THE GRAND DUCHESS. Don't call me prisoner, General Strammfest. My
grandmother dandled you on her knee.
STRAMMFEST [bursting into tears]. O God, yes. Believe me, my heart is
what it was then.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Your brain also is what it was then. I will not be
addressed by you as prisoner.
STRAMMFEST. I may not, for your own sake, call you by your rightful and
most sacred titles. What am I to call you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. The Revolution has made us comrades. Call me comrade.
STRAMMFEST. I had rather die.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Then call me Annajanska; and I will call you Peter
Piper, as grandmamma did.
STRAMMFEST [painfully agitated]. Schneidekind, you must speak to her: I
cannot--[he breaks down.]
SCHNEIDEKIND [officially]. The Republic of Beotia has been compelled
to confine the Panjandrum and his family, for their own safety, within
certain bounds. You have broken those bounds.
STRAMMFEST [taking the word from him]. You are I must say it--a
prisoner. What am I to do with you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. You should have thought of that before you arrested
me.
STRAMMFEST. Come, come, prisoner! do you know what will happen to you if
you compel me to take a sterner tone with you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. No. But I know what will happen to you.
STRAMAIFEST. Pray what, prisoner?
THE GLAND DUCHESS. Clergyman's sore throat.
Schneidekind splutters; drops a paper: and conceals his laughter under
the table.
STRAMMFEST [thunderously]. Lieutenant Schneidekind.
SCHNEIDEKIND [in a stifled voice]. Yes, Sir. [The table vibrates
visibly.]
STRAMMFEST. Come out of it, you fool: you're upsetting the ink.
Schneidekind emerges, red in the face with suppressed mirth.
STRAMMFEST. Why don't you laugh? Don't you appreciate Her Imperial
Highness's joke?
SCHNEIDEKIND [suddenly becoming solemn]. I don't want to, sir.
STRAMMFEST. Laugh at once, sir. I order you to laugh.
SCHNEIDEKIND [with a touch of temper]. I really can't, sir. [He sits
down decisively.]
STRAMMFEST [growling at him]. Yah! [He turns impressively to the Grand
Duchess.] Your Imperial Highness desires me to address you as comrade?
THE GRAND DUCHESS [rising and waving a red handkerchief]. Long live the
Revolution, comrade!
STRAMMFEST [rising and saluting]. Proletarians of all lands, unite.
Lieutenant Schneidekind, you will rise and sing the Marseillaise.
SCHNEIDEKIND [rising]. But I cannot, sir. I have no voice, no ear.
STRAMMFEST. Then sit down; and bury your shame in your typewriter.
[Schneidekind sits down.] Comrade Annajanska, you have eloped with a
young officer.
THE GRAND DUCHESS [astounded]. General Strammfest, you lie.
STRAMMFEST. Denial, comrade, is useless. It is through that officer
that your movements have been traced. [The Grand Duchess is suddenly
enlightened, and seems amused. Strammfest continues an a forensic
manner.] He joined you at the Golden Anchor in Hakonsburg. You gave
us the slip there; but the officer was traced to Potterdam, where you
rejoined him and went alone to Premsylople. What have you done with that
unhappy young man? Where is he?
THE GRAND DUCHESS [pretending to whisper an important secret]. Where he
has always been.
STRAMMFEST [eagerly]. Where is that?
THE GRAND DUCHESS [impetuously]. In your imagination. I came alone. I
am alone. Hundreds of officers travel every day from Hakonsburg to
Potterdam. What do I know about them?
STRAMMFEST. They travel in khaki. They do not travel in full dress court
uniform as this man did.
SCHNEIDEKIND. Only officers who are eloping with grand duchesses wear
court uniform: otherwise the grand duchesses could not be seen with
them.
STRAMMFEST. Hold your tongue. [Schneidekind, in high dudgeon, folds his
arms and retires from the conversation. The General returns to his paper
and to his examination of the Grand Duchess.] This officer travelled
with your passport. What have you to say to that?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Bosh! How could a man travel with a woman's passport?
STRAMMFEST. It is quite simple, as you very well know. A dozen
travellers arrive at the boundary. The official collects their
passports. He counts twelve persons; then counts the passports. If there
are twelve, he is satisfied.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Then how do you know that one of the passports was
mine?
STRAMMFEST. A waiter at the Potterdam Hotel looked at the officer's
passport when he was in his bath. It was your passport.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Stuff! Why did he not have me arrested?
STRAMMFEST. When the waiter returned to the hotel with the police the
officer had vanished; and you were there with your own passport. They
knouted him.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh! Strammfest, send these men away. I must speak to
you alone.
STRAMMFEST [rising in horror]. No: this is the last straw: I cannot
consent. It is impossible, utterly, eternally impossible, that a
daughter of the Imperial House should speak to any one alone, were it
even her own husband.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. You forget that there is an exception. She may speak
to a child alone. [She rises.] Strammfest, you have been dandled on my
grandmother's knee. By that gracious action the dowager Panjandrina made
you a child forever. So did Nature, by the way. I order you to speak to
me alone. Do you hear? I order you. For seven hundred years no member of
your family has ever disobeyed an order from a member of mine. Will you
disobey me?
STRAMMFEST. There is an alternative to obedience. The dead cannot
disobey. [He takes out his pistol and places the muzzle against his
temple.]