Aha! Then let us begin _ab ovo_. I have letters here [_he shows a bundle of them_] one, two, three, five--about a dozen! In these letters unknown but malicious individuals congratulate me upon an event which is said to have taken place in my storage loft. I would pay no attention to these communications were they not confirmed by a news item in the papers according to which a newborn infant is said to have been found in the loft of a costumer in the suburbs ... a costumer, forsooth! I would have said nothing, I repeat, if this item had not perplexed me. Undoubtedly there is a case of mistaken identity involved here. In spite of that, I don't like to have the report stick to me. Especially since this cub of a reporter speaks of the costumer as being a bankrupt manager of barn stormers. Read it, mama: "The Stork Visits Costumer." I'll box that fellow's ears! This evening my appointment at Strassburg is to be made public in the papers and at the same time I am to be offered as a kind of comic dessert _urbi et orbi_. As if it were not obvious that of all curses that of being made ridiculous is the worst! MRS. JOHN You say there's policemen at the door downstairs, sir? HASSENREUTER Yes, and their watch is so close that the funeral procession of Mrs. Knobbe's baby has been brought to a standstill. They won't even let the little coffin and the horrid fellow from the burial society who is carrying it go out to the carriage. MRS. JOHN What child's funeral was that? HASSENREUTER Don't you know? It's the little son of Mrs. Knobbe which was brought up to me in so mysterious a way by two women and died almost under my very eyes, probably of exhaustion. _A propos_ ... MRS. JOHN The Knobbe woman's child is dead? HASSENREUTER _A propos_, Mrs. John, I was going to say that you ought really to know how the affair of those two half-crazy women who got hold of the child finally ended? MRS. JOHN Well now, tell me, ain't it like the very finger of God that they didn't take my little Adelbert an' that he didn't die? HASSENREUTER Just why? I don't understand the logic of that. On the other hand, I have been asking myself whether the confused speeches of the Polish girl, the theft committed in my loft, and the milk bottle which Quaquaro brought down in a boot--whether all these things had not something to do with the notice in the papers. MRS. JOHN No, there ain't no connection between them things. Has you seen Paul, sir? HASSENREUTER Paul? Ah yes; that's your husband. Yes, yes. Indeed I saw him in conversation with detective Puppe, who visited me too in connection with the theft. _JOHN enters._ JOHN Well, Jette, wasn't I right? This here thing's happened soon enough! MRS. JOHN What's happened? JOHN D'you want me to go an' earn the thousand crowns' reward what's offered accordin' to placards on the news pillars by the chief o' police's office for denouncin' the criminal? MRS. JOHN How's that? JOHN