[To himself.]

How one chatters when one has something in his mind and does not know how to bring it out!

CLARA.

Everything is bright and cheerful today; that’s because it is such beautiful weather.

SECRETARY.

Yes, in weather like this the owls fall out of their nests, the bats kill themselves because they feel the devil has created them, the mole burrows so deep into the earth that he cannot find his way out again and must pitifully suffocate unless he bores through to the other side and emerges again in America.  Today every ear of corn shoots up twice as high, and every poppy grows twice as red as usual, even if only out of shame at not having been so at first.  Shall man remain behind?  Shall he defraud the dear Lord of the only reward which His world offers Him—­a happy face and a bright eye, which mirrors and at the same time transfigures all this gloriousness?  Truly, when I see one of these recluses sneaking out of his door in the morning, his brow furrowed with wrinkles, and staring at the sky as if it were a vault of blotting-paper, I often think to myself:  It is going to rain soon; God will have to let down the curtain of clouds, so that that sour face will not irritate Him.  They ought to take legal action against fellows like that on the ground that they are thwarters of merry parties and destroyers of harvest weather.  How are you going to render thanks for your life if not by living?  Sing joyously, bird, or else you will not deserve your voice!

CLARA.

Oh, that is true, so true!  It almost makes me cry!

SECRETARY.

It was not meant for you.  That for eight days you have been breathing more heavily than you used to, I well understand—­I know your father.  But, God be praised!  I can make your heart free again, and for that very purpose I am here.  You shall see your brother again this very evening, and people shall point their fingers, not at him, but at those who cast him into prison.  Does that deserve a kiss, a sisterly kiss, if it cannot be any other kind?  Or shall we play blindman’s buff for it?—­If I do not catch you in ten minutes, I am to go away without the kiss and take a box on the ear into the bargain.

CLARA (to herself).

I feel as if I had suddenly grown to be a thousand years old, and time were standing still with me.  I can go neither backwards nor forwards!  Oh, all this brazen sunshine and cheerfulness round about me!

SECRETARY.

You do not answer me.  To be sure, I forgot—­you are engaged.  Oh, girl!  Why did you do that to me?  And yet have I any right to complain?  She is like all that is dear and good, and all that is dear and good should have made me think of her.  And yet to me she was for years as if she no longer existed in the world!  For that reason she—­If it only were a fellow before whom one had to cast down one’s eyes!  But this Leonard—­