HUGENBERG. I've come from Muensterburg. I ran away this morning. ALVA. My eyes are bad. I am forced to keep the blinds closed. HUGENBERG. I need your help. You will not refuse me. I've got a plan ready. Can anyone hear us? ALVA. What do you mean? What sort of a plan? HUGENBERG. Are you alone? ALVA. Yes. What do you want to impart to me? HUGENBERG. I've had two plans already that I let drop. What I shall tell you now has been worked out to the last possible chance. If I had money I should not confide it to you; I thought about that a long time before coming.... Will you not permit me to set forth to you my design? ALVA. Will you kindly tell me just what you are talking about? HUGENBERG. She cannot possibly be so indifferent to you that I must tell you that. The evidence *you* gave the coroner helped her more than everything the defending counsel said. ALVA. I beg to decline the supposition. HUGENBERG. You would say that; I understand that, of course. But all the same you were her best witness. ALVA. *You* were! You said my father was about to force her to shoot herself. HUGENBERG. He was, too. But they didn't believe me. I wasn't put on my oath. ALVA. Where have you come from now? HUGENBERG. From a reform-school I broke out of this morning. ALVA. And what do you have in view? HUGENBERG. I'm trying to get into the confidence of a turnkey. ALVA. What do you mean to live on? HUGENBERG. I'm living with a girl who's had a child by my father. ALVA. Who is your father? HUGENBERG. He's a police captain. I know the prison without ever having been inside it; and nobody in it will recognize me as I am now. But I don't count on that at all. I know an iron ladder by which one can get from the first court to the roof and thru an opening there into the attic. There's no way up to it from inside. But in all five wings boards and laths and great heaps of shavings are lying under the roofs, and I'll drag them all together in the middle and set fire to them. My pockets are full of matches and all the things used to make fires. ALVA. But then you'll burn up there! HUGENBERG. Of course, if I'm not rescued. But to get into the first court I must have the turnkey in my power, and for that I need money. Not that I mean to bribe him; that wouldn't go. I must lend him money to send his three children to the country, and then at four o'clock in the morning when the prisoners of respected families are discharged, I'll slip in the door. He'll lock-up behind me and ask me what I'm after, and I'll ask him to let me out again in the evening. And before it gets light, I'm up in the attic. ALVA. How did you escape from the reform-school? HUGENBERG. Jumped out the window. I need two hundred marks for the rascal to send his family to the country. RODRIGO. (_Stepping out of the portieres, right._) Will the Herr Baron have coffee in the music-room or on the veranda?