Читать книгу Comedies by Holberg : Jeppe of the Hill, The Political Tinker, Erasmus Montanus - Ludvig Holberg - Страница 17

Table of Contents

(Enter Baron Nilus, Secretary, Valet, Eric, and another Lackey.)

BARON. It looks as if we were going to have a good harvest this year; see how thick that barley is growing.

SECRETARY. True, my lord, but that means that a barrel of barley won't bring more than five marks this year.

BARON. That makes no difference. The peasants are always better off in good seasons.

SECRETARY. I don't know how that may be, my lord, but the peasants always complain and ask for seed-corn, no matter whether the year is fruitful or not. When they have something, they drink so much the more. There is an inn-keeper who lives near here, called Jacob Shoemaker, who helps a good deal to keep the peasants poor; they say he puts salt in his ale to make them thirsty so they will drink more.

BARON. We shall have to drive the fellow out. But what is that lying in the road? It must be a dead man. One hears of nothing but misfortune nowadays. Run and see what it is, one of you!

LACKEY. That is Jeppe of the Hill, whose wife is such a terror. Get up, Jeppe! No, he wouldn't wake even if we pummelled him and pulled his hair.

BARON. Let him be, then. I want to play a little joke on him. You are usually full of ingenious ideas. Can't you think of something to divert me?

SECRETARY. I think it would be good fun to tie a paper collar round his neck, or else cut off his hair.

VALET. I think it would be more amusing to smear his face with ink and then send some one to see how his wife takes it when he comes home in that condition.

BARON. That's not bad. But what do you wager that Eric won't hit on something better still? Let's hear your suggestion, Eric.

ERIC. My idea is that we take off all his clothes and put him in my lord's best bed, and in the morning when he wakes, all of us treat him as if he were the lord of the domain, so he won't know how he has got so transformed. And when we have convinced him that he is the baron, we can get him drunk again, as he is now, and lay him on the same dunghill in his own old clothes. If all this is skilfully carried out, it will work wonderfully, and he will imagine that he had dreamt of his good fortune, or has actually been in paradise.

BARON. Eric, you're a big man and therefore you have big ideas. But what if we should wake him in the process?

ERIC. I'm sure we shalln't do that, my lord! for this same Jeppe is one of the heaviest sleepers in the whole district. Last year they tried setting off a rocket under his head, but when the rocket went off he never even stirred in his sleep.

BARON. Then let us do it. Drag him right off, put a fine shirt on him, and lay him in my best bed.