 
Joyzelle. This is the garden which no one visits. The sun does not enter here; the poor wild flowers upon which men wage war because they are not beautiful here await death; and the birds are silent. Here are the violet, which has lost its perfume, the trembling, shrinking buttercup and the scarlet poppy, which sheds its petals without ceasing.... Here are the scabious begging for a little water, the deadly spurge hiding its green blossoms, the blue campanula silently shaking its useless bells.... I know you all, you humble and despised flowers, so good and so ugly!... You could be beautiful; it needs scarce anything: a ray
LancÉor. Joyzelle!... Joyzelle. LancÉor!... LancÉor. Joyzelle!... Joyzelle. Go away!... Go away!... Take care!... It is death if he sees you!... LancÉor. He will not see us; he is very far from here. Joyzelle. Where is he?... LancÉor. I saw him go away. I watched his departure from the top of that tower in which I am a prisoner.... He is at the other end of the island, near the blue forest that shuts in the horizon.... Joyzelle. But he may return; or some one will tell him.... Go away, go away, I say!... Your life is at stake!... LancÉor. The palace is deserted; I have gone through the rooms, the gardens and the courts, the long box hedges, the marble staircases.... Joyzelle. Go away, it is only a trap.... He has a design upon your life; I know it, he said so.... He suspects that I love you.... He is only seeking an excuse for what he LancÉor. No. Joyzelle. If you do not go away, then I shall go. LancÉor. If you go, Joyzelle, I shall remain at this gate until night brings him back to the palace.... He will find me on this forbidden threshold.... I have passed the limits assigned to me; I have therefore disobeyed him and I wish him to see it and I wish him to know it!... Joyzelle. LancÉor, have pity! I entreat you, LancÉor!... You are risking all our happiness!... Do not think only of yourself!... I will go where you please, if you will leave this gate!... We shall see each other elsewhere, later, another day.... We must choose the time, we must take care, we must make our preparations.... See, I am stretching out my arms LancÉor. Open the gate. Joyzelle. No, no, no, I cannot.... LancÉor. Open, open, Joyzelle, if you would have me live.... Joyzelle. Why do you wish me to open?... LancÉor. I want to see you closer, I want to touch your hands which I have not yet touched, to look at you once more as I looked at you on the first day.... Open, or I am determined to be undone; I shall not go away.... Joyzelle. Will you go away then?... LancÉor. I promise you, Joyzelle.... As soon as you open the gate, before a swallow, before a thought has time to hasten from wherever it may be to surprise my hand as it touches yours.... I beseech you, Joyzelle: this is too cruel.... I am standing at this gate like a blind beggar.... I can see only your shadow moving among the leaves.... These bars are hateful and hide your face.... One look alone, Joyzelle, in which I shall see you wholly; and then I will go like a robber flying with a great treasure dragging noisily behind him.... No one will know and we shall be happy.... Joyzelle. LancÉor, this is terrible!... I never tremble, but I am trembling to-day.... Perhaps it means your life; and it already means mine.... What is that light which rises so quickly?... It has come to threaten us, it is going to betray us!... LancÉor. No, no, it is the sun rising behind the wall.... It is the innocent sun, the good May sun, which has come to delight us.... Open, then, open quickly: each minute that passes adds its dangers to the dangers which you fear.... A single movement, Joyzelle; a turn of your hand; and you really open the gates of life to me! (Joyzelle turns the key; the gate opens; LancÉor crosses the threshold.) LancÉor. (Taking Joyzelle in his arms.) Joyzelle!... Joyzelle. I am here!... LancÉor. I hold your hands and your eyes, your hair and your lips, in the same kiss and at the same moment, all the gifts of love which I have never had and all its presence!... My arms are so surprised that they cannot carry them; and my whole life cannot contain them.... Do not Joyzelle. It is not to escape you, but to be closer to you.... LancÉor. Do not turn your head; do not deprive me of a shadow of your lashes, a gleam of your eyes: it is not the hours, but the very minutes that threaten our happiness.... Joyzelle. I was seeking your smile.... LancÉor. And your own meets mine in the first kiss that passes between our lips to unite our destinies.... It seems to me to-day as though I had always seen you and always clasped you and as though I were repeating, in reality, on the threshold of paradise, what I did on earth when embracing your shadow.... Joyzelle. I used to embrace you at night when I embraced my dreams.... LancÉor. I knew no doubt.... Joyzelle. I knew no fear.... LancÉor. And everything is granted me.... Joyzelle. And everything makes me happy!... LancÉor. How deep your eyes are and how full of confidence!... Joyzelle. And how clear are yours and full of certainty!... LancÉor. How well I recognize them!... Joyzelle. And how well I know yours!... LancÉor. Your hands rest on my shoulders just as when I lay waiting for them without daring to wake.... Joyzelle. And your arm is round my neck just as it was.... LancÉor. It was thus that your eyelids used to close at the breath of love.... Joyzelle. And it was thus, too, that the tears came to your eyes when they opened.... LancÉor. When happiness is so great.... Joyzelle. Unhappiness does not come so long as love binds it.... LancÉor. Do you love me?... Joyzelle. Yes.... LancÉor. Oh, how you said "yes!"... "Yes" from the depths of your heart, from the depths of your thought, from the depths of your very soul!... I knew it, perhaps; but it had to be said; and our kisses themselves did not count without it.... Now it is enough, it will feed my life; all the hatred on earth could not wipe it away nor thirty years of distress exhaust it!... I am in the light and the spring overwhelms me!... I look up to the sky and the garden awakens!... Do you hear the birds making the trees sing and repeating your smile and that wonderful "yes;" and do you see the rays that caress your hair like diamonds sparkling among the flames and the thousands of flowers that bend over us to surprise in our eyes the mystery of a love which they did not know?... Joyzelle. (Opening her eyes.) There was nothing here but poor, dead flowers....
