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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04

Год написания книги
2018
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There are strange trades in the world, Sir Hunter; cooks live by eating, tailors by vanity, I, by the laughter of human beings; if they cease to laugh I must starve.

[Murmuring in the pit: A Jackpudding! A Jackpudding!]

HINZE

I do not eat that vegetable.

JACKPUD

Why? Don't be bashful, help yourself.

HINZE

I tell you, white cabbage does not agree with me.

JACKPUD

It will taste all the better to me. Give me your hand! I must become better acquainted with you, Sir Hunter.

HINZE

Here!

JACKPUD

Take here the hand of an honest German fellow; I am not ashamed of being German, as many of my countrymen are. (He presses the cat's hand very tightly.)

HINZE

Ow! Ow! (He resists, growls, clutches JACKPUDDING.)

JACKPUD

Oh! Hunter! Are you possessed of the devil? (He rises and goes to the king weeping.) Your majesty, the hunter is a perfidious man; just look at the remembrance of his five fingers he has left on me.

KING (eating).

Strange! Now sit down again; wear gloves in the future when you give him your hand.

JACKPUD

One must guard against you.

HINZE

Why did you take such a hold on me? The deuce take your pretended honesty!

JACKPUD

Why, you scratch like a cat!

[HINZE laughs maliciously.]

KING

But what's the trouble today, anyhow? Why is there no intelligent conversation carried on at the table? I do not enjoy a bite unless my mind has some nourishment too. Court scholar, did you perhaps fall on your head today?

LEANDER (eating).

May it please your majesty—

KING

How far is the sun from the earth?

LEANDER

Two million four hundred thousand and seventy-one-miles.

KING

And the circle in which the planets revolve?

LEANDER

A hundred thousand million miles.

KING

A hundred thousand million! There's nothing in the world I like better to hear than such great numbers—millions, trillions—that gives you—something to think about. It's a good deal, isn't it, a thousand million, more or less?

LEANDER

Human intelligence grows with the numbers.

KING

But tell me, about how large is the whole world in general, counting fixed stars, milky ways, hoods of mist, and all that?

LEANDER

That cannot be expressed at all.

KING

But you are to express it or (threatening with his sceptre)—

LEANDER

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