Comedies by Holberg : Jeppe of the Hill, The Political Tinker, Erasmus Montanus Part 6

JEPPE. Indeed, you have been diligent in your office, as your solid silver b.u.t.tons plainly show. What wages do you get?

BAILIFF. Fifty rix-dollars a year.

JEPPE [gets up and walks to and fro]. Fifty? You surely shall be hanged.

BAILIFF. It couldn't well be less, my lord, for a whole year's hard work.

JEPPE. That's just the reason you are to be hanged--because you only get fifty rix-dollars. You have money enough for a coat with silver b.u.t.tons, frills at your wrists, and a silk queue for your hair--and all on fifty rix-dollars a year. If you didn't rob me, poor man, where else could you get it?

BAILIFF [on his knees]. Oh, gracious lord! For the sake of my unfortunate wife and innocent children, spare me!

JEPPE. Have you many children?

BAILIFF. Seven children living, my lord.

JEPPE. Ha! Ha! Seven children living! Have him hanged immediately, Sectary.

SECRETARY. Oh, gracious lord, I am no hangman.

JEPPE. If you're not, you can soon learn to be. You look fit for any trade. And when you have hanged him, I shall have you hanged yourself.

BAILIFF. Oh, gracious lord, is there no reprieve?

JEPPE [walks to and fro, sits down, drinks, and gets up again]. Half a hundred rix-dollars, a wife and seven children. If no one else will hang you, I'll do it myself. I know what sort you are, you bailiffs! I know how you have cheated me and other miserable peasants--Oh, there come those d.a.m.ned peasant illusions into my head again. I meant to say, that I know your games and your goings-on so well, I could be a bailiff myself if I had to. You get the cream off the milk, and your master gets dung, to speak modestly. I really think that if the world keeps on, the bailiffs will all be n.o.blemen and the n.o.blemen all bailiffs. When a peasant slips something into your hand or your wife's, here is what your master is told: "The poor man is willing and industrious enough, but certain misfortunes have befallen him which make it impossible for him to pay: he has a poor piece of land, his cattle have got the scab,"--or something like that,--and with such babble your master has to let himself be cheated. Take my word for it, lad! I'm not going to let myself be fooled in that way, for I'm a peasant and a peasant's son myself--see how that illusion keeps cropping up! I was about to say that I am a peasant's son myself, for Abraham and Eve, our first parents, were tillers of the soil.

SECRETARY [on his knees]. Oh, gracious lord! Pray take pity on him for the sake of his unfortunate wife; for how can she live if he is not there to feed her and the children?

JEPPE. Who says they should live either? We can string them up along with him.

SECRETARY. Oh, my lord! she is such a lovely, beautiful woman.

JEPPE. So? Perhaps you are her lover, seeing you feel so badly about her. Send her here.

SCENE 3

[Enter Bailiff's wife; she kisses Jeppe's band.]

JEPPE. Are you the bailiff's wife?

WIFE. Yes, your lords.h.i.+p, I am.

JEPPE [takes her by the b.r.e.a.s.t.s]. You are pretty. Would you like to sleep with me to-night?

WIFE. My lord has only to command, for I am his servant.

JEPPE [to the Bailiff]. Do you consent to my lying with your wife to-night?

BAILIFF. I thank his lords.h.i.+p for doing my humble house the honor.

JEPPE. Here! Bring her a chair; she shall eat with me. [She sits at the table, and eats and drinks with him. He becomes jealous of the Secretary.] You'll get into trouble, if you look at her like that.

[Whenever he looks at the Secretary, the Secretary takes his eyes off the woman and gazes at the floor. Jeppe sings an old love-ballad as he sits at the table with her. He orders a polka to be played and dances with her, but he is so drunk that he falls down three times, and finally lies where he falls and goes to sleep.]

SCENE 4

(Enter the Baron and Eric.)

BARON. He is sound asleep. Now we have played our game, but we have nearly been made the bigger fools ourselves, for he intended to tyrannize over us, so that we must either have spoiled our trick, or else have let ourselves be mauled by the rude yokel, from whose conduct one can learn how haughty and overbearing such people become when they suddenly rise from the mire to a station of worth and honor. If I had, in an unlucky moment, impersonated a secretary myself, I might have got a thras.h.i.+ng, and the whole affair would have been a failure, for people would have laughed more at me than at the peasant. We had better let him sleep awhile before we put him back into his dirty farm clothes again.

ERIC. Why, my lord, he is sleeping like a log; look, I can pound him and he doesn't feel it.

BARON. Take him out, then, and complete our little comedy.

ACT IV

SCENE 1

[Jeppe is lying on a dungheap in his old peasant clothes. He wakes and calls out.]

JEPPE. Hey, Sectary, Valet, Lackeys! another gla.s.s of pork-wine! [He looks about him, rubs his eyes as before, feels his head, and finds his old broad-brimmed hat on it; rubs his eyes again, turns the hat over and over, looks at his clothes, recognizes himself again, and begins to talk.] How long was Abraham in paradise? Now, alas, I recognize everything again--my bed, my jacket, my old cuckold-hat, myself; this is different, Jeppe, from drinking pork-wine out of a gilt-edged gla.s.s, and sitting at a table with lackeys and a sectary behind my chair. Good fortune, worse luck, never lasts very long.

Oh, that I, who such a short time ago was "my lord," should now find myself in such a miserable plight, with my fine bed turned into a dungheap, my gold-embroidered cap changed into my old cuckold-hat, my lackeys into pigs, and I myself from "my lord" to a wretched peasant once more! I thought when I woke up again I should find my fingers covered with gold rings, but, saving your presence, they're covered with something very different. I thought I should be calling servants to account, but now I must get my back ready for my home-coming, when I shall have to give an account of my own doings.

I thought that when I woke up I should reach out and grasp a gla.s.s of pork-wine, but instead, to speak modestly, I get a handful of dung. Alas, Jeppe, your sojourn in paradise was pretty short, and your happiness came quickly to an end. But who knows that the same thing might not happen again if I were to lie down for a while? Oh, if it only would! Oh, if I could get back there again! [Lies down and goes to sleep.]

SCENE 2

[Enter Nille.]

NILLE. I wonder if anything has happened to him? What could it be?

Either the devil has taken him, or, what I fear more, he's sitting at an inn drinking up the money. I was a goose to trust the drunkard with twelve pence at once. But what do I see? Isn't that himself lying there in the filth and snoring? Oh, miserable mortal that I am, to have such a beast for a husband! Your back will pay dearly for this! [She steals up to him and gives him a whack on the rump with Master Eric.]

JEPPE. Hey, hey! Help, help! What is that? Where am I? Who am I? Who is beating me? and why? Hey!

NILLE. I'll teach you what it is soon enough. [Beats him and pulls his hair.]

JEPPE. Oh, dear Nille, don't beat me any more; you don't know all that has happened to me.

NILLE. Where have you been all this time, you guzzler? Where is the soap you were to buy?