The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 52

Oh, I haven't got into anything in particular. I am a little nervous.

That's all.

ALBERT

Can't you see, Amadeus, how you have to force yourself in order to use this evasion toward me, who, of course, has no right whatever to demand any frankness? Can't you see how you are wasting a part of your mental energy, so to speak, on this slight disingenuousness? No, dissimulation is utterly foreign to your nature, as I have always told you. If you should ever get to the point where you had to deceive one who was near and dear to you, that would be the end of you.

AMADEUS

Your worry is quite superfluous! Haven't you known us long enough--me and Cecilia--to know 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 a.s.sured 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 to live may have all the adventures he could ever desire within the peaceful precincts of his own home. He can experience them just as fully as anybody else, but without waste of time, without unpleasantness, without danger. And if he only possess a little imagination, his wife may bear him nothing but illegitimate children without being at all aware of it.

AMADEUS

It's an open question whether you have the right to force such a part on anybody whom you respect.

ALBERT

It is not wise to let people know what they mean to you. I have put this thought into an aphorism:

If you grasp me, you rasp me; If I know you, I own you.

MARIE (_entering from the garden with little Peter_)

Peter wants me absolutely to come in. I wanted to wait for Cecilia in the garden.

AMADEUS

How are you, Marie?

MARIE

I'm not disturbing you, I hope?