u spent. So far as I know you're getting a monthly salary of
five hundred marks from her besides. It is often pretty hard to
believe in your love for the unhappy murderess. When I asked Fraulein
von Geschwitz just now to accept my help, it certainly was not to
incite your insatiable avarice. The admiration which I have learnt to
have for Fraulein von Geschwitz in this affair, I am far from feeling
towards you. It is not at all clear to me what claims of any kind you
can make upon me. That you chanced to be present at the murder of my
father has not yet created the slightest bond of relationship between
you and me. On the contrary, I am firmly convinced that if the heroic
undertaking of Countess Geschwitz had not come your way you would be
lying somewhere to-day without a penny, drunken in the gutter.

RODRIGO. And do you know what would have become of you if you hadn't
sold for two millions the tuppeny paper your father ran? You'd have
hitched up with the stringiest sort of ballet-girl and been to-day a
stable-boy in the Humpelmeier Circus. What work do you do? You've
written a drama of horrors in which my bride's calves are the two
chief figures and which no high-class theater will produce. You
walking pajamas! You fresh rag-bag you! Two years ago I balanced two
saddled cavalry-horses on this chest. How that'll go now, after this
(_clasping his bald head_), is a question sure enough. The foreign
girls will get a fine idea of German art when they see the sweat come
beading thru my tights at every fresh kilo-weight! I shall make the
whole auditorium stink with my exhalations!

ALVA. You're weak as a dish-clout!

RODRIGO. Would to God you were right! or did you perhaps intend to
insult me? If so, I'll set the tip of my toe to your jaw so that your
tongue'll crawl along the carpet over there!

ALVA. Try it! (_Steps and voices outside._) Who is that...?

RODRIGO. You can thank God that I have no public here before me!

ALVA. Who can that be!

RODRIGO. That is my beloved. It's a full year now since we've seen
each other.

ALVA. But how should they be back already! Who can be coming there? I
expect no one.

RODRIGO. Oh the devil, unlock it!

ALVA. Hide yourself!

RODRIGO. I'll get behind the portieres. I've stood there once before,
a year ago. (_Disappears, right. Alva opens the rear door, whereupon
Alfred Hugenberg enters, hat in hand._)

ALVA. With whom have I--.... You? Aren't you--?

HUGENBERG. Alfred Hug