Henrich.  I am a cur if I can see how the council hit on the idea of making my master burgomaster, because I can see no connection between a tinker and a high official like that, unless it is that just as a tinker throws plates and dishes into a mould and melts them up into new ones, so a good burgomaster can remould the republic, when it is declining, by making good laws.  But the good men did not take into consideration the fact that my master is the worst tinker in Hamburg, and therefore, if they have by any chance chosen him on that basis, he will be the worst burgomaster, too, that we have ever had.  The only useful thing about their choice is that it makes me a reutendiener, and that is a position for which I have both talent and inclination, for ever since I was a boy I have enjoyed seeing people arrested.  It is a good place, too, for one who knows how to make something out of it.  First of all I must appear to have a great deal of say with the burgomaster, and when people get that article of faith through their heads, Henrich will make at least a hundred or two hundred thalers a year, which I shall take not out of greed, but only to show that I understand my business as reutendiener.  If any one wants to talk to the burgomaster, I say he is not at home.  If they say they saw him at the window, I answer that it makes no difference, he is still not at home.  People in Hamburg know at once what that answer means; they slip a thaler into Henrich’s hand, and his Honor promptly comes home.  If he has been ill, he recovers at once; if he has had visitors, they leave at once; if he has been lying down, he gets up at once.  I run about with the lackeys of the gentry, now and then, and I know well enough what goes on in those houses.  In the old days when folks were as stupid as horses and asses, such things were called stealing, but now they are known as “extras,” “tips,” or “unclassified income.”  But look, here comes Anneke; she doesn’t know yet about the transformation, for she still has her vulgar tinker-look and tinker-walk.

SCENE 2

[Enter Anneke.]

Anneke.  Ha, ha, ha!  He looks like a mummer.  I believe that’s an Adrienne that he’s got on him.

Henrich.  Listen, you tinker’s trash! have you never seen a livery or a lackey before?  Faith, these common people are like animals, they stand and stare like cows, when they see a man in different clothes one day from what he wears another.

Anneke.  No, a joke’s one thing, and sober truth’s another.  Don’t you know that I’ve learned to tell fortunes?  An old woman came here to-day who reads people’s hands.  I gave her a bit of bread and she taught me the art of seeing in people’s hands what is going to happen to them.  If I may look at your hand, I can tell your fortune at once.

Henrich.  Yes, yes, Anneke!  Henrich isn’t as stupid as you think.  I smell a rat already.  You have got wind of the promotion that is promised me to-day.