It’s my fault. If I’d been a good mother, instead of a good bridge player—
AGNUS (agonizedly)
Oh! for God’s sake! Can’t something be done? I’ll kill myself—
SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (who has also been moved, says now sharply) Here, here! (In a hoarse whisper) Don’t you go taking such liberties with what don’t belong to you.
THE DEVIL (who has been musing on what Doll has said)
Not fit to associate with human beings. No, I guess not. (Looking at Schwartzenhopfel) I should have remained the Dutchman with no human ties. Sentiment and romance just make me ill.
DOLL BLONDIN (indignantly)
Shame on you! (She goes over to comfort the other two women)
THE DEVIL (still musing)
I suppose that’s how The Devil got his bad name. Trying to cure Faust of Marguerite in order to use him for the world’s advancement. Same ingratitude, same mix-up; everybody calling me names. (Sharply to Schwartzenhopfel, who has listened) Very incorrectly reported, even at that—very unjustly—that Faust affair. Those stupid Germans—when they’re not drinking themselves into sentimental poetry, the ravings of a disordered brain, they’re guzzling themselves into gloomy philosophy—the pessimism of a disordered liver—and the fellow who wrote up the Faust-Marguerite case had both maladies (viciously) in their most virulent form! And that’s what most humans get their idea of me from—when, actually, the case was just about like this one—(meditatively) I wonder what I did to straighten things out that time? (Meditates)