But I heard it very plainly----Who is outside? FRAU BERGMANN. Nobody----Schmidt's Mother from Garden street.----You come just at the right time, Mother Schmidt. SCENE SIXTH. _Men and women wine-dressers in the vineyard. The sun is setting behind the peaks of the mountains in the west. A clear sound of bells rises from the valley below. Hans Rilow and Ernest Röbel roll about in the dry grass of the highest plot under the overhanging rocks._ ERNEST. I have overworked myself. HANS. Don't let us be sad!----It's a pity the minutes are passing. ERNEST. One sees them hanging and can't manage any more----and to-morrow they are in the wine press. HANS. Fatigue is as intolerable to me as hunger. ERNEST. Oh, I can't eat any more. HANS. Just this shining muscatelle! ERNEST. My elasticity has its limit. HANS. If I bend down the vine, we can sway it from mouth to mouth. Neither of us will have to disturb himself. We can bite off the grapes and let the branches fly back to the trunk. ERNEST. One hardly decides upon a thing, when, see, that vanishing power begins to darken. HANS. Hence the flaming firmament----and the evening bells----I promise myself little more for the future. ERNEST. Sometimes I see myself already as a worthy pastor--with a good-natured little wife, a well-filled library and offices and dignities all about me. For six days one has to think, and on the seventh one opens one's mouth. When out walking, one gives one's hand to the school-girls and boys, and when one comes home the coffee steams, the cookies are brought out and the maids fetch apples through the garden door.----Can you imagine anything more beautiful? HANS. I imagine half-closed eyelids, half-open lips and Turkish draperies.----I do not believe in pathos. Our elders show us long faces in order to hide their stupidity. Among themselves they call each other donkeys just as we do. I know that.----When I am a millionaire I'll erect a monument to God.----Imagine the future as a milkshake with sugar and cinnamon. One fellow upsets it and howls, another stirs it all together and sweats. Why not skim off the cream?----Or don't you believe that one can learn how? ERNEST. Let us skim! HANS. What remains the hens will eat.----I have pulled my head out of so many traps already---- ERNEST. Let us skim, Hans!----Why do you laugh? HANS. Are you beginning again already? ERNEST. But one of us must begin. HANS. Thirty years from now, on some evening like to-day, if we recall this one, perhaps it will seem too beautiful for expression. ERNEST. And how everything springs from self! HANS. Why not? ERNEST. If by chance one were alone----one might like to weep! HANS. Don't let us be sad! (_He kisses him on the mouth._) ERNEST. (_Returning the kiss._)