The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I Part 45

LOTH

The pain is soon forgotten and there is no danger of death.

HELEN

Oh, but she is praying so to die. She wails and wails: Do let me die!...

The doctor!

[_She jumps up and slips into the conservatory._

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

[_On entering._] I do really wish now that that little woman upstairs would hurry a bit! [_He sits down beside the table, takes out his cigar case again, extracts a cigar from it and lays the latter down on the table._] You'll come over to my house afterward, won't you? I have a necessary evil with two horses standing out there in which we can drive straight over. [_He taps his cigar against the edge of the table._] Oh, the holy state of matrimony! O Lord! [_Striking a match._] So you're still pure, free, pious and merry?

LOTH

You might better have waited a few more days with that question.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

[_His cigar is lit now._] Oho! I see!--[_laughing_]--so you've caught on to my tricks at last!

LOTH

Are you still so frightfully pessimistic in regard to women?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

_Fright_fully! [_Watching the drifting smoke of his cigar._] In other years I was a pessimist, so to speak, by presentiment....

LOTH

Have you had very special experiences in the meantime?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

That's just it. My shingle reads: Specialist for Diseases of Women.--The practice of medicine, I a.s.sure you, makes a man terribly wise ...

terribly ... sane ...; it's a specific against all kinds of delusions.

LOTH

[_Laughing._] Well, then we can fall back into our old tone at once. I want you to know ... I haven't caught on to your tricks at all. Less than ever now ... But I am to understand, I suppose, that you've exchanged your old hobby?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Hobby?

LOTH

The question of woman was in those days in a certain way your pet subject.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

I see! And why should I have exchanged it?

LOTH

If you think even worse of women than ...

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

[_Somewhat aroused. He gets up and walks to and fro while he is speaking._] I don't think evil of women.--Not a bit!--I think evil only of marrying ... of marriage ... of marriage and--at most, of men ... The woman question, you think, has ceased to interest me? What do you suppose I've worked here for, during six years, like a cart horse? Surely in order to devote at last all the power that is in me to the solution of that question. Didn't you know that from the beginning?

LOTH

How do you suppose I could have known it?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Well, as I said ... and I've already gathered a lot of very significant material that will be of some service to me! Sh! I've got the bad habit of raising my voice. [_He falls silent, listens, goes to the door and comes back._] But what took you among these gold farmers?

LOTH

I would like to study the local conditions.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

[_In a repressed tone._] What a notion! [_Still more softly._] I can give you plenty of material there too.

LOTH

To be sure. You must be thoroughly informed as to the conditions here.

How do things look among the families around here?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Miserable! There's nothing but drunkenness, gluttony, inbreeding and, in consequence,--degeneration along the whole line.

LOTH

With exceptions, surely?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Hardly.

LOTH