Lieutenant.  Good; then I will let you go as soon as you have given your word both to your own parents and to your future parents-in-law, and have begged their pardon.

Montanus.  I humbly beg all of you, as I weep salt tears, to forgive me; and I promise to lead an entirely different life henceforward.  I condemn my former ways, and I have been cured of them not so much by the fix I had got into as by this good man’s wise and profound words.  Next to my parents I shall always hold him in the highest esteem.

Jeronimus.  Then you don’t believe any longer, my dear son-in-law, that the world is round?  For that is the point that I take most to heart.

Montanus.  My dear father-in-law, I won’t argue about it any further.  But I will only say this, that nowadays all learned folk are of the opinion that the earth is round.

Jeronimus.  Oh, Mr. Lieutenant, let him be made a soldier again until the earth becomes flat.

Montanus.  My dear father-in-law, the earth is as flat as a pancake.  Now are you satisfied?

Jeronimus.  Yes, now we are good friends again,—­now you shall have my daughter.  Come to my house, now, all together, and drink to the reconciliation.  Mr. Lieutenant, won’t you do us the honor of joining us?

[Exeunt.]