Page:Pelléas and Melisande.djvu/41

Rh that strange expression he has assumed since he is ill: "Is it you, Pelléas? Ah, I had never remarked it, but you have the grave and friendly face of those who will not live long. You must travel; you must travel…" It is strange; I am about to obey him… My mother listened to him and wept with joy. You have not perceived it? The whole house seems to revive already, one hears people breathe, one hears them walk… Listen, I hear talking behind this door. Quick, quick, answer quickly, where will I see you?

Where would you?

In the park; near the fountain of the blind? Will you, will you come?

Yes.

It will be the last evening. I am about to travel as my father said. You will see me no more…

Do not say that, Pelléas… I will see you always; I will look on you always…

You will look in vain… I shall be so far that you will be unable to see me more.

What has happened, Pelléas? I no longer understand what you say…

Go away, go away. Let us separate. I hear talking behind this door.

(They go out separately.)

Now that the father of Pelléas is saved, and that sickness, the old maid-servant of death, has left the Castle, a little joy and a little sun are at last to re-enter the house… It was time! For since your coming, we have lived here only in whispering around a closed room… And really I pitied you, Melisande… I observed you, you were there, careless, perhaps, but with the strange and wild air of someone who awaited always a great misfortune, by sunlight, in a beautiful garden… I cannot explain… But I was sad to see you thus; for you are too young and too handsome to live thus, day and night, under the breath of death… But at present all will be changed. At my age,—and there, perhaps, is the surest fruitage of my life,—at my age, I have acquired, I know not what faith in the truth of events, and I have always seen that every being, young and handsome, created about itself events that were young, handsome and happy… And it is you, now, who will open the door to the new era that I foresee… Come here; why do you remain there without answering and without lifting your eyes?—I have kissed you thus far only once, the day you came; and yet, old men want to touch sometimes with their lips, the forehead of a woman or the cheek of a child, to still believe in the freshness of life and to put farther away the threat of death. Are you afraid of my old lips? How I pitied you these past months…

Grandfather. I was not unhappy…

Let me look at you, quite near, a moment…one has so much need of beauty by the side of death…

(Enter Golaud.)

Pelléas goes away to-night.