Part 7 (2/2)

That's a lie. My mamma never got married at all, and I'm here just the same. You see me, don't you?

BRIGELLA.

True; I ought to have seen at the first glance that you were a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

TRUFFALDINO.

I am not a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I am a child of love. All geniuses are children of love.

BRIGELLA.

But all children of love are not geniuses. You, for instance.

TRUFFALDINO.

I? I have risen in the world. I am Chief-- Chief--Chief--Administrator of the Harem. You understand. (Music is heard.) Anyhow, you go to the devil now and pay your customary a.s.siduous attention to your pages. His Sublime Majesty the Emperor approaches....

SCENE VIII

(_To the strains of music enter from the left the Imperial Guards, thereupon the eight doctors, behind them_ PANTALONE, TARTAGLIA, _finally_ ALTOUM, _at whose entrance all prostrate themselves, touching the floor with their brows_. ALTOUM _seats himself on his throne_. PANTALONE _and_ TARTAGLIA _stand near him_.

_The doctors sink on to their cus.h.i.+ons.

The music ceases._)

ALTOUM.

How long, ye faithful, shall this torture last?

Scarcely have we with seeming reverence Mourned the poor Prince of Samarkand, mine eyes Have scarcely dried their tears, but a new victim, New sorrow comes. O cruel daughter, born To be a curse to me! But what avails To curse the day when by the highest G.o.d I swore that edict! For I cannot break My oath; I cannot touch my daughter's heart; I cannot frighten those who come to woo.

Which man of you can tell me what to do?

PANTALONE.

My dearest Majesty, some other Counsellor must advise you in this case. In my home in Venice, Heaven knows, I never heard of such laws. In my home there are never any edicts of that sort. In my home princes don't fall in love with a medallion, and then, out of sheer love for the original, go hawking their heads about.

In my home in Venice there never was a girl who refused a man when he offered, like this Princess Turandot here. Heaven knows, in my home such things don't happen even in dreams!

Before I had the ill-luck to have to run away from Venice, and before I had the unmerited good fortune to be appointed your Majesty's Prime Minister, I had never heard anything about China, except that you had to be careful not to smash it; and Heaven knows it kind of knocks me on the head that in this part of the world there should be such obsolete customs and such obsolete oaths and such obsolete males and females as there are here in your country, Heaven knows.

And if I were to tell the story in my home in Venice, they would say: ”Shut up, you bounder!

Tell that to the marines!” They'd laugh in my face, I tell you, Heaven knows!

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