Anthony.
What do you know about it? Do you think you have any right to join your curses to mine, because that clerk of yours left you in the lurch? Some one else will take you for a walk on Sunday afternoons, some one else will tell you that your cheeks are red and your eyes are blue, some one else will make you his wife, if you deserve it. But when you’ve borne your burden honourably for thirty years, without complaining, when you’ve patiently endured suffering and bereavement and all manner of misfortune, and then your son, who should be making a soft pillow for you in your old age, comes and heaps disgrace on you, till you feel like calling to the earth, “Swallow me, if you can stomach me, for I am more foul than you”—then you may pour out all the curses that I am holding back; then you may tear your hair and beat your breast. That’s the privilege you shall have over me, since you’re a woman.
Clara.
Oh, Karl!
Anthony.
I often wonder what I shall do when I see him again, when he comes in some evening before we’ve got the lamp lit, with his head shaved, prison-fashion, and stutters out “Good-evening” with his hand glued to the door-latch. I shall do something, I know, but what? (Grinding his teeth.) And if they keep him ten years, he’ll find me still. I shall live till then, I know that. Mark you, Death! From now on I’m a stone to your scythe. Sooner shall it be shattered in your hands, than move me an inch.
Clara (taking his hand).
Father, do lie down for half an hour.
Anthony.
To dream you are in child-bed, eh? And jump up and lay hold of you and then remember, and say I didn’t know what I was doing? Thank you, no. My sleep has dismissed its magician and hired a prophet instead, who shows me fearful things with his bloody fingers. I don’t know how it is. Anything seems possible to me now. Ugh! The future makes me shudder, like a glass of water seen through a microscope—is that right, Mr. Choir-master, you’ve spelt it for me often enough? I did that once at the fair in Nürnberg, and couldn’t take a drink the whole day after it. I saw our Karl last night with a pistol in his hand. When I looked at him more closely, he fired. I heard a cry, but I couldn’t see anything for smoke. When the smoke cleared, there was no split skull to be seen, but in the meantime my fine son had become a rich man. He was standing counting gold pieces from one hand into the other, and his face—devil take me if a man could look more placid, if he had slaved all day and just locked up his work-shop. We might look out for that. We might first sit in judgment, and then go ourselves before the greatest judge of all.