Chapter XV: Act III (2)

CASTI-PIANI--[_Stroking her head, without looking at her._] Whether you love me or don’t love me, you dear animal, is all one to me. Of course, you cannot know how many thousand times I have already had to undergo just such outbursts of emotion. Far be it from me to undervalue love. But alas, love must also serve as the vindication of all those innumerable women who merely satisfy their sensual wants, without asking the least return, and by their unrecompensed abandon only ruin the market.

ELFRIEDE--Marry me! There is still time for you to begin a new life! Marriage will reconcile you with society. You can be editor of a socialist paper, you can be a representative in the Reichstag! Marry me, and then even you will learn for once in your life what superhuman sacrifices a woman is capable of in her boundless love!

CASTI-PIANI--[_Still without looking at her, stroking her hair._] The best your superhuman sacrifices could do would be to turn my stomach. All my life I have loved tigresses. With bitches I was never anything but a stick of wood. My only consolation is that marriage, which you glorify so rapturously and for which bitches are bred, is a civilized institution. Civilized institutions arise only that they may be surmounted. The race will win beyond marriage just as it has surmounted slavery. The =free love-market=, where the tigress triumphs, is founded on a =primordial law= of =unalterable nature=. And how proud and high will woman stand in the world, so soon as she has conquered the right to sell herself, unbranded, at the highest price a man will bid for her! Illegitimate children will be better cared for then by the mother, than legitimate ones are now by the father. Then the pride and ambition of woman will no longer lie in the man who allots her her place, but in the world, where she struggles up to the highest position that her value can give her. Then what a glorious fresh vital sound the words “daughter of joy” will have! In the story of paradise it is written that Heaven endowed woman with the power to seduce. Woman seduces whom she will. Woman seduces when she will. She does not wait for love. And conventional society combats this hellish danger to our sacred civilization, by bringing woman up in an artificial darkness of mind and soul. The growing girl must not know what it means =to be a woman=. All our institutions might go to smash if she did! No hangman’s dodge is too base for the defense of conventional society! With every advance of civilization the love-business expands. The cleverer the world gets, the bigger is the love-market. And our celebrated civilization, in the name of morality, condemns these millions of daughters of joy to starvation, or robs them in the name of morality of their self-respect and life-vindication, yea, hurls them down to the level of beasts, all in the name of morality! How many centuries more will an =immorality= which cries to Heaven ravage this world with the sword and ax of morality!

ELFRIEDE--[_Voicelessly whimpering._] Marry me! You stand above and beyond the world! For the first time, to-day I offer my hand to a man!

CASTI-PIANI--[_Stroking her hair without looking at her._] Materialism! Commercialism!--What would the world know about morality at all, if man could commandeer love as he bosses politics!

ELFRIEDE--I hope for no higher happiness from our marriage than the privilege of kneeling so before you all my life and listening to your words!

CASTI-PIANI--Have you ever asked yourself what marriage means?

ELFRIEDE--Till this moment I’ve had no occasion to do so. [_Rising._] Tell me! I shall do everything to come up to your requirements.

CASTI-PIANI--[_Draws her onto his knee._] Come here, my child. I’ll explain it to you. [ELFRIEDE _is prudish for a moment_.] Please keep still.

ELFRIEDE--I have never sat on a man’s knee.

CASTI-PIANI--Give me a kiss. [_She kisses him._] Thanks. [_Holding her off._] You’d like to know what marriage is?--Tell me, which is stronger: a man who has =one= dog or a man who has =none=?

ELFRIEDE--The man who has the dog is stronger.

CASTI-PIANI--And now tell me again, which is stronger: a man who has one dog or a man who has =two= dogs?

ELFRIEDE--I guess the man who has one dog is stronger, for of course, two dogs couldn’t very well help getting jealous of each other.

CASTI-PIANI--That would be the least consideration. But he would have to feed =two= dogs or else they’d run away, while =one= dog takes care of himself and also if there is need protects his master from robbers.

ELFRIEDE--And by this abominable comparison you would explain the unselfish inseparable union of man and wife? Merciful God, what a life you must have had!

CASTI-PIANI--The man with one wife is economically stronger than if he had none; but he is also economically stronger than if he had to take care of two or more wives. That is the cornerstone of marriage. Woman would never have dreamt of this ingenious device!

ELFRIEDE--You poor pitiable man! Did you ever know a home and family? Did you ever have a mother to nurse you when you were sick, to read you stories when you were convalescing, for you to confide in when there was something in your heart, and who helped you always and always, even when you had thought for the longest time that there was no more help for you on God’s earth?

