_Scene:_ Hotel veranda in the Swiss Mountains.
[Present: Herr Holthoff, Frau Holthoff, Doctor Haenle, Lassalle and
Helene, seated or walking about and talking leisurely. Surroundings
beautiful and an air of peace pervades the place.]
DOCTOR HAENLE. These early Fall days are the finest of the year in the
mountains.
HELENE. Yes: for then the guests have mostly gone.
LASSALLE. Just as the church is never quite so sacred as when the priest
is not there!
FRAU HOLTHOFF. You mean the priest and congregation?
LASSALLE. Certainly, they go together. A priest apart from his people is
simply a man.
HELENE. Ferdinand loves the Church!
LASSALLE. You should say a church, my lady fair!
HELENE. Yes, a church--this is the fourth time we have met. Two of the
other times were in a church.
LASSALLE. [_Ecstatically_] Yes, in the dim, cool, religious light of a
church, vacant save for us two--I should say for us one!
HELENE. We just sat and said the lover's litany--"Love like ours can
never die."
HERR HOLTHOFF. Well, love and religion are one at the last.
LASSALLE. They were one once, and neither will be right until they are
one again.
HELENE. A creed is made up of ossified metaphors--lover's metaphors.
DOCTOR HAENLE. Good, and every one can believe a creed if you allow him
to place his own interpretation on it!
LASSALLE. That is what we will do in the Co-operative Commonwealth.
DOCTOR HAENLE. Which reminds me that Bismarck, who loves you almost as
well as we do, declares that you are a Monarchist, not a Socialist, the
difference being that you believe in the House of Lassalle and he in the
House of Hohenzollern.
LASSALLE. Which means, I suppose, that I will be king of the
Co-operative Commonwealth?
HELENE. You will be if I have my way.
DOCTOR HAENLE. Heresy and sedition! The woman who loves a man confuses
him with God, and regards him as one divinely appointed to rule.
HELENE. I can not deny it if I would.
FRAU HOLTHOFF. And yet tomorrow you and Lassalle part!
HELENE. Only for a time.
LASSALLE. For how long, no man can say; that is why I have urged that we
should be married here and now. A notary can be gotten from the village
in an hour--you, dear comrades, shall be the witnesses.
HELENE. It is only my love that makes me hesitate. The future of
Ferdinand Lassalle, and the future of Socialism must not be jeopardized!
DOCTOR HAENLE. Jeopardized?
LASSALLE. Jeopardized by love?
HELENE. The world would regard a marriage here as an elopement. My
father would be furious. Who are we that we should run away to wed, as
if I were a schoolgirl and Lassalle a grocer's clerk! Lassalle is the
king of men. He convinces them by his logic, by his presence, by his
enthusiasm----
HERR HOLTHOFF. He has convinced you in any event.
HELENE. And he can and will convince the world!
DOCTOR HAENLE. I believe he will.
HELENE. And when he wins my parents he will secure an influence that
will help usher in the Better Day. Besides----
LASSALLE. Besides?
HELENE. [_Laughing_] I am engaged to marry Prince Racowitza!
LASSALLE. [_Smiling_] True, I forgot. But when he sees the Goddess of
the Dawn and the Socialistic Sun-God together, he will give them his
blessing and renounce all claims.
HELENE. Exactly so.
DOCTOR HAENLE. Which is certainly better than to snip him off without
first tying the ligature.
FRAU HOLTHOFF. This whole situation is really amusing when one takes a
cool look at it. Here is Helene betrothed to Prince Racowitza, who is
intelligent, kind, amiable, good, unobjectionable. And because society
demands that a girl shall marry somebody, she accepts the situation,
and until Lassalle, the vagrant planet, came shooting through space,
this girl of aspiration and ambition would have actually wedded the
unobjectionable man and herself become unobjectionable to please her
unobjectionable parents.
HERR HOLTHOFF. That is a plain, judicial statement of the case, made by
the wife of a fairly good man.
