Right now, your Consuelo is an excellent artist, but just as soon as you teach her mythology, and she begins to read, she'll become a nuisance, she'll be corrupted, and then she'll go and poison herself. I know those books, I've read 'em myself. All they teach is corruption, and how to kill oneself.
First Actress
I love the novels that come out in the newspaper.
Briquet
That shows what a foolish girl you are. You'll be done for in no time. Believe me, my friends, we must forget entirely what is happening out there. How can we understand all that goes on there?
Mancini
You are an enemy of enlightenment, you are an obscurantist, Briquet.
Briquet
And you are stupid. You are from out there. What has it taught you? [The actors laugh.] If you'd been born in a circus as I was, you'd know something. Enlightenment is plain nonsense—nothing else. Ask Zinida. She knows everything they teach out there—geography, mythology—— Does it make her any happier? You tell them, dear.
Zinida