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JEPPE. Where is my bailiff?

VALET. He is waiting outside.

JEPPE. Tell him to come in immediately.

[Enter the Bailiff in a coat with silver buttons and a sword-belt over his shoulder.]

BAILIFF. Has his lordship any orders?

JEPPE. Only that you are to be hanged.

BAILIFF. I have surely done no wrong, my lord! Why should I be hanged?

JEPPE. Are you not the bailiff?

BAILIFF. Yes, indeed, your lordship.

JEPPE. And yet you ask why you should be hanged?

BAILIFF. I have served your lordship so honestly and faithfully and have been so diligent in my office that your lordship has always praised me more than any other of his servants.

JEPPE. Indeed, you have been diligent in your office, as your solid silver buttons 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 buttons, 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 damned 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 noblemen and the noblemen 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.