Clement. Oh, of course—they're all great geniuses at the café. And then there was that insufferable cub ...
Margaret. Who?
Clement. Oh, you know the fellow I mean—the one that was always making tactless remarks about the aristocracy.
Margaret. Gilbert—you must mean Gilbert.
Clement. That's the one. Of course I don't undertake to defend everybody in my station of life; there are clowns and boobies in every rank, even among poets, I've been told. But it's unmannerly of the fellow, one of us being there ...
Margaret. Oh, that was his way.
Clement. I had to take myself sharply in hand, or I should have said something rude.
GERHART HAUPTMANN
Permission Albert Langen, Munich
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"