(Enter the Baron and Eric.)

Baron.  He is sound asleep.  Now we have played our game, but we have nearly been made the bigger fools ourselves, for he intended to tyrannize over us, so that we must either have spoiled our trick, or else have let ourselves be mauled by the rude yokel, from whose conduct one can learn how haughty and overbearing such people become when they suddenly rise from the mire to a station of worth and honor.  If I had, in an unlucky moment, impersonated a secretary myself, I might have got a thrashing, and the whole affair would have been a failure, for people would have laughed more at me than at the peasant.  We had better let him sleep awhile before we put him back into his dirty farm clothes again.

Eric.  Why, my lord, he is sleeping like a log; look, I can pound him and he doesn’t feel it.

Baron.  Take him out, then, and complete our little comedy.

ACT IV

SCENE 1

[Jeppe is lying on a dungheap in his old peasant clothes.  He wakes and calls out.]

Jeppe.  Hey, Sectary, Valet, Lackeys! another glass of pork-wine! [He looks about him, rubs his eyes as before, feels his head, and finds his old broad-brimmed hat on it; rubs his eyes again, turns the hat over and over, looks at his clothes, recognizes himself again, and begins to talk.] How long was Abraham in paradise?  Now, alas, I recognize everything again—­my bed, my jacket, my old cuckold-hat, myself; this is different, Jeppe, from drinking pork-wine out of a gilt-edged glass, and sitting at a table with lackeys and a sectary behind my chair.  Good fortune, worse luck, never lasts very long.  Oh, that I, who such a short time ago was “my lord,” should now find myself in such a miserable plight, with my fine bed turned into a dungheap, my gold-embroidered cap changed into my old cuckold-hat, my lackeys into pigs, and I myself from “my lord” to a wretched peasant once more!  I thought when I woke up again I should find my fingers covered with gold rings, but, saving your presence, they’re covered with something very different.  I thought I should be calling servants to account, but now I must get my back ready for my home-coming, when I shall have to give an account of my own doings.  I thought that when I woke up I should reach out and grasp a glass of pork-wine, but instead, to speak modestly, I get a handful of dung.  Alas, Jeppe, your sojourn in paradise was pretty short, and your happiness came quickly to an end.  But who knows that the same thing might not happen again if I were to lie down for a while?  Oh, if it only would!  Oh, if I could get back there again! [Lies down and goes to sleep.]

SCENE 2

[Enter Nille.]

Nille.  I wonder if anything has happened to him?  What could it be?  Either the devil has taken him, or, what I fear more, he’s sitting at an inn drinking up the money.  I was a goose to trust the drunkard with twelve pence at once.  But what do I see?  Isn’t that himself lying there in the filth and snoring?  Oh, miserable mortal that I am, to have such a beast for a husband!  Your back will pay dearly for this! [She steals up to him and gives him a whack on the rump with Master Eric.]