"That is better, Mr. Bischoff," said my dear girl with a most bewitching, yet triumphant smile. "But I have not finished. I do not want to impersonate a mere monster. I consent to be a cat first, and a sick child afterwards, but I must know why—I will not be content with nice phrases. The Lady will be my début, and I want my début to be a triumph. Mr. Cooper does not seem to know exactly how to explain. Will you?"
If Mitzi had shown her superiority up to this moment, it was now Bischoff's turn. As for me I had my favourite feeling: That of being ... but why should I repeat it? You know.
"It is only because your dull and heavy Macbeth is compatible with my theory of the Lady," began Bischoff, "that I can give you the explanation you want. In my idea Macbeth was not heavy, but irresolute. Never mind, let him be heavy. In either case, the Lady is obliged to put a steam engine, if I may use this expression, in front of all she says, to carry him away. However, she shudders before her horrible words and deeds. She seems to shut her eyes not to see them. She is not a mere monster, to quote your own words, she is a poor weak woman, who loves that one man with such strength, that she has been able to discover all his failings, so that she may, with her trembling body, cover and protect the imperfections. You have only to search for her tenderness and you will find it. It is, for instance, with the utmost softness that you must say the words:
'Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness ...
... What thou would'st highly
That would'st thou holily.'
And it is only because she feels kindness, pity and peace in her heart that she calls the spirits: 'Come you spirits, unsex me here, and fill me top-full of direst cruelty.' Again, she suffers when she cries: That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor Heaven cry 'Hold, hold!' And how happy were she if she had known nothing of it all: 'What beast was it then that made you break this enterprise to me?'"
"Yes," said Mitzi, "but immediately afterwards she says those horrible words about the babe...."
"That," answered Bischoff, "is effort. That is one of the sentences where she uses the steam engine to pull more vigorously. That you must say as if you were shuddering before your own words, as if you were feeling that it is too much. In short, the woman must continually appear under the mask of the monster, and this is the reason why I see the Lady cajoling her husband like a beautiful, flexible cat during the scene where she induces him to the murder. But as soon as the deed is done she shows all her weakness. Not to lose courage she has felt obliged to drink. Nevertheless, she starts at the slightest noise.
'Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night.'
in these words! And does she not confess that she is unable to commit the crime herself, when she says these words, which must be uttered with trembling love: