!

She sat for a while wondering what the plan was that Alberto was devising. Should she sneak a look at the last page? No, that would be cheating. She'd better hurry up and read it to the end.

"But my grades…"

It was certainly not a thought that rippled the surface.

Once again Hilde had an almost transfiguring conviction that Sophie and Alberto really existed. Still waters run deep, she thought to herself.

At school, Sophie received lots of attention because it was her birthday. Her classmates were already keyed up by thoughts of summer vacation, and grades, and the sodas on the last day of school. The minute the teacher dismissed the class with her best wishes for the vacation, Sophie ran home. Joanna tried to slow her down but Sophie called over her shoulder that there was something she just had to do.

Why did that idea come to her?

But she was convinced Alberto was right on one important point. One thing was that her father had an overview of what was going to happen to Sophie and Alberto. But while he was writing, he probably didn't know everything that would happen. He might dash off something in a great hurry, something he might not notice till long after he had written it. In a situation like that Sophie and Alberto would have a certain amount of leeway.

Dear Sophie Amundsen, Today you are getting a card as well. Happy birthday, Sophie, and many thanks for everything you have done for Hilde. Best regards, Major Albert Knag.

In the mailbox she found two cards from Lebanon. They were both birthday cards: HAPPY BIRTHDAY --15 YEARS. One of them was to "Hilde M0ller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen…" But the other one was to Sophie herself. Both cards were stamped "UN Battalion -- June 15."

Sophie was not sure how to react, now that Hilde's father had finally written to her too. Hilde's card read:

Sophie read her own card first:

1. Opposition to authority

Dear Hilde, I have no idea what day or time it is in Lillesand. But, as I said, it doesn't make much difference. If I know you, I am not too late for a last, or next to last, greeting from down here. But don't stay up too late! Alberto will soon be telling you about the French Enlightenment. He will concentrate on seven points. They are:

2. Rationalism

3. The enlightenment movement

5. The return to nature

4. Cultural optimism

Alberto was sitting on the doorstep when she got to the cabin. He invited her to sit beside him. The weather was fine although a slight mist of damp raw air was coming off the lake. It was as though it had not quite recovered from the storm.

7. Human rights

6. Natural religion

The major was obviously still keeping his eye on them.

Sophie let herself in and put her report card with all the A's on the kitchen table. Then she slipped through the hedge and ran into the woods.

"Let's get going right away," said Alberto.

Soon she was once again rowing across the little lake.

"Precisely. Let me outline some of the ideas that many of the French Enlightenment philosophers had in common. The important names are Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, but there were many, many others. I shall concentrate on seven points."

"After Hume, the next great philosopher was the German, Immanuel Kant. But France also had many important thinkers in the eighteenth century. We could say that the philosophical center of gravity h. Europe in the eighteenth century was in England in the first half, in France in the middle, and in Germany toward the end of it."

"A shift from west to east, in other words."

"Because he was the one who built everything up from the ground."

"Quite so. The opposition to authority was not least directed against the power of the clergy, the king, and the nobility. During the eighteenth century, these institu-tions had far more power in France than they had in England."

"Thanks, that I am painfully aware of."

Sophie handed him the card from Hilde's father. Alberto sighed deeply. "He could have saved himself the trouble… the first key words, then, are opposition to authority. Many of the French Enlightenment philosophers visited England, which was in many ways more liberal than their home country, and were intrigued by the English natural sciences, especially Newton and his universal physics. But they were also inspired by British philosophy, in particular by Locke and his political philos-ophy. Once back in France, they became increasingly opposed to the old authority. They thought it was essential to remain skeptical of all inherited truths, the idea being that the individual must find his own answer to every question. The tradition of Descartes was very inspiring in this respect."

"Then came the French Revolution."

"Yes, in 1789. But the revolutionary ideas arose much earlier. The next key word is rationalism."

"Hume himself did not die until 1776. That was about twenty years after Montesquieu and only two years before Voltaire and Rousseau, who both died in 1778. But all three had been to England and were familiar with the philosophy of Locke. You may recall that Locke was not consistent in his empiricism. He believed, for example, that faith in God and certain moral norms were inherent in human reason. This idea is also the core of the French Enlightenment."

"Yes, a difference that goes right back to the Middle Ages. When the British speak of 'common sense,' the French usually speak of 'evident.' The English expression means 'what everybody knows,' the French means 'what is obvious'-- to one's reason, that is."

"I see."

"I thought rationalism went out with Hume."

