[Frau Holthoff starts to help Helene on with her wraps. Knocking is heard at the door. Herr Holthoff goes into the hall to answer knock.]
Herr Holthoff. [Outside] Well, well, Ferdinand the First, Ferdinand himself!
[Commotion—all move toward door]
Enter HERR HOLTHOFF with LASSALLE
[Lassalle is tall, slender, nervous, active, intelligent, commanding. All shake hands, and he and Karl Marx embrace and kiss each other on the cheek. Helene stares, slips down behind the sofa, and seated on an ottoman reads intently with her nose in a book. The rest talk and move toward the center of the stage, gathering around Lassalle, who affectionately half-embraces all—with remarks from everybody: "How well you look!" "And the news from Dresden!" "Did the police molest you?" "Was it a big audience?" etc. Lassalle seats himself on sofa with back to Helene, who is immediately behind him.]
Lassalle. We will win when fifty-one per cent of the voters declare themselves. You see Nature never intended that ninety per cent of the people should slave for the other ten per cent. The world must see that we all should work—that to succeed we must work for each other. We have thought that educated men should not work, and that men who work should not be educated. We have congested work and congested education and congested wealth. The good things of the world are for all, and if there were an even distribution there would be no want, no wretchedness. The rich for the most part waste and destroy, and of course the many have to toil in order to make good this waste. When we can convince fifty-one per cent of the people that righteousness is only a form of self-preservation, that mankind is an organism and that we are all parts of the whole, the battle will be won. [Rises and paces the floor, still talking] I spoke last night to five thousand people, and the way they listened and applauded and applauded and listened, revealed how hungry the people are for truth. The hope of the world lies in the middle class—the rich are as ignorant as the poverty-stricken. A way must be devised to reach the rich—I can do it. Inaction, idleness, that is the curse. Life is fluid, and only running water is pure. Stagnation is death. Turbulent Rome was healthy, but quiescent Rome was soft, feverish, morbid, pathological. Now, take Hamlet—what man ever had more opportunities? Heir to the throne—beauty, power, youth, intellect—all were his! What wrecked him? Why, inaction; he sat down to muse, instead of being up and doing. He wrangled, dawdled, dreamed, followed soothsayers, and consulted mediums until his mind was mush——
Helene. [Rising quickly] Mad from the beginning!
[Lassalle and the two men to whom he was talking jump, turn, stare.]
Helene. Mad from the beginning, I say!
[The two friends at once quit Lassalle and move off arm in arm talking, leaving Lassalle and Helene eyeing each other across the sofa. Her eyes flash defiance; he relaxes, smiles, paying no attention to her contradiction concerning Hamlet. He kneels on the sofa and leans toward her.]