The PRINCESS, LEANDER, the court scholar.

LEANDER.

Well, your Royal Highness! (They sit down.)

PRINCESS.

Here.  Master Leander, is my essay.  I have entitled it Thoughts at
Night.

LEANDER (reads).

Excellent!  Inspired!  Ah!  I feel as though I hear the hour of midnight striking.  When did you write it?

PRINCESS.

Yesterday noon, after dinner.

LEANDER.

Beautifully conceived!  Truly, beautifully conceived!  But with your most gracious permission! The moon shines sadly down in the world. If you will not take it amiss, it should read:  into the world.

PRINCESS.

Very well, I will note that for the future; it’s too stupid that poetry should be made so hard for us; one can’t write five or six lines without making a mistake.

LEANDER.

That’s the obstinacy of language, so to speak.

PRINCESS.

Are not the emotions tenderly and delicately phrased!

LEANDER.

Indescribably!  It is scarcely comprehensible how a feminine mind could write such a thing.

PRINCESS.

Now I might try my hand at moonlight descriptions.  Don’t you think so?

LEANDER.

Naturally you keep going farther all the time; you keep rising higher.

PRINCESS.

I have also begun a piece:  The Unhappy Misanthrope; or, Lost Peace and Restored Innocence!

LEANDER.

Even the title itself is fascinating.

PRINCESS.

And then I feel an incomprehensible desire within me to write some horrible ghost story.  As I said before, if it were not for those grammatical errors!

LEANDER.

Do not worry about that, incomparable princess!  They are easily corrected.

[Groom from the Chamber enters.]

GROOM.

The Prince of Malsinki, who has just arrived, wishes to wait on your royal highness.

[Exit.]

LEANDER.

Your obedient servant.

[Exit.]

Prince NATHANIEL of Malsinki.  The KING

KING.

Here, Prince, is my daughter, a young, simple creature, as you see her before you. (Aside.) Be polite, my daughter, courteous; he is an illustrious prince from afar; his country is not even on my map, I have already looked it up; I have an amazing amount of respect for him.

PRINCESS.

I am glad to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.

NATHAN.

Beautiful Princess, the report of your beauty has been spread so widely over the whole world that I have come here from a far distant corner for the happiness of seeing you face to face.

KING.

Indeed it is astonishing, how many countries and kingdoms there are!  You would not believe how many thousand crown-princes have been here already, to pay their addresses to my daughter; sometimes they arrive by dozens, especially when the weather is fine—­and now you have come all the way from—­I beg your pardon, topography is such a very extensive subject—­in what region does your country lie?