"Like the humanists of antiquity -- such as Socrates and the Stoics -- most of the Enlightenment philosophers had an unshakable faith in human reason. This was so characteristic that the French Enlightenment is often called the Age of Reason. The new natural sciences had revealed that nature was subject to reason. Now the Enlightenment philosophers saw it as their duty to lay a foundation for morals, religion, and ethics in accordance with man's immutable reason. This led to the enlightenment movement."

"You also said that the French have always been more rational than the British."

"You could say that. The greatest monument to the enlightenment movement was characteristically enough a huge encyclopedia. I refer to the Encyclopedia in 28 volumes published during the years from 1751 to 1772. All the great philosophers and men of letters contributed to it. 'Everything is to be found here,' it was said, 'from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded.'"

"Now was the time to start 'enlightening' the masses. This was to be the basis for a better society. People thought that poverty and oppression were the fault of ig-norance and superstition. Great attention was therefore focused on the education of children and of the people. It is no accident that the science of pedagogy was founded during the Enlightenment."

"So schools date from the Middle Ages, and pedagogy from the Enlightenment."

"The next point is cultural optimism," Sophie said.

"The third point."

"Excuse me."

"The Enlightenment philosophers thought that once reason and knowledge became widespread, humanity would make great progress. It could only be a question of time before irrationalism and ignorance would give way to an 'enlightened' humanity. This thought was dominant in Western Europe until the last couple of decades. Today we are no longer so convinced that all 'developments' are to the good. But this criticism of 'civilization' was already being voiced by French Enlightenment philosophers."

"Would you oblige me by putting that card away while I am talking?"

"For some, the new catchphrase was back to nature. But 'nature' to the Enlightenment philosophers meant almost the same as 'reason/ since human reason was a gift of nature rather than of religion or of 'civilization.' It was observed that the so-called primitive peoples were frequently both healthier and happier than Europeans, and this, it was said, was because they had not been 'civilized.' Rousseau proposed the catchphrase, 'We should return to nature.' For nature is good, and man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him. Rousseau also believed that the child should be allowed to remain in its 'naturally' innocent state as long as possible. It would not be wrong to say that the idea of the intrinsic value of childhood dates from the Enlightenment. Previously, childhood had been considered merely a preparation for adult life. But we are all human beings -- and we live our life on this earth, even when we are children."

"Maybe we should have listened to them."

"I should think so!"

"Religion, they thought, had to be made natural."

"They meant that religion also had to be brought into harmony with 'natural' reason. There were many who fought for what one could call a natural religion, and that is the sixth point on the list. At the time there were a lot of confirmed materialists who did not believe in a God, and who professed to atheism. But most of the Enlightenment philosophers thought it was irrational to imagine a world without God. The world was far too rational for that. Newton held the same view, for example. It was also considered rational to believe in the immortality of the soul. Just as for Descartes, whether or not man has an immortal soul was held to be more a question of reason than of faith."

"That's because you don't live in the eighteenth century. According to the Enlightenment philosophers, what religion needed was to be stripped of all the irrational dogmas or doctrines that had got attached to the simple teachings of Jesus during the course of ecclesiastical history."

"What exactly did they mean by that?"

"That I find very strange. To me, it's a typical case of what you believe, not of what you know."

"So now there's only one point left, human rights."

"I see."

"Many people consequently professed to what is known as Deism."

"Yes, very much so. The French Enlightenment philosophers did not content themselves with theoretical views on man's place in society. They fought actively for what they called the 'natural rights' of the citizen. At first, this took the form of a campaign against censorship -- for the freedom of the press. But also in matters of religion, morals, and politics, the individual's right to freedom of thought and utterance had to be secured. They also fought for the abolition of slavery and for a more humane treatment of criminals."

"And yet this is perhaps the most important. On the whole, you could say that the French Enlightenment was more practical than the English philosophy."

"What is that?"

"By Deism we mean a belief that God created the world ages and ages ago, but has not revealed himself to the world since. Thus God is reduced to the 'Supreme Being' who only reveals himself to mankind through nature and natural laws, never in any 'supernatural' way. We find a similar 'philosophical God' in the writings of Aristotle. For him, God was the 'formal cause' or 'first mover.'"

"You mean they lived according to their philosophy?"

"I think I agree with most of that."

"But a lot of people still have to fight for these rights."

"The principle of the 'inviolability of the individual' culminated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted by the French National Assembly in 178V. This Declaration of Human Rights was the basis for our own Norwegian Constitution of 1814."

