15
Countess: You have......
Prince: Probably he will bear my name tomorrow. I will
Of course, to my old
introduce him wherever I like to.
fried, the Count, your father. If you don’t want to see
the young man, you had better retire to your room during
his visit.
Countess: Do you believe that I think your manner very
appropriate?
Prince: Just as little as your bad humor.
Countess: Bad humor? I in bad humor? You will allow me
to think your idea in bad laste? For the rest my humor
is just as good as usual.
Only just
Prince: I don’t question your usual good humor.
now...... For the rest, I'm well informed, that you have
known how to reconciler yourself to your illfate. Just as
I have learned to put up with mine, which was perhaps quite
as painful.
Countess: What? What did you?... Not everybody can be
fate
promoto to a ministry......Oh, this remark refers perhaps
to the honour Your Highness intended to confer on me, by
acking me ten years ago, after the death of your late con-
sort, to be your wife?
Prince: And seven years ago, too, if you’ll remember kindly,
I have never given you oc-
Countess: Oh, yes, I remember.
casion to doubt my good memory.
Prince: And I hope, Mizzi, you never supposed that I wanted
to atone for something like a sin. I asked you to become my
life, just because I was fully persuaded that only with you
could I find real happiness.
Countess: Real happiness- You might have been mistaken.
Prince: I believe myself, I would have been mistaken then.
Perhaps even seven years ago,
Ten years ago it was too soon,
not today.
Countess: Today as well, my dear Prince. It is your bad luck,
never to have understood me, Not when I loved you, Not, when
I bated you. Not through the long period you were indifferent
to me.
I know more about you than
Prince: I always knew you, Mizzi.
you suppose. For instance, I know rather well that you used
these seventeen years to a better purpose than keeping for a
man, who might not have been altogether worthy of you. Yes,
I even know that you have had the caprice to live through a
few more disillsionments after that first one.