nd). What do you want?

DUeHRING. Mr. Gerardo, I--I have ...

GERARDO. How did you get in here?

DUeHRING. I've been watching my chance for two hours down on the
sidewalk, Mr. Gerardo.

GERARDO (recollecting). Let me see, you are ...

DUeHRING. For fully two hours I've been standing down on the sidewalk.
What else was I to do?

GERARDO. But, my dear sir, I haven't the time.

DUeHRING. I don't mean to play the whole opera to you now.

GERARDO. I haven't the time left ...

DUeHRING. You haven't the time left! How about _me_! You are thirty. You
have attained success in your art. You can continue following your bent
through the whole long life that still is before you. I will ask you to
listen only to your own part in my opera. You promised to do so when
you came to town.

GERARDO. It's to no purpose, Sir. I am not my own master ...

DUeHRING. Please, Mr. Gerardo! Please, please! Look at me, here's an old
man lying before you on his knees who has known only one thing in life:
his art. I know what you would reply to me, you, a young man who has
been carried aloft on the wings of angels, one might say. "If you would
have the goddess of Fortune find you, don't hunt for her." Do you
imagine, when one has cherished but a single hope for fifty years, one
could possibly have overlooked any means whatsoever within human reach,
to attain that hope? First one turns cynical and then serious again.
One tries to get there by scheming, one is once more a light hearted
child, and again an earnest seeker after one's artistic ideals--not for
ambition's sake, not for conviction's sake, cannot help it, because
it's a curse which has been laid on one by a cruel omnipotence to which
the life-long agony of its creature is a pleasing offering! A pleasing
offering, I say, for we whom art enthralls rebel against our lot as
little as does the slave of a woman against his seductress, as little
as does the dog against his master who whips him.

GERARDO (in despair). I am powerless ...

DUeHRING. Let me tell you, my dear Sir, the tyrants of antiquity who, as
you know, would have their slaves tortured to death just for a pleasant
pastime, they were mere children, they were harmless innocent little
angels as compared with that divine providence which thought it was
creating those tyrants in its own image.

GERARDO. While I quite comprehend you ...

DUeHRING (while GERARDO vainly tries several times to interrupt him; he
follows GERARDO