ow that our marriage is based, above all else, on
absolute frankness?

ALBERT

Many have good intentions, but their courage often deserts them at the
critical moment.

AMADEUS

We have never yet kept anything hidden from each other.

ALBERT

Because so far you have had nothing to confess.

AMADEUS

Oh, a great deal, perhaps, which other people keep to themselves. Our
common life has not been without its complications. We have had to be
parted from each other for months at a time. I have had to rehearse
in private with other singers than Philine, and (_with an air of
superiority_) other men than Prince Sigismund must have discovered that
Cecilia is pretty.

ALBERT

I haven't said a word about Cecilia.

AMADEUS

And besides, it would be quite hopeless for Cecilia or me to keep any
secrets. We know each other too well--I don't think two people ever
existed who understood each other so completely as we do.

ALBERT

I can imagine a point where the understanding would have to end, and
everything else with it.

AMADEUS

Everything else maybe--but not the understanding.

ALBERT

Oh, well! If nothing is left but the understanding, that means the
beginning of the end.

AMADEUS

Those are--chances that every human being must resign himself to take.

ALBERT

You don't talk like one who has resigned himself, however, but like one
who has made up his mind.

AMADEUS

Who can be perfectly sure of himself or of anybody else? We two, at any
rate, are not challenging fate by feeling too secure.

ALBERT

Oh, when it comes to that, my dear fellow--fate always regards itself
challenged--by doubt no less than by confidence.

AMADEUS

To be safe against any surprise brings a certain sense of tranquillity
anyhow.

ALBERT

A little more tranquillity would produce a decision to avoid anything
that might endanger an assured happiness.

AMADEUS

Do you think anything is to be won by that kind of avoidance? Don't you
feel rather, that the worst and most dangerous of all falsehoods is to
resist temptation with a soul full of longing for it? And that it is
easier to go unscathed through adventures than through desires?

ALBERT

Adventures...! Is it actually necessary, then, to live through them? A
painter who has risen above pot-boiling, and who has left the follies
of youth behind him, can be satisfied with a single model for all the
figures that are created out of his dreams--and one who knows how