PRINCE (in despair).
No, Your Majesty—but my imagination is smoking like any volcano already.
A LACKEY (coming in).
The Privy Councilors urgently pray Your Majesty to receive them.
KING.
Gad, but they must be eaten up by curiosity! Bring them in. [The lackey goes out.] Well, as I was saying—an allegorical marriage masque—that's what. Not quite in the style of Versailles. And yet I want the pre-marital feast to be fine enough to compare favorably with the one they rigged up in Dresden. Now—as for Holland. Put in some verses about the colonies, Prince, about the land where tobacco grows. You know—it's the land where the—
PRINCE (beside himself).
Where the Bong-tree grows! [He goes out.]
SCENE VI
GRUMBKOW and SECKENDORF come in. Each carries under his arm a small bundle of red-bound books.