ALICE. [_Checks herself_] Did he say anything before the end came?
LIEUTENANT. Miss Judith's father spoke a few words only.
LIEUTENANT. He said: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!"
LIEUTENANT. Yes, Miss Judith's father was a good and noble man.
ALICE. Do you know what his last words were? No, you can never guess it. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!"
ALICE. I suppose he meant that he had always done right and died as one that had been wronged by life.
CURT. I am sure his funeral sermon will be fine.
ALICE. And plenty of flowers--from the non-commissioned officers.
ALICE. About a year ago he said something like this: "It looks to me as if life were a tremendous hoax played on all of us!"
CURT. Do you mean to imply that he was playing a hoax on us up to the very moment of death?
ALICE. No--but now, when he is dead, I feel a strange inclination to speak well of him.
LIEUTENANT. Miss Judith's father was a good and noble man.
CURT. "They know not what they do." How many times did I not ask you whether he knew what he was doing? And you didn't think he knew. Therefore, forgive him!
ALICE. Riddles! Riddles! But do you notice that there is peace in the house now? The wonderful peace of death. Wonderful as the solemn anxiety that surrounds the coming of a child into the world. I hear the silence--and on the floor I see the traces of the easy-chair that carried him away--And I feel that now my own life is ended, and I am starting on the road to dissolution! Do you know, it's queer, but those simple words of the Lieutenant--and his is a simple mind--they pursue me, but now they have become serious. My husband, my youth's beloved--yes, perhaps you laugh!--he _was_ a good and noble man--nevertheless!
CURT. Nevertheless? And a brave one--as he fought for his own and his family's existence!
ALICE. What worries! What humiliations! Which he wiped out--in order to pass on!
CURT. He was one who had been passed by! And that is to say much! Alice, go in there!
ALICE. No, I cannot do it! For while we have been talking here, the image of him as he was in his younger years has come back to me--I have seen him, I see him--now, as when he was only twenty--I must have loved that man!