STRAMMFEST. You must not say so. It is treason, even from you.
[He sinks, discouraged, into the chair, and covers his face with
his hand.]

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not deceive yourself, General: never again
will a Panjandrum reign in Beotia. [She walks slowly across the
room, brooding bitterly, and thinking aloud.] We are so decayed,
so out of date, so feeble, so wicked in our own despite, that we
have come at last to will our own destruction.

STRAMMFEST. You are uttering blasphemy.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. All great truths begin as blasphemies. All the
king's horses and all the king's men cannot set up my father's
throne again. If they could, you would have done it, would you
not?

STRAMMFEST. God knows I would!

THE GRAND DUCHESS. You really mean that? You would keep the
people in their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those
infamous prisons again with the noblest spirits in the land? you
would thrust the rising sun of liberty back into the sea of blood
from which it has risen? And all because there was in the middle
of the dirt and ugliness and horror a little patch of court
splendor in which you could stand with a few orders on your
uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in
unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you
fell into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be
so stupid, so heartless?