The Creditor (Gustav)
Gustav says
Do you remember how we met for the first time? You were such an ethereal little thing, a little slate on which your parents and governess had scratched some wretched scrawl, which I had to rub out afterwards, and then I wrote a new text on it, according to what I thought right, till it seemed to you that the slate was filled with writing. That’s why, do you see, I shouldn’t like to be in your husband’s place -no, that’s his business. But that’s why meeting you has an especial fascination for me. We hit it off together so perfectly, and when I sit down here and chat with you it’s just as though I were uncorking bottles of old wine which I myself have bottled. The wine which is served to me is my own, but it has mellowed. And now that I intend to marry again, I have made a very careful choice of a young girl whom I can train according to my own ideas. For woman is man’s child, don’t you know; if she isn’t his child, then he becomes hers, and that means that the world is turned upside down.