CASTI-PIANI--What I lived through as a child no human creature could live through without having his will and energy broken and ruined. Can you imagine yourself a young man of sixteen and still whipped because the logarithm of Pi won’t go into his head? And the man who whipped me was my father! And I whipped back! I beat my father to death! He died after I’d beaten him once.--But these are trifles. You see what sort of creatures I live with here. I have never heard among these creatures the insults that were my mother’s share all through my childhood and which her spitefulness earned afresh for her each day. But those are trifles. The slaps, blows and kicks with which father, mother and a dozen teachers vied with one another to demean my defenseless body, were trifling in comparison with the slaps, blows and kicks with which the vicissitudes of life have vied with one another to degrade my defenseless =soul=.

ELFRIEDE--[_Kisses him._] If you could guess how much I love you for all those frightful experiences!

CASTI-PIANI--The life of man is tenfold death =before= death. Not merely for me. For you! For everything that breathes! For the ordinary man, life consists of pains, aches and tortures which his =body= suffers. And if a man struggles up to a higher plane, in the hope of escaping the sufferings of the body, then for him life consists of pains, aches and tortures which the soul endures and beside which the torments of the body were a kindness. How =horrible= this life is is shown by mankind’s having had to think out a Being that consisted of nothing but goodness, but love, but kindness,--and by all humanity’s having to pray daily, hourly to this Being, in order to endure its life at all!

ELFRIEDE--[_Caressing him._] When you marry me, pains of the body and soul-pains alike will have an end! You need not plague yourself any longer with all these frightful questions. My mama has a private fortune of sixty thousand marks, and after all their twenty-five years of happy married life, Papa hasn’t an inkling of it. Doesn’t the prospect lure you, of marrying me and having sixty thousand marks cash suddenly at your disposal?

CASTI-PIANI--[_Pushing her off nervously._] You don’t understand how to caress, young lady! You act like an ass that’s trying to be a setter. Your hands irritate me! That’s not because you haven’t learnt anything. It’s because of your having sprung from the enslaved love-life of conventional society. There’s nothing thoroughbred in your body. You lack the necessary delicacy! Delicacy, modesty, shame! You lack the feeling for the =effect= of your caresses, a feeling that every thoroughbred child is born with.

ELFRIEDE--[_Springing up._] And you dare to tell me that in this house?

CASTI-PIANI--[_Rising simultaneously._] That I dare tell you in this house!

ELFRIEDE--In this house? That I lack the necessary delicacy, the necessary =shame=?!

CASTI-PIANI--That you lack the necessary delicacy and sense of shame! In this house of ill-fame I tell you that! Get it into your head, once and for all, with what =fine tact= these creatures apply themselves to their defamed calling! The girl most lately come into this house knows more about the soul of man than the most famous professor of psychology in the most renowned university. You, young lady, would assuredly experience the same disappointments here as you have always had. The woman who is created for the love-market can be recognized at the first glance. Her frank and regular features shine with =innocent rapture= and blissful =innocence=.--[_Regarding_ ELFRIEDE.] In =your= face, with all due respect, I can find no trace of either rapture or innocence.

ELFRIEDE--[_Hesitating._] Don’t you believe, my lord, that with my iron will, my energy, and my insuperable enthusiasm for the beautiful, I might yet acquire the delicacy and the fine tact of which you speak?

CASTI-PIANI--No, no, madam!--please, no! Get rid of those notions on the spot!

ELFRIEDE--I am so deeply convinced of the moral significance of everything you say that the =utmost sacrifice= by which I could overcome my bourgeois helplessness would not be too great for me!

CASTI-PIANI--No, no. I won’t agree to that! That would be horrible. Life is horrible enough. No, no, madam! Keep your fearful fingers off the one divine ray that pierces the shuddering night of our tortured earthly existence! What am I living for? Why do I take part in this civilization of ours? No, no! The one pure flower of heaven in life’s thorn-thicket, befouled with sweat and blood, shall not be trampled out under clumsy feet! Believe me, I beg you, that I would have shot a bullet through my head half a century ago if it had not been that above the wail shrieking to heaven from birth-pangs, woes of life and death-agonies, still gleamed this =one bright star=!

ELFRIEDE--The utmost mental exertion fails to give me even an inkling of your meaning! What is that ray that pierces the night of our existence? What is the =one pure flower of heaven= that must not be trampled into the dirt?

