Your wedding dress ? Oh , how well it becomes you ! It looks as if it had been made today ! But this time it is not exactly in style , dear mother ! The sleeves are too wide ! It must not annoy you ! MOTHERI should have to be you for that ! CLARA . And so this is the way you looked ! But surely you carried a bunch of flowers too , did n't you ? I have often asked you to , but you have never before put it on . You have always said : It is no longer my wedding dress ; it is my shroud now , and that is something one should not play with . I got so that I could n't even look at it any more , because , hanging there so white , it always made me think of your death , and of the day when the old women would try to pull it on over your head . Why then today ? Do n't talk in that way , dear mother ! It weakens you . You still talk as you did in your illness ! A gold chain ? Where did you get that ? What does he mean by that ? I did n't see him very often at best — almost never except at the table . He had more appetite than I ! MOTHERThat was natural ! He had to work so hard ! To be sure ! And how strange men are ! They are more ashamed of their tears than they are of their sins ! A clenched fist — why not exhibit that ? But red eyes !— And father too ! The afternoon they opened your vein and no blood came , he sobbed at his work-bench until it moved my very soul ! But when I went up to him and stroked his cheeks , what did he say ? “ See if you can n't get this accursèd splinter out of my eye ! I have so much to do and can n't accomplish anything ! ” MOTHERYes ! yes !— I never see Leonard any more , by the way . How does that happen ? Let him stay away ! Is it because I stay out too long when I go to the well in the evening that you have reason to suspect that ? I do n't see him at all ! The bell is ringing ! Why so polite , so considerate ? I am no princess , you know . LEONARDI thought you were not alone ! In passing by I thought I saw your neighbor Babbie standing by the window . And so that is why — Things used to be different ! What of it ? Oh , Leonard , it was not right of you ! I did n't praise him , did I ? You do n't need to run him down ! We used to play together as children , and afterward — you know very well ! Then I think it was only natural , seeing him again for the first time in a long while that way , for me to look at him and be astonished to see how big and — I thought he was looking at the little mole on my left cheek to see if it , too , had grown bigger ! You know I always imagine people are looking at that when they stare at me so , and it always makes me blush . I have a feeling as if it were growing larger , as long as they look at it ! Oh , you said a bad , bad word , when I pushed you back and jumped up from the bench . The moon , which up to that time had shone in through the foliage with such kindly consideration for me , at that moment sank shrewdly behind the wet clouds . I wanted to hurry away , but felt something holding me . At first I thought it was you , but it was the rose-bush , whose thorns held my dress like teeth . You outraged my heart , so that I no longer trusted it myself . You stood before me like one demanding the payment of a debt ! I — Oh , God ! When I got home , I found my mother ill , mortally ill. She had been stricken suddenly , as if by an invisible hand . My father had wanted to send for me , but she would not consent to his doing so , not wishing to interrupt my happiness . And how I felt when I heard that ! I held myself aloof , I did not dare to touch her , I trembled ! She took it for childish anxiety and motioned me over to her ; when I slowly drew near her , she held me down and kissed my desecrated mouth . I lost control of myself ; I wanted to confess to her , to cry out what I thought and felt : It is my fault that you are lying there ! I tried to do so , but tears and sobs choked my voice . She reached for my father 's hand , and said with a blissful glance at me : What a heart ! What ? Oh ! Want you to ? It will mean my death , if I do not become your wife pretty soon ! But you do not know my father ! He does not understand why we are in such a hurry — he cannot understand why , and we cannot tell him why ! And he has declared a hundred times that he will never give his daughter to any man unless he has not only , as he says , love in his heart for her , but also bread in his cupboard for her . He will say : Wait another year or two , my son .