MR. DE KRIEGSCHENMAHL:
What, Madame!
SIGNORA FANTASTICI:
If you like you will play aristocratic fathers.
MR. DE KRIEGSCHENMAHL: Aristocratic fathers! Why, certainly. The Kriegschenmahls are gentlemen from father to son.
SIGNORA FANTASTICI:
What! Your ancestors have all been actors?
MR. DE KRIEGSCHENMAHL:
Madame, what do you mean? Do you mean to offend me?
SIGNORA FANTASTICI: No, assuredly—but I am taking your sons with me. They please me. I will perfect their education. The younger will play the heroes; the older, tender roles. The former will become stronger, the latter more sweet. And in ten years from now I will send them back to you charmers.
MR. DE KRIEGSCHENMAHL:
Ah, madame. What must be done so as not to separate from them?
SIGNORA FANTASTICI: Listen, I'm a good person; I don't enjoy causing pain to whoever it may be, but I insist that the rights of poetry be respected in me. Too much prose, sir, too much prose in this house!
MR. DE KRIEGSCHENMAHL:
What! Madame? I cannot order my dinner in prose from Madame de
Kriegschenmahl?
SIGNORA FANTASTICI: Poetry doesn't consist only of verse, but in love for the arts, in enthusiasm and imagination, which raises the soul and the spirit. It proscribes all manner of sentiments, vulgarity, undemocratic ideas under the weight of which you've spent your entire life! Listen to me. I am going to give a party to a charming woman that illness keeps at home and who supports her sufferings with admirable courage. Now that's poetry for heaven's sake, true poetry. Would you play a role in the play we want to perform for her?