von Berkelwitz.
I'll be hanged if I understand a single word.
Prince.
We all know the old families wouldn't have survived till now if the stock hadn't been renewed--surreptitiously, so to speak--by----
Brachtmann.
Really, Prince--really----
Prince.
My dear Brachtmann, it's all very well for you to look shocked. Your family hasn't had to resort to such expedients: your patent of nobility isn't more than two hundred years old. But my people have been misbehaving since the time of Lewis the Pious. Look at the result--look at me. Jaw prognathous--frontal bone asymmetrical--ears abnormal--all the symptoms of a decaying race. Thanks to several centuries of inbreeding, I must go through life a degenerate, and I assure you I haven't any talent for it. If only I could marry a healthy dairy-maid! Under such circumstances, do you wonder one loses one's respect for morality? What if two people in this house have followed the dictates of their temperament?
Brachtmann.
Prince, von Berkelwitz is right. As long as we're in the house ourselves, we'll postpone any discussion of its inmates.