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