Alice.. Well, it's rather difficult to understand. But you know if you stop believing in a thing, such as fairies, or that you like chocolate, or that your Uncle's fond of you ... after a bit it somehow isn't there any longer. That's what nearly happened to the gods. But Mercury knew that if people won't believe a thing when you say it's real, they'll just as good as believe it and understand it a great deal better when it only seems make-believe. And that's Art. And as the easiest art in the world is the art of acting ... I hope they didn't hear [She wags back her little head to the proscenium.] ... the gods became actors.
Uncle Edward.. Now you get back to the story. It's all they [He wags his big head at the audience.] care about.
Alice.. Yes. Momus helped Mercury find Psyche, and they all had a tremendous time and hoped it would never be Monday. For every time they got to the end of a century they wanted to stay and see what would happen in the next. Like when you eat nuts it's so very difficult to stop at any particular nut, isn't it? Now I ...
Uncle Edward.. But they don't want to hear about you.
Alice.. Sorry.
Uncle Edward.. And don't gabble. This ain't the metaphysics, which they can't abear. This is facts. They respect facts.
Alice.. I hate facts. They're so dull. It was when they became actors they got their new names. Harlequin and Columbine and Clown and Pantaloon. And they travelled from Greece into Italy, where Charon got called Pantaloon because he acted an old gentleman of Venice, and Saint Pantaleone is a patron of Venice, and there were heaps of people called Pantaleone there in the fifteenth....
[Uncle Edward is snapping his fingers and pointing to Ms trousers.]
Yes, I know. Even to-day Pantaloon is still wearing the very Venetian clothes of the time when he first played the part. He's got on the first pantaloons ever worn, and his hair is tied in a lovelock. Clown and Pantaloon have got white faces. By this time funny actors, who acted in dumb-show, used to put flour on their faces, like Pierrot you know, because the theatres were so dark and they wanted to show their expressions. Then there's the scene. I do hope you'll like the scene. It's supposed to be Italy, and I think it's beautiful. Anyhow it's the kind of scene we have to have so as not to take up too much room. And it has beehives in it. Columbine keeps two, one for bees and one for butterflies.
[It is part of Alice's regret, for which she keeps a nearly secret sigh, that we couldn't have real bees and butterflies. She thinks it would be so jolly to see the bees and butterflies go among the audience and settle on the buttonholes and sprays they wear and bring back the sense of gardens to the people there.