Yes, and I am looking forward to it with a great deal of pleasure. ALBERT You need simply to pull yourself together--a few weeks of mountain air and quiet will get you out of this. AMADEUS Oh, I haven't got into anything in particular. I am a little nervous. That's all. ALBERT Can't you see, Amadeus, how you have to force yourself in order to use this evasion toward me, who, of course, has no right whatever to demand any frankness? Can't you see how you are wasting a part of your mental energy, so to speak, on this slight disingenuousness? No, dissimulation is utterly foreign to your nature, as I have always told you. If you should ever get to the point where you had to deceive one who was near and dear to you, that would be the end of you. AMADEUS Your worry is quite superfluous! Haven't you known us long enough--me and Cecilia--to know that our marriage is based, above all else, on absolute frankness? ALBERT Many have good intentions, but their courage often deserts them at the critical moment. AMADEUS We have never yet kept anything hidden from each other. ALBERT Because so far you have had nothing to confess. AMADEUS Oh, a great deal, perhaps, which other people keep to themselves. Our common life has not been without its complications. We have had to be parted from each other for months at a time. I have had to rehearse in private with other singers than Philine, and (_with an air of superiority_) other men than Prince Sigismund must have discovered that Cecilia is pretty. ALBERT I haven't said a word about Cecilia. AMADEUS And besides, it would be quite hopeless for Cecilia or me to keep any secrets. We know each other too well--I don't think two people ever existed who understood each other so completely as we do. ALBERT I can imagine a point where the understanding would have to end, and everything else with it. AMADEUS Everything else maybe--but not the understanding. ALBERT Oh, well! If nothing is left but the understanding, that means the beginning of the end. AMADEUS Those are--chances that every human being must resign himself to take. ALBERT You don't talk like one who has resigned himself, however, but like one who has made up his mind. AMADEUS Who can be perfectly sure of himself or of anybody else? We two, at any rate, are not challenging fate by feeling too secure. ALBERT Oh, when it comes to that, my dear fellow--fate always regards itself challenged--by doubt no less than by confidence. AMADEUS To be safe against any surprise brings a certain sense of tranquillity anyhow. ALBERT A little more tranquillity would produce a decision to avoid anything that might endanger an assured happiness. AMADEUS Do you think anything is to be won by that kind of avoidance? Don't you feel rather, that the worst and most dangerous of all falsehoods is to resist temptation with a soul full of longing for it? And that it is easier to go unscathed through adventures than through desires? ALBERT