RODRIGO. I've still got to redeem my properties out of the pawn-shop here, too. Six hundred kilos of the best iron. The baggage-rate on 'em is always three times as much as my own ticket, so that the whole junket isn't worth a trowser's button. When I went into the pawn-shop with 'em, dripping with sweat, they asked me if the things were genuine!—I'd have really done better to have had the costumes made abroad. In Paris, for instance, they see at the first glance where one's best points are, and bravely lay them bare. But you can't learn that with bow-legs; it's got to be studied on classically shaped people. In this country they're as scared of naked skin as they are abroad of dynamite bombs. A couple of years ago I was fined fifty marks at the Alhambra Theater, because people could see I had a few hairs on my chest, not enough to make a respectable tooth-brush! But the Fine Arts Minister opined that the little school-girls might lose their joy in knitting stockings because of it; and since then I have myself shaved once a month.
ALVA. If I didn't need every bit of my creative power now for the “World-conqueror,” I might like to test the problem and see what could be done with it. That's the curse of our young literature: we're so much too literary. We know only such questions and problems as come up among writers and cultured people. We cannot see beyond the limits of our own professional interests. In order to get back on the trail of a great and powerful art we must move as much as possible among men who've never read a book in their lives, whom the simplest animal instincts direct in all they do. I've tried already, with all my might, to work according to those principles—in my “Earth-spirit.” The woman who was my model for the chief figure in that, breathes to-day—and has for a year—behind barred windows; and on that account for some incomprehensible reason the play was only brought to performance by the Society for Free Literature. As long as my father was alive, all the stages of Germany stood open to my creations. That has been vastly changed.
RODRIGO. I've had a pair of tights made of the tenderest blue-green. If they don't make a success abroad, I'll sell mouse-traps! The trunks are so delicate I can't sit on the edge of a table in 'em. The only thing that will disturb the good impression is my awful bald head, which I owe to my active participation in this great conspiracy. To lie in the hospital in perfect health for three months would make a fat pig of the most run-down old hobo. Since coming out I've fed on nothing but Karlsbad pills. Day and night I have orchestra rehearsals in my intestines. I'll be so washed out before I get across the frontier that I won't be able to lift a bottle-cork.
GESCHWITZ. How the attendants in the hospital got out of her way yesterday! That was a refreshing sight. The garden was still as the grave: in the loveliest noon sunlight the convalescents didn't venture out of doors. Away back by the contagious ward she stepped out under the mulberry trees and swayed on her ankles on the gravel. The door-keeper had recognized me, and a young doctor who met me in the corridor shrunk up as tho a revolver shot had struck him. The Sisters vanished into the big rooms or stayed stuck against the walls. When I came back there was not a soul to be seen in the garden or at the gate. No better chance could have been found, if we had had the curséd passports. And now the fellow says he isn't going with her!
RODRIGO. I understand the poor hospital-brothers. One has a bad foot and another has a swollen cheek, and there appears in the midst of them the incarnate death-insurance-agentess! In the Hall of the Knights, as the blessed division was called from which I organized my spying, when the news got around there that Sister Theophila had departed this life, not one of the fellows could be kept in bed. They scrambled up to the window-bars, if they had to drag their pains along with them by the hundred-weight. I never heard such swearing in my life!
ALVA. Allow me, Fräulein von Geschwitz, to come back to my proposition once more. Tho my father was shot in this room, still I can see in the murder, as in the punishment, nothing but a horrible misfortune that has befallen her; nor do I think that my father, if he had come through alive, would have withdrawn his support from her entirely. Whether your plan for freeing her will succeed still seems to me very doubtful, tho I wouldn't like to discourage you; but I can find no words to express the admiration with which your self-sacrifice, your energy, your superhuman scorn of death, inspires me. I don't believe any man ever risked so much for a woman, let alone for a friend. I am not aware, Fräulein von Geschwitz, how rich you are, but the expenses for what you have accomplished must have exhausted your fortune. May I venture to offer you a loan of 20,000 marks—which I should have no trouble raising for you in cash?
GESCHWITZ. How we did rejoice when Sister Theophila was really dead! From that day on we were free from custody. We changed our beds as we liked. I had done my hair like hers, and copied every tone of her voice. When the professor came he called her “gnädiges Fräulein” and said to me, “It's better living here than in prison!”... When the Sister suddenly was missing, we looked at each other in suspense: we had both been sick five days: now was the deciding moment. Next morning came the assistant.—“How is Sister Theophila?”—“Dead!”—We communicated behind his back, and when he had gone we sank in each other's arms: “God be thanked! God be thanked!”—What pains it cost me to keep my darling from betraying how well she already was! “You have nine years of prison before you,” I cried to her early and late. Now they probably won't let her stay in the contagious ward three days more!
RODRIGO. I lay in the hospital full three months to spy out the ground, after toilfully peddling together the qualities necessary for such a long stay. Now I act the valet here with you, Dr. Schön, so that no strange servants may come into the house. Where is the bridegroom who's ever done so much for his bride? My fortune has also been destroyed.
ALVA. When you succeed in developing her into a respectable artiste you will have put the world in debt to you. With the temperament and the beauty that she has to give out of the depths of her nature she can make the most blasé public hold its breath. And then, too, she will be protected by acting passion from a second time becoming a criminal in reality.
RODRIGO. I'll soon drive her kiddishness out of her!