Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress | Page 8

power I recognize on earth [he kisses her hand].
THE GRAND DUCHESS [indulgently]. Idolater! When will you learn
that our strength has never been in ourselves, but in your illusions
about us? [She shakes off her kindliness, and sits down in his chair.]
Now tell me, what are your orders? And do you mean to obey them?
STRAMMFEST [starting like a goaded ox, and blundering fretfully
about the room]. How can I obey six different dictators, and not one
gentleman among the lot of them? One of them orders me to make
peace with the foreign enemy. Another orders me to offer all the neutral
countries 48 hours to choose between adopting his views on the single
tax and being instantly invaded and annihilated. A third orders me to go
to a damned Socialist Conference and explain that Beotia will allow no
annexations and no indemnities, and merely wishes to establish the
Kingdom of Heaven on Earth throughout the universe. [He finishes
behind Schneidekind's chair.]
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Damn their trifling!
STRAMMFEST. I thank Your Imperial Highness from the bottom of
my heart for that expression. Europe thanks you.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. M'yes; but--[rising]. Strammfest, you know
that your cause--the cause of the dynasty--is lost.
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 We are so decayed, so out
of date, so feeble, so wicked in our own despite, that we have come at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?
STRAMMFEST. You must be mad to think of royalty in such a way. I
never yawned at court. The dogs yawned; but that was because they
were dogs: they had no imagination, no ideals, no sense of honor and
dignity to sustain them.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. My poor Strammfest: you were not often
enough at court to tire of it. You were mostly soldiering; and when you
came home to have a new order pinned on your breast, your happiness
came through looking at my father and mother and at me, and adoring
us. Was that not so?
STRAMMFEST. Do YOU reproach me with it? I am not ashamed of it.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, it was all very well for you, Strammfest.
But think of me, of me! standing there for you to gape at, and knowing

that I was no goddess, but only a girl like any other girl! It was cruelty
to animals: you could have stuck up a wax doll or a golden calf to
worship; it would not have been bored.
STRAMMFEST. Stop; or I shall renounce my allegiance to you. I have
had women flogged for such seditious chatter as this.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not provoke me to send a bullet through
your head for reminding me of it.
STRAMMFEST. You always had low tastes. You are no true daughter
of the Panjandrums: you are a changeling, thrust into the Panjandrina's
bed by some profligate nurse. I have heard stories of your childhood: of
how--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Ha, ha! Yes: they took me to the circus
when I was a child. It was my first moment of happiness, my first
glimpse of heaven. I ran away and joined the troupe. They caught me
and dragged me back to my gilded cage; but I had tasted freedom; and
they never could make me forget it.
STRAMMFEST. Freedom! To be the slave of an acrobat! to be
exhibited to the public! to--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, I was trained to that. I had learnt that
part of the business at court.
STRAMMFEST. You had not