Page:Pelléas and Melisande.djvu/13

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Grandfather, I received, at the same time as the letter from my brother, another letter; a letter from my friend Marcellus. He is about to die and he calls me.

He says he knows exactly the day that death must come. He tells me that I can arrive before it if I please, but that there is no more time to lose.

And yet it is needful to wait awhile. We do not know what the return of your brother prepares for us. And besides is not your father here, just above us, sicker, perhaps, than your friend. Could you choose between the father and the friend?

(He leaves).

Be careful to light the lamp from to-night on. Pelléas.

(They go out separately.)

(In front of the Castle. Enter and.

It is dark in the gardens. And what forests, what forests around the palaces!…

Yes; it astonished me too when I came here, and it astonishes everybody. There are places where one never sees the sun. But one is soon used to it. It is a long time, it is a long time… It is nearly forty years that I live here…Look on the other side and you will have the light of the sea…

I hear a noise beneath us…

Yes; it is someone coming up to us… Ah! it is Pelléas… He seems still tired from having waited for you so long…

He has not seen us.

I think he has seen us, but he does not know what he should do… Pelléas, Pelléas, is it you?

Yes. I was coming from the side of the sea…

We also; we were looking for light. Here, it is a little clearer than elsewhere. And yet the sea is dark.

We shall have a storm to-night. There is one every night since some time… and yet it is so calm this evening… One would embark without knowing it and never come back.

Something leaves the port.

It must be a large ship. The lights are very high, we will see it by and by, when it enters the ray of light.

I do not know if we will see it. there is still a mist on the sea.

It looks as if the mist were slowly rising.

Yes; I perceive, over there, a little light I had not seen.