As a matter of course, Holberg also introduces to us what we may call "the Latin fool." His name is _Erasmus Montanus_--an unsurpassable translation of the plain Danish name, Rasmus Berg. He exhibits his learning as a constant display of paradoxes and gives only one evidence of sound judgment and insight. Erasmus is capable of proving that his mother is a stone, because a stone cannot fly, nor can his mother; but as the poor peasant woman gets afraid of this astounding metamorphosis and already thinks her legs are turning cold, he graciously comforts her by the assurance that she can think and speak, which a stone cannot. "Consequently you are no stone, mother!" He can also prove by several arguments that children are entitled to thrash their old parents, one of the arguments being that you have to restore what has been bestowed upon you. It serves him right when the whole parish finally rises against him, not because of all these foolish assertions, but because of the only theory in which he is perfectly right, and which he proves by fair arguments, that of the earth being round. On this point he has to give in and admit that the earth is flat like a pancake--the only condition on which the father of his sweetheart will give his consent to the marriage. In the _Lying-in Room_, a most curious portrait of contemporary customs and manners in connection with such a daily event as the birth of a child--we find ourselves in a female gallery, unsurpassed in any literature for variety, liveliness and realism. It might be worthy of a whole lecture on what would certainly prove a highly interesting subject: Holberg and the Fair Sex. May I finally mention as perhaps the most deeply human of all his comedies, _Jeppe on the Hill_ or _The Transformed Peasant_. It is a representation of a practical joke played on a poor peasant who is found in a field near the high road, senselessly intoxicated. He is subsequently brought to the mansion, put into his lordship's bed and garbed with his lordship's finest nightshirt. He awakes and believes himself in Paradise, is treated as a Lord by the real owner of the mansion whose sham servility makes him behave himself insolently, and is once more intoxicated and replaced where he was found in his old dirty clothes. He is then accused of intrusion and violent behaviour at the mansion, sentenced formally to death, and subjected, when asleep, under the influence of a drug, to a sham execution, the rope being fastened under his arms instead of round his neck. He is finally lowered from the gallows, and brought back to life by the same authorities who have sentenced him to death, after which he is dismissed with a few shillings--and the bitter conviction that he has been treated as a plaything by the Lord of the mansion.