every word is written in the book--and
at the end of time comes the reckoning!

BENJAMIN. You are so severe!

ELEONORA. I? Not I! How should I dare to be? I, I? [She goes to the
stove, opens it, and takes out several torn pieces of white letter paper
and puts them on the dining table.]

BENJAMIN. [Rises and looks at the pieces of paper which Eleonora is
putting together.]

ELEONORA [To herself]. That people should be so thoughtless as to leave
their secrets in the stove! Whenever I come I always go right to the
stove! But I don't do it maliciously--I wouldn't do anything like that,
for then I should feel remorse.

BENJAMIN. It is from Peter, who writes and asks Christine to meet him. I
have been expecting that for a long time.

ELEONORA [Putting her hands over the bits o f paper]. Oh, you, what have
you been expecting? Tell me, you evil minded being, who believes nothing
but bad of people. This letter could not mean anything wrong to me,
for I know Christine, who is going to be my sister sometime. And that
meeting will avert misfortune for brother Elis. Will you promise me to
say nothing of this, Benjamin?

BENJAMIN. I don't exactly think I should like to talk much about it!

ELEONORA. People who are suspicious become so unjust. They think they
are so wise, and they are so foolish!--But what is all this to me!

BENJAMIN. Yes, why _are_ you so inquisitive?

ELEONORA. You see that is my illness--that I must know all about
everything or else I become restless--

BENJAMIN. Know about everything?

ELEONORA. That is a fault which I cannot overcome. And I even know what
the birds say.

BENJAMIN. But they can't talk?

ELEONORA. Haven't you heard birds that people have taught to talk?

BENJAMIN. Oh, yes--that people have taught to talk!

ELEONORA. That is to say they can talk. And we find those that have
taught themselves or are like that instinctively--they sit and listen
without our knowing it and then they repeat these things afterward. Just
now as I was coming along I heard two magpies in the walnut tree, who
sat there gossiping.

BENJAMIN. How funny you are! But what were they saying?

ELEONORA. "Peter," said one of them, "Judas," said the other. "The same
thing," said the first one. "Fie, Fie, Fie," said the other. But have
you noticed that the nightingales only sing in the grounds of the deaf
and dumb asylum here?

BENJAMIN. Yes, they do say that's so. Why do they do that?

ELEONORA. Because thos