GUSTAV.  I feel very sorry for you, my friend.  Without being a physician, I can tell that you are a dying man.  It is enough to look at your latest pictures in order to see that.

ADOLPH.  You think so?  How can you see it?

GUSTAV.  Your colour is watery blue, anaemic, thin, so that the cadaverous yellow of the canvas shines through.  And it impresses me as if your own hollow, putty-coloured checks were showing beneath—­

ADOLPH.  Oh, stop, stop!

GUSTAV.  Well, this is not only my personal opinion.  Have you read to-day’s paper?

ADOLPH. [Shrinking] No!

GUSTAV.  It’s on the table here.

ADOLPH. [Reaching for the paper without daring to take hold of it]
Do they speak of it there?

GUSTAV.  Read it—­or do you want me to read it to you?

ADOLPH.  No!

GUSTAV.  I’ll leave you, if you want me to.

ADOLPH.  No, no, no!—­I don’t know—­it seems as if I were beginning to hate you, and yet I cannot let you go.—­You drag me out of the hole into which I have fallen, but no sooner do you get me on firm ice, than you knock me on the head and shove me into the water again.  As long as my secrets were my own, I had still something left within me, but now I am quite empty.  There is a canvas by an Italian master, showing a scene of torture—­a saint whose intestines are being torn out of him and rolled on the axle of a windlass.  The martyr is watching himself grow thinner and thinner, while the roll on the axle grows thicker.—­Now it seems to me as if you had swelled out since you began to dig in me; and when you leave, you’ll carry away my vitals with you, and leave nothing but an empty shell behind.

GUSTAV.  How you do let your fancy run away with you!—­And besides, your wife is bringing back your heart.

ADOLPH.  No, not since you have burned her to ashes.  Everything is in ashes where you have passed along:  my art, my love, my hope, my faith!

GUSTAV.  All of it was pretty nearly finished before I came along.

ADOLPH.  Yes, but it might have been saved.  Now it’s too late—­ incendiary!

GUSTAV.  We have cleared some ground only.  Now we’ll sow in the ashes.

ADOLPH.  I hate you!  I curse you!

GUSTAV.  Good symptoms!  There is still some strength left in you.  And now I’ll pull you up on the ice again.  Listen now!  Do you want to listen to me, and do you want to obey me?

ADOLPH.  Do with me what you will—­I’ll obey you!

GUSTAV. [Rising] Look at me!

ADOLPH. [Looking at GUSTAV] Now you are looking at me again with that other pair of eyes which attracts me.

GUSTAV.  And listen to me!

ADOLPH.  Yes, but speak of yourself.  Don’t talk of me any longer:  I am like an open wound and cannot bear being touched.

GUSTAV.  No, there is nothing to say about me.  I am a teacher of dead languages, and a widower—­that’s all!  Take my hand.