THE LAWYER. Yes, something that has to be punished. If I have had a pleasant day or night, then I suffer infernal pangs and a bad conscience the next day.
THE DAUGHTER. How strange!
THE LAWYER. I wake up in the morning with a headache; and then the repetitions begin, but so that everything becomes perverted. What the night before was pretty, agreeable, witty, is presented by memory in the morning as ugly, distasteful, stupid. Pleasure seems to decay, and all joy goes to pieces. What men call success serves always as a basis for their next failure. My own successes have brought ruin upon me. For men view the fortune of others with an instinctive dread. They regard it unjust that fate should favour any one man, and so they try to restore balance by piling rocks on the road. To have talent is to be in danger of one's life, for then one may easily starve to death!—However, you will have to return to your duties, or I shall bring suit against you, and we shall pass through every court up to the highest—one, two, three!
THE DAUGHTER. Return?—To the iron stove, and the cabbage pot, and the baby clothes——
THE LAWYER. Exactly! We have a big wash to-day, for we must wash all the handkerchiefs——
THE DAUGHTER. Oh, must I do it all over again?
THE LAWYER. All life is nothing but doing things over again. Look at the teacher in there—He received his doctor's degree yesterday, was laurelled and saluted, climbed Parnassus and was embraced by the monarch—and to-day he starts school all over again, asks how much twice two makes, and will continue to do so until his death—However, you must come back to your home!
THE DAUGHTER. I shall rather die!
THE LAWYER. Die?—That is not allowed. First of all, it is a disgrace—so much so that even the dead body is subjected to insults; and secondly, one goes to hell—it is a mortal sin!
THE DAUGHTER. It is not easy to be human!