# Princess Bebé/Act 4

An open-air restaurant at night. The Englishman is seated at a table, drinking beer. Margot and Biondinetta enter.
Biondinetta. I told you he wasn't here. He won't come to-night, either. He tells me that he is coming so that I won't look for him where I know he is, where I am going some night to dig a knife into his heart, if he deceives me.
Margot. You talk like a fool. Kill a man, eh? Don't you do it, and don't you kill yourself for him, either. He'll be back after you some day soon enough, when you don't want it.
Biondinetta. No, he'll never come back. He has money now. Didn't you see? Do you know where he gets all his money?
Margot. Of course I do! Do you suppose I'd kill mine for that? When mine bothers me is when he hasn't any money. When he has, I never ask him where he gets it. Do they ask us?
Biondinetta. But I don't love anybody but him, and he knows it.
Margot. And he loves you; the boy has to live. You ought to be glad of it; it isn't right that you should be the only one who works. Come on, now, and dance. If he thinks you've forgotten him and are in love with some one else, he'll come back fast enough. He'll get tired, like all the rest. You can find people who are willing to hand out a hundred francs, five hundred francs, a thousand francs—but it's only once, because they happen to feel like it, but when it comes to five or ten francs every day, or whatever you've got, and if ​you haven't got it you dig it up out of the ground, so that they shan't go without—a man can't have that unless he's got somebody to love him, like you love him, and he'll never find it anywhere else either. Come on and dance.
Biondinetta. No, I'm not going. I came here to meet him, and I'm not going away; I mean to look for him, and I'll look for him, even if he kills me.
Margot. No, you won't. What? Go there? He is with swells now, you know that. They don't want any scenes. They know how to take care of themselves when they are having a good time, you'd better believe it.
Biondinetta. Yes, I know. She's a fine lady and they're grand people, but rotten with sin. They are worse than we are, only more respectable.
Margot. That's what you get for having a boy that's good-looking. Why didn't I take this fellow?
Biondinetta. Fred, the Englishman? You'd have made a big mistake. He's a sot. He'd march off for a bock with the first one who happened along. I've seen him do it. You are happy now; yours loves you.
Margot. Yes, he's so refined; he knows how to treat me. He got into a nasty mess that time I was sick in Paris, so that I shouldn't want for anything—six months in the penitentiary was what they gave him, though nobody would appear against him, not even the man who was wounded; it was safer for him to shut up, and he knew it. Hello! Another quadrille. Come on, we ought to dance. M. Boniface will be angry if we don't. He says unless we dance and get people to spend money in the restaurant, it isn't worth his while to give us tickets. Help me out. There's a shipload of Italian sailors in to-night; you talk their lingo. They've money after the voyage—plenty of it. Come on and dance.
​Biondinetta. I'll tell them whatever you want; but not a word on my own account.
Englishman. My darling, will you buy me a bock?
Margot. You know where you can get a bock that has diamonds in it, when you want it.
Englishman. Diamonds? I don't believe in diamonds any more.
Margot. No, I suppose you've drunk them all up by this time.
Englishman. [Pointing to the beer] This doesn't play me the tricks that you do. I am not myself now—I don't feel well; I am sick. Lend me five francs, Margot; have a heart with poor Fred.
Margot. Five francs? You can earn them easier than we can.
Englishman. Don't you want to lend them to me? I'll find your man, then, and kill him. I am stronger than he is.
Margot. Get out! Let go of me, will you? Don't be so rough.
Englishman. Give me five francs!
Margot. Let go!
Biondinetta. I'll scream if you don't.
Margot. Don't you do it. Then the police will come, and jail us all. I can handle him myself; he's no good. Now get out!
Englishman. All this fuss over five francs! You don't treat me right. But I'll get even with you; you'll be sorry.
Margot. Come on and dance.
The Little Marquis and Cosi-Cosi enter.
Little Marquis. What is he doing to you?
Biondinetta. Ah, so you're here, are you? I never expected it.
​Little Marquis. Why not? I told you I was coming, and here I am. I suppose I am not a man of my word?
Biondinetta. Your word? Well, where have you been then?
Little Marquis. That's it! The first question you ask a man is where he has been; afterward you inquire for his health, which doesn't matter. I might have killed myself for all you care—have been dead.
