SCENE 4
(Enter the Baron and Eric.)
BARON. He is sound asleep. Now we have played our game, but we have nearly been made the bigger fools ourselves, for he intended to tyrannize over us, so that we must either have spoiled our trick, or else have let ourselves be mauled by the rude yokel, from whose conduct one can learn how haughty and overbearing such people become when they suddenly rise from the mire to a station of worth and honor. If I had, in an unlucky moment, impersonated a secretary myself, I might have got a thrashing, and the whole affair would have been a failure, for people would have laughed more at me than at the peasant. We had better let him sleep awhile before we put him back into his dirty farm clothes again.
ERIC. Why, my lord, he is sleeping like a log; look, I can pound him and he doesn't feel it.
BARON. Take him out, then, and complete our little comedy.