HASSENREUTER
But, my dear Spitta, who has put these mad notions into year head? I've taken real pleasure in the thought of you. I've really been quietly envying you the peaceful personage that was to be yours. I've attached no special significance to certain literary ambitions that one is likely to pick up in the metropolis. That's a mere phase, I thought, and will be quite passing in his case! And now you want to become an actor? God help you, were I your father! I'd lock you up on bread and water and not let you out again until the very memory of this folly was gone. Dixi! And now, good-bye, my dear man.
SPITTA
I'm afraid that locking me op or resorting to force of any kind would not help in my case at all.
HASSENREUTER
But, man alive, you want to become an actor—you, with your round shoulders, with your spectacles and, above all, with your hoarse and sharp voice. It's impossible.
SPITTA
If such fellows as I exist in real life, why shouldn't they exist on the stage too? And I am of the opinion that a smooth, well-sounding voice, probably combined with the Goethe-Schiller-Weimar school of idealistic artifice, is harmful rather than helpful. The only question is whether you would take me, just as I am, as a pupil?
HASSENREUTER
[Hastily draws on his overcoat.] I would not. In the first place my school of acting is only one of the schools of idealistic artifice which you mention. In the second place I wouldn't be responsible to your father for such an action. And in the third place, we quarrel enough as it is—every time you stay to supper at my house after giving your lessons. If you were my pupil, we'd come to blows. And now, Spitta, I must catch the car.