Biondinetta. Killed yourself? Not much!
Little Marquis. You don't believe it, eh? You tell her.
Cosi-Cosi. Yes, he might have killed himself. Easily.
Biondinetta. Honest?
Little Marquis. You think a man is made of stone. I can't stand these rows all the time. After last night—you can tell her. How did I feel?
Cosi-Cosi. Sick. He fell flat.
Margot. Don't you mind what he says. That's the game; they've fixed it up between them. Don't you see? What's that? Hold out your hand… Another ring?
Biondinetta. Who gave you that ring?
Little Marquis. It isn't mine; it's one I've got to sell.
Biondinetta. Who gave you that ring?
Little Marquis. Oh, I bought it! Will that do? Good! Now shut up. If it won't do, just as good, see? And shut up.
Cosi-Cosi. What was the Englishman putting over when we came in?
Margot. Oh, nothing! He's drunk.
Cosi-Cosi. He needs a sound thrashing, and I'm the man to give it to him.
Margot. Let him alone, will you?
Little Marquis. No, I am the one to do it; I'll show you.
​Margot. Go along!
Little Marquis. He'll wish I had. He'll not stick his nose in this place again. What is the matter with you?
Englishman. Do you want to fight? I don't fight over women. Sit down. Waiter!… bring a bock. Bring two bocks. Call over your friend.
Cosi-Cosi. I don't care to sit down.
Englishman. I tell you sit down. The first thing that gentlemen do when they meet is talk nice; then they take a drink. Then they fight—only they don't fight over women. You damn fools! We are good friends. Let's get down to business—serious business.
Margot. Are you going to sit there and listen to him?
Little Marquis. Why not? The man talks sense; it sounds reasonable.
Englishman. Tell them to get out. Our business is not for women; it's serious.
Biondinetta. But——
Little Marquis. Get out; leave us alone. Do you hear?
Biondinetta. Yes, listen to me. What business have you got to talk over with them? I know what your business is.
Englishman. Tell them to shut up, will you? Can't you shut up your own women?
Little Marquis. I told you to shut up and wait for us out there.
Margot. Oh, come along! They make me sick. They're always hot to fight for us, but that's before they begin. By the time they do, they are friends, and then they fight us—to a finish. Come on and dance. [Margot and Biondinetta go out.
Englishman. Waiter! Bring three bocks.
Princess Helena and Prince Stephen enter.
Princess Helena. The dance could not be more respect​able. We have been treated with the utmost consideration. If we had remained a few minutes longer, we should undoubtedly have found that it was our conduct that was incorrect, as it was at the Comte's villa.
Prince Stephen. We have failed to preserve our incognito. I heard our names whispered as we passed.
Princess Helena. Amusing, was it not? Those who recognized you said: "Prince Stephen of Suavia out for the night with a cocotte." Those who recognized me: "Princess Helena and her lover—or one of her lovers."
Prince Stephen. A great many recognized us both. I wonder what they thought?
Princess Helena. Probably that we were here out of curiosity, or for some improper purpose.
Prince Stephen. Well, are you satisfied? Shall we go?
Princess Helena. Have you repented of our adventure so soon?
Prince Stephen. I was not thinking of myself, but of you. The world will be full of this exploit to-morrow.
Princess Helena. You are more cowardly than I. You realize that you have made a mistake, but instead of pushing on, you retreat. You remind me of one of those fantastic peoples who overthrow a monarchy because it is tyrannical and establish a republic; then, because the republic does not bring them happiness, they promptly restore the monarchy. But that is not my way. If the republic proved a failure, I should declare for a state of anarchy, but I should never retreat. I am enchanted with this spot. This is life—to be here, to see everything, to shut one's eyes to nothing; to sympathize, to understand…
Prince Stephen. Everything? Perhaps that was what induced you to fall in love with Herr Rosmer. It was not the man, it was the opening out of a new vista of life.
​Princess Helena. Yes, it is true. He was the only person who brought to our Palace the atmosphere of another world, and of truths that were different from ours. His was a different environment. I had no choice when I loved him any more than the prisoner has a choice, whose one desire is to regain his liberty, and who flees by the first avenue which lies open, which leads to freedom and the outer air.
