MELCHIOR.

I can reach my hand to my friend here at any moment.

THE MASKED MAN.

Your friend is a charlatan. n.o.body laughs who has a pfennig left in cash. The sublime humorist is the most miserable, most pitiable creature in creation.

MELCHIOR.

Let the humorist be what he may; you tell me who you are, or I'll reach the humorist my hand.

THE MASKED MAN.

What then?

MORITZ.

He is right, Melchior. I have boasted. Take his advice and profit by it. No matter how masked he is----he is, at least.

MELCHIOR.

Do you believe in G.o.d?

THE MASKED MAN.

Yes, conditionally.

MELCHIOR.

Will you tell me who discovered gunpowder?

THE MASKED MAN.

Berthold Schwarz----alias Konstantin Anklitzen.----A Franciscan monk at Freiburg in Breisgau, in 1330.

MORITZ.

What wouldn't I give if he had let it alone!

THE MASKED MAN.

You would only have hanged yourself then.

MELCHIOR.

What do you think about morals?

THE MASKED MAN.

You rascal, am I your schoolboy?

MELCHIOR.

Do I know what you are?

MORITZ.

Don't quarrel!----Please don't quarrel. What good does that do?----Why should we sit, two living men and a corpse, together in a churchyard at two o'clock in the morning if we want to quarrel like topers! It will be a pleasure to me to arbitrate between you. If you want to quarrel, I'll take my head under my arm and go!

MELCHIOR.

You are the same old 'fraid cat as ever.

THE MASKED MAN.

The phantom is not wrong. One shouldn't forget one's dignity.----By morals I understand the real product of two imaginary quant.i.ties. The imaginary quant.i.ties are "shall" and "will." The product is called morals and leaves no doubt of its reality.

MORITZ.

If you had only told me that earlier! My morals hounded me to death.

For the sake of my dear parents I killed myself. "Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long in the land." The text made a phenomenal fool of me.

THE MASKED MAN.

Give yourself up to no more illusions, dear friend. Your dear parents would have died as little from it as you did. Judged righteously, they would only have raged and stormed from the healthiest necessity.

MELCHIOR.

That may be right as far as it goes.----I can a.s.sure you, however, sir, that if I reach Moritz my hand, sooner or later my morals alone will have to bear the blame.

THE MASKED MAN.

That is just the reason you are not Moritz!

MORITZ.

But I don't believe the difference is so material, so compulsive at least, esteemed unknown, but what by chance the same thing might have happened to you as happened to me that time when I trotted through the alder grove with a pistol in my pocket.

THE MASKED MAN.

Don't you remember me? You have been standing for the moment actually between life and death.----Moreover, in my opinion, this is not exactly the place in which to continue such a profound debate.

MORITZ.

Certainly, it's growing cold, gentlemen! They dressed me in my Sunday suit, but I wear neither undershirt nor drawers.

MELCHIOR.

Farewell, dear Moritz. I don't know where the man is taking me. But he is a man----