The Swan

Dr. Nicholas Agi:
A fencer is always in danger of revealing his intentions to his adversary - and that he must never do.

Princess Beatrix:
[about Albert] When he DOES decide to hold something, it would be the bass viol!

Princess Beatrix:
Dear Aunt Symphorosa - always looking for wallflowers.

Captain Wunderlich:
What was she called?

Symphorosa:
Oh, I can't remember.

Princess Beatrix:
Yes you can dear, "Elaina the Iceburg."

Princess Beatrix:
But this is the 20th century!

Symphorosa:
I don't like the 20th century.

Princess Beatrix:
Oh my dear child, this is the one thing, the one opportunity that all your life I've been praying for - for you to become a queen.

Dr. Nicholas Agi:
I never dared to think that you could give your love to me. But can you blame me now if I want to... if I want to take you and carry you off into the darkness out there? Close your eyes.

Dr. Nicholas Agi:
You're so sweet and so beautiful...

Princess Alexandra:
Don't come any closer Nicholas... I've never seen a man in love and... he happens to be in love with me.

Dr. Nicholas Agi:
Are you so afraid of me?

Princess Alexandra:
Oh, if I am I want always to be afraid. I want to be so good to you. I want a hundred things. I want to tell you everything that's in my heart... I want to look after you and spoil you and... oh, eat something.

Queen Maria Dominika:
[to Beatrix, about Napoleon] My dear I have a book. I shall send it to you, it's most comforting. It proves conclusively that Napoleon never existed!

Father Carl Hyacinth:
Your royal highness, you bring honor and glory to the house.

Queen Maria Dominika:
Also my pickled beets.

[Alexandra passionately kisses Agi]

Prince Albert:
That's a different matter. That's a completely different matter altogether.

[last lines]

Prince Albert:
Your father used to call you his swan, so I am told. I think that's a good thing to remember. Think what it means to be a swan: to glide like a dream on the smooth surface of the lake, and never go to the shore. On dry land, where ordinary people walk, the swan is awkward, even ridiculous. When she waddles up the bank she painfully resembles a different kind of bird, n'est-ce-pas?

Princess Alexandra:
A goose.

Prince Albert:
I'm afraid so. And there she must stay, out on the lake: silent, white, majestic. Be a bird, but never fly. Know one song, but never sing it until the moment of death. And so it must be for you, Alexandra: cool indifference to the staring crowds along the bank. And the song? Never.

Princess Alexandra:
Take me inside, Albert. [Albert takes her hand, and they go inside the palace together]

Princess Beatrix:
[very perturbed about Prince Albert spending much of the day observing mechanized milking machines in the estate's dairy barn] I should think that machine is quite worn out, say nothing of the cows.