Kiss me first. Don't be afraid. I look rather savage, but it is only a shape which I had to put on in order to make myself visible to you. I had no other handy.... But I am really quite clean and I don't smell bad. TYLTYL I never said you did! THE GREAT ANCESTOR No, but to judge by the grimace you made you weren't quite sure!... (_Sitting down on the middle bench_.) I will sit down here; the Great Mendicant will take his seat on my right and the Great Peasant on my left. They don't smell either.... (THE GREAT MENDICANT _and_ THE GREAT PEASANT _take their seats; the other_ ANCESTORS _stand behind him_.) And I will take you on my knees.... I am glad to hold you in my arms for a moment.... We have known each other so long! TYLTYL I don't remember ever seeing you before. THE GREAT ANCESTOR And yet we have always lived in each other; for you were already living in me when I was on earth; and now I live in you while you are still on that same earth, which we seem to have quitted.... But what do you think of this place of ours?... Let me have the pleasure of showing you over your home. TYLTYL My home? THE GREAT ANCESTOR Certainly.... You are at home here.... And a very nice home it is.... Everything you see--this square, that prison, the church, those houses, we who live in them--all this is really only inside yourself.... People rarely see it, they don't even suspect it; but it's true. TYLTYL I should never have thought there was so much room inside myself and that it was so large.... THE GREAT ANCESTOR It's much larger really; there's a great deal that you don't see.... But that is not what interests us to-day; let us come straight to the point, to the great question that brings you here.... We are going to choose the woman whom you are to love.... TYLTYL Since you are so kind, there's one thing I should like to ask you.... THE GREAT ANCESTOR Ask me any questions you please. TYLTYL How is it that I have not, like other men, the right to choose the woman I love? THE GREAT ANCESTOR But you have the right to choose and are here for the sole purpose of making that choice. TYLTYL No, they tell me that it's you and the others who will make it. THE GREAT ANCESTOR But I and the others are all you.... You are we, we are you; and it's all the same thing. TYLTYL Not for me.... They keep on telling me to hold my tongue, that it's not my business, that it's no concern of mine.... Everybody's allowed to get a word in, except me.... I've had enough, I'm sick and tired of it!... Where do I come in? That's what I want to know! THE GREAT ANCESTOR You're simply acting as all men act when they think they are doing what they want to do. TYLTYL But, after all, dash it, what business is it of yours? I can understand, in a way, that the children I may one day have should claim some right to select their mother; but the rest of you, over here, what difference can it make to you? THE GREAT ANCESTOR