MASTER OF Q. If I told, they would say that I was boasting; and if I don't tell, then they call me a hypocrite.
THE OFFICER. That is why you blackened your face?
MASTER OF Q. Exactly—making myself a shade blacker than I am.
THE OFFICER. Who is coming there?
MASTER OF Q. Oh, a poet who is going to have his mud bath.
THE POET enters with his eyes raised toward the sky and carrying a pail of mud in one hand.
THE OFFICER. Why, he ought to be having light baths and air baths.
MASTER OF Q. No, he is roaming about the higher regions so much that he gets homesick for the mud—and wallowing in the mire makes the skin callous like that of a pig. Then he cannot feel the stings of the wasps.
THE OFFICER. This is a queer world, full of contradictions.
THE POET. [Ecstatically] Man was created by the god Phtah out of clay on a potter's wheel, or a lathe—[sceptically], or any damned old thing! [Ecstatically] Out of clay does the sculptor create his more or less immortal masterpieces—[sceptically], which mostly are pure rot. [Ecstatically] Out of clay they make those utensils which are so indispensable in the pantry and which generically are named pots and plates—[sceptically], but what in thunder does it matter to me what they are called anyhow? [Ecstatically] Such is the clay! When clay becomes fluid, it is called mud—C'est mon affaire!—[shouts] Lena!