The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann
Chapter 6 : Ah, but that's just it! The physician here is an unusually capable one.And, do you

Ah, but that's just it! The physician here is an unusually capable one.

And, do you know, I've found this out: in a doctor, conscientiousness counts for more than genius.

LOTH

Perhaps it is an essential concomitant of a physician's genius.

HOFFMANN

Maybe so. Anyhow, our doctor _has_ a conscience. He's a bit of an idealist--more or less our kind. His success among the miners and the peasants is simply phenomenal! Sometimes, I must say, he isn't an easy man to bear, he's got a mixture of hardness and sentimentality. But, as I said before, I know how to value conscientiousness; no doubt about that.

But before I forget ... I do attach some importance to it ... a man ought to know what he has to look out for ... Listen!... Tell me ... I see it in your face. Those gentlemen at the next table had nothing good to say of me? Tell me, please, what they did say.

LOTH

I really ought not to do that, for I was going to beg one hundred crowns of you, literally beg, for there is hardly any chance of my ever being able to return them.

HOFFMANN

[_Draws a cheque-book from his inner pocket, makes out a cheque and hands it to LOTH._] Any branch of the Imperial Bank will cash it ... It's simply a pleasure....

LOTH

Your promptness surpa.s.ses all expectation. Well, I accept it with, grat.i.tude, and you know--it could be worse spent.

HOFFMANN

[_Somewhat rhetorically._] A labourer is worthy of his hire. But now, Loth, have the goodness to tell me what the gentlemen in question....

LOTH

I dare say they talked nonsense.

HOFFMANN

Tell me in spite of that, please. I'm simply interested, quite simply interested--that's all.

LOTH

They discussed the fact that you had violently forced another man out of his position here--a contractor named Mueller.

HOFFMANN

_Of_ course! The same old story.

LOTH

The man, they said, was betrothed to your present wife.

HOFFMANN

So he was. And what else?

LOTH

I tell you these things just as I heard them, for I a.s.sume that it is of some importance to you to be acquainted with the exact nature of the slander.

HOFFMANN

Quite right. And so?

LOTH

So far as I could make out this Mueller was said to have had the contract for the construction of a stretch of mountain railroad here.

HOFFMANN

Yes, with a wretched capital of ten thousand crowns. When he came to see that the money wouldn't go far enough, he was in haste to make a catch of one of the Witzdorf farmers' daughters; the honour was to have fallen to my wife.

LOTH

They said that he had his arrangement with the daughter, and you had made yours with the father.--Next he shot himself, didn't he?--And you finished the construction of his section of the road and made a great deal of money out of it?

HOFFMANN

There's an element of truth in all that. Of course, I could give you a very different notion of how those things hung together. Perhaps they knew a few more of these edifying anecdotes.

LOTH

There was one thing, I am bound to tell you, that seemed to excite them particularly: they computed what an enormous business you were doing in coal now, and they called you--well, it wasn't exactly flattering. In short they a.s.serted that you had persuaded the stupid farmers of the neighbourhood, over some champagne, to sign a contract by which the exploitation of all the coal mined on their property was turned over to you at a ridiculously small rental.

HOFFMANN

[_Touched on the raw, gets up._] I'll tell you something, Loth ... Pshaw, why concern oneself with it at all. I vote that we think of supper. I'm savagely hungry--yes, quite savagely.

[_He presses the b.u.t.ton of an electric connection, the wire of which hangs down over the sofa in the form of a green cord. The ringing of an electric bell is heard._

LOTH

Well, if you want to keep me here, then have the kindness ... I'd like to brush up a bit first.

HOFFMANN

In a moment--everything that's necessary ... [_EDWARD, a servant in livery, enters._] Edward, take this gentleman to the guest chamber.

EDWARD

Very, well, sir.

HOFFMANN