  Scene I.—A Room in the Palace
LancÉor. Who am I? In a few hours I have aged thirty years.... The poison is doing its work and sorrow too.... I see myself with terror in this mirror which shows me the wreck of myself.... Yet, it does not lie. (Going to another mirror.) For here is another that says the same thing ... unless they all lie, even as everything seems to lie and to mock at me in this extraordinary island. (He feels his face.) Alas, they are right!... These wrinkles which my hand follows are not formed by their malevolent crystal.... They are in my flesh!...
Joyzelle. (Surprised by the darkness, she stands a moment on the threshold. Then, casting her LancÉor. You know me?... Joyzelle. Why not? LancÉor. But then I am not...? I am still myself?... Look at me!... What trace of me remains?... (Going to the window and tearing aside the curtain.) Look! Look!... What do you know me by?... Tell Joyzelle. (Looking at him and throwing herself, weeping, in his arms.) Oh, how you have suffered!... LancÉor. I have suffered, yes, I have suffered!... I deserved it but too well, after what I said, after what I did!... But that is not what matters or overwhelms me.... I would willingly die, if you could but see once more, were it only for the flash of an eye, that which you once loved.... I cling to myself, to the little that remains of me.... I should like to hide myself, to bury my distress; and yet I want you to see me first, so that you may know at last what you would have to love, if you still loved me.... Come, come, nearer, nearer.... Not nearer to me, but nearer to the rays that shine upon my wretchedness.... Look at these wrinkles, these dead eyes, these lips.... Joyzelle. I see that you are pale and that you seem tired.... Do not put away my arms.... Bring your face closer.... Why not let me put my lips to it, as I did when all things smiled to us in the garden of flowers?... Love knows many days on which nothing smiles.... What matter, if it be there to smile when we weep?... I am pushing back your hair which hid your face and made it look so sad.... See, it is just like that which I pushed back in our first kiss.... Come, come, do not think about the lies of the mirrors.... They do not know what they say; but love knows.... Already life is returning to those eyes which see me again.... Have no fear, for I have none.... I know what we must do and I shall have the secret that will cure your pain.... LancÉor. Joyzelle!... Joyzelle. Yes, yes, come nearer; I love you more dearly than at the happy moment when all united us.... LancÉor. Ah, I understand that; but the other, the other thing!... Joyzelle. What thing? LancÉor. I understand that one can find one's love in ruins, that one can gather up its remnants and loves them still.... But where are the remnants of our love? Nothing is left of it; for, before fate struck me as you see, I had crushed out of existence all that it could not destroy.... I have lied and deceived; and, at the very moment when the least lie begins again in a sphere where nothing is wiped out, a fault which love might have pardoned.... Truth Joyzelle. Did you kiss that woman?... LancÉor. Yes. Joyzelle. Did she call you?... LancÉor. No. Joyzelle. And why did you say that I was mistaken?... LancÉor. What good would it be to tell you, Joyzelle? It is too late.... You would not believe me, Joyzelle. But ah, I did see it!... And I knew at once that it was not you that were lying, that it was impossible.... LancÉor. How did you know?... Joyzelle. Because I love you.... LancÉor. But, what am I, Joyzelle, what do you love in me, in whom I have profaned and others destroyed all that you once loved?... Joyzelle. You. LancÉor. What remains of me?... Not these hands, which have lost their strength; not these eyes, which no longer have their brightness; not this heart, which has betrayed love.... Joyzelle. It is you and still you and none but you yourself!... What matter who you are, so long as LancÉor. Joyzelle!... Joyzelle. Yes, yes, embrace me, crush me in your arms!... We have to struggle, we shall have to suffer; we are here in a world that seems full of snares.... We are only two, but we are all love!... Scene II.—A grove.
