him and is silent. After a
moment.) The rest need noise, diversion, human beings about them. One
_must_ have something in order _to be able to_ forget! Some narcotic to
put one to sleep! There _are_ people, who do that all of their lives
and are quite, happy, who never come to themselves, are continually
living in a kind of intoxication and leave this world without attaining
real consciousness. You see, Auntie, the city is the proper place for
that. There you can dull your feelings and forget.

AUNT CLARA. I could not stand the city.

PAUL. Yes, you, Aunt Clara! You are a child of the country.

AUNT CLARA. Well, aren't you, Paul?

PAUL. True! But you have never been alienated from the soil! I tell you
the man who has once partaken of that poison, can not give it up, he is
forced to go back to it again and again.

AUNT CLARA (impatiently). One simply can't understand you, Paul. When
you arrived, you said one thing and now you are saying another. The
very idea!

PAUL (is forced to smile). You fail to understand that, you good old
soul! Of course, you do not know what has come to pass since then. At
that time I was not at odds with myself ...

AUNT CLARA. At that time! When, pray tell? You came on the third
holiday and this is New Year's eve. You have been here for five days.

PAUL. Today it's quite a different matter. Quite different!

AUNT CLARA. What on earth has _happened_, pray tell!

PAUL. Much, much, Aunt Clara!

AUNT CLARA (probing). I suppose because they were a bit boisterous at
the funeral! That's the way of it, you know, when they get to drinking.

PAUL (negative gesture). Good heavens, no!... No!

AUNT CLARA. That's the way they _always_ act at funerals. I know of
funerals where there was dancing.

PAUL. Yes, yes, that may be!

AUNT CLARA. And then they all were so friendly with you.

PAUL. Oh, yes. With the friendliest kind of an air, they told me not to
take it into my head that I know how to farm.

AUNT CLARA. Why, Paul. You only imagine that!

PAUL. The good neighbors. At bottom they are right! How should an old
man be able to learn the things that call for the efforts of a whole
life, just as any other career does! Ridiculous! Why that simply must
have lurid consequences.

AUNT CLARA (impatiently). I should never have thought that you would
act this way, Paul!

PAUL. Act what way? I am only checking over the possibilities. Every
business man does that! And I tell you, the prospect