DOCTOR. From one point of view, it is--I beg you to
let me say so, Marchioness! Yet, on the other hand, it is
much more complicated than you can imagine.

DONNA MATILDA. To me, on the contrary, it is perfectly
clear!

DOCTOR (with a smile of pity of the competent person
towards those who do not understand). We must take into
account the peculiar psychology of madmen; which, you must
know, enables us to be certain that they observe things and
can, for instance, easily detect people who are disguised; can
in fact recognize the disguise and yet believe in it; just as
children do, for whom disguise is both play and reality.
That is why I used the word childish. But the thing is
extremely complicated, inasmuch as he must be perfectly
aware of being an image to himself and for himself--that
image there, in fact (alluding to the portrait in the throne
room, and pointing to the left)!

BELCREDI. That's what he said!

DOCTOR. Very well then--An image before which other
images, ours, have appeared: understand? Now he, in his
acute and perfectly lucid delirium, was able to detect at once
a difference between his image and ours: that is, he saw
that ours were make-believes. So he suspected us; because
all madmen are armed with a special diffidence. But that's
all there is to it! Our make-believe, built up all round his,
did not seem pitiful to him. While his seemed all the more
tragic to us, in that he, as if in defiance--understand ?--and
induced by his suspicion, wanted to show us up merely as
a joke. That was also partly the case with him, in coming
before us with painted cheeks and hair, and saying he had
done it on purpose for a jest.

DONNA MATILDA (impatiently). No, it's not that, doc-
tor. It's not like that! It's not like that!

DOCTOR. Why isn't it, may I ask?

-111-