Am I King Nicola, or am I not?
ALMA.
You are King Nicola, my father. Do not worry! What more can they do to us today?
THE KING.
So you too have gone mad or you are a miserable pretender! They don't believe us! What can we do to prove it to them, so that I may lay my head on the block and thereby give you attestation of your birth?! Send to the prison! There they have the record of the scars on my body. I blasphemed against the king. "Curse the king!" I cried. I was that king!——But where is a man with a normal reason who will believe such adventures! I never thought of that during all these years! Who would carry documents with him when his head had been twice forfeited to the executioner! And have I fathomed the ways of Almighty God more than anyone only to be considered mad in the end!——But such is life! Such is life!
KING PIETRO.
The sight of your sufferings is heartrending, Alexandrion! But your assertion is ridiculous!
ALMA.
He is King Nicola!
FILIPO.