FIRST YOUNG WEAVER

[_Standing with several comrades in the lobby or outer room, calls in at the door._] What's a peasant but a peasant, though he lies in bed till nine?

FIRST OLD WEAVER

The peasant an' the count, it's the same story with 'em both. Says the peasant when a weaver wants a house: I'll give you a little bit of a hole to live in, an' you'll pay me so much rent in money, an' the rest of it you'll make up by helpin' me to get in my hay an' my corn--and if that don't please you, why, then you may go elsewhere. He tries another, and to the second he says the same as to the first.

BAUMERT

[_Angrily._] The weaver's like a bone that every dog takes a gnaw at.

PEASANT

[_Furious._] You starvin' curs, you're no good for anything. Can you yoke a plough? Can you draw a straight furrow or throw a bundle of sheaves on to a cart. You're fit for nothing but to idle about an' go after the women. A pack of scoundrelly ne'er-do-wells!

[_He has paid and now goes out._

[_The FORESTER follows, laughing. WELZEL, the joiner, and MRS. WELZEL laugh aloud; the TRAVELLER laughs to himself. Then there is a moment's silence._

HORNIG

A peasant like that's as stupid as his own ox. As if I didn't know all about the distress in the villages round here. Sad sights I've seen! Four and five lyin' naked on one sack of straw.

TRAVELLER

[_In a mildly remonstrative tone._] Allow me to remark, my good man, that there's a great difference of opinion as to the amount of distress here in the Eulengebirge. If you can read....

HORNIG

I can read straight off, as well as you. An' I know what I've seen with my own eyes. It would be queer if a man that's travelled the country with a pack on his back these forty years an' more didn't know something about it. There was the Fullers, now. You saw the children sc.r.a.pin' about among the dung-heaps with the peasants' geese. The people up there died naked, on the bare stone floors. In their sore need they ate the stinking weavers' glue. Hunger carried 'em off by the hundred.

TRAVELLER

You must be aware, since you are able to read, that strict investigation has been made by the Government, and that....

HORNIG

Yes, yes, we all know what that means. They send a gentleman that knows all about it already better nor if he had seen it, an' he goes about a bit in the village where the brook flows broad an' the best houses is. He don't want to dirty his shinin' boots. Thinks he to hisself: All the rest'll be the same as this. An' so he steps into his carriage, an'

drives away home again, an' then writes to Berlin that there's no distress in the place at all. If he had but taken the trouble to go higher up into a village like that, to where the stream comes in, or across the stream on to the narrow side--or, better still, if he'd gone up to the little out-o'-the-way hovels on the hill above, some of 'em that black an' tumble-down as it would be the waste of a good match to set fire to 'em--it's another kind o' report he'd have sent to Berlin.

They should ha' come to me, these government gentlemen that wouldn't believe there was no distress here. I would ha' shown 'em something. I'd have opened their eyes for 'em in some of these starvation holes.

[_The strains of the Weavers' Song are heard, sung outside._

WELZEL

There they are, roaring at that devil's song again.

WIEGAND

They're turning the whole place upside down.

MRS. WELZEL

You'd think there was something in the air.

_JAEGER and BECKER arm in arm, at the head of a troop of young weavers, march noisily through the outer room and enter the bar._

JAEGER

Halt! To your places!

[_The new arrivals sit down at the various tables, and begin to talk to other weavers already seated there._

HORNIG

[_Calls out to BECKER._] What's up now, Becker, that you've got together a crowd like this?

BECKER

[_Significantly._] Who knows but something may be goin' to happen? Eh, Moritz?

HORNIG

Come, come, lads. Don't you be a-gettin' of yourselves into mischief.

BECKER

Blood's flowed already. Would you like to see it?

[_He pulls up his sleeve and shows bleeding tattoo-marks on the upper part of his arm. Many of the other young weavers do the same._

BECKER

We've been at barber Schmidt's gettin' ourselves vaccinated.

HORNIG

Now the thing's explained. Little wonder there's such an uproar in the place, with a band of young rapscallions like you paradin' round.

JAEGER

[_Consequentially, in a loud voice._] You may bring two quarts at once, Welzel! I pay. Perhaps you think I haven't got the needful. You're wrong, then. If we wanted we could sit an' drink your best brandy an' swill coffee till to-morrow morning with any bagman in the land.

[_Laughter among the young weavers._

TRAVELLER

[_Affecting comic surprise._] Is the young gentleman kind enough to take notice of me?