--The
practice of medicine, I assure you, makes a man terribly wise ...
terribly ... sane ...; it's a specific against all kinds of delusions.
LOTH
[_Laughing._] Well, then we can fall back into our old tone at once. I
want you to know ... I haven't caught on to your tricks at all. Less than
ever now ... But I am to understand, I suppose, that you've exchanged
your old hobby?
DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG
Hobby?
LOTH
The question of woman was in those days in a certain way your pet
subject.
DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG
I see! And why should I have exchanged it?
LOTH
If you think even worse of women than ...
DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG
[_Somewhat aroused. He gets up and walks to and fro while he is
speaking._] I don't think evil of women.--Not a bit!--I think evil only
of marrying ... of marriage ... of marriage and--at most, of men ... The
woman question, you think, has ceased to interest me? What do you suppose
I've worked here for, during six years, like a cart horse? Surely in
order to devote at last all the power that is in me to the solution of
that question. Didn't you know that from the beginning?
LOTH
How do you suppose I could have known it?
DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG
Well, as I said .
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