AMADEUS What circumstances are you talking of anyhow? ALBERT My dear fellow, I should never have dreamt of forcing myself into your confidence, but as the matter has already got into the papers.... AMADEUS What has got into the papers? ALBERT Haven't you read that thing in the New Journal to-night? AMADEUS What thing? ALBERT That Cecilia and Prince Sigismund.... But, of course, you are familiar with the main facts? AMADEUS I'm familiar with nothing. What is in the New Journal? ALBERT Just a brief notice--without any names, but not to be mistaken.... It reads something like this: "One of our foremost artists, who has just been celebrating triumphs in the metropolis of an adjoining state ... until now the wife of a gifted musician" ... or perhaps it was "highly gifted" ... and so on ... and so on ... "and a well-known Austrian gentleman, belonging to our oldest nobility, intend, we are told ..." and so on.... AMADEUS Cecilia and the Prince...?! ALBERT Yes ... and then a hint that, in such a case, it would not prove very difficult to obtain a dispensation from the Pope.... AMADEUS Has everybody gone crazy?... I can assure you that not a word of it is true!... You won't believe me?... I hope you don't think I would deny it, if.... Or do you actually mean that Cecilia might have ... from me.... Oh, dear, and you are supposed to be a friend of ours, a student of the human soul, and a poet! ALBERT I beg your pardon, but after what has happened it would not seem improbable.... AMADEUS Not improbable...? It is simply impossible! Cecilia has never thought of it! ALBERT However, it ought not to surprise you that such a rumor has been started. AMADEUS Nothing surprises me. But I feel as if the relationship between Cecilia and myself were being profaned by tittle-tattle of that kind. ALBERT Pioneers like yourself must scorn the judgment of the world. Else they are in danger of being proved mere braggarts. AMADEUS Oh, I am no pioneer. The whole thing is a private arrangement between me and Cecilia, which gives us both the greatest possible comfort. Be kind enough, at least, to tell the people who ask you, that we are not going to be divorced--but that, on the other hand, we are not deceiving each other, as it is asserted in these scrawls with which I have been bombarded for some time. (_He indicates the letter which arrived at the same time as Cecilia's_) ALBERT (_picks up the letter, glances through it, and puts it away again_) An anonymous letter...? Well, that's part of it.... AMADEUS