[Scratching the back of his head.] I can't say as to that exackly. My brothers in the masons' union, though, they ain't admirers o' him.
HASSENREUTER
Then you have no German hearts in your bodies! Otto is what I called my eldest son who is in the imperial navy! And believe me [pointing to the infant] this coming generation will well know what it owes to that mighty hero, the great forger of German unity! [He takes the tin boiler of the apparatus which WALBURGA has unpacked into his hands and lifts it high up.] Now then: the whole business of this apparatus is mere child's play. This frame which holds all the bottles—each bottle to be filled two-thirds with water and one-third with milk—is sunk into the boiler which is filled with boiling water. By keeping the water at the boiling-point for an hour and a half in this manner, the content—of the bottles becomes free of germs. Chemists call this process sterilisation.
JOHN
Jette, at the master-mason's house, the milk that's fed to the twins is sterilised too.
The pupils of HASSENREUTER, KÄFERSTEIN and DR. KEGEL, two young men between twenty and twenty-five years of age, have knocked at the door and then opened it.
HASSENREUTER
[Noticing his pupils.] Patience, gentlemen. I'll be with you directly. At the moment I am busying myself with the problems of the nourishment of infants and the care of children.
KÄFERSTEIN
[His head bears witness to a sharply defined character: large nose, pale, a serious expression, beardless, about the mouth a flicker of kindly mischievousness. With hollow voice, gentle and suppressed.] You must know that we are the three kings out of the East.