LASSALLE. Error set in motion continues indefinitely, all according to
the physical law of inertia. The customs of society continue, and are
always regarded by the many as perfect--in fact, divine. This continues
until some one called a demagogue and a fanatic suggests a change. This
talk of change causes a little wobble in the velocity of the error, but
it still spins forward and crushes and mangles all who get in the way.
That is what you call orthodoxy--the subjection of the many. The men,
run over and mangled, are spoken of as "dangerous."
HERR HOLTHOFF. Which reminds me that when people say a man is dangerous,
they simply mean that his ideas are new to them.
LASSALLE. [_Seating himself at a table opposite Helene_] You hear, my
Goddess of the Dawn, Helene, that dangerous ideas are simply new ideas?
HELENE. Yes, I heard it and I have said it.
LASSALLE. Because I have said it.
HELENE. Undoubtedly, which is reason enough.
LASSALLE. Can you make your father believe that?
HELENE. I intend to try and I expect to succeed.
[All slip away and leave Helene and Lassalle alone. As the
conversation grows earnest, he holds her hands across the table,
just as the lovers do in a Gibson picture.]
LASSALLE. And you still think this better than that we should proclaim
the republic tomorrow, and have our dear friends go down and inform the
world that we are man and wife?
HELENE. Listen: The desire of my life is to be your wife. No ceremony
can make us more completely one than we are now. My soul is intertwined
with yours. All that remains is, how shall we announce the truth to the
world? Shall we do it by the tongue of scandal? That is not necessary.
Doctor Haenle can take you to call on my father. I will be there--we
will meet incidentally. You are irresistible to men, as well as to
women. My father will study you. You will allow him to talk--you will
agree with him. After he has said all he has to say, you will talk, and
he will gradually agree with you. My parents will become accustomed to
your presence--they will see that you are a gentleman. Prince Racowitza
will be there, and he will not have to be told the truth--he will see
it. He will be obedient to my wishes. He admires me, and you----
LASSALLE. I love you.
HELENE. You love me--the world seems tame. I am simply yours.
LASSALLE. I realize it, and so, like your little prince, I am
obedient--an obedient rebel!
HELENE. A rebel?
LASSALLE. I say it, but very gently. I can win your parents and the
prince, quite as well if introduced to them as your husband, as if we
faced each other in their presence and pretended--a nice word,
that--pretended we had never met. There, I am done. I am now your
page--your slave.
HELENE. [_Disturbed and slightly nettled_] Then grant me a small favor.
LASSALLE. Even if it be the half of my kingdom.
HELENE. Let me see a picture of Madame Hatzfeldt!
LASSALLE. Whom?
HELENE. Madame Hatzfeldt.
LASSALLE. [_Coloring and confused_] Oh, surely, I will--I will find one
for you and send it by mail.
HELENE. Perhaps you have one in your pocketbook?
LASSALLE. Oh, that is so; possibly I have!
[Takes pocketbook out of breast-pocket of his coat, fumbles and
finds a small, square photograph, which he passes over to Helene,
who studies his face and then the photograph.]
HELENE. [_Looking at picture_] She has intellect!
LASSALLE. [_Trying to laugh_] She was born in Eighteen Hundred Eight--I
call her Gran'ma!
HELENE. Is she handsome?
LASSALLE. Oh, twenty years ago she was.
HELENE. Twenty years ago she was a woman in distress?
LASSALLE. Yes.
HELENE. And women in distress are very alluring to gallant and
adventurous young men.
LASSALLE. It was twenty years ago, I say.
HELENE. And now you are--are friends?
LASSALLE. We are friends!
HELENE. [_Archly_] Shall I win her before we are married, or after?
LASSALLE. After.
HELENE. As you say.
LASSALLE. We are both needlessly humble, I take it!
[Smiles and gently takes her hand.]
HELENE. [_Smiles back_] We understand each other.
LASSALLE. And to be understood is paradise.
HELENE. We have been in paradise eight days.
LASSALLE. Paradise!
HELENE. Paradise!