The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Iv Part 21

GOTTLIEB.

Yes, to be sure.

SCHLOSS.

But why doesn't the court of awards interfere in the inheritance? What improbabilities!

LORENZ.

So then we're going now, dear Gottlieb; farewell, don't let time hang heavy on your hands.

GOTTLIEB.

Good-bye.

[_Exit the brothers_.]

GOTTLIEB (_alone_).

They are going away--and I am alone. We all three have our lodgings.

Lorenz, of course, can till the ground with his horse, Barthel can slaughter and pickle his ox and live on it a while--but what am I, poor unfortunate, to do with my cat? At the most, I can have a m.u.f.f for the winter made out of his fur, but I think he is even shedding it now. There he lies asleep quite comfortably--poor Hinze! Soon we shall have to part. I am sorry I brought him up, I know him as I know myself--but he will have to believe me, I cannot help myself, I must really sell him. He looks at me as though he understood. I could almost begin to cry.

[_He walks up and down, lost in thought_.]

MuLLER.

Well, you see now, don't, you, that it's going to be a touching picture of family life? The peasant is poor and without money; now, in the direst need, he will sell his faithful pet to some susceptible young lady, and in the end that will be the foundation of his good fortune. Probably it is an imitation of Kotzebue's _Parrot_; here the bird is replaced by a cat and the play runs on of itself.

FISCHER.

Now that it's working out this way, I am satisfied too.

HINZE, the tom-cat (_rises, stretches, arches his back, yawns, then speaks_).

My dear Gottlieb--I really sympathize with you.

GOTTLIEB (_astonished_).

What, puss, you are speaking?

THE CRITICS (_in the pit_).

The cat is talking? What does that mean, pray?

FISCHER.

It's impossible for me to get the proper illusion here.

MuLLER.

Rather than let myself be disappointed like this I never want to see another play all my life.

HINZE.

Why should I not be able to speak, Gottlieb?

GOTTLIEB.

I should not have suspected it; I never heard a cat speak in all my life.

HINZE.

Because we do not join in every conversation, you think we're nothing but dogs.

GOTTLIEB.

I think your only business is to catch mice.

HINZE.

If we had not, in our intercourse with human beings, got a certain contempt for speech, we could all speak.

GOTTLIEB.

Well, I'll own that! But why don't you give any one an opportunity to discover you?

HINZE.

That's to avoid responsibility, for if once the power of speech were inflicted on us so-called animals, there wouldn't be any joy left in the world. What isn't the dog compelled to do and learn! The horse!

They are foolish animals to show their intelligence, they must give way entirely to their vanity; we cats still continue to be the freest race because, with all our skill, we can act so clumsily that human beings quite give up the idea of training us.

GOTTLIEB.

But why do you disclose all this to me?

HINZE.

Because you are a good, a n.o.ble man, one of the few who take no delight in servility and slavery; see, that is why I disclose myself to you completely and fully.

GOTTLIEB (_gives him his hand_).

Good friend!

HINZE.

Human beings labor under the delusion that the only remarkable thing about us is that instinctive purring which arises from a certain feeling of comfort; for that reason they often stroke us awkwardly and then we usually purr to secure ourselves against blows. But if they knew how to manage us in the right way, believe me, they would accustom our good nature to everything, and Michel, your neighbor's tom-cat, would even at times be pleased to jump through a hoop for the king.

GOTTLIEB.