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ne.-
- What tempted me into that galley at all?
- It's best, in the long run, to live as a Christian,
- to put away peacock-like ostentation,
- to base all one's dealings on law and morality,
- to be ever oneself, and to earn at the last
- speech at one's grave-side, and wreaths on one's coffin.
- [Walks a few steps.]
- The hussy;-she was on the very verge
- of turning my head clean topsy-turvy.
- May I be a troll if I understand
- what it was that dazed and bemused me so.
- Well; it's well that's done: had the joke been carried
- but one step on, I'd have looked absurd.-
- I have erred;-but at least it's a consolation
- that my error was due to the false situation.
- It wasn't my personal self that fell.
- 'Twas in fact this prophetical way of life,
- so utterly lacking the salt of activity,
- that took its revenge in these qualms of bad taste.
- It's a sorry business this prophetising!
- One's office compels one to walk in a mist;
- in playing the prophet, you throw up the game
- the moment you act like a rational being.
- In so far I've done what the occasion demanded,
- in the mere fact of paying my court to that goose.
- But, nevertheless-
- [Bursts out laughing.]
- Hm, to think of it now!
- To try to make time stop by jigging and dancing,
- and to cope with the current by capering and prancing!
- To thrum on the lute-strings, to fondle and sigh,
- and end, like a rooster,-by getting well plucked!
- Such conduct is truly prophetic frenzy.-