I have been beholden to you for advice in the hours of the most frightful danger. Had I not followed freely your advice, so full of watchful and crafty shrewdness, in difficult situations we might today be under foreign rule. Now, however, I require of you a sacrifice which, as the father of your child, you owe the state and our dynasty. Without restraint I allowed your intelligence to rule between me and my own blood, never suspecting how soon I should have to ask you to put it between yourself and your child. The Prince asks me to give him your daughter for his wife!
THE KING.
My child is so far above me that her feet never touch the ground without the seed of happiness blossoming beneath her tread.
KING PIETRO.
I can believe that, but will you order your daughter to reject every offer of the Prince!
FILIPO.
Donna Alma will never obey that order!
KING PIETRO.
Silence!
THE KING.