The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Vii Part 39

ECKHOF.

Even if shame could be healed by money, that would be the one remedy you couldn't apply.

WILHELMINE.

And why?

ECKHOF.

Because Your Highness hasn't any money.

SONNSFELD.

Dreadful creature!

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

He knows our situation only too well. We must give up all thought of sending an answer.

ECKHOF.

May I go now?

SONNSFELD.

Impertinent creature! What is your name?

ECKHOF.

Eckhof.

SONNSFELD.

Where were you born?

ECKHOF. Hamburg.

SONNSFELD.

What have you learned?

ECKHOF. Nothing.

WILHELMINE.

Nothing? That is little enough.

SONNSFELD.

What did you want to make of yourself?

ECKHOF.

Everything.

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

A strange man! Let us cross-examine him. It will afford us a little amus.e.m.e.nt at least.

SONNSFELD (_to_ ECKHOF).

We are not clever enough to understand such witty answers. How do you reconcile nothing with everything.

ECKHOF.

I grew up in a theatre, but all I ever learned there was to clean the lamps. Our manager discharged his company and I was compelled to take service with a secretary in the post office. But when my new master's wife demanded that I should climb up behind her carriage, as her footman, I took to wandering again. I begged my way to Schwerin and a learned man of the law made me his clerk. The post office and the courtroom were just two new sorts of theatre for me. The addresses on the letters excited my imagination, the lawsuits gave my brain exercise.

The desire to create, upon the stage, true pictures of human greatness and human degradation, to depict vice and virtue in reality's own colors, still inspired me, but I saw no opportunity to satisfy it. Then, in a reckless moment, when I had sought to drown my melancholy in drink, fate threw me into the hands of the Prussian recruiting officers. I was dazzled by the handful of silver they offered me; for its sake I bartered away my golden freedom. Since that day I carry the musket. The noisy drums drown the longing that awakens a thousand times a day, the longing for an Art that still calls me as to a sacred mission; the uniform smothers the impulse to create human n.o.bility; and in these drilled, unnatural motions of my limbs, my free will and my sense of personal dignity will perish at last. From such a fate there is no release for the poor bought soldier--no release but death.

WILHELMINE (_aside, sadly_).

It is a picture of my own sorrow.

SONNSFELD.

That is all very well, but you really should be glad that now you are _something_--as you were nothing before and had not learned any trade.

ECKHOF.

I learned little from books but much from life. I understand something of music.

SONNSFELD.

Of music? Ah, then you can entertain this poor imprisoned Princess. Your Highness, where is the Crown Prince's flute?

ECKHOF.

I play the violin.

SONNSFELD.

We have a violin, too. We have the Crown Prince's entire orchestra hidden here. [_She goes to the cupboard and brings out a violin._] Here, now play something for us and we will dance.

WILHELMINE.

What are you thinking of? With the Queen's room over there? And the King may surprise us at any moment from the other side.

SONNSFELD.