LancÉor. There is nothing here now but the flowers of life!... Look!... They are coming down, they are streaming down upon us!... They are bursting on the branches, they bend the trees, they entangle our steps, they press against one another, they crush one another, they open out wide, one within the other, they blind the leaves, they dazzle the grass; I know none of them and the spring is drunk; I have never seen flowers so disordered, so resplendent!... Joyzelle. Where are we?... LancÉor. We are in the garden which you would not open to my love.... Joyzelle. What have we done? LancÉor. I have given the kiss that is given but once; and you have spoken the word that is never respoken.... Joyzelle. (Swooning.) LancÉor, I am mad, or else we are going to die.... LancÉor. (Supporting her.) Joyzelle, you are turning pale and your dear arms are pressing me as though you feared that a hidden enemy.... Joyzelle. Have you not seen...? LancÉor. What? Joyzelle. We are caught in a trap and those flowers are betraying us.... The birds were silent, the trees were dead, there was nothing here but weeds, which no one dug up.... I recognize them all and remember their names, which still remind me of their former wretchedness.... Here is the buttercup, laden with golden disks; the poor pale pimpernel is changed into a bush of lilies; the tall scabious are dropping their petals over our heads; and those purple bells
LancÉor. Hark!... Joyzelle. It is the horses' hoofs and the horn sounding the recall.... He is returning. Fly!... LancÉor. But you?... Joyzelle. I have nothing to fear, but his hateful love.... Go!... LancÉor. I will stay with you; and, if his violence.... Joyzelle. You will ruin us both.... Go!... Hide there, behind those spurges.... Whatever he may say, whatever he may do, do not show yourself and fear nothing for me: I shall know how to defend myself.... Go!... He is coming!... Go!... I hear his voice....
Merlin. Is he here, Joyzelle?... Joyzelle. No. Merlin. Those flowers do not lie; they inform against love.... They were your keepers and have been faithful to me.... I am not cruel and I forgive more than once.... You can save him Joyzelle. No!... Merlin. I have done nothing, Joyzelle, to deserve such hatred or such an insult.... Since you wish it, I will let fate take its course....
Joyzelle. (Rushing behind the cluster.) LancÉor!... LancÉor. Joyzelle!... I am hurt.... An adder has stung me.... Joyzelle. It is not an adder.... It is a horrible animal.... It is lifting itself against you!... Let me Merlin. (Approaching them and examining the bite.) Joyzelle. LancÉor! LancÉor! Answer me! Answer me!... Merlin. He will not answer, he is sound asleep.... Withdraw, Joyzelle, unless you wish this mere sleep to end in the grave.... Withdraw, Joyzelle: you will not be betraying him; you will be warding off death.... Joyzelle. First make the sign that shall restore him to life! Merlin. (Looking at her gravely.) I will make the sign, Joyzelle. (Joyzelle exit slowly, turns back and withdraws at last, before a grave and imperious gesture from Merlin. Merlin, left alone with LancÉor, kneels down beside him to dress his wound.) There, have no fear, my son, there, it is for your happiness; and may all my heart open in the first kiss that I am able to give you.
