SCENE VI.--_Vintagers, men and women, are in the Vineyard. In the west the sun is sinking behind the mountain peaks. A clear sound of bells comes up from the valley.--At the uppermost vine-trellis, under the overhanging cliffs_, HANSY RILOW and ERNEST ROEBEL _sprawl in the drying grass_. ERNEST--I have overworked. HANSY--Let’s not be sad.--Too bad how the minutes fly. ERNEST--You see them hanging and can no more--and to-morrow they’ll be pressed. HANSY--Being tired is as unbearable to me as being hungry. ERNEST--Oh, I can no more! HANSY--Just this one shining muscatel! ERNEST--There’s a limit to my elasticity. HANSY--If I bend the spray, it’ll swing back and forth between our mouths. We’ll neither of us have to stir--just bite off the grapes and let the stalk spring back to the vine. ERNEST--One no sooner resolves on something than lo! the strength that had vanished is renewed in him again. HANSY--And add the flaming firmament--and the evening bells,--my hopes for the future rise scarcely higher than this. ERNEST--I often see myself as a Reverend Pastor already, with a genial, motherly housewife, a voluminous library, and offices and honors everywhere. Six days you have, to ruminate, and on the seventh you open your mouth. When you go walking, school-children take your hand, and when you come home the coffee is steaming, the cakes are brought in, and thru the garden door the girls come up with apples.--Can you imagine anything happier? HANSY--I have visions of half-shut lashes, half-opened lips, and Turkish draperies.--I don’t believe in pathos. You see, our elders pull long faces to cover their stupidities from us. Among themselves they call each other blockheads as we do. I know that.--When I’m a millionaire, I’ll set up a memorial to dear God.--Think of the future as a milk pudding with sugar and spice. One fellow upsets it and bawls. Another stirs it all up in a mess and toils. Why not skim it?--or don’t you believe that that art can be learned? ERNEST--Let us skim! HANSY--What’s left ’ll be chicken-feed.--I’ve pulled my head out of so many nooses now already.... ERNEST--Let us skim, Hansy!--Why do you laugh? HANSY--Are you beginning again already? ERNEST--One of us has got to begin. HANSY--When we think back thirty years hence to an evening such as this, it may seem to us beautiful beyond words. ERNEST--And how beautiful everything =is=, now, quite of itself! HANSY--So why not? ERNEST--If one happened to be alone, one might even weep. HANSY--Don’t let us be sad. [_Kisses him on the mouth._] ERNEST--[_Returning the kiss._] I left the house with the idea of just merely speaking to you and going back again. HANSY--I was expecting you.--Virtue isn’t a bad clothing, but it belongs on imposing figures. ERNEST--It still hangs loose around our limbs. I should have been uneasy if I hadn’t found you.--I love you, Hansy, as I’ve never loved a living soul....