This page needs to be proofread.
PEER
- O'er all the world.
MONSIEUR BALLON
- But how, friend-?
PEER By the might of gold!
- That plan is not at all a new one;
- it's been the soul of my career.
- Even as a boy, I swept in dreams
- far o'er the ocean on a cloud.
- I soared with train and golden scabbard,-
- and flopped down on all-fours again.
- But still my goal, my friends, stood fast.-
- There is a text, or else a saying,
- somewhere, I don't remember where,
- that if you gained the whole wide world,
- but lost yourself, your gain were but
- a garland on a cloven skull.
- That is the text-or something like it;
- and that remark is sober truth.
VON EBERKOPF
- But what then is the Gyntish Self?
PEER
- The world behind my forehead's arch,
- in force of which I'm no one else
- than I, no more than God's the Devil.
TRUMPETERSTRALE
- I understand now where you're aiming!
MONSIEUR BALLON
- Thinker sublime!
VON EB
