The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie - LightNovelsOnl.com
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COUNT
Your son? You've got a son?
PRINCE
I have.
COUNT
Well, did you ever...! You have got a young man who is your son--or rather, you have got a son who is a young man. How old?
PRINCE
Seventeen.
COUNT
Seventeen! And you haven't told me before! No, Egon ... Egon! And tell me ... seventeen...? My dear chap, then your wife was still alive....
PRINCE
Yes, my wife was still alive at the time. You see, Arpad, one gets mixed up in all sorts of strange affairs.
COUNT
'Pon my soul, so it seems!
PRINCE
And thus, one fine day, you find yourself having a son of seventeen with whom you go traveling.
COUNT
So it's with him you are going away?
PRINCE
I am taking that liberty.
COUNT
No, I couldn't possibly tell you.... Why, he has got a son of seventeen!... (_Suddenly he grasps the hand of the Prince, and then puts his arms about him_) And if I may ask ... the mother of that young gentleman, your son ... how it happens ... as you have started telling me....
PRINCE
She's dead long ago. Died a couple of weeks after he was born. A mere slip of a girl.
COUNT
Of the common people?
PRINCE
Oh, of course. But a charming creature. I may as well tell you everything about it. That is, as far as I can recall it myself. The whole story seems like a dream. And if it were not for the boy....
COUNT
And all that you tell me only now! To-day only--just before the boy is coming here!
PRINCE
You never can tell how a thing like that may be received.
COUNT
Tut, tut! Received, you say...? Did you believe perhaps ... I'm something of a philosopher myself, after all.... And you call yourself a friend of mine!
PRINCE
Not a soul has known it--not a single soul in the whole world.
COUNT
But you might have told me. Really, I don't see how you could.... Come now, it wasn't quite nice.
PRINCE
I wanted to wait and see how the boy developed. You never can tell....
COUNT
Of course, with a mixed pedigree like that.... But you seem rea.s.sured now?
PRINCE
Oh, yes, he's a fine fellow.
COUNT (_embracing him again_)
And where has he been living until now?
PRINCE
His earliest years were spent a good way from Vienna--in the Tirol.
COUNT
With peasants?
