The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 18

Thank G.o.d, you cannot be a suicide without being an infanticide as well!

CLARA.

Better both than a parricide! Oh, I know that one cannot atone for one sin with another! But what I now do affects me alone! If I hand the knife to my father the blow strikes him as well as me! It strikes me in any case! That gives me courage and strength in all my distress! Things will go well with you on earth!

[_Exit._]

SCENE V

 

LEONARD (_alone_).

"I must, I must marry her!" And why must I? She is going to do a crazy thing in order to keep her father from doing one. Where lies the necessity of my doing a still crazier thing in order to ward off hers? I cannot admit the necessity--at least not until I see before me the man who wants to get ahead of me with the most insane act of all! And if he thinks as I do about it there will be no end! That sounds quite sensible, and yet--I must follow her! Here comes somebody! Thank G.o.d!--Nothing is more ignominious than to have to be at variance with one's own thoughts! A rebellion in the head, in which one brings forth viper after viper and each one tries to eat the other or bite his tail, is the worst of all!

SCENE VI

_Enter the SECRETARY._

SECRETARY.

Good evening!

LEONARD.

Mr. Secretary? To what do I owe the honor--

SECRETARY.

Leonard, you will see at once!

LEONARD.

You say Leonard to me?--To be sure, we used to be schoolmates!

SECRETARY.

And we may perhaps be death-mates too!

[_He draws forth two pistols._]

Do you know how to handle these?

LEONARD.

I do not understand you!

SECRETARY (_c.o.c.ks one of them_).

Do you see?--This is how it is done! Then you aim at me, as I am now doing at you, and pull the trigger! So!

LEONARD.

What are you talking about?

SECRETARY.

One of us two must die! Die! And immediately!

LEONARD.

Die?

SECRETARY.

You know why!

LEONARD.

By G.o.d, no!

SECRETARY.

No matter--it will occur to you all right when you are dying!

LEONARD.

I have no idea--

SECRETARY.

Bethink yourself! Otherwise I might take you for a mad dog that has unwittingly bitten the one I love most on earth, and shoot you down as such! But for half an hour more I must let you pa.s.s as my equal!

LEONARD.

But don't talk so loud! If anybody should hear you--

SECRETARY.

If anybody could hear me you would have called him long ago! Well?

LEONARD.

If it is about the girl--I can marry her, you know! I had, in fact, half made up my mind to do it, when she herself was here!

SECRETARY.