Prince Stephen. Instead of leading to freedom, you found, when you followed it, that you had merely changed prisons.
Princess Helena. Wholly to my disadvantage. It was never my privilege to meet a more persistent stickler for etiquette and every known form of propriety than Herr Rosmer. If you are perfectly frank with me—and with yourself—you must confess that your experience has been the same. You were as sadly mistaken as I in imagining that an unequal match was the most effective assertion of your individuality. We should have begun by living our new lives; then love would have come in due season.
Prince Stephen. Our experience reminds me of a story which was told me by one of the officers of my regiment, a young man of the most distinguished lineage in Suavia. He fell in love with a girl who lived in the same city, who belonged to the working classes, and to him the charm of their association lay in wandering about the humbler quarters of the city, arm in arm with his girl. They visited the obscurer cafés, they frequented the popular theatres—in a word, he became another person; he escaped from his environment, from the society in which he had always moved, from the obligations of the life which was official. But he soon noticed that the girl was always bored when she was in his company; she looked upon those places with which she had ​always been familiar with disgust. What she desired was to exhibit herself upon the fashionable promenades, to visit the principal restaurants, the theatres which were patronized by the aristocracy—in a word, the other life; and it was natural. What amused the one, bored the other. So, shortly after, my friend fell in love with a noble lady, of flawless birth, and then for the first time he was able to run about the lower quarters to his heart's content, and to visit all the vulgar theatres and disreputable cafés, because they all proved equally amusing to that noble lady, and so they were both always of one accord. I wonder if our experience has been the same?
Princess Helena. It has.
Prince Stephen. We do not live as abstractions in the world, as fragments of the ideal. We are something in ourselves, but the environment which surrounds us is much more than ourselves—it is the landscape in which we are figures. The scenery is half of the play, in life as upon the stage.
Princess Helena. Yes, there are times and places in which we might fall in love with the first person to present himself, without ever having seen him before, or stopping even to ask his name. I wonder: what are you thinking of now?
Prince Stephen. I was listening to that waltz. It is one of the memories of my life—a waltz that Elsa used to sing in the theatre.
Princess Helena. When she was still a popular favorite, a famous actress in your eyes, not merely a respectable woman to whom the mention of her triumphs as an artist gives offense. There is a waltz also in my life. Waltzes blend themselves so easily with the past, and remain in the memory even after years. Have you never noticed it? ​There is a quick movement in every waltz, joyous, triumphal, and then a hushed, subdued ritornello whose burden is slow and reluctant, sad as the memory of a joy that is past. When the lights are out and the dance is over, and we are alone in the silence of the soul, the echo of a waltz still lingers in our ears—the echo of a waltz that drops tears.
Prince Stephen. What is your favorite music?
Princess Helena. Do not inquire into my musical tastes; they are of deplorable vulgarity. Music appeals to me because of the words I associate with it, and so one air is as good as another. How empty a man's soul must be which is unable to provide words to any music! I am more exacting with poets, because they speak for themselves, and in their case I will tolerate no vulgarity.
Prince Stephen. Who is your favorite poet?
Princess Helena. Women feel very much toward poets as they do toward other men. They do not love the ones whom all the world admires. We single out one quality, perhaps, for our love and admiration amid a multitude of defects, or it may be that we love the very defects themselves, because then we know that our choice has been our own—it has been more truly ours.
Prince Stephen. Do you admire Shelley, the divine Shelley?
Princess Helena. I admire and love him. He was the universal lover.
Prince Stephen. Are you familiar with his life?
Princess Helena. It was wholly wonderful, more wonderful even than his verse. He persuaded his own wife to abet his elopement with Emilia Viviani. What marvellous power of suggestion that genius must have possessed, which was able to unite two women in a single love!
Prince Stephen. Do you remember his verses?
And then he adds:
Princess Helena. It is Gabriele d'Annunzio's "Hymn to Life":
[A pause.
What are you thinking of now?
Prince Stephen. I was thinking—what our life was at the Court of Suavia. What a wall of convention, of prejudices, and of jealousies hemmed us round! We lived there almost together, and yet we never knew each other at all. I always thought that you were a frivolous creature, wild ​and foolish. Even your love-affair appeared to me ridiculous, because I felt that if you had really been as independent and as forceful as was said, then you would have refused to be forced into a marriage against your will.