Arielle. She sleeps.... The breaths of the garden are hushed around her to listen to her breath; and the nightingale alone, deputed by the night which bathes her in silver, comes to soothe her slumbers.... How beautiful and peaceful she is; and how pure she looks, a thousand times purer than the water that trickles yonder, flowing from the glaciers, in the snowy whiteness that sings under the pale leaves!... Her sweet hair lies spread like a flood of motionless light; and the moon cannot tell to whom belongs the gold that mingles with the azure in which its beams float.... Her bright eyes are closed; and yet the light that falls from the stars tremulously raises her loving eyelids to seek
Joyzelle. (In her sleep.) LancÉor!... Arielle. One more.... The last, even as we drink of the well defended by the angels who keep the secrets of time and space, the well at whose brink we shall never rest again.... Joyzelle. (Sleeping, talking as in a dream.) Is that you, LancÉor?... How sweet your lips are at the breath of dawn!... I swoon beneath the flowers that fall from paradise.... Arielle. Faithful in sleep and constant in her dreams!... The demons of the night will steal nothing Merlin. (In the distance, in a voice of grave reproach.) Arielle!...
Arielle. I am speaking for you and my voice is your voice.... I speak in the name of your heart, which loves deeply and dares not confess it.... You had, at this prescribed moment, to meet Merlin. Begone, it is too late.... Arielle. No, it is not too late; this is the one moment; and your destiny depends on the movement which you make.... Merlin. Begone, do not tempt me, or I will plunge you back into your impotent shade.... I drew you from it to open my eyes, not to mislead me.... Arielle. To listen to the instinct by which alone men are saved is not to be misled.... Think of the terrible days which Viviane is preparing: Viviane, whom you must love if you do not love this one.... Merlin. Viviane?... Is it in this life or in some other world that that name resounds within my secret heart like a name of madness, sorrow and shame?... Arielle. No, it is in this life, the only one that you possess.... It is the name of the fairy who, in BrocÉliande, where your fate leads you, awaits your appearance to shatter your old age.... O master, I see her!... Have a care, she approaches and will win your heart!... So soon as this love, so pure, so healthful, has lost its claims, hers crawls out of the shadow.... Master, I entreat you!... My eyes are counting her wiles: she entwines you with her arms which travesty love; she takes away your power, your reason, your wisdom; she snatches from you at last the secret of your strength; and, like an old, drunken man, you fall to the ground.... Then she strips you, mocks at you, rises to her feet and closes on us the door of the mortal cavern which will never open again.... Merlin. It is inevitable, then?... Arielle. You know, as I do, that nothing can deceive me where you are concerned.... Master, I beseech you, both for yourself and for me, who love the light and who must lose it with you!... This is the irrevocable hour!... Choose, choose life!... It still offers itself and therefore it belongs to us and you have a right to it!... Merlin. Begone, it is useless.... Besides, this one would never have loved me.... Arielle. It is enough that you love her and that he whom she loves no longer stands between you.... That is what I read in the two futures.... Merlin. (Wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow.) Begone, for I know.... And so it was written that, by loving this child, I could have saved myself.... But she is not for me; and my hour is past.... This is the hour of those who come and who have met as time ordained, as life ordained.... Begone, begone, I say!... (Arielle, veiling her features, exit silently.) I surrender my share; and it is for you, my son, that I complete the proof.... (He takes off his cloak and appears taller and younger, dressed in clothes similar to LancÉor's and presenting a strange resemblance to him. Approaching Joyzelle.) Ah, my innocent Joyzelle!... You will suffer too, you must suffer still more, since destiny lies hidden in your tears; but what matter the sorrows that lead to love?... I would gladly exchange all the joys that I have known in my poor life for the most cruel of those happy sorrows.... (He leans over Joyzelle.)
