k here represents the stag. Right here, do you see? Here is the
salt-cellar: that's you. And the wind blows from the direction of that
plate. What are you going to do now in order to stalk the stag? Hey?

[_Trying to assist him_.]

You--well?

ROBERT.

I must--

FORESTER (_nodding assent_).

You must--

[_Makes a pantomime_.]

ROBERT.

I must get to the windward of him.

FORESTER.

Get to the windward. Correct. Do you begin to see what I am driving at?
You must get to the windward of him. That's it! Do you see now? That is
the reason why I had to have a talk with you.

[_Solemnly_.]

You must get to the windward of the stag.

[_Rises_.]

And now--make her happy--Robert--my Mary.

[_About to go_.]

ROBERT.

But what has all this to do with Mary?

FORESTER.

Why, you have not yet understood me? Look here! The stag must not have
an inkling that you are very anxious about him; and much less a woman.
You make too much fuss about the women. Children must not know how
dearly one loves them; anything but that! But women even less so. In
reality, they are nothing but grown-up children, only more shrewd. And
the children are already shrewd enough.--Sit down, Robert, I must tell
you something.

[_They sit at the edge of the table, facing the audience_.]

When that Mary of mine was four years old--no taller than this--I once
came home later than usual. "Where is Mary?" I ask. One child says: "In
her room;" the other: "In front of the house. She'll be here pretty
soon." But one guess was as far from the truth as the other. Evening
comes, night comes--Mary does not appear. I go outside. In the garden,
in the adjoining shrubbery, on the rocks of the dell, in the whole
forest--not a trace of Mary. In the meantime my wife is looking for her
at your house, then at every house in the village, but nowhere can she
find a trace of Mary. Can it be possible that some one should have
kidnapped her? Why, she was as beautiful as a wax-doll, my Mary. The
whole night I never touched my bed. Even at that time Mary was
everything to me. The next morning I alarm the entire village. Not a
person fails to respond. All were passionately fond of Mary. At least I
wished to bury the corpse. In the dell, you know, the thicket of
firs--under the cliffs where on the other side of the brook the old
footpath runs high along the rocks-next to it the willows. This time I
crawl through the whole thicket. In the midst of it is the sm