are
rosy and your eyes blue, and still another to take you as his wife, if
you deserve it! Wait until you have borne the burdens of life in
chastity and honor for thirty years, and have endured sorrow and death
and every human adversity with uncomplaining patience; then let your
son, who ought to stuff a soft pillow for your old head, come and so
overwhelm you with disgrace that you would like to cry out to the earth:
Swallow me, if it does not sicken thee, for I am muddier than thou! Then
you may utter all the curses that I suppress in my bosom, then you may
tear your hair and beat your breasts!--You have that advantage over me,
for you are not a man!

CLARA.

Oh, Carl!

ANTONY.

I wonder what I shall do when I see him again before me, when he comes
home some evening before candlelight with his hair shaved off--for
hair-dressing is not allowed in the penitentiary--and stammers out a
good evening, keeping his hand on the door-knob? I shall do something,
that is certain--but what?

[_Gnashes his teeth._]

And if they keep him locked up for ten years, he shall find me, for I
shall live until then--that much I know! Mark you, Death, what I say:
From now on I am a stone in front of your scythe! It shall fly to pieces
before it shall budge me!

CLARA (_grasps his hand_).

Father, you ought to lie down and rest for half an hour!

ANTONY.

To dream that you are about to be confined? And then to fly into a
passion and seize you, and afterward bethink myself too late and say:
"Dear daughter, I did not know what I was doing!" Thank you! My sleep
has dismissed the magician and employed a prophet, who points out
loathsome things to me with his bloody finger! I don't know how it
is--everything seems possible to me now. Ugh! I shudder at the future as
at a glass of water seen under the microscope--is that the right word,
Mr. Precentor? You have spelled it out for me often enough! I looked
through one once in Nuremburg at the fair, and couldn't drink any more
water all day long. Last night I saw my dear Carl with a pistol in his
hand; when I looked closer into his eyes he pulled the trigger. I heard
a cry, but could see nothing on account of the smoke. When it cleared
away, I saw no shattered skull--but my fine son had in the mean time
come to be a rich man; he was standing and counting gold pieces from one
hand into the other. His face--the Devil take me!--a man could have no
calmer one after working all day and closi