STUDENT. Do you speculate in houses?
HUMMEL. Mm-yah! But not in the way you mean.
STUDENT. Do you know the people who live here?
HUMMEL. All of them. A man of my age knows everybody, including their parents and grandparents, and in some manner he always finds himself related to every one else. I am just eighty—but nobody knows me—not through and through. I am very much interested in human destinies.
At that moment the shades are raised in the Round Room on the ground floor, and the COLONEL becomes visible, dressed in civilian clothes. He goes to one of the windows to study the thermometer outside. Then he turns back into the room and stops in front of the marble statue.
HUMMEL. There's the Colonel now, who will sit next to you at the opera this afternoon.
STUDENT. Is he—the Colonel? I don't understand this at all, but it's like a fairy-tale.
HUMMEL. All my life has been like a collection of fairy-tales, my dear sir. Although the tales read differently, they are all strung on a common thread, and the dominant theme recurs constantly.
STUDENT. Whom does that statue represent?
HUMMEL. His wife, of course.