"Lassalle"!

FRAU HOLTHOFF. Just see the company in which she places our Ferdinand!

HELENE. [_Wearily_] Oh, I am not trying to compliment Lassalle. The fact
is, I dislike the man. His literary style is explosive; about all he
seems to do is to paraphrase dear Karl Marx. Besides, he is a Jew----

KARL MARX. Gently--I am a Jew!

HELENE. But you are different. Lassalle is aggressive, pushing,
grasping--he has ego plus, and [_With relaxing tension_] all I want to
say is that I am aweary of being accused of quoting Lassalle--that I do
not know Lassalle, and what is more, I----

FRAU HOLTHOFF. Oh, you'll talk differently when you see him!

HELENE. But surely you, too, do not make genius exempt from the moral
code?

DOCTOR HAENLE. Oh, some one has been telling you about Madame
Hatzfeldt----

HELENE. I know the undisputed facts.

KARL MARX. Which are that at nineteen years of age Ferdinand Lassalle
became the legal counsel for Madame Hatzfeldt; that he fought her case
through the courts for nine years; that he lost three times and finally
won.

HELENE. And then became a member of the Madame's household.

KARL MARX. If so, with the Madame's permission.

HELENE. [_Sarcastically_] Certainly.

FRAU HOLTHOFF. That thirty years' difference in their ages ought to
absolve him.

DOCTOR HAENLE. To say nothing of the fee he received!

KARL MARX. The fee?

DOCTOR HAENLE. One hundred thousand thalers.

FRAU HOLTHOFF. Capital; also, _Das Kapital_!

KARL MARX. I have made a note of it. A lawyer gets a single fee of one
hundred thousand thalers--this under the competitive system--a hundred
years of labor for the average workingman!

FRAU HOLTHOFF. A lawyer at nineteen--studying on one case, knowing its
every aspect and phase, pursuing the case for nine years, and opposed by
six of the ablest, oldest and most influential legal lights in Germany,
and gaining a complete victory!

KARL MARX. I've heard of successful authors of a single book, but I
never before heard of a great lawyer with but one case!

FRAU HOLTHOFF. Oh, Lassalle has had many cases offered him, but he
refused them all so as to devote himself to the People _versus_ Entailed
Nobility.

KARL MARX. You mean Entrenched Alleged Royalty.

FRAU HOLTHOFF. Yes. I accept the correction--and this case he will win,
just as he did the other.

HELENE. You had better say his body will go to fill up the sunken
roadway!

DOCTOR HAENLE. Good! that was your idea o