So, Josephine, your second bridegroom has been seduced away from you by Destiny. Charles, your fortune, which was at any rate confiscate to your brother, now passes to the Crown. I wonder just how you will manage.
[Charles throws her a tender, confident look which she evades.]
But one thing at a time. Josephine, what occurs to you in this fitful moment?
Duchess
Life nauseates me so at the moment that it is difficult to imagine any corner where I would not be too dizzy with hatred to stand. If you will permit me, I shall return to my rooms to think. There are some agreeable things scattered through my rooms that may possibly inspire direction.
Queen
Your sensations, Josephine, they have always been so much more acute than your emotions. I wonder if you could not turn with a certain surprising equanimity from regarding the marble forms of your Greeks to the Gothic saints of wood and ivory, then one would detect incense in the fold of your shroud instead of patchouli in the pleats of your cambric. You know, probably you could find in the distortions of religious mania a perfect pendant to your taste for deformities in life.
Duchess
You are cruel, and you are irreverent.
Queen