Your father seeks consolation at this moment in the sturdy arms of your mother.----I will open the world to you. Your momentary lack of resolution springs from your miserable condition. With a warm supper inside of you, you will make fun of it. MELCHIOR. (_To himself._) It can only be the devil! (_Aloud._) After that of which I have been guilty, a warm supper cannot give me back my peace! THE MASKED MAN. That will follow the supper!----I can tell you this much, the girl had better have given birth. She was built properly. Unfortunately, she was killed by the abortives given by Mother Schmidt.----I will take you out among men. I will give you the opportunity to enlarge your horizon fabulously. I will make you thoroughly acquainted with everything interesting that the world has to offer. MELCHIOR. Who are you? Who are you?----I can't trust a man that I don't know. THE MASKED MAN. You can't learn to know me unless you trust me. MELCHIOR. Do you think so? THE MASKED MAN. Of course!----Besides, you have no choice. MELCHIOR. I can reach my hand to my friend here at any moment. THE MASKED MAN. Your friend is a charlatan. Nobody laughs who has a pfennig left in cash. The sublime humorist is the most miserable, most pitiable creature in creation. MELCHIOR. Let the humorist be what he may; you tell me who you are, or I'll reach the humorist my hand. THE MASKED MAN. What then? MORITZ. He is right, Melchior. I have boasted. Take his advice and profit by it. No matter how masked he is----he is, at least. MELCHIOR. Do you believe in God? THE MASKED MAN. Yes, conditionally. MELCHIOR. Will you tell me who discovered gunpowder? THE MASKED MAN. Berthold Schwarz----alias Konstantin Anklitzen.----A Franciscan monk at Freiburg in Breisgau, in 1330. MORITZ. What wouldn't I give if he had let it alone! THE MASKED MAN. You would only have hanged yourself then. MELCHIOR. What do you think about morals? THE MASKED MAN. You rascal, am I your schoolboy? MELCHIOR. Do I know what you are? MORITZ. Don't quarrel!----Please don't quarrel. What good does that do?----Why should we sit, two living men and a corpse, together in a churchyard at two o'clock in the morning if we want to quarrel like topers! It will be a pleasure to me to arbitrate between you. If you want to quarrel, I'll take my head under my arm and go! MELCHIOR. You are the same old 'fraid cat as ever. THE MASKED MAN. The phantom is not wrong. One shouldn't forget one's dignity.----By morals I understand the real product of two imaginary quantities. The imaginary quantities are “shall” and “will.” The product is called morals and leaves no doubt of its reality. MORITZ.