"Yes, unhappily. But the Enlightenment philosophers wanted to establish certain rights that everybody was entitled to simply by being born. That was what they meant by natural rights. We still speak of a 'natural right' which can often be in conflict with the laws of the land. And we constantly find individuals, or even whole nations, that claim this 'natural right' when they rebel against anarchy, servitude, and oppression."

"The French Revolution in 1787 established a number of rights for all 'citizens.' But a citizen was nearly always considered to be a man. Yet it was the French Revolution that gave us the first inklings of feminism."

"What about women's rights?"

"As early as 1787 the Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet published a treatise on the rights of women. He held that women had the same 'natural rights' as men. During the Revolution of 1789, women were extremely active in the fight against the old feudal regime. For example, it was women who led the demonstrations that forced the king away from his palace at Versailles. Women's groups were formed in Paris. In addition to the demand for the same political rights as men, they also demanded changes in the marriage laws and in women's social conditions."

"Did they get equal rights?"

"One of those who fought hardest for the rights of women during the French Revolution was Olympe de Gouges. In 1791-- two years after the revolution -- she published a declaration on the rights of women. The declaration on the rights of the citizen had not included any article on women's natural rights. Olympe de Gouges now demanded all the same rights for women as for men."

"It was about time!"

"No. Just as on so many subsequent occasions, the question of women's rights was exploited in the heat of the struggle, but as soon as things fell into place in a new regime, the old male-dominated society was re-introduced."

"Typical!"

"It was not until the nineteenth century that feminism really got under way, not only in France but also in the rest of Europe. Little by little this struggle began to bear fruit. But in Norway, for example, women did not get the right to vote until 1913. And women in many parts of the world still have a lot to fight for."

"What do you mean by more or less?"

"How shameful!"

"I have the feeling there won't be any more."

"A sea serpent!" cried Sophie.

Alberto sat looking across at the lake. After a minute or two he said: "That was more or less what I wanted to say about the Enlightenment."

"What happened?"

"They can count on my support."

But as he said this, something began to happen in the middle of the lake. Something was bubbling up from the depths. A huge and hideous creature rose from the surface.

The dark monster coiled itself back and forth a few times and then disappeared back into the depths. The water was as still as before.

"She was beheaded in 1793. And all political activity for women was banned."

"Now we'll go inside," he said.

He just shook his head with a disconsolate expression.

They went into the little hut.

Alberto had turned away.

An embroidered sampler now hung between the two pictures. It read: LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY.

Then Sophie discovered a small envelope on the mantelpiece. "To Hilde and Sophie," it said. Sophie knew at once who it was from, but it was a new turn of events that he had begun to count on her.

She opened the letter and read aloud:

Sophie stood looking at the two pictures of Berkeley and Bjerkely. She pointed to the picture of Bjerkely and said: "I think Hilde lives somewhere inside that picture."

Sophie turned to Alberto: "Did you hang that there?"

Dear both of you, Sophie's philosophy teacher ought to have underlined the significance of the French Enlightenment for the ideals and principles the UN is founded on. Two hundred years ago, the slogan "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" helped unite the people of France. Today the same words should unite the whole world. It is more important now than ever before to be one big Family of Man. Our descendants are our own children and grandchildren. What kind of world are they inheriting from us?

Hilde's mother was calling from downstairs that the mystery was starting in ten minutes and that she had put the pizza in the oven. Hilde was quite exhausted after all she had read. She had been up since six o'clock this morning.

She decided to spend the rest of the evening celebrating her birthday with her mother. But first she had to look something up in her encyclopedia.

She took the FORV to GP volume of the big family encyclopedia and ran up to her room again.

Gouges… no. De Gouges? No again. Olympe de Gouges? Still a blank. This encyclopedia had not written one single word about the woman who was beheaded for her political commitment. Wasn't that scandalous!

Gouges… there she was!

Hilde ran downstairs to get a bigger encyclopedia.

She was surely not just someone her father had thought up?

"I just have to look something up," she said to her astounded mother.

Gouges, Marie Olympe (1748-1793), Fr. author, played a prominent role during the French Revolution with numerous brochures on social questions and several plays. One of the few during the Revolution who campaigned for human rights to apply to women. In 1791 published "Declaration on the Rights of Women." Beheaded in 1793 for daring to defend Louis XVI and oppose Robespierre. (Lit: L. Lacour, "Les Origines du feminisme contem-porain," 1900)