[_More and more amused._] I know, I know! I remember your going through all the literature of love once in order to determine quite conscientiously whether that which you felt at that time for a certain lady was really the tender passion. So, let's hear a few more of your demands. LOTH My wife, for instance, would have to practice renunciation. HELEN If ... if ... Ah, I don't know whether it's right to ... but I merely wanted to say that women, as a rule, are accustomed to renounce. LOTH For heaven's sake! You understand me quite wrongly. I did not mean renunciation in the vulgar sense. I would demand renunciation only in so far, or, rather, I would simply ask my wife to resign voluntarily and gladly that part of myself which belongs to my chosen work. No, no, in regard to every thing else, it is my wife who is to make demands--to demand all that her sex has forfeited in the course of thousands of years. HOFFMANN Oho, oho! Emancipation of woman! Really, that sudden turn was admirable--now you are in the right channel. Fred Loth, or the agitator in a vest-pocket edition. How would you formulate your demands in this respect, or rather: to what degree would yam wife have to be emancipated?--It really amuses me to hear you talk! Would she have to smoke cigars? Wear breeches? LOTH Hardly that. I would want her, to be sure, to have risen above certain social conventions. I should not want her, for instance, to hesitate, if she felt genuine love for me, to be the first to make the avowal. HOFFMANN [_Has finished his breakfast. He jumps up in half-humorous, half-serious indignation._] Do you know? That ... that is a really _shameless_ demand. And I prophesy, too, that you'll go about with it unfulfilled to your very end--unless you prefer to drop it first. HELEN [_Mastering her deep emotion with difficulty._] If you gentlemen will excuse me now--the household ... You know [_to HOFFMANN_] that mama is upstairs and so ... HOFFMANN Don't let us keep you. _HELEN bows and withdraws._ HOFFMANN [_Holding a match case in his hand and walking over to the cigar-box which stands on the table._] There's no doubt ... you do get a man excited ... it's almost uncanny. [_He takes a cigar from the box and sits down on the sofa in the foreground, left. He cuts off the end of his cigar, and, during what follows, he holds the cigar in his left, the severed end between the fingers of his right hand._] In spite of all that ... it does amuse me. And then, you don't know how good it feels to pass a few days in the country this way, away from all business matters. If only to-day this confounded ... how late is it anyhow? Unfortunately I have to go into town to a dinner to-day. It couldn't be helped: I had to give this banquet. What are you going to do as a business man? Tit for tat. The mine officials are used to that sort of thing.--Well, I've got time enough to smoke another cigar--quite in peace, too.