Baron Raff.] Foolish boy! He will be sent into exile, or worse, if he is not careful.
baron raff
Yes. What a mistake it is to be sincere!
·56· prince petrovitch
The only folly you have never committed, Baron.
baron raff
One has only one head, you know, Prince.
prince paul
My dear Baron, your head is the last thing any one would wish to take from you. [Pulls out snuffbox and offers it to Prince Petrovitch.]
prince petrovitch
Thanks, Prince! Thanks!
prince paul
Very delicate, isn’t it? I get it direct from Paris. But under this vulgar Republic everything has degenerated over there. “Cotelettes à, [E: à] l’impériale” vanished, of course, with the Bourbon, and omelettes went out with the Orleanists. La belle France is entirely ruined, Prince, through bad morals and worse cookery. [Enter the Marquis de Poivrard.] Ah! Marquis. I trust Madame la Marquise is quite well.
marquis de p.
You ought to know better than I do, Prince Paul; you see more of her.
·57· prince paul
[Bowing.] Perhaps I see more in her, Marquis. Your wife is really a charming woman, so full of esprit, and so satirical too; she talks continually of you when we are together.
prince petrovitch
[Looking at the clock.] His Majesty is a little late to-day, is he not?
prince paul
What has happened to you, my dear Petrovitch? you seem quite out of sorts. You haven’t quarrelled with your cook, I hope? What a tragedy that would be for you; you would lose all your friends.
prince petrovitch
I fear I wouldn’t be so fortunate as that. You forget I would still have my purse. But you are wrong for once; my chef and I are on excellent terms.
prince paul
Then your creditors or Mademoiselle Vera Sabouroff have been writing to you? I find both of them such excellent correspondents. But really you needn’t be alarmed. I find the most violent proclamations from the Executive Committee, as they call it, left all over my house. ·58· I never read them; they are so badly spelt as a rule.
prince petrovitch
Wrong again, Prince; the Nihilists leave me alone for some reason or other.
prince paul
[Aside.] Ah! true. I forgot. Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
prince petrovitch
I am bored with life, Prince. Since the opera season ended I have been a perpetual martyr to ennui.
prince paul
The maladie du siècle! You want a new excitement, Prince. Let me see—you have been married twice already; suppose you try—falling in love, for once.
baron raff
Prince, I have been thinking a good deal lately—
prince paul
[Interrupting.] You surprise me very much, Baron.
·59· baron raff
I cannot understand your nature.
prince paul
[Smiling.] If my nature had been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world.
count r.
There seems to be nothing in life about which you would not jest.
prince paul
Ah! my dear Count, life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
czarevitch
[Coming back from the window.] I don’t think Prince Paul’s nature is such a mystery. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone, or experiencing a new sensation.
prince paul
Parbleu! I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
·60· czarevitch
[Bitterly.] If to have enemies is a measure of greatness, then you must be a Colossus, indeed, Prince.
prince paul
Yes, I know I’m the most hated man in Russia, except your father, except your father, of course, Prince. He doesn’t seem to like it much, by the way, but I do, I assure you. [Bitterly.] I love to drive through the streets and see how the canaille scowl at me from every corner. It makes me feel I am a power in Russia; one man against a hundred millions! Besides, I have no ambition to be a popular hero, to be crowned with laurels one year and pelted with stones the next; I prefer dying peaceably in my own bed.
czarevitch
And after death?
prince paul
[Shrugging his shoulders.] Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.
czarevitch
Do you never think of the people and their rights?
·61· prince paul
The people and their rights bore me. I am sick of both. In these modern days to be vulgar, illiterate, common and vicious, seems to give a man a marvellous infinity of rights that his honest fathers never dreamed of. Believe me, Prince, in good democracy every man should be an aristocrat; but these people in Russia who seek to thrust us out are no better than the animals in one’s preserves, and made to be shot at, most of them.
czarevitch
[Excitedly.] If they are common, illiterate, vulgar, no better than the beasts of the field, who made them so?
[Enter Aide-de-Camp.]
aide-de-camp
His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor! [Prince Paul looks at the Czarevitch, and smiles.]
[Enter the Czar, surrounded by his guard.]
