the table, and eats and drinks with him. He becomes jealous of the
Secretary.] You'll get into trouble, if you look at her like that.
[Whenever he looks at the Secretary, the Secretary takes his eyes
off the woman and gazes at the floor. Jeppe sings an old love-ballad
as he sits at the table with her. He orders a polka to be played and
dances with her, but he is so drunk that he falls down three times,
and finally lies where he falls and goes to sleep.]



SCENE 4


(Enter the Baron and Eric.)

BARON. He is sound asleep. Now we have played our game, but we have
nearly been made the bigger fools ourselves, for he intended to
tyrannize over us, so that we must either have spoiled our trick, or
else have let ourselves be mauled by the rude yokel, from whose
conduct one can learn how haughty and overbearing such people become
when they suddenly rise from the mire to a station of worth and
honor. If I had, in an unlucky moment, impersonated a secretary
myself, I might have got a thrashing, and the whole affair would
have been a failure, for people would have laughed more at me than
at the peasant. We had better let him sleep awhile before we put him
back into his dirty farm clothes again.

ERIC. Why, my lord, he is sleeping like a log; look, I can pound him
and he doesn't feel it.