WIFE. Yes, your lordship, I am.
JEPPE [takes her by the breasts]. You are pretty. Would you like to sleep with me to-night?
WIFE. My lord has only to command, for I am his servant.
JEPPE [to the Bailiff]. Do you consent to my lying with your wife to-night?
BAILIFF. I thank his lordship for doing my humble house the honor.
JEPPE. Here! Bring her a chair; she shall eat with me. [She sits at the table, and eats and drinks with him. He becomes jealous of the Secretary.] You'll get into trouble, if you look at her like that. [Whenever he looks at the Secretary, the Secretary takes his eyes off the woman and gazes at the floor. Jeppe sings an old love-ballad as he sits at the table with her. He orders a polka to be played and dances with her, but he is so drunk that he falls down three times, and finally lies where he falls and goes to sleep.]
SCENE 4
(Enter the Baron and Eric.)
BARON. He is sound asleep. Now we have played our game, but we have nearly been made the bigger fools ourselves, for he intended to tyrannize over us, so that we must either have spoiled our trick, or else have let ourselves be mauled by the rude yokel, from whose conduct one can learn how haughty and overbearing such people become when they suddenly rise from the mire to a station of worth and honor. If I had, in an unlucky moment, impersonated a secretary myself, I might have got a thrashing, and the whole affair would have been a failure, for people would have laughed more at me than at the peasant. We had better let him sleep awhile before we put him back into his dirty farm clothes again.
ERIC. Why, my lord, he is sleeping like a log; look, I can pound him and he doesn't feel it.