MASTER OF CEREMONIES. Yes.—But because you were proud and wanted no assistance, you have now to bear your own sufferings.
PRINCE. What have I done, then?
MASTER OF CEREMONIES. What a sublime question!
PRINCE. But why don't you tell?
MASTER OF CEREMONIES. As our task is to torture each other by truth-telling—were we not called "heroes of truth" in our lifetime?—I shall tell you a part of your own secret. You were, and you are still, a hunchback——
PRINCE. What is that?
MASTER OF CEREMONIES. There you see! You don't know what is known to everybody else. But all those others pitied you, and so you never heard the word that names your own deformity.
PRINCE. What deformity is that? Perhaps you mean that I have a weak chest? But that is no deformity.
MASTER OF CEREMONIES. A "weak chest"—yes, that is your own name for the matter. However, people kept the disfigurement of your body hidden from you, and they tried to assuage your misfortune by showing you sympathy and kindness. But you accepted their generosity as an earned tribute, their encouraging words as expressions of admiration due to your superior physique. And at last you went so far in conceit that you regarded yourself as a type of masculine beauty. And when, to cap it all, woman granted you her favours out of pity, then you believed yourself an irresistible conqueror.
PRINCE. What right have you to say such rude things to me?