CAESAR. Hear, hear!
PROFESSOR. Gentlemen! Our small society is to-day honoured by the presence of the great man, who is our guest of honour, and when the committee...
CAESAR (to the DOCTOR). That's the government, you know!
PROFESSOR.... and when the committee asked me to act as interpreter and to explain the motives that prompted them I was at first doubtful whether I could accept the honour. But when I compared my own incapacity with that of others, I discovered that neither lost in the comparison.
VOICES. Bravo!
PROFESSOR. Gentlemen! A century of discovery is ending with the greatest of all discoveries—foreseen by Pythagoras, prepared for by Albertus and Paracelsus and first carried out by our guest of honour. You will permit me to give this feeble expression of our admiration for the greatest man of a great century. A laurel crown from the society! (He places a laurel frown on the STRANGER'S head.) And from the committee: this! (He hangs a shining order round the STRANGER'S neck.) Gentlemen! Three cheers for the Great Man who has made gold!
ALL (with the exception of the STRANGER). Hurrah!
(The band plays chords from Mendelssohn's Dead March. During the last part of the foregoing speech servants have exchanged the golden goblets for dull tin ones, and they now begin to take away the pheasants, peacocks, etc. The music plays softly. General conversation.)
CAESAR. Oughtn't we to taste these things before they take them away?
DOCTOR. It all seems humbug, except that about making gold.