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