DOCTOR. Let's wait patiently. Anyhow, it will soon be over, and it has to be in the evening.... It will only be the matter of a moment! If we can succeed in rousing him, as I was saying, and in breaking at one go the threads--already slack--which still bind him to this fiction of his, giving him back what he himself asks for--you remember, he said: "one cannot always be twenty-six years old, madam!" if we can give him freedom from this torment, which even _he_ feels is a torment, then if he is able to recover at one bound the sensation of the distance of time.... BELCREDI (_quickly_). He'll be cured! (_then emphatically with irony_). We'll pull him out of it all! DOCTOR. Yes, we may hope to set him going again, like a watch which has stopped at a certain hour ... just as if we had our watches in our hands and were waiting for that other watch to go again.--A shake--so--and let's hope it'll tell the time again after its long stop. (_At this point the Marquis Charles Di Nolli enters from the principal entrance_). DONNA MATILDA. Oh, Charles!... And Frida? Where is she? DI NOLLI. She'll be here in a moment. DOCTOR. Has the motor arrived? DI NOLLI. Yes. DONNA MATILDA. Yes? Has the dress come? DI NOLLI. It's been here some time. DOCTOR. Good! Good! DONNA MATILDA (_trembling_). Where is she? Where's Frida? DI NOLLI (_shrugging his shoulders and smiling sadly, like one lending himself unwillingly to an untimely joke_). You'll see, you'll see!... (_pointing towards the hall_). Here she is!... (_Berthold appears at the threshold of the hall, and announces with solemnity_). BERTHOLD. Her Highness the Countess Matilda of Canossa! (_Frida enters, magnificent and beautiful, arrayed in the robes of her mother as "Countess Matilda of Tuscany," so that she is a living copy of the portrait in the throne room_). FRIDA (_passing Berthold, who is bowing, says to him with disdain_). Of Tuscany, of Tuscany! Canossa is just one of my castles! BELCREDI (_in admiration_). Look! Look! She seems another person.... DONNA MATILDA. One would say it were I! Look!--Why, Frida, look! She's exactly my portrait, alive! DOCTOR. Yes, yes.... Perfect! Perfect! The portrait, to the life. BELCREDI. Yes, there's no question about it. She _is_ the portrait! Magnificent! FRIDA. Don't make me laugh, or I shall burst! I say, mother, what a tiny waist you had? I had to squeeze so to get into this! DONNA MATILDA (_arranging her dress a little_). Wait!... Keep still!... These pleats ... is it really so tight? FRIDA. I'm suffocating! I implore you, to be quick!... DOCTOR. But we must wait till it's evening! FRIDA. No, no, I can't hold out till evening!