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Page 63
MOTHER. You hear?
STRANGER. No, now I don't want to! You've made your own daughter,
my wife, into a whore; and branded my unborn child a bastard. You
can keep them both. You've murdered my honour. There's nothing for
me to do but to revive it elsewhere.
MOTHER. You can never forgive!
STRANGER. I can. I forgive you--and I shall leave you. (He puts on
the brown cloak and hat, picks up his stick and travelling bag.)
For if I were to stay, I'd soon grow worse than I am now. The
innocent child, whose mission was to ennoble our warped
relationship, has been defiled by you in his mother's womb and made
an apple of discord and a source of punishment a revenge. Why
should I stay here to be torn to pieces?
MOTHER. For you, duties don't exist.
STRANGER. Oh yes, they do! And the first of them's this: To protect
myself from total destruction. Farewell!
Curtain.
ACT III
SCENE I
THE BANQUETING HALL
[Room in a hotel prepared for a banquet. There are long tables
laden with flowers and candelabra. Dishes with peacocks, pheasants
in full plumage, boars' heads, entire lobsters, oysters, salmon,
bundles of asparagus, melons and grapes. There is a musicians'
gallery with eight players in the right-hand corner at the back.]
[At the high table: the STRANGER in a frock coat; next to him a
Civil Uniform with orders; a professorial Frock Coat with an order;
and other black Frock Coats with orders of a more or less striking
kind. At the second table a few Frock Coats between black Morning
Coats. At the third table clean every-day costumes. At the fourth
table dirty and ragged figures of strange appearance.]
[The tables are so arranged that the first is furthest to the left
and the fourth furthest to the right, so that the people sitting at
the fourth table cannot be seen by the STRANGER. At the fourth
table CAESAR and the DOCTOR are seated, in shabby clothes. They are
the farthest down stage. Dessert has just been handed round and the
guests have golden goblets in front of them. The band is playing a
passage in the middle of Mendelssohn's Dead March pianissimo. The
guests are talking to one another quietly.]
DOCTOR (to CAESAR). The company seems rather depressed and the
dessert came too soon!
CAESAR. By the way, the whole thing look's like a swindle! He
hasn't made any gold, that's merely a lie, like everything else.
DOCTOR. I don't know, but that's what's being said. But in our
enlightened age anything whatever may be expected.
CAESAR. There's a professor at the high table, who's supposed to be
an authority. But what subject is he professor of?
DOCTOR: I've no idea. It must be metallurgy and applied chemistry.
CAESAR. Can you see what order he's wearing?
DOCTOR. I don't know it. I expect it's some tenth rate foreign order.
CAESAR. Well, at a subscription dinner like this the company's
always rather mixed.
DOCTOR. Hm!
CAESAR. You mean, that we ... hm. ... I admit we're not well
dressed, but as far as intelligence goes. ...
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