CASTI-PIANI--[_Taking_ ELFRIEDE’S _hand and whispering mysteriously_.] Sensual pleasure, gracious lady!--The laughing, sunny enjoyment of the senses! =Sensual joy is the ray=, the =flower of heaven=, because it is the one unclouded bliss, the one pure rapture undefiled, that earthly existence offers us. Believe me when I say that for half a century nothing has kept me in this world but selfless worship of this one full-throated laughing joy, this =sensual pleasure= that repays mankind for all the torments of existence!

ELFRIEDE--I think somebody’s coming.

CASTI-PIANI--Lisiska, probably!

ELFRIEDE--Lisiska? Who is Lisiska?

CASTI-PIANI--The girl who studied those books on the suppression of the white slave traffic in your house! In a moment you can convince yourself if I have said too much! We are prepared for such occasions, thank heaven. [_Takes her down right._] Sit down behind this screen. From here, even =you= can for once in your life watch the =clear, unsullied= bliss of two people whom the =joy of the senses= draws together! [ELFRIEDE _seats herself on the stool behind the screen, right_. CASTI-PIANI _goes to the centre door, glances out, and then retires behind the screen, left, and sits_. HERR KÖNIG _and_ LISISKA _enter, centre. He is a young man of twenty-five, in a gay sport-suit with knee-breeches._ LISISKA _is dressed in a simple white garment reaching to the calf, black stockings, patent-leather slippers, and a white bow in her loose black hair_.]

HERR KÖNIG--

I have not come to while my time away,
A sensualist in the circle of your charms,
And will with gratitude and friendship pay
If quickly sober’d I can leave your arms.

LISISKA--

Speak not so friendly in my ear.
Here you are lord, and command us here.
Hesitate not to color my pallid
And bloodless cheeks with buffets untallied!
That for a whore like me
Is an unheard-of fee!
Helpless lamenting, sobbing and wailing
Need not cause you the slightest quailing.
Shallow’s the bliss from such abuse!
Pile pitiless blow upon blow without truce!
If your fist should smash in my face entire
Even that would not slake my desire!

HERR KÖNIG--

I am not prepared for such words, such a test....
Is this a merry welcome for the guest?
You speak as if in purgatory already
Here, you atoned for lust enjoyed and gone.

LISISKA--

Oh, no! Untamed the Monster, Lust, doth eddy,
Raging forever in flesh, blood and bone!
Think you I, the devil’s spouse,
Would ever have happened into this house
If my heart’s horrible hammering stopped
When Rapture seized me and shone?
Rapture evaporates, dropped
On a hot stone!
And Lust, an unstilled throe,
A hungering woe,
Plunges, to find death, into this
And every abyss!
Are you not cruel, good sir, in your joys?
I should be sorry!
But what do you care for my noise?
Strike me, your quarry!

HERR KÖNIG--

If that dark urge is really yours, to go
From the last depths to something yet below,--
I could shed tears that from the spring-time crew
Of amorous girls I picked and chose just you.
Out of your eyes, so innocent, so gay,
There gleamed on me a =bliss without alloy=....

LISISKA--

Do you wish that our time pass away--
And we have no joy?
Down there, over our rules and tenets,
Mother Adele sits, watch in hand:
Counts and reckons, immovable, bland,
My enjoyment’s minutes!
[_Pause._]

HERR KÖNIG--

You have grown tired of ecstasy at length
And hope for lassitude from tears and pain,--
For some deep calm to overcome the strength
Of your hot craving day and night in vain.

LISISKA--

If I sleep, then please with a sudden hard
Punch in the ribs wake me up, well-jarred!

HERR KÖNIG--

That note was false! A flaw is in the reed!
--How can a human being understand that?!
Whistle at happiness--at life--you can that,--
But =sleep=? No! that was blasphemy indeed!

LISISKA--

I am not your property,
You need not protect me;
Spare not then so anxiously
The joys that still affect me;
Seek no means to comfort me;
Kindness knows not how to;
Who beats me up most mercilessly,--
He’s the one I bow to.
You ask me
Whether or no
I still can blush?
Unmask me
With a quick blow,
And mark the flush!

HERR KÖNIG--

Cold sweat runs down me, chill’d in skull and spine,
Shuddering!--Let me out!... Half in a dream
I hoped to pluck the sweet fruits of love’s vine.
You offer thorns to me instead!... You seem
A young wild thing; how came it that you strayed--
Impossible!--from flower-paths to these briars?

