[All get up and are about to exchange formalities.] RAABE JUNIOR'S (voice in the background). Here's to you! DR. BODENSTEIN (knocks on his glass, with a loud voice). Ladies and gentlemen! Let us dedicate a glass to the memory of the departed, according to the beautiful tradition of our fathers; that we must not mourn the dead, that we should envy them! Our slumbering friend lives on in the memory of those who were near to him! To immortality, in this sense, all of us may, after all, agree in a manner! (He raises his glass and clinks with those beside him. All the rest do the same. Silence prevails. Only the clinking of glasses is heard.) PAUL (raising his glass, to ANTOINETTE). The doctor is right! Let us drink to his memory, madam! May the earth rest lightly on him! (ANTOINETTE lowers her head and stifles her tears.) PAUL (looking at her fervently). Aren't yon going to respond? ANTOINETTE (musters her strength, raises her head, and with tears in her eyes clinks glasses with him). PAUL (drinks). To the memory of my father. ANTOINETTE (nods). Your father! PAUL. To that of our parents, madam! A silent glass! (He empties his glass.) [ANTOINETTE puts down her glass, after she has drunk.] LASKOWSKI (has noticed ANTOINETTE). Just cry ahead, dearie! Cry your fill! That's the way they'll drink to your Heliodor some day! DR. BODENSTEIN. And so they will drink to all of us some day! KUNZE. For man's life on earth is like unto the grass of the field, on which the wind bloweth. It flourisheth for a season and withereth and no one remembereth it. So also the children of men. DR. BODENSTEIN. This goblet to the departed, one and all! (He drinks again.) PAUL. The departed on these walls! I drink to you! (He raises his glass to the portraits on the walls. All have risen meanwhile, and broken up into new groups. Confusion of voices in the background.) SCHROCK and RAABE (have intonated the Gaudeamus. At first softly, then more distinctly the following stanza is sung): Ubi sunt qui ante nos In mundo fuere? Vadite ad superos, Transite ad inferos, Ubi jam fuere. [Illustration: FORDING THE WATER] GLYSZINSKI (has joined in lustily at the end, and repeats alone). Ubi jam fuere! [MERTENS, VON TIEDEMANN, MRS. SCHNAASE, MRS. VON TIEDEMANN stand in the foreground where they have been conversing in an undertone.] MERTENS (in an undertone). Now the pot is boiling! VON TIEDEMANN (a bit mellow). That's the way a funeral should be! No airs! The dead won't become alive again anyhow! MERTENS. Many a man might object to that anyhow! VON TIEDEMANN. The devil take it. A fellow doesn't want to give up what he once has! MERTENS. Wasn't Laskowski superb again! VON TIEDEMANN. Always is, of late! Never see him any other way! MRS. VON TIEDEMANN. And then Mrs. Laskowski? Did you watch, Gretchen? MRS. SCHNAASE. I don't exactly see, Elizabeth!