— And what will be your answer ? LEONARD . You foolish girl , that difficulty is disposed of ! I have the position now — I am cashier ! You cashier ? And the other applicant , the pastor 's nephew ? That comes — How do I know ? I think it was because we got angry at each other the Sunday before ! I do n't understand you ! About me ? Leonard ! Not a word . You bad man ! Get out of my sight ! Oh , my God , I am chained to this man ! I know nothing about it . Here comes my father . I must go into the kitchen !LEONARDWell , I guess there is nothing to be got here ! I can n't understand it at all ; for Master Antony is one of those fellows whose ghost , if you should accidentally put one too many letters on his gravestone , would haunt you until you took it off . For he would regard it as dishonest to appropriate more of the alphabet than he was properly entitled to . The weekly paper ! Father ! SECOND BAILIFFHave you no pity ? Father , he is innocent ! He must be innocent ! He is your son , my brother ! Father , father , I cannot — Father , you are terrible ! ANTONYDear daughter , Carl is only a bungler . He has killed his mother , and what does it mean ? His father remains alive ! So , come to his aid — you cannot ask him to do everything alone . You must make an end of me ! The old trunk still looks rugged , does n't it ? But it has begun to totter already — it will not cost you much trouble to fell it ! You need not reach for the ax . You have a pretty face — I have never praised you , but today I will tell you , so that you may acquire courage and confidence . Your eyes , nose , mouth are surely admired ! Become — You understand me ?— Or tell me , I have an idea that you are already — CLARAMother ! Mother ! I — swear — that — I — will — never — bring — disgrace-on — you ! Father , I have had enough . I ate out in the kitchen . You wrenched the hammer away from him and did it yourself , and said : “ This is my masterpiece ! ” The preceptor , who was just then leading the choir boys in the dirge over by the door , thought you had gone crazy . Yes , father , so it is . Oh , Carl ! Calm yourself ! Merciful God ! What shall I do ? Father , Carl has not yet confessed anything , and they have found nothing on him . You always believe the worst things you can of Carl ! You have always done so ! I wonder if you still remember how — And supposing Carl is acquitted ? Supposing the jewels are found again ? He has just gone out . Oh , father ! Why are you not here ?— He has forgotten his spectacles — there they lie ! Oh , if he only notices it and returns for them !— How then ? Where Who had them ? Yes ! That she is not altogether in her right mind , to be sure ! WOLFRAMMy God ! My God ! All in vain ! Not a single servant that I have ever taken into my house have I allowed to leave me ; to each one I have paid double wages and closed my eyes to all remissness , in order to buy their silence ! And yet — the false , ungrateful creatures ! Oh , my poor children ! Only for your sake did I seek to conceal it ! Do not blame your servants ! Surely it is not their fault ! Ever since your neighbor 's house burned down , and your wife stood at the open window laughing and clapping her hands at the fire , yes , and even puffing out her cheeks and blowing at it , as if she wanted to make it burn more furiously , people have had to choose between taking her for the devil himself or for a lunatic . And there were hundreds who saw that ! Your own wife ! Oh , my poor mother ! It is too terrible ! Once in the tavern the bailiff put his glass down on the table by my father 's and nodded to him as if he wanted to touch glasses with him . My father then took his away , and said : “ People in red coats and blue trimmings used to have to drink out of glasses with wooden feet . Also they used to have to wait out in front of the window , or , if it was raining , by the door , and respectfully remove their hats when the landlord handed them the drink . Moreover , if they felt a desire to touch glasses with anybody , they waited until neighbor Hangman happened in . ” Oh , God ! What is not possible in this world ! My mother had to pay for that with an untimely death ! In the mountains at the lumber-dealer 's . No ! I should think people would forget about such things when they had hundreds and thousands of books to study . And— what happens then ? Everything is bright and cheerful today ; that 's because it is such beautiful weather . Oh , that is true , so true ! It almost makes me cry ! To Leonard ! Where else should I go ? Only that one road lies before me in this world ! Do not make me frantic ! Do not mention that word again ! You ! It is you I love ! There ! I cry it out to you as if I were already wandering on the other side of the grave , where no one blushes any more , where cold and naked forms glide past one another , because the fearful , holy presence of God has entirely consumed in every one all thought of others . Did you ? Oh , the other too !He stepped up in front of me — he or I !— Oh , my heart , my accursed heart ! In order to prove to him , prove to myself , that it was not so , or to stifle it if it were so , I did what now— God in Heaven ! I would have pity on myself , were I Thou , and Thou I ! Oh , ask me everything that conspires to drive a poor girl crazy ! Scorn and derision from all sides when you went to the University , and did not let me hear from you .