LISISKA--

Leave not my sore desires
All unallayed!
Turn not heartless away from your slave!
Before me I have my grave,
And my only hope is to leave behind
No more of this world than I needs must.
Think you, we only come to such lust
Because in this house we are kept confined?
No, it is but the senses’ torturing thirst
Holds us here accursed!
But this, too, was reckoned without insight:
Night by night
I see it, blinding-clear:--that even
In this house no heaven
Of peace to the senses is given!

ELFRIEDE--[_In her hiding-place, to herself, with astonishment._] God Almighty! That is just the =exact contrary= of what I’ve imagined it for ten long years!

CASTI-PIANI--[_In his hiding-place, to himself, with horror._] Devil! Devil! Devil! That is the =exact contrary= of what I’ve imagined about sensual joy for fifty years!

LISISKA--

Don’t go away from me! Hear me, hard-hearted!
I was an innocent child, and started
Life earnestly, full of duty and zeal!
I could never carelessly smile,--but =feel=--?!...
From my teachers, even my brothers and sisters,
I often heard awed admiring whispers,
And my parents would both presage:
“You’ll be the delight of our old age.”
Then with a sudden blast
That was past!
And once-awakened lust
Grew over all bounds, all “oughts,”
Over all my thoughts,
Over all my heart’s feeling of trust,
So that I marvel’d, driven
Infatuate, master’d, what it implied,
That I saw no lightning strike at my side
Nor heard any thunder from heaven.
Then it came to me--hope, that our life had been given
For joy to us, joy never glutted nor dried.

HERR KÖNIG--

And this high hope you found was not fulfilled?
--I speak, I know, as a blind man of--of----

LISISKA--

No--it was only a hellish =drive=
Whence no joy remained alive.

HERR KÖNIG--

But when so many girls have died of love--
Was it with all of them--Desire unstilled?
--But then, how should such hordes of women press
By thousands down =your= path of dire excess?

LISISKA--

Have you no will to glory
In the stripes upon my body?
For what was it made so soft,--
For what was it so tender created?
Speechless looks have dilated
O’er stroke upon stroke here, oft!
Flagging desires anew to inflame
Boasting I tell from whom they came.

HERR KÖNIG--

Be still, I tell you! One more word thereon
And I’ll have stayed too long!... ’Tis plain to see
In your pale features how tempestuously
Youth fled from you!... Your innocence once gone,
Did he who robbed you of it leave you in shame?

LISISKA--

No--but another came,
Found glee and blame;
For always I swore eternal troth
To the young fools, and broke the oath.
Always I hoped my curse
Must disappear with another man.
Each time it was bitterness or worse.
No rest could be found for me, or can,
For ’twas always only the hellish drive
Out of which no joy came forth alive!

HERR KÖNIG--

So to this house you came at last, and lead
A life of riot and revel here indeed!
Music resounds, champagne drips from the tables,
Laughter roars through the graying dawn full oft,
Nought the long working-day knows but the soft
Sound of hot tongues’ husht lisping of love’s fables.--
What a low, common beggar I must be
To you--proud queen of joy and ecstasy!
I came with what was mine from you to purchase
A plain, straightforward interchange of pleasure.
I could tear my hair with rage! For without measure
Hideous is the lust that here besmirches
Those libertines your friends and you their game!
They set no stops to their inhuman glee!
Hasten and wreathe =their= limbs! A purer aim
And element upbuoys and quickens me!
I sought refreshment, and have no desire
To smear myself in the earth’s deepest mire!

LISISKA--

Oh, stay! If you desert me now, ’tis harder,--
’Tis night around me again! Don’t go away!
Like a lip-lash already each word you say
Flicks me, and stings my craving with pricking whips:
Would you might loathe and hate me with such ardor
That it would be your fists and not your lips
Whose blow on blow aches through my body’s smart!
Once you’ve been pressed to my heart
Then go back whence you came,
Smilingly write my name
In your notebook ... --while with me
There will stay but the ghastly curse--to be
Once more in the grip of the hellish drive
Out of which no joy remained alive!

HERR KÖNIG--

I can’t believe my senses now!--It seems,
You’ve fallen in =love= with me? Oh, cruel!--Spurned
By women, I have wept aloud and yearned
Thru many--how many--nights of tortured dreams!
Is the first love in all my life now faltering
Toward me upon bought lips?!--Are you not bound
To give to every stranger, without paltering,
His will,--and hopes of comfort would you found
On me?--to me lay passionately bare
Your soul, whose lurid charms shall hold me fast?
If e’er my lot so close to yours were cast
I should be seized with horror past compare!