Princess Helena. At that time I fancied that marriage was the first step toward becoming free, so I consented to it gladly, as no doubt you understand. I had always heard that you were a dull person, steeped in useless learning, and consequently without any knowledge of life, whom any woman could twist about her finger, if she cared to take the trouble.
Prince Stephen. Now what do you think of me?
Princess Helena. I think that we might have been very happy.
Prince Stephen. As we are to-night. Life is strange. After all our striving, all our efforts to attain happiness, when the inevitable hour arrives and we look into our hearts and ask what has been the sum of sorrow or of happiness in our lives, it may be that the only recollection which is not tinged with sadness, will be that of some idle encounter such as this, which chance has brought, to linger in the memory like a high moment of life, which we cherish as a fond and beautiful dream.
Princess Helena. It takes so little to make us happy—a beautiful night of deep and faultless blue, the murmur of the sea afar off, a vulgar dance here at our side, with its cheap music, and the mutual confidences of our hearts as they search to find words of absolute truth that they may reveal themselves and trust entirely.
Prince Stephen. Or verses of favorite poets to speak for us, or silences deep as the night, yet clear as this spread of lucent sky with all its host of stars. Like stars in the night, the eyes are the light of silence.
​Princess Helena. Perhaps we shall never be more happy. Can it be that all our efforts and struggles to obtain even a small part of that which we desire in life, are fruitless? Is it that life admits of no violence, and only when we have ceased to hope and struggle and strive, lets fall upon us as if by chance, a little of the great store of happiness which it treasures? If it is, then let us try not to think, let us lull our wills to sleep, that life may bring us joy or sorrow at its pleasure. Who can say but that when we think that we are shaping life most surely to our purposes, we are not submitting most blindly to the immutable laws of fate?
The Woman With the Scar enters, and runs rapidly up to the Prince and Princess. A Gendarme follows her.
Princess Helena. [Surprised and startled] Oh!
Woman With the Scar. Ah! Please excuse me… Don't be frightened, lady. I thought—but it isn't he. A mistake. Strangers, eh? Foreigners?… they don't know me. I am sorry if I frightened the lady. She is beautiful.
Little Marquis. [Calling from outside] Are you coming? You are invited to-night.
Woman With the Scar. Let me alone, will you? [Goes out.
Gendarme. [Approaching the Prince and Princess with ostentatious deference and respect] I am sorry the woman annoyed you.
Princess Helena. No, poor thing! What a singular person! Apparently she thought she knew us.
Gendarme. Pardon, Your Highness, pardon.
Prince Stephen. Ah! So you know then?
Gendarme. I have watched Your Highnesses since your arrival. It was imprudent of Your Highnesses to venture here alone.
​Princess Helena. But why? The behavior of these people could not possibly be more correct, especially after the villa of the Comte de Tournerelles. Don't you think so, Stephen?
Gendarme. Superficially, perhaps, but a night seldom passes without some incident which is unpleasant. These are dangerous folk, without exception. Three of the worst are near by—the Little Marquis, an Englishman who was a jockey, long since disqualified for cheating, and a fine specimen of Italian, known as Cosi-Cosi. They are watching us now. All have long records in the police courts, and at least one has been within a step of the guillotine.
Princess Helena. How wonderful! What marvellous people, living by their wits, by sheer strength of brute courage, snapping their fingers in the face of society, its morality, and its laws! They live. This is life!
Prince Stephen. Professors of strenuosity, as we should call them nowadays.
Princess Helena. Who was that singular woman?
Gendarme. She is crazy. They call her the Woman With the Scar.
Princess Helena. What a horrible name!
Gendarme. Would you like to see? I'll send for her. Come here! Don't be afraid. Tell this lady and gentleman who you are.
Woman With the Scar. No, let me go. Don't you believe what he says. There's no truth in it.
Gendarme. Come here, I tell you. Loosen that collar around your neck.
Woman With the Scar. Take your hands off me.
Princess Helena. Don't hurt her! Let go. Poor woman!
​Woman With the Scar. Thanks, lady. I'll show it to you, if you like. Here…
Princess Helena. Oh! Terrible!
Prince Stephen. What is it?
