cause we always walk on our toes, as you must
already have read in your natural history.

GOTTLIEB.

I have great respect for you--on account of the boots.

HINZE (_hangs a soldier's knapsack about his neck_).

I am going now.
See, I have also made myself a bag with a drawing-string.

GOTTLIEB.

What's it all for?

HINZE.

Just let me alone! I want to be a hunter. Why, where is my
cane?

GOTTLIEB.

Here.

HINZE.

Well, then, good-bye.

[_Exit._]

GOTTLIEB.

A hunter? I can't understand the man.

[_Exit._]

_Open Field_

HINZE (_with cane, knapsack, and bag_).

Splendid weather! It's such a
beautiful, warm day; afterward I must lie down a bit in the sun. (_He
spreads out his bag._) Well, fortune, stand by me. Of course, when I
think that this capricious goddess of fortune so seldom favors
shrewdly laid plans, that she always ends up by disgracing the
intelligence of mortals, I feel as though I should lose all my
courage. Yet, be quiet, my heart; a kingdom is certainly worth the
trouble of working and sweating some for it! If only there are no dogs
around here; I can't bear those creatures at all; it is a race that I
despise because they so willingly submit to the lowest servitude to
human beings. They can't do anything but either fawn or bite; they
haven't fashionable manners at all, a thing which is so necessary in
company. There's no game to be caught. (_He begins to sing a hunting
song: "I steal through the woods so still and wild," etc. A
nightingale in the bush near-by begins to sing._) She sings
gloriously, the songstress of the grove; but how delicious she must
taste! The great people of the earth are, after all, right lucky in
the fact that they can eat as many nightingales and larks as they
like; we poor common people must content ourselves with their singing,
with the beauty in nature, with the incomprehensibly sweet harmony.
It's a shame I can't hear anything sing without getting a desire to
eat it. Nature! Nature! Why do you always destroy my finest emotions
by having created me thus! I feel almost like taking off my boots and
softly climbing up that tree yonder; she must be perching there.
(_Stamping in the pit._) The nightingale is good-natured not to let
herself be interrupted even by this martial music; she must taste
delicious; I am forgetting all about my hunting with these sweet