Page:Poet Lore, volume 36, 1925.pdf/403

 the door on the right).—You are surprised, eh! Perhaps you will stop grumbling that the Princess sent us here.

Maid (Goes to the balustrade, looks down).—Ah, water—a lake—But that darkness beneath the trees, almost black!

Zan (Mysteriously).—They say that phantoms may be seen there—

Maid (Suddenly).—Are you beginning again? Something more of ghosts and wood spirits, with which you tried to frighten the life out of me on the way!

Zan.—I only quote what I have heard, and as for the rest, the Lord be with us, and all harm leave us! I didn’t mention a thing about this terrace then. Certainly nothing about the dead monk. No, did I—?

Maid (Jumps back from the balustrade).—Be still, stop saying those things; you want to frighten me out of here. Come, we had better bring a table. (Suddenly.) And did the Princess really order a table to be brought out on the terrace, now, at night time?

Zan.—“When you arrive at the little castle with Tereza,” she said, “set a table on the terrace for me.”

Maid.—But you did not tell her about that monk?

Zan.—There was not time for that, but if there had been, I should have told her that here, long ago, one night, when the nobility were playing cards here after a hunt, a dead monk revealed himself, the deceased brother of the then ruling prince. That monk by rights should have been the ruler, but they deprived him of his due and put him into a monastery, and there he died. And suddenly—

Maid (Moving quickly toward the door).—you had better come for the table. (Halts on the threshold.) But that happened long ago, you say.

Zan.—What?

Maid.—Well, how about the monk?

Zan.—Why, the dead monk suddenly stationed himself behind his brother and looked down at his cards, a dead man—exactly at midnight—

Maid.—The table, the table!

(Leaves hurriedly through the door.)

follows her.

Ivan (Steps out cautiously).—A gossiping woman, a garrulous