Oh, you have had ample time; now it is too late. Straighten
your back so that you may fall like a real world-hater! [Lifts
scythe.]
PEHR. No, no, for God's sake, wait a little--
DEATH. You're a timid beggar! Live on then if you think it
anything; but don't regret it later. I shall not come again for a
long time. [Starts to go.]
PEHR. No, no, no! don't leave me alone--
DEATH. Alone? Why, you have lovely Nature!
PEHR. Yes, it's all very well when the weather is fine and the sun
shines, but thus late--
DEATH. You see now that you cannot live without your fellow men.
Knock three times on the door over yonder, and you will find
company. [Death vanishes. Pehr knocks three times on door of hut;
the Wise Man comes out.]
WISE MAN. Whom seek you?
PEHR. A human being! In short--I'm unhappy.
WISE MAN. Then you should not seek human beings, for they cannot
help you.
PEHR. I know it, yet I would neither live nor die; I have suffered
all, and my heart will not break!
WISE MAN. You are young, and do not know the human heart. In here I
have lately been pondering the causes of mankind's misery. Would
you like to see how the little object called the human heart looks?
[Steps into hut and returns presently with a casket and a lantern,
which he hangs on a tree.]
You see the little three-cornered muscle, which now has ceased to
beat--Once it throbbed with rage, thumped with joy, cramped with
sorrow, swelled with hope. You see that it is divided into two
large chambers: In one lives the good, in the other the evil--or,
with a word, there sits an angel on one side of the wall and a
devil on the other.
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