PAUL (violently agitated, partly to himself). Incomprehensible! Incomprehensible! Two days without news! Two full days! AUNT CLARA (sadly). I do not comprehend you either, my boy! PAUL (takes a few steps without heeding her). This stillness! This death-like stillness! AUNT CLARA (sits down). Isn't it good, when peace prevails? PAUL. As you look at it. Certainly it is good! But first of all one must be at peace himself! Must have become calm and clear about the matters that concern one. Know what one wants to do and is expected to do and what one is here for in this world. AUNT CLARA. But every one knows that, Paul. PAUL (without listening to her, rather to himself). Uncanny, this silence all around one. Doubly and three-fold one feels, how it seethes and boils within, without one's getting anywhere. One can hear himself _think_! (He stops, then in a changed voice, as he looks up.) No no, Aunt Clara, people who have closed their account, belong in the country. Others do not! (AUNT CLARA looks at him and is silent. After a moment.) The rest need noise, diversion, human beings about them. One _must_ have something in order _to be able to_ forget! Some narcotic to put one to sleep! There _are_ people, who do that all of their lives and are quite, happy, who never come to themselves, are continually living in a kind of intoxication and leave this world without attaining real consciousness. You see, Auntie, the city is the proper place for that. There you can dull your feelings and forget. AUNT CLARA. I could not stand the city. PAUL. Yes, you, Aunt Clara! You are a child of the country. AUNT CLARA. Well, aren't you, Paul? PAUL. True! But you have never been alienated from the soil! I tell you the man who has once partaken of that poison, can not give it up, he is forced to go back to it again and again. AUNT CLARA (impatiently). One simply can't understand you, Paul. When you arrived, you said one thing and now you are saying another. The very idea! PAUL (is forced to smile). You fail to understand that, you good old soul! Of course, you do not know what has come to pass since then. At that time I was not at odds with myself ... AUNT CLARA. At that time! When, pray tell? You came on the third holiday and this is New Year's eve. You have been here for five days. PAUL. Today it's quite a different matter. Quite different! AUNT CLARA. What on earth has _happened_, pray tell! PAUL. Much, much, Aunt Clara! AUNT CLARA (probing). I suppose because they were a bit boisterous at the funeral! That's the way of it, you know, when they get to drinking. PAUL (negative gesture). Good heavens, no!... No! AUNT CLARA. That's the way they _always_ act at funerals. I know of funerals where there was dancing. PAUL. Yes, yes, that may be! AUNT CLARA. And then they all were so friendly with you. PAUL. Oh, yes. With the friendliest kind of an air, they told me not to take it into my head that I know how to farm.