2. What of the Emperor
LEOPOLD.
What of the emperor?
[Immediately, a courtier thrusts a huge, candy-striped lolly in MAXIMILIAN’s face.]
MAXIMILIAN.
O! O!
[The emperor snatches the lollipop and starts to lick.]
LEOPOLD.
My lord?
MAXIMILIAN, looking up disinterestedly from his lolly.
Who spoke?
COURTIERS.
Doctor Leopold.
MAXIMILIAN.
Ah, Leopold! Sorrowful Leopold!
Leopold, Leopold, Leopold . . .
What does Leopold want?
LEOPOLD.
To humbly offer up that prize,
That one of all designs
That Leopold devised,
Less humbly, he calls best.
MAXIMILIAN.
Prize, dear boy? Ah, I love prizes! Tell me, what does it do?
LEOPOLD.
Collapse dimension, execute space,
Crown the Tyrant-Eye
Roaming sovereign of the sky!
Behold, what soaring suns
On silent runs
And farther than the sky
They swim out there
Beyond compare!
Flaming stars, frozen stars,
Pale stars, black stars,
Stars of pitch and groaning birth!
MAXIMILIAN.
Gran Dieu! How exciting!
LEOPOLD.
Yes?
MAXIMILIAN.
But less exciting than my lolly. O Lord Porkeo!
[With a jingling of bells, PORKEO, pierrot-in-white, emerges from the crowd of courtiers and leaps jauntily between the emperor and LEOPOLD. He begins “the Song of the Ha-Ha’s”.]