STRANGER. Why should I keep silent about it and let you make yourself ridiculous by your boasting about that revered family of yours? Have you never noticed people grinning at you?
RUDOLPH. No-o! [Pause.
STRANGER. I am now looking at father's bookcase in the pile over there. It was always locked, you remember. But one day, when father was out, I got hold of the key. The books in front I had seen through the glass doors, of course. There were volumes of sermons, the collected works of great poets, handbooks for gardening, compilations of the statutes referring to customs duties and the confiscation of smuggled goods; the constitution; a volume about foreign coins; and a technical work that later determined my choice of a career. But back of those books there was room for other things, and I began to explore. First of all I found the rattan—and, do you know, I have since learned that that bitter plant bears a fruit from which we get the red dye known as "dragon's blood": now, isn't that queer! And beside the rattan stood a bottle labelled "cyanide of potassium."
RUDOLPH. I suppose it was meant for use over at the works.
STRANGER. Or elsewhere, perhaps. But this is what I had in mind: there were some bundles of pamphlets with illustrated covers that aroused my interest. And, to put it plain, they contained the notorious memoirs of a certain chevalier—I took them out and locked the case again. And beneath the big oak over there I studied them. We used to call that oak the Tree of Knowledge—and it was, all right! And in that way I left my childhood's paradise to become initiated, all too early, into those mysteries which—yes!
RUDOLPH. You, too?
STRANGER. Yes, I, too! [Pause] However—let us talk of something else, as all that is now in ashes.—Did you have any insurance?
RUDOLPH. [Angrily] Didn't you ask that a while ago?
STRANGER. Not that I can recall. It happens so often that I confuse what I have said with what I have intended to say, and mostly because I think so intensely—ever since that day when I tried to hang myself in the closet.
RUDOLPH. What is that you are saying?