LISISKA--

For God’s sake, don’t believe in my love!
’Tis my duty here to affect the dove!
Think to yourself just once what it means
When suddenly someone parts the screens!--
Rake up love’s coals, be alive and elated;
There is a =man= by God created!--
--Do you want me to play that wretched game
With =you= here?
To feel but loathing when your high’st flame
Burns thru here?!
But if you thoroly with your Hunnish
Fists my body and limbs will punish,--
That, if you find pleasure in it,
Can unite us till my dying minute!

HERR KÖNIG--

White robe of innocence! Spirit unstained
By even this house! Your purity makes blind
My eyes; your beauty takes my heart and mind
With infinite gazing.--Rioting unrestrained
In fierce self-martyrdom without repose--
You fight the soul’s unfathomable woes,--
Death in your face, and in your heart hot hate
For all earth’s vain delights turned desolate!
[_He kneels._]
Let me be friend, be brother to you! Whether
You give your body up to me--lies deep
Beneath us!--so have you exalted me!
To your slim knees here solemnly I vow
That only as soul cleaves to soul art thou
My own--so only am I thine--together!
Out of hell’s agony to heaven’s steep
You soared, and now unconscious of the sweep,
Of lusts that ebb and flow beneath your height
Must bleed your life out in sublimity
Thru me shall that be shown to all men’s sight!
From my chaste poetry the world shall learn
To weigh the wrong and misery of sold love!
I swear it by the eternal stars above,
The purest light that in our night can burn.
Give me a pledge, avow to me openly:--
Have you by love been gladden’d? once? or ever?

LISISKA--[_Raising him._]

If you killed me now straight off, I could never
Say it differently!
It was always only the hellish drive
Whence no joy remained alive.
Thus, once for all, it is in this place:
Here is the rendezvous
Of all to whom love is a pang without grace
And a hankering ever new!
What other chance callers may appear
Aren’t taken in earnest by us here!
Men such as you
Are few
For they count for nothing where
We house, whom men compare
With beasts unheeded.--
But now have I yet succeeded
In bringing you round to grant
Comfort to my wild want?

HERR KÖNIG--

What wilderness of paths your hand may lead me,
Still gleams a star above us that will speed me!

LISISKA--[_Hugs and kisses him._]

Then come, love! pliable at last, for trysts
In ancient, ne’er-disturbed tranquillity,
As uttermost lust’s calm bliss long known to me!
Oh, if I only died under your fists!
[_Both exeunt, right._]

CASTI-PIANI--[_Breaking out of his hiding-place, wildly._] What was that?

ELFRIEDE--[_Breaking out likewise, passionately._] What was that! Worthless parasite that I am! What did my withered brain ever think the joy of the senses was! Self-immolation, glowing martyrdom, that’s what the life in this house is! And I, in my lying arrogance, in my threadbare virtue, supposed this house a breeding-place of depravity!

CASTI-PIANI--I am smashed and shattered!!

ELFRIEDE--All my youth, that the good God gave me overflowing with the desire and the power to love,--I have wantonly dragged it through the gray, soul-smothering dirt of the streets! Coward that I was, the sacredness of sensual passion seemed to me the basest reprobacy!

CASTI-PIANI--[_Stunned._] That was the blinding-bright enlightenment that unforeseen breaks his neck who walks in his sleep on the ridge-pole!

ELFRIEDE--[_Passionately._] That was the blinding-bright enlightenment!

CASTI-PIANI--What am I still doing in the world, if even sensual pleasure is nothing but a hellish flaying of man, nothing but a satanic butchery of mankind, like all the rest of our earthly existence?! So =that’s= the true aspect of the =one divine ray= that pierces the horrible night of our tormented life! Oh, if only I had shot a bullet through my head half a century ago! Then I would have been spared this pitiful bankruptcy of my bilked and swindled spiritual wealth.

ELFRIEDE--What is there still for you to do in the world? I can tell you! You trade in girls. You boast you trade in girls. Anyway, you have the closest relations with all the places that count in the white slave trade. Sell me! I beseech you, sell me into a house like this! You can make a very lucrative bargain of me! I have never loved; and, surely, that doesn’t lower my value! I won’t bring you any disgrace! You shall add, by me, to the honor in which your customers hold you! I promise! I will guarantee myself to you with any oath you ask me!

CASTI-PIANI--[_Half-crazed._] What will keep me from breaking my neck? What will help me across the icy shudders of death?