— “ She still thinks of him ! ” “ She thinks that child 's play was meant seriously ! ” “ Does she receive any letters from him ? ” — And then , too , my mother : “ Stay with people of your class ! ” “ Pride never succeeds ! ” “ Leonard is a very nice fellow ; everybody is surprised that you look at him over your shoulder so ! ” And added to all the rest , my own heart : “ If he has forgotten you , show him that you too — ” Oh , God ! Release me ? There !SECRETARYAs cashier , I — your brother — thief — very sorry — but out of consideration for my office , I cannot help it —He wrote you that on the very day your mother died ? For he adds his condolence on her sudden death ! I suppose so ! Yes ! Go now , go ! SECRETARYOr else one would have to shoot the dog who knows of it . Oh , that he had some courage about him ! That he would stand up and fight ! That one could force him to it ! I should not be afraid of missing him ! I beg of you ! SECRETARYAs soon as it grows dark !Girl , you stand before me —Thousands of your sex would have kept it a secret with shrewd cunning , and only in an hour of sweet forgetfulness would have confided it coaxingly to the ear and soul of their husbands . I feel what I owe you ! CLARAOh , my heart , lock yourself up ! Crush yourself together so that not another drop of that blood may escape which would kindle again the congealing life in my veins ! For a moment a feeling akin to hope arose in you again ! Now for the first time I am conscious of it !No ! No man can , overlook that ! And if — could you yourself overlook it ? Would you have had the courage to grasp a hand that — No ! no ! Such evil courage you would not have ! You would with your own hands have to lock yourself into your hell , if any one tried to open the door from the outside . You are forever — Oh , alas , that the pain is intermittent , that the piercing agony sometimes ceases ! That is the reason why it lasts so long ! The tortured man imagines he is resting when the torturer merely pauses to get his breath . It is like a drowning man 's catching his breath on the waves , when the current that has drawn him under spews him forth again only to seize him once more and draw him down . He has nothing but a double , futile fight for life !— Well , Clara ?— Yes , father , I am going ! Your daughter will not drive you to self-destruction ! Soon I shall be the wife of that man , or — God ! No ! I do not go begging for happiness — it is misery , the deepest misery that I beg for ! You will give me my misery !— Away ! Where is the letter ?Three wells you pass on your way to him ! You must not halt at any of them , Clara — you have not yet the right to do that ! Good evening , Leonard ! I have come to give back your letter ! Read it again ! LEONARDIt is a perfectly sensible letter ! How can a man who has public money in trust marry into a family to which— to which your brother belongs ? Leonard ! Leonard , I am my father 's daughter ! Not as the sister of an accused , innocent man , who has been set free — for my brother is at liberty — not as a girl who trembles before undeserved disgrace , forI tremble still more before you , only as the daughter of the old man who gave me life , do I stand here ! Can you ask ? Oh , that I might go away ! My father will cut his throat , unless — Marry me ! He has sworn it ! Marry me ! He has sworn it ! Marry me ! And , afterward , kill me ! I will thank you even more for the latter than for the former ! Answer that yourself ! No , that I cannot swear ! But this I can swear Whether I love you or do not love you , that you shall never know ! I will wait on you , I will work for you , you need give me nothing to eat , I will support myself , I will do sewing and spinning for other people at night , I will go hungry when I have nothing to do , I will rather bite a piece out of my own arm than go to my father and let him suspect anything ! When you beat me , because your dog is not at hand , or because you have kicked him out , I will rather swallow my own tongue than emit a cry which will betray to the neighbors what is going on . I cannot promise that my skin will not show the welts caused by your whip , for that is not in my power . But I will lie about it , I will say that I fell head foremost against the cupboard , or that I slipped on the floor because it was too smooth — that I will do before anybody has time to ask me where the black and blue marks came from !