BEGGAR. What are you brooding over?
STRANGER. I'm asking myself why I'm here; and then: where I was yesterday?
BEGGAR. Where do you think?
STRANGER. It seems in hell; unless I dreamed everything.
BEGGAR. Then wake up now, for this is going to be reality.
STRANGER. Let it come. I'm only afraid of ghosts.
BEGGAR (taking out a newspaper). Firstly, the great authority has withdrawn the certificate he gave you for making gold. He says, in this paper, that you deceived him. The result is that the paper calls you a charlatan!
STRANGER. O God! What is it I'm fighting?
BEGGAR. Difficulties, like other men.
STRANGER. No, this is something else....