Arielle. Master, we must hasten and lay the new trap. Merlin. Will he fall into it? Arielle. Man always falls into a trap, when his instinct leads him; but let us veil his reason, let us change his character; we shall behold a sight that will make us smile.... Merlin. I shall not smile, for the sight is a sad one and I do not like to see a noble and beautiful love, a love that believes itself predestined and unparalleled, thus reduced to nothing, at the first proof, in the arms of a phantom.... Arielle. LancÉor is not free, for he is no longer himself and I have abandoned him to his instinct during the past hour.... Merlin. He ought to have conquered it.... Arielle. You speak like that because I am submissive: but remember the time when I was less docile. Merlin. You think yourself very docile because I have conquered you; but you retain some shadow even in the light in which I have been able to train you and I find in you Arielle. Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life.... Merlin. What will happen if he yields?... Arielle. He will yield: it is written. The question is if Joyzelle's love will surmount the proof. Merlin. And do you not know? Arielle. No; she has a mind which is not wholly within my sphere, which depends upon a principle which I do not know, which I have never seen except in her and which changes the future.... I have tried to subdue her; but she obeys me only in little things. But Merlin. (In a voice of smiling reproach.) Arielle.... Arielle. Go, let me be.... You know that kisses given to poor Arielle pass like the flash of a wing that closes over running water....
LancÉor. Where did I fall asleep? Some strange poison has entered my heart.... I am no longer the same and my mind is wandering.... I am struggling against the intoxication and I do not know where I am going.... (Catches sight of Arielle.) But who is that woman behind the oleanders? (Approaching the hedge and looking.) She is beautiful!... She is half unclad and her curved foot, like a prudent flower, is trying the water, which smiles and encircles it with pearls.... She raises her arms to bind her hair; and the light of the sky glides between her shoulders, like gleaming water over marble wings. (Approaching closer.) She is beautiful, she is beautiful!... I must see her.... She is turning round and one of her bare breasts, peeping through her tresses, adds rays to the rays that strike it.... She is listening, she hears; and her wide-open eyes are questioning the roses.... She has seen me, she hides herself, she is going to fly.... (Passing
Joyzelle. (Dismayed.) LancÉor!... LancÉor. Why, where do you come from, Joyzelle? Joyzelle. I have seen and heard.... LancÉor. Well, what?... What have you seen?... Look around you: there is nothing to see.... The oleanders are in flower, the water in the basin sleeps, the doves are cooing, the water-lilies are opening their petals: that is all that I see, all that you can see.... Joyzelle. Do you love her? LancÉor. Whom?... Joyzelle. The woman who has just fled.... LancÉor. How should I love her?... I had never seen her.... The woman was there; I happened to pass.... She gave a loud scream.... I ran up.... She seemed to have lost her footing and, as I held out my hand to her, she gave me the kiss which you heard.... Joyzelle. Is it really you speaking? LancÉor. Yes, look at me: it is really and wholly I.... Come nearer, touch me if you doubt it.... Joyzelle. The proof was terrible; but this is mortal.... LancÉor. What?... Joyzelle. Was this the first time that you saw that woman?... LancÉor. Yes. Joyzelle. I shall not speak of it again.... I shall understand, perhaps; in any case, I forgive.... LancÉor. There is nothing to forgive. Joyzelle. What do you say?... LancÉor. I say that I have no need for the pardon with which you overwhelm a fault which I have not committed. Joyzelle. Which you have not committed?... Then I did not see what I saw nor hear what I heard?... LancÉor. No. Joyzelle. LancÉor!... LancÉor. LancÉor! LancÉor!... If you called me by my name for a thousand years and more, it would alter nothing in what was nothing!... Joyzelle. I do not know what is passing between your happiness and mine.... Oh, look at me and touch my hands, that I may know where you are!... Oh, if you speak like that, then it was not you whom I saw this morning in the wonderful garden where I gave away my soul!... No, there is something that is mocking our strength.... It is not possible that all is thus lost because of a single word.... I am seeking, I am all astray.... I LancÉor. I have said what I have said; if you do not believe me, go away, you annoy me.... Joyzelle. Look me in the face.... Do you love her, since you lie like that?... LancÉor. No, I love no one and you less than the others.... Joyzelle. LancÉor!... What have I done?... Perhaps, without knowing.... LancÉor. Nothing, it is not that.... But I am not what you thought and I do not care to be.... I am like other men; I wish you to know it and make the best of it.... I want all our promises to be scattered to the wind of some new dream, like this dead leaf which I crumple in my hand.... Ah, the love of women!... Well, so much the worse for them!... I shall live like other men in a faithless world, where no one loves, where all oaths yield to the first test.... Ah, tears!... They were bound to come, I expected
LancÉor. What have I done?... I am obeying ... what?... I do not know.... What have I said?... It is not I speaking.... I have
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