cond Housemaid has only one leg.

Lady S.: (suspiciously) How do you know that?

King: Common report. I give you my honor.

Lady S.: It may be so. I further read--and the statement is
vouched
for by no less an authority that Mephistopheles
Minor--that
your Majesty indulges in a bath of hot rum-punch every
morning. I trust I do not lay myself open to the charge
of
displaying an indelicate curiosity as to the mysteries of
the royal dressing-room when I ask if there is any
founda-
tion for this statement?

King: None whatever. When our medical adviser exhibits
rum-punch
it is as a draught, not as a fomentation. As to our
bath,
our valet plays the garden hose upon us every morning.

Lady S.: (shocked) Oh, pray--pray spare me these unseemly
details.
Well, you are a Despot--have you taken steps to slay this
scribbler?

King: Well, no--I have not gone so far as that. After all,
it's
the poor devil's living, you know.

Lady S.: It is the poor devil's living that surprises me. If this
man lies, there is no recognized punishment that is
suffi-
ciently terrible for him.

King: That's precisely it. I--I am waiting until a punishment
is
discovered that will exactly meet the enormity of the
case.
I am in constant communication with the Mikado of Japan,
who
is a leading authority on such points; and, moreover, I
have
the ground plans and sectional elevations of several
capital
punishments in my desk at this moment. Oh, Lady Sophy,
as
you are powerful, be merciful!

DUET -- King and Lady Sophy.

King: Subjected to your heavenly gaze
(Poetical phrase),
My brain is turned completely.
Observe me now
No monarch I vow,
Was ever so afflicted!

Lady S: I'm pleased with that poetical phrase,
"A heavenly gaze,"
But though you put it neatly,
Say what you will,
These paragraphs still
Remain uncontradicted.