Rosmer. Yes, most willingly!
Brendel. Can you spare me an ideal or two?
Rosmer. What do you say?
Brendel. One or two cast-off ideals? You will be doing a good deed. I am cleaned out, my dear boy, absolutely and entirely.
Rebecca. Did you not succeed in giving your lecture?
Brendel. No, fair lady. What do you think?—just as I was standing ready to pour out the contents of my horn in plenty, I made the painful discovery that I was bankrupt.
Rebecca. But what of all your unwritten works, then?
Brendel. For five and twenty years I have been like a miser sitting on his locked money-chest. And then to-day, when I opened it to take out my treasure—there was nothing there! The mills of time had ground it into dust. There was not a blessed thing left of the whole lot.
Rosmer. But are you certain of that?
Brendel. There is no room for doubt, my dear boy. The President has convinced me of that.