Secretary—It seems to me it would be clever if we tied a paper collar around his neck or clipped his hair.
The valet—It seems to me that it would be even more clever if we daubed his face with ink and stationed someone to see how his wife would receive him when he came home in such a predicament.
Baron—That's all very well, but what will you wager that Erik can devise something more clever than that? Give us your opinion, Erik!
Erik, lackey—It is my opinion that his clothes should all be taken off and that he should be laid in my lord's best bed, and in the morning when he awakes we should all act as though he were the lord of the manor, so that he should not know who or where he was. And when we have made him believe that he is the baron, we should make him as drunk again as he now is and lay him, in his old clothes, on the same dung heap. If this plan is carefully executed, it would have a strange effect and he would make himself believe either that he had dreamed about such glories or that he had really been in Paradise.
Baron—Erik, you are a great man and therefore you have only great ideas. But now if he should wake up in the meantime?
Erik—I am very sure that he will not, my lord. Since the same Jeppe on the Hill is one of the soundest sleepers in the whole district. Why, they tried the other year to fasten a rocket to the back of his neck, but even when the rocket was fired off he didn't wake up from his sleep.
Baron—Let us then proceed. Take him away immediately, clothe him in a fine shirt and lay him in my best bed.
(Curtain.)