DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Yes, that's my opinion. There are obstacles present which just you would ... LOTH Look here! Don't for heaven's sake have any scruples on that account. The conditions, as a matter of fact, aren't so complicated as all that. At bottom they're really terribly simple. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Simply terrible, you'd better say. LOTH I was referring simply to the obstacles. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG So was I, very largely. But take it all in all, I can't imagine that you really know the conditions as they are. LOTH Please, Schimmel, express yourself more clearly. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG You must absolutely have dropped the chief demand which you used to make in regard to marriage, although you did give me to understand that you laid as much weight as ever on the propagation of a race sound in mind and body. LOTH Dropped my demand...? Dropped it? But why should I? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG I see. Then there's nothing else left me but to ... Then you don't know the conditions here. You do not know, for instance, that Hoffmann had a son who perished through alcoholism at the age of three. LOTH Wha ... what d'you say? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG I'm sorry, Loth, but I've got to tell you. You can do afterward as you please. But the thing was no joke. They were visiting here just as they are now. They sent for me--half an hour too late. The little fellow had bled to death long before I arrived. _LOTH drinks in the DOCTOR'S _words with every evidence of profound and terrible emotion._ DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG The silly little chap grabbed for the vinegar bottle, thinking his beloved rum was in it. The bottle fell and the child tumbled on the broken glass. Down here, you see, the _vena saphena_, was completely severed. LOTH Whose, _whose_ child was that? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG The child of Hoffmann and of the same woman who again, up there ... And she drinks too, drinks to the point of unconsciousness, drinks whatever she can get hold of! LOTH So it's not, it's not inherited from Hoffmann? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Not at all. That's the tragic aspect of the man! He suffers under it as much as he is capable of suffering. To be sure, he knew that he was marrying into a family of dipsomaniacs. The old farmer simply spends his life in the tavern. LOTH Then, to be sure--I understand many things--No, everything, rather ... everything! [_After a heavy silence._] Then her life here, Helen's life, is a ... how shall I express it? I have no words for it; it's ... DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Utterly horrible. I can judge of that. And I understood from the beginning how you should cling to her. But, as I said ... LOTH It's enough. I understand ... But doesn't...? Couldn't one perhaps persuade Hoffmann to do something? She ought to be removed from all this foulness. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Hoffmann? LOTH Yes, Hoffmann. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG You don't know him. I don't believe that he has ruined her already, but he has ruined her reputation even now.