Prince Michael. What infatuation is this?
Imperia. It isn't infatuation. I go to see my daughter.
Prince Michael. Your daughter! What daughter? I didn't know you had a daughter.
Imperia. You never asked. What do you know of my life? What other people have told you, who know no more about it than you do, what for some reason I may have seen fit to tell you myself—only I always tell you the truth.
Prince Michael. But this daughter?
Imperia. She is the child of the only man I ever loved.
Prince Michael. Thanks.
Imperia. And I still love him; I always shall.
Prince Michael. Where is he?
Imperia. In prison, reprieved from a death-sentence, serving for life.
Prince Michael. Romantic episode!
Imperia. He stabbed a foreigner in Rome, attempting to take his money. He killed him. He had been three days without food. We models could earn nothing then; the malaria had driven out the artists.
Prince Michael. Were you living with him at the time?
Imperia. No, he was living with his mother. I lived at home with my parents and my brothers and sisters, with my child. My father owned a house by the riverside, half tavern, half concert-hall. We children did a little of everything. During the day we went out as models; at night we danced tarantellas in the theatre and sang Neapolitan songs. Then Leonardo gave my father five hundred lire to let me come to live with him.
Prince Michael. But Imperia! This is horrible!
Imperia. It is the truth. What was my father to do? We had to live somehow.
