HENRY IV. It's like this: When we are not resigned, out come our desires. A woman wants to be a man ... an old man would be young again. Desires, ridiculous fixed ideas of course--But reflect! Monsignor, those other desires are not less ridiculous: I mean, those desires where the will is kept within the limits of the possible. Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves. However, Monsignor, while you keep yourself in order, holding on with both your hands to your holy habit, there slips down from your sleeves, there peels off from you like ... like a serpent ... something you don't notice: life, Monsignor! (_Turns to the Marchioness_): Has it never happened to you, my Lady, to find a different self in yourself? Have you always been the same? My God! One day ... how was it, how was it you were able to commit this or that action? (_Fixes her so intently in the eyes as almost to make her blanch_): Yes, that particular action, that very one: we understand each other! But don't be afraid: I shall reveal it to none. And you, Peter Damiani, how could you be a friend of that man?... LANDOLPH. Majesty! HENRY IV. (_at once_). No, I won't name him! (_Turning to Belcredi_): What did you think of him? But we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it _is_, to some extent, for me?--you, you, my Lady, certainly don't dye your hair to deceive the others, nor even yourself; but only to cheat your own image a little before the looking-glass. I do it for a joke! You do it seriously! But I assure you that you too, Madam, are in masquerade, though it be in all seriousness; and I am not speaking of the venerable crown on your brows or the ducal mantle. I am speaking only of the memory you wish to fix in yourself of your fair complexion one day when it pleased you--or of your dark complexion, if you were dark: the fading image of your youth! For you, Peter Damiani, on the contrary, the memory of what you have been, of what you have done, seems to you a recognition of past realities that remain within you like a dream. I'm in the same case too: with so many inexplicable memories--like dreams! Ah!... There's nothing to marvel at in it, Peter Damiani! Tomorrow it will be the same thing with our life of today! (_Suddenly getting excited and taking hold of his sackcloth_). This sackcloth here.... (_Beginning to take it off with a gesture of almost ferocious joy while the three valets run over to him, frightened, as if to prevent his doing so_)! Ah, my God! (_Draws back and throws off sackcloth_). Tomorrow, at Bressanone, twenty-seven German