— Marry me ! I shall not live long ! And if it lasts too long for you , if you do not care to meet the expenses of the divorce proceedings necessary to get rid of me , them buy some poison of the apothecary and put it somewhere as if it were for your rats . I will take it without your even nodding to me , and tell the neighbors with my dying breath that I took it for pulverized sugar ! Then may God not frown too severely on me if I come before he calls me ! If I had myself alone to consider I would endure it patiently . If the world kicked me in my misery , instead of standing by me , I would bear it submissively and regard it as just punishment for I know not what ! I would love my child , even if it had your features , and I would cry so much before the poor innocent thing that , when it grew older and wiser , it would certainly not despise and curse its mother . But it is not myself alone ; and on Judgement Day I shall much more easily find an answer to the Judge 's question : why did you drive your father to it ? I readily believe that you fail to understand why anybody in the world should keep an oath . I thank you as I would thank a serpent which had wound itself around me and unwound itself and sprung away again , because another prey enticed it . I know that I have been bitten , I know that it deserts me only because it does not seem worth the trouble to suck out what little marrow there is left in my bones . But still I thank the snake , for now I shall have a quiet death . Yes , man , I am not mocking ; to me it is as if I had seen through your breast down into the abyss of hell , and whatever may be my lot in the awful eternity to come , I shall never have anything more to do with you , and that is a consolation ! And just as the unfortunate person whom a viper has stung cannot be blamed for opening his veins in terror and disgust , in order that his poisoned blood may stream swiftly forth , so perhaps God in His everlasting mercy will take pity on me when He looks down upon you and me and sees what you have made of me ! For how could I do it , when I never , never should have done it ?— One thing more : My father knows nothing , he does not even suspect anything ! And that he may never find out I shall quit the world this very day ! If I thought for one moment that you— oh , but that is foolishness ! You would be only all the better pleased to see them all stand and shake their heads and inquire in vain of one another why it happened ! Away from here ! The man can talk ! No ! Better both than a parricide ! Oh , I know that one cannot atone for one sin with another ! But what I now do affects me alone ! If I hand the knife to my father the blow strikes him as well as me ! It strikes me in any case ! That gives me courage and strength in all my distress ! Things will go well with you on earth ! Where ? What ? Nothing ! I held fast to the scrap of paper , and yet the evening wind is so strong that it blows the tiles off the roofs . As I was passing the church one fell right in front of me , so that my foot struck against it . Oh , God ! I thought — one more ! And I stood still . That would have been fine ; they would have buried me and said : “ She met with an accident ! ” — But I waited in vain for the second . CARLThunder and — I 'll lame the hand that wrote that !— Bring me a bottle of wine ! Or is your savings box empty ? There is one more in the house . I had bought it secretly for mother 's birthday and put it aside . Tomorrow would have been the day — Carl , do not drink so much ! Father says the devil lurks in wine ! As if he had been in a den of thieves . No sooner had he opened his mouth than mother fell over and was dead ! Surely you are not going to — Brother , you talk — You do not understand me ! And are you going away to leave your father all alone ? He is sixty years old ! I ? Oh , what anguish ! Yes , I must go ! Away ! I must go into the kitchen ! What else should I mean ? Yes ! That too ! Just to hear that I came home again ! Why do I not do it then ? Shall I never do it ? Am I going to continue putting it off from day to day , as I am now doing from one minute to the next , until — certainly ! Then , away ! Away ! And yet I stand still ! I have a feeling as if imploring hands were raised in my womb , as if eyes —What does it mean ? Am I too weak to do it ? Then ask yourself if you are strong enough to see your father with his throat cut !—No ! No !— Our Father , Who art in Heaven , hallowed be Thy name — God ! God ! My poor head ! I cannot even pray ! Brother ! Brother ! Help me ! The Lord 's Prayer !It seemed to me as if I were already lying in the water and sinking , and had not yet prayed ! I— Forgive us our trespasses , as we forgive those that trespass against us ! That is it ! Yes ! Yes ! Certainly I forgive him ! I shall think no more of him !— Good night , Carl ! Thank you ! Thank you ! That was the last thing that still troubled me ! The deed itself would have betrayed me ! Now people will say : She had an accident ! She fell in ! It is bright moonlight !— Oh , God , I am coming only because otherwise my father would come ! Forgive me , as I — have mercy on me — mercy —