The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 94

COUNT

Your son? You've got a son?

PRINCE

I have.

COUNT

Well, did you ever...! You have got a young man who is your son--or rather, you have got a son who is a young man. How old?

PRINCE

Seventeen.

COUNT

Seventeen! And you haven't told me before! No, Egon ... Egon! And tell me ... seventeen...? My dear chap, then your wife was still alive....

PRINCE

Yes, my wife was still alive at the time. You see, Arpad, one gets mixed up in all sorts of strange affairs.

COUNT

'Pon my soul, so it seems!

PRINCE

And thus, one fine day, you find yourself having a son of seventeen with whom you go traveling.

COUNT

So it's with him you are going away?

PRINCE

I am taking that liberty.

COUNT

No, I couldn't possibly tell you.... Why, he has got a son of seventeen!... (_Suddenly he grasps the hand of the Prince, and then puts his arms about him_) And if I may ask ... the mother of that young gentleman, your son ... how it happens ... as you have started telling me....

PRINCE

She's dead long ago. Died a couple of weeks after he was born. A mere slip of a girl.

COUNT

Of the common people?

PRINCE

Oh, of course. But a charming creature. I may as well tell you everything about it. That is, as far as I can recall it myself. The whole story seems like a dream. And if it were not for the boy....

COUNT

And all that you tell me only now! To-day only--just before the boy is coming here!

PRINCE

You never can tell how a thing like that may be received.

COUNT

Tut, tut! Received, you say...? Did you believe perhaps ... I'm something of a philosopher myself, after all.... And you call yourself a friend of mine!

PRINCE

Not a soul has known it--not a single soul in the whole world.

COUNT

But you might have told me. Really, I don't see how you could.... Come now, it wasn't quite nice.

PRINCE

I wanted to wait and see how the boy developed. You never can tell....

COUNT

Of course, with a mixed pedigree like that.... But you seem rea.s.sured now?

PRINCE

Oh, yes, he's a fine fellow.

COUNT (_embracing him again_)

And where has he been living until now?

PRINCE

His earliest years were spent a good way from Vienna--in the Tirol.

COUNT

With peasants?