SOPHY (as before).
If he only would yield.
WILLIAM.
He said state officials could not be deposed, unless it could be proved against them that they deserved it. But you were not a state official; your master was not the state, but he who owned the forest, the owner of the estate.
FORESTER (with suppressed anger).
Then, if I were an official of the state, Stein would not be allowed to do me an injustice. And because I am not, he is allowed to brand me as a scoundrel?—You did not understand him rightly, William!
WILLIAM.
He repeated it to me three times—
FORESTER.
Because you did not represent the matter to him as it is—that already your great-grandfather had been forester of Düsterwalde, and your grandfather after him, and that for forty years, throughout the whole valley, people have called me the Hereditary Forester.