Princess Helena. Can't you see? A great gash, which circles her neck entirely, like a collar. Where did you get this scar?
Woman With the Scar. I did it myself; it was an accident!
Gendarme. You cannot believe what she says. She met a stranger one night at the Casino two years ago; he was a foreigner, and they went out together—it was one of I don't know how many such adventures. The man was a professional gambler who had lost everything—we have plenty of them every season—and he determined to recoup himself at the expense of one of these unfortunate women, who, naturally, are not able to be too particular about the persons with whom they deal. As soon as he thought she was asleep, he ripped the lock off the drawer where he expected to find her valuables; but she awoke, and before she could cry out, he flung himself upon her to kill her; and he thought that he had killed her. The wound was a terrible one, as you see. He fled…
Prince Stephen. But surely you were able to arrest him?
Gendarme. The next morning, although she was in no condition to appear against him. They had been seen leaving the Casino together; they had been observed when they entered the house. We had no difficulty in apprehending the man.
Prince Stephen. Needless to say he paid dearly for his exploit.
Gendarme. You will not believe it, but when he was taken before this woman, she denied roundly that he was the ​man with whom she had spent the night, or that he had attempted to kill her.
Princess Helena. Perhaps he was not. There may have been some mistake.
Gendarme. There could be no doubt of it. He was the man. We found the jewels on him, and the money.
Prince Stephen. In that case——
Gendarme. We were helpless. What could we do in the face of the uncontradicted testimony of such a witness?
Woman With the Scar. It's a lie, the whole story! It wasn't he. He didn't do it.
Gendarme. Nonsense! We have the facts; we know why he did it. It seems incredible.
Princess Helena. No, I can understand; I can understand that sublime silence. That man had known how to make himself loved in one night.
Woman With the Scar. Lady!——
Princess Helena. But what became of him? How did he repay her act of silence?
Gendarme. He took ship for America. Since then her one idea has been to go to him. Whatever she earns, she saves toward the voyage. She is miserably poor, she is even obliged to beg, now that her earnings are insufficient.
Princess Helena. Is it possible? And all your illusion is to join him again? Speak frankly, my poor woman.
Woman With the Scar. Yes, all.
Princess Helena. All? [To Stephen] It is in our power to make the memory of this moment even happier in our lives. The happiness of this poor creature lies in our hands.
Woman With the Scar. What do you mean?
Princess Helena. Nothing. You shall go to him, I promise you. [To the Gendarme] Bring me her address in the morning.
​Woman With the Scar. What is she talking about? It's a lie. You are laughing at me——
Gendarme. Stop! Do you know with whom you are speaking? Down on your knees, and beg pardon! And away with you!
Woman With the Scar. Oh, lady! Lady! I kiss your hand… I am going! Going! It is my voyage! I shall never get there, I know that; it would be too much happiness. I shall die on the journey!
Gendarme. No, you won't. You will find him and he will kill you. And this time he will make a good job of it.
Woman With the Scar. Find him? He can kill me then if he wants to; I am willing.
Gendarme. If he really kills you and they catch him, you won't be able to save him then like you did last time.
Woman With the Scar. Oh, yes, I will! Because I have a letter, and it will be suicide. And he will be saved! I have planned it all beforehand. [She goes out.
Prince Stephen. What an extraordinary woman!
Gendarme. Did you ever see anything to equal it?
Princess Helena. Oh! If passion and madness were never to sweep through our souls, what would be the value of life?
Gendarme. Perhaps I had best remain with Your Highnesses?
Prince Stephen. No, no; it is quite unnecessary. Ah!… thank you. And good night.
Gendarme. Under no circumstances. I cannot accept anything.
Princess Helena. Remember to send me her address in the morning.
Gendarme. At your service. [Goes out.
Princess Helena. Where shall we go where we may cease to be what we are? Among these people, upon the uttermost edge of society, we fancied that we were forgotten. But the gendarme reminds us that he is in the secret; he is watching over us, to protect us.
Prince Stephen. It cannot be helped; you heard what he said. These people are dangerous.
