HENRICH. He is a rogue who says I was ever a tinker's apprentice.
HERMAN. Then why do you want me to make such a speech?
HENRICH. Oh, have a little patience! Your Honor is too hasty. I should politely tell them at the start that if any one made fun of me for having been a tinker, he would get into trouble. And if I noticed the least expression of mockery on any one's face, I should say, "Wise and noble sirs, do you for a moment allow yourselves to imagine that you have made me burgomaster to ridicule me: And at that I should pound hard on the desk while I spoke, so that they might see from my introductory speech that I was not to be fooled with, and that they had made a burgomaster who was the man for the place. For if his Honor lets himself be imposed on at the start, the council will continue to look on him as a rascal."
HERMAN. You talk like a rascal, but still I shall manage to hit on the kind of speech I want to make. Let us go in.
[Exeunt.
ACT IV
SCENE I
(A Room in Herman's house. Henrich, alone. He has braid on both sleeves of his coat, which reaches to his heels, and is trimmed with white paper.)
HENRICH. I am a cur if I can see how the council hit on the idea of making my master burgomaster, because I can see no connection between a tinker and a high official like that, unless it is that just as a tinker throws plates and dishes into a mould and melts them up into new ones, so a good burgomaster can remould the republic, when it is declining, by making good laws. But the good men did not take into consideration the fact that my master is the worst tinker in Hamburg, and therefore, if they have by any chance chosen him on that basis, he will be the worst burgomaster, too, that we have ever had. The only useful thing about their choice is that it makes me a reutendiener, and that is a position for which I have both talent and inclination, for ever since I was a boy I have enjoyed seeing people arrested. It is a good place, too, for one who knows how to make something out of it. First of all I must appear to have a great deal of say with the burgomaster, and when people get that article of faith through their heads, Henrich will make at least a hundred or two hundred thalers a year, which I shall take not out of greed, but only to show that I understand my business as reutendiener. If any one wants to talk to the burgomaster, I say he is not at home. If they say they saw him at the window, I answer that it makes no difference, he is still not at home. People in Hamburg know at once what that answer means; they slip a thaler into Henrich's hand, and his Honor promptly comes home. If he has been ill, he recovers at once; if he has had visitors, they leave at once; if he has been lying down, he gets up at once. I run about with the lackeys of the gentry, now and then, and I know well enough what goes on in those houses. In the old days when folks were as stupid as horses and asses, such things were called stealing, but now they are known as "extras," "tips," or "unclassified income." But look, here comes Anneke; she doesn't know yet about the transformation, for she still has her vulgar tinker-look and tinker-walk.