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 [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 ******, 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.]