Joyzelle. (Waking with a start.) LancÉor!... Merlin. Yes, it is I: the darkness has led me to you; and I come to wake you with a new kiss, so that you may.... Joyzelle. (Springing up and looking at him in terror.) Who are you?... Merlin. (Putting out his arms to embrace her.) You know who I am, Joyzelle, and love must tell you.... Joyzelle. (Drawing back violently.) Ah, do not touch me, or I shall summon death to come to put an end to this horrible dream!... Merlin. Look at me, Joyzelle!... I do not understand you; and doubtless sleep still troubles.... Joyzelle. Where is he?... Merlin. Wake, Joyzelle.... Joyzelle. Where is he and what have you done with him?... Merlin. He is wherever I am; and, if your eyes mislead you.... Joyzelle. Do you not know that I carry him here, in these eyes which see you and compare what he is with what you are?... Have you not seen what he is in my heart, that you should copy him thus?... You, beside him; you, in his clothes and under his aspect: ah, it is as though death pretended to be life!... But there might be twenty thousand of you resembling him and he alone be changed from what he was yesterday; and I would sweep away the twenty thousand phantoms, to go to the only man who is not a dream among the other dreams!... Oh, do not try to hide in the shadow.... You retreat too late; I have discovered you and I know who you are... I know your spells; and how I should laugh at them, did I not fear that, by your witchcraft, when usurping that dear and unrecognizable shape, you have caused him to suffer!... What have you done to him?... Where is he?... I will know.... You shall not go without answering.... (Seizing Merlin's hand.) I am alone, I am Merlin. I love you too much, Joyzelle, to do him any harm, so long as you love him.... He has therefore nothing to fear.... Do you not fear me either. I am not here to take advantage of the darkness and surprise your heart. I had another object.... Listen to me, Joyzelle; it is no longer the rival or the unhappy lover that speaks to you; it is a prudent and anxious father.... Before he came who conquered you, as never man in this world conquered woman, I had, I confess, caught a glimpse of a happiness which it is idle to pursue in the decline of years.... To-day I retire, sadly, but in good faith.... I know how much you love the poor unconscious being whom malevolent chance has placed upon your road.... And do not mistake me: I am speaking of him now without hatred or envy, but not without dismay, when I think of the heart-rending days Joyzelle. How?... Merlin. The proof is grave and sad; I would have liked to spare you.... But you know better than I that there are salutary sufferings, before which it is shameful to fly.... A sign will be enough to overturn a world.... A little movement of that neck which as yet bends without anxiety, a single glance of those Joyzelle. What do you mean?... Merlin. That, at this very moment, when all that is spotless and true, limpid and ardent in your heart, when all the transparent virtues of your soul, all the faithfulness, all the loyalty and all the innocence of your virgin blood mount up towards him whom you had selected to make of him the purest, the happiest of men, he is there, behind us, at two steps from this bank, sheltered by those leaves which he thinks impenetrable, in the arms of the woman with whom, the other day, as you yourself saw, he Joyzelle. No. Merlin. Why do you say no, without looking?... Joyzelle. Because he is myself.... Merlin. I do not ask you to believe my words: I simply ask you to turn your head.... Joyzelle. No. Merlin. Do you hear the murmur of their voices mingling and the song of kisses answering kisses?... Joyzelle. No. Merlin. Do not raise your voice to interrupt a crime which you do not wish to see.... They will not hear you; they listen only to the sound of their lips!... But turn, Joyzelle, I beseech you!... Your life is at stake and all the happiness to which you have a right!... Do not reject the proffered truth that comes to save you if you have the courage at last to accept it! It will not return except to make you weep, when it is too late!... But look! Look!... You need not even turn your head!... Your star is kind to you and does not tire!... Do not close your eyes, it is coming to unseal them!... See!... The shadow of their arms, lengthened by the moonlight, is creeping along that arch and covering your knees!... Open your eyes! Look!... It is coming to defy you, it is rising to your lips!... Joyzelle. No.
Merlin. I understand you, Joyzelle.... You must not deny what remains of your love while I am here.... I leave you to yourself, face to face with your duty, face to face with your destiny.... Such sacrifices ask for no witnesses: they demand silence.... The truth is there; it is cowardly to fly from it.... You will know how to face it when you are alone.... There is yet time.... I admire you, Joyzelle.... Your life and your happiness invoke your courage and depend upon a glance....
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