e edge of the paper he is reading]. Hold
your tongue.

THE GRAND DUCHESS [blazing]. Me, or the soldier?

STRAMMFEST [horrified]. The soldier, madam.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Tell him to let go.

STRAMMFEST. Release the lady.

The soldiers take their hands off her. One of them wipes his fevered
brow. The other sucks his wrist.

SCHNEIDKIND [fiercely]. 'ttention!

The two soldiers sit up stiffly.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, let the poor man suck his wrist. It may be
poisoned. I bit it.

STRAMMFEST [shocked]. You bit a common soldier!

GRAND DUCHESS. Well, I offered to cauterize it with the poker in the
office stove. But he was afraid. What more could I do?

SCHNEIDEKIND. Why did you bite him, prisoner?

THE GRAND DUCHESS. He would not let go.

STRAMMFEST. Did he let go when you bit him?

THE GRAND DUCHESS. No. [Patting the soldier on the back]. You should
give the man a cross for his devotion. I could not go on eating him; so
I brought him along with me.

STRAMMFEST. Prisoner--

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 [thun