GOTTLIEB (does it).

A blessing on good food! (They kiss.) Content
yourself with that.

HINZE.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

GOTTLIEB.

The boots fit very nicely, and you have a charming little foot.

HINZE.

That is only because we always walk on our toes, as you must already have read in your natural history.

GOTTLIEB.

I have great respect for you—­on account of the boots.

HINZE (hangs a soldier’s knapsack about his neck).

I am going now. 
See, I have also made myself a bag with a drawing-string.

GOTTLIEB.

What’s it all for?

HINZE.

Just let me alone!  I want to be a hunter.  Why, where is my cane?

GOTTLIEB.

Here.

HINZE.

Well, then, good-bye.

[Exit.]

GOTTLIEB.

A hunter?  I can’t understand the man.

[Exit.]

Open Field

HINZE (with cane, knapsack, and bag).

Splendid weather!  It’s such a beautiful, warm day; afterward I must lie down a bit in the sun. (He spreads out his bag.) Well, fortune, stand by me.  Of course, when I think that this capricious goddess of fortune so seldom favors shrewdly laid plans, that she always ends up by disgracing the intelligence of mortals, I feel as though I should lose all my courage.  Yet, be quiet, my heart; a kingdom is certainly worth the trouble of working and sweating some for it!  If only there are no dogs around here; I can’t bear those creatures at all; it is a race that I despise because they so willingly submit to the lowest servitude to human beings.  They can’t do anything but either fawn or bite; they haven’t fashionable manners at all, a thing which is so necessary in company.  There’s no game to be caught. (He begins to sing a hunting song:  “I steal through the woods so still and wild,” etc.  A nightingale in the bush near-by begins to sing.) She sings gloriously, the songstress of the grove; but how delicious she must taste!  The great people of the earth are, after all, right lucky in the fact that they can eat as many nightingales and larks as they like; we poor common people must content ourselves with their singing, with the beauty in nature, with the incomprehensibly sweet harmony.  It’s a shame I can’t hear anything sing without getting a desire to eat it.  Nature!  Nature!  Why do you always destroy my finest emotions by having created me thus!  I feel almost like taking off my boots and softly climbing up that tree yonder; she must be perching there. (Stamping in the pit.) The nightingale is good-natured not to let herself be interrupted even by this martial music; she must taste delicious; I am forgetting all about my hunting with these sweet dreams.  Truly, there’s no game to be caught.  Why, who’s there?