>>91335004RAT. (aside to CERESBERG). What are you driving at? Speak plainer.
CERES. Hush! hush! I know not what sort of a notion you and I have of liberty, that we should toil under the yoke like bullocks, while we are making such wonderful fine speeches about independence. I like it not.
SWITZER (to GRIMMIKO). What crotchet has that swaggering booby got in his numskull, I wonder?
RAT. (aside to CERESBERG). Is it the CEO you mean?—
CERES. Hush! I tell you; hush! He has got his eavesdroppers all around us. CEO, did you say? Who made him CEO over us? Has he not, in fact, usurped that title, which by right belongs to me? What? Is it for this that we stake our lives—that we endure all the splenetic caprices of fortunes—that we may in the end congratulate ourselves upon being the serfs of a slave? Serfs! When we might be princes? By heaven! Rattmann, I could never brook it.
SWITZER (overhearing him—to the others). Yes—there's a hero for you! He is just the man to do mighty execution upon frogs with stones. The very breath of his nostrils, when he sneezes, would blow you through the eye of a needle.
CERES. (to RATTMANN). Yes—and for years I have been intent upon it. There must be an alteration, Rattmann. If you are the man I always took you for—Rattmann! He is missing—he is almost given up—Rattmann— methinks his hour is come. What? does not the color so much as mount to your cheek when you hear the chimes of liberty ringing in your ears? Have you not courage enough to take the hint?
RAT. Ha! Satan! What bait art thou spreading for my soul?
CERES. Does it take? Good! then follow me! I have marked in what direction he slunk off. Come along! a brace of pistols seldom fail; and then—we shall be the first to strangle sucking babes. (He endeavors to draw him of.)
SWITZER (enraged, draws his sword). Ha! caitiff! I have overheard you! You remind me, at the right moment, of the Bohemian forest! Were not you the coward that began to quail when the cry arose, "the enemy is coming!" I then swore by my soul—(They fight, CERESBERG is killed.) To the devil with thee, assassin!
HOLOS (in agitation). Murder! murder!—Switzer!—Ceresberg!— Part them!
SWITZER (throwing the sword on the body). There let him rot! Be still, my comrades! Don't let such a trifle disturb you. The brute has always been inveterate against the CEO and has not a single scar on his whole body. Once more, be still. Ha, the scoundrel! He would stab a man behind his back—skulk and murder! Is it for this that the hot sweat has poured down us in streams? that we may sneak out of the world at last like contemptible wretches? The brute! Is it for this that we have lived in fire and brimstone? To perish at last like rats?
GRIMM. But what the devil, comrade, were you after? What were you quarreling about? The CEO will be furious.
SWITZER. Be that on my head. And you, wretch (to RATTMANN) you were his accomplice, you! Get out of my sight!