ELFRIEDE--I will help you across! _I!_ Sell me! Then you’ll be saved!

CASTI-PIANI--Who are =you=?

ELFRIEDE--I want to find my death in the joy of the senses. I want to give myself up to be slaughtered on the altar of sensuous love!

CASTI-PIANI--Am I to sell you--=you=?

ELFRIEDE--I want to die the martyr’s death that this girl who was just here is dying! Have _I_ no natural human rights the same as others?

CASTI-PIANI--Heaven preserve me from it! [_With mounting emphasis._] This--this--this is the =derisive laughter of Hell=, that rings above my plunge into death!

ELFRIEDE--[_Sinking to his feet._] Sell me! Sell me!

CASTI-PIANI--The most terrible times of my life arise before me. Once before, I sold in the love-market a girl whom nature had not intended for it! For that crime against nature I spent six full years behind =prison bars=. Of course she, too, was one of those temperamentless creatures in whose =faces= one can see “big feet.”

ELFRIEDE--[_Clasping his knees._] On my soul I implore you, sell me! You were right. My activity in combating the white slave traffic was unsatisfied sensuality. But my sensuousness is =not= weak! Ask me for proofs. Shall I kiss you madly, insanely?

CASTI-PIANI--[_In utmost despair._] And this ear-piercing howl of suffering at my feet? What =is= that! This echoing shriek for help from birth-pangs, woes of life, and death-agonies I will no longer endure. I cannot stand this earth’s continuous crying any longer!

ELFRIEDE--[_Wringing her hands._] =To you yourself=, if you will, I will yield up my virginity! =To you yourself=, if you will, I will give my first love-night!

CASTI-PIANI--[_Shrieking._] The last straw! [_A shot._ ELFRIEDE _utters a piercing yell_. CASTI-PIANI, _the smoking revolver in his right hand, his left pressed convulsively to his breast, totters to one of the arm-chairs and breaks down in it_.]

CASTI-PIANI--I--I beg your pardon--Baroness. I’ve--I’ve hurt myself.--That was not--not gallant of me----

ELFRIEDE--[_Bending over him._] God have mercy, you haven’t hit yourself with it?!

CASTI-PIANI--Don’t--don’t hurt my ears--shrieking! Be loving--loving--loving--if you can----

ELFRIEDE--[_Stands up in horror, both hands in her hair, stares at him and screams._] No! No! No! I =can’t= be loving with this sight before me! I =can’t= be loving! [_Directly after the shot, three slim young girls, dressed exactly like_ LISISKA, _have curiously one after the other stepped out of the three doors. Hesitatingly they approach_ CASTI-PIANI, _and, with the minimum of action or emotion, gesturing silently among themselves, they essay to ease his death-struggles. He looks up and sees them._]

CASTI-PIANI--And that--and that--ve-vengeance? Spirits of vengeance?--No! No!--That--that is Marushka! I see you now. That is Euphemia!--That, Theophila!-- --Marushka! Kiss me, Marushka! [_The slenderest of the three girls bends over_ CASTI-PIANI _and kisses him on the mouth_.] No! [_In anguish._] No! No! That wasn’t anything!--Kiss--kiss me differently! [_She kisses him again._]--So!--So, so, so!--I have de-deceived you [_slowly raising himself, supported by_ MARUSHKA]--deceived you all! The joy of the senses--torture--bloody agony!-- --At last--at last--deliverance! [_He stands, straight and stiff, as though seized with catalepsy, his eyes very wide open._] We--we must receive--His Worship-- --standing.... [_He falls dead._]

ELFRIEDE--[_Drowned in tears, to the three girls._] Well?--Is none of you girls brave enough to do it? You were more to this man than I was permitted to be! [_The three girls shake their heads and withdraw shyly, frightened, but cold and impassive._ ELFRIEDE, _sobbing, turns to the corpse_:] Then forgive me miserable! While you were alive, you abhorred me with all your soul! Forgive me that I come near you now! [_Kisses him passionately on the mouth. Breaking into a flood of tears_.] This last disillusion, even in your fearfullest blackest pessimism you can never have conceived,--that a =virgin= was to close your eyes! [_She closes his eyes and sinks, weeping piteously, at his feet._]

CURTAIN

Transcriber’s Notes

• Italics represented by _underscores_.

• Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

• Gespert text (words with intraletter spacing) represented with
=equal signs=.

• Obvious typographic erros silently corrected.

• Variations in hyphenation and punctuation kept as in the original.

• Footnotes numbered consecutively and relocated to the end of each
play.