tains. On the right, huts. On the left
a small pool, round which invalids are sitting. Their clothes are blue
and their hands cinnabar-red. From the pond blue vapour and small blue
flames rise now and then. Whenever this happens the invalids put them
hands to their mouths and cough. The background is formed by a mountain
covered with pine-wood, which is obscured above by a stationary bank of
mist.]

[The STRANGER is sitting at a table outside one of the huts. The
CONFESSOR comes forward from the right.]

STRANGER. At last!

CONFESSOR. What do you mean: at last?

STRANGER. You left me here a week ago and told me to wait till you came
back.

CONFESSOR. Hadn't I prepared you for the fact that the way to the white
house up there would be long and difficult.

STRANGER. I don't deny it. How far have we come?

CONFESSOR. Five hundred yards. We've still got fifteen hundred.

STRANGER. But where's the sun?

CONFESSOR. Up there, above the clouds....

STRANGER. Then we shall have to go through them?

CONFESSOR. Yes. Of course.

STRANGER. What are those patients doing there? What a company! And why
are their hands so red?

CONFESSOR. For both our sakes I want to avoid using impure words, so
I'll speak in pleasant riddles, which you, as a writer, will understand.

STRANGER. Yes. Speak beautifully. There's so much that's ugly here.

CONFESSOR. You may have noticed that the signs given to the planets
correspond with those of certain metals? Good! Then you'll have seen
that Venus is represented by a mirror. This mirror was originally made
of copper, so that copper was called Venus and bore her stamp. But now
the reverse of Venus' mirror is covered with quicksilver or mercury!

STRANGER. The reverse of Venus... is Mercury. Oh!

CONFESSOR. Quicksilver is therefore the reverse side of Venus.
Quicksilver is itself as bright as a calm sea, as a lake at the height
of summer; but when mercury meets firestone and burns, it blushes and
turns red like newly-shed blood, like the cloth on the scaffold, like
the cinnabar lips of the whore! Do you understand now, or not?

STRANGER. Wait a moment! Cinnabar is quicksilver and sulphur.

CONFESSOR. Yes. Mercury must be burnt, if it comes too near to Venus!
Have we said enough now?

STRANGER. So these are sulphur springs?

CONFESSOR. Yes. And the sulphur flames purify or burn everything rotten!
So when the source of life's grown tainted, one is sent to the sulphur
springs....