sphemies. All the king's
horses and all the king's men cannot set up my father's throne again. If
they could, you would have done it, would you not?

STRAMMFEST. God knows I would!

THE GRAND DUCHESS. You really mean that? You would keep the people in
their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons
again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising
sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And
all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror
a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few
orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in
unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell
into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid,
so heartless?

STRAMMFEST. You must be mad to think of royalty in such a way. I never
yawned at court. The dogs yawned; but that was because they were dogs:
they had no imagination, no ideals, no sense of honor and dignity to
sustain them.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. My poor Strammfest: you were not often enough at
court to tire of it. You were mostly soldiering; and when you came home
to have a new order pinned on your breast, your happiness came through
looking at my father and mother and at me, and adoring us. Was that not
so?

STRAMMFEST. Do YOU reproach me with it? I am not ashamed of it.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, it was all very well for you, Strammfest. But
think of me, of me! standing there for you to gape at, and knowing that
I was no goddess, but only a girl like any other girl! It was cruelty to
animals: you could have stuck up a wax doll or a golden calf to worship;
it would not have been bored.

STRAMMFEST. Stop; or I shall renounce my allegiance to you. I have had
women flogged for such seditious chatter as this.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not provoke me to send a bullet through your head
for reminding me of it.

STRAMMFEST. You always had low tastes. You are no true daughter of the
Panjandrums: you are a changeling, thrust into the Panjandrina's bed by
some profligate nurse. I have heard stories of your childhood: of how--

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Ha, ha! Yes: they took me to the circus when I was a
child. It was my first moment of happiness, my first glimpse of heaven.
I ran away and joined the troupe. They caught me and dragged me back to
my gilded cage; but I had tasted freedom; and they never could make m