Princess Helena. People are dangerous everywhere; the whole world is like this, and so are our own souls—the eternal struggle of life, force against force, the hand of those who seek to live their own lives as individuals in the name of human instinct, against the hand of those who would maintain the social fabric in the common name of all. On the one side the criminal, on the other the police; and in the great world as in this little world, all the classes which do duty as police, with their codes af morals, their sacrosanct dignities and their laws, are able to accomplish no more in their fight with the classes which we call criminal, than we see them do here; they impart an air of gayety to the dance, which seems to be respectable under the paternal eye of the police, while in reality the dancers are doing nothing but plotting and scheming to outwit them. The very life of these people is to outwit the police. How would any human life be possible if we were not able to outwit the social laws?
Prince Stephen. I am amazed to hear you talk. How is it that you were permitted reading so radical, so subversive at the Court of Suavia?
Princess Helena. Does it sound as if it were reading to you? No, the ideas are my own. I feel as I do because I have never allowed myself to be frightened by any truth, and I have never become so enamored of any, that I have been ​afraid to see it transformed into a lie. If I could look into my soul every day and discover a new truth, which when found would disarrange my life completely, I should not hesitate to destroy my life every day so as to live a new life every day with a new truth. Is that the way that you feel?
Prince Stephen. It is so hard to destroy! Who knows?—when love has already become a lie in our hearts, it may still be, perhaps, the truth of another heart, which we have no right to destroy.
Princess Helena. Do you believe that either Elsa or Herr Rosmer would have any regrets?
Prince Stephen. I believe that it is not so easy to escape responsibility in life, nor to stifle the pangs of remorse. Possibly the motives of the woman who is now my wife, and of the man who is now your lover, may not have been altogether disinterested when they accepted our love. Yet we led them to believe that they might safely build the future fabric of their lives upon it. If we fail them now, then what of that future? It becomes impossible. How false their position, to what humiliation they will be exposed, to what reprisals! And our condition will be no better. We shall no longer be romantic lovers who have sacrificed everything to love. Another experiment, and we shall renounce something more than our dignity as Princes; we shall forfeit our self-respect as well.
Princess Helena. Then… the past must always influence our lives. There can never be a moment which we can really call ours, when we speak and feel and love as at that moment we really do. The dead body of something must always be chained at our heels. No, I can no longer pray at an altar when I have lost my faith. My prayers end, my faith is exhausted. I must love when I love, forget when I forget. If I were to hesitate now, I should go further; I ​should return to the Court of Suavia, I should again become Princess. Duty for duty, respect for respect, I should accept those which are mine, which belong to my race, to my name. All that these democrats value in our love, is the opportunity which it affords them to become Princes like ourselves.
Prince Stephen. The aspiration of every true democrat who foments a revolution.
Princess Helena. The only revolution which can be productive of good in the world will be a revolution undertaken by us, the great, from above, who are already equals. Then it will be a disinterested revolution. We shall not be seeking riches nor liberty, nor even justice—we shall simply be seeking the truth. And the truth is—for us—to-night—that we may be happy, that we may unite our lives and destinies in one, while the memory of the Court of Suavia fades as dimly from our sight as the illusion of that bourgeois home which, in the name of a false happiness, we had dreamed. Ah, no! It was not happiness, it was not life—not yet. Life, to us, is to love each other—to love you.
Prince Stephen. Forever?
Princess Helena. To-day, to-morrow, a few hours longer… perhaps only to-night. Who can tell? What does it matter? There are dreams which are worth all the realities of life. In another moment, I may feel as you do, that there are duties and responsibilities and the sting of remorse, that we have done wrong, that we must turn back, yes, that we shall turn back, even that… we ought. But not yet! First, let us talk of ourselves again, of anything, nothing, as before… of verses, and music afar off, the blue heaven above us, while in the distance lies the sea, and silence—silence, deep as the night.
Prince Stephen. My Princess Bebé! You touch the ​world with joy, you infuse our thoughts with light. Life becomes more intense at your side, and the soul stretches out toward infinity.
Princess Helena. Which is life. To understand life, to understand all of it, to love it wholly, and then to live it—to live it all our lives!
Prince Stephen. No, not to live it. For life is sad and bitter, it is doing evil and suffering wrong—but to dream, to dream as we do now…
Princess Helena. To live—to dream! Both—what does it matter? To love. To love is all. It is dreaming and it is living!
Curtain