"Yes, it is the title of a play in which at the end some one is stabbed," says Scirocco, looking up from his reading.
"Thank you, Rudi; one can always learn from you," assures Pistasch.
"You are the first who has discovered that--I pity you," replies Sempaly, sarcastically.
"Surely not because I am weak in history and literature," says Pistasch, phlegmatically. "Bah! if one of us only knows who he is, he knows what he needs."
"Yes, everything else would only confuse him," says Scirocco, seriously.
"Precisely," answers Pistasch, coolly. He now sits on the corner of the billiard table, both hands in his pockets, in the large room with its faded leather furniture. "But confess that your sister maltreats me, after I have tried so hard to please her."
"Too hard, perhaps," says Scirocco, and looks gloomily at his cousin. Is the latter the only one who does not perceive that the Countess would prefer to preserve him in a cage, secure from the attacks of audacious women and mothers? "'Ce sont toujour les concessions qui ont perdu les grands hommes,' Philippe Egalité remarked on his way to execution," he continues, and takes his cousin's ostentatious naïveté for what it is really worth.
"That might be called forcing history," cries Rhoeden, entering at this moment, and hearing the last phrase.
"Who was Philippe Egalité?" asks Pistasch, with unembarrassed--yes, boasted ignorance.
"A man who, in order to make himself loved by the masses, voted for the death of his cousin, the king, made himself riding trousers of the ancien régime, and was beheaded by the masses by way of thanks."