THE OFFICER. Why, that is love! And I couldn't have dreamt that a fickle fellow like him would prove capable of loving so deeply and so earnestly.
MASTER OF Q. That is a mighty decent way of looking at it.
THE OFFICER. I have been in love with Victoria myself--in fact I am still waiting for her in the passageway----
MASTER OF Q. Oh, you are the fellow who is waiting in the passageway?
MASTER OF Q. Well, have you got that door opened yet?
THE OFFICER. No, the case is still in court--THE BILLPOSTER is out with his dipnet, of course, so that the taking of evidence is always being put off--and in the meantime the Glazier has mended all the window panes in the castle, which has grown half a story higher--This has been an uncommonly good year--warm and wet----
MASTER OF Q. But just the same you have had no heat comparing with what I have here.
THE OFFICER. How much do you have in your ovens?
MASTER OF Q. When we fumigate cholera suspects, we run it up to one hundred and forty degrees.
THE OFFICER. Of course, I know it, but I forget so often what I know.
MASTER OF Q. I wish often that I could forget--especially myself. That is why I go in for masquerades and carnivals and amateur theatricals.
THE OFFICER. What have you been up to then?
MASTER OF Q. If I told, they would say that I was boasting; and if I don't tell, then they call me a hypocrite.
THE OFFICER. That is why you blackened your face?
MASTER OF Q. Exactly--making myself a shade blacker than I am.
MASTER OF Q. Oh, a poet who is going to have his mud bath.
THE POET _enters with his eyes raised toward the sky and carrying a pail of mud in one hand_.
THE OFFICER. Why, he ought to be having light baths and air baths.
MASTER OF Q. No, he is roaming about the higher regions so much that he gets homesick for the mud--and wallowing in the mire makes the skin callous like that of a pig. Then he cannot feel the stings of the wasps.
THE OFFICER. This is a queer world, full of contradictions.
THE POET. [_Ecstatically_] Man was created by the god Phtah out of clay on a potter's wheel, or a lathe--[_sceptically_], or any damned old thing! [_Ecstatically_] Out of clay does the sculptor create his more or less immortal masterpieces--[_sceptically_], which mostly are pure rot. [_Ecstatically_] Out of clay they make those utensils which are so indispensable in the pantry and which generically are named pots and plates--[_sceptically_], but what in thunder does it matter to me what they are called anyhow? [_Ecstatically_] Such is the clay! When clay becomes fluid, it is called mud--C'est mon affaire!--[_shouts_] Lena!