SCENE I.--_A Room in the Palace
[_LANCÉOR is discovered before a mirror. He appears emaciated, bent, aged, unrecognizable._
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!... And these hideous blemishes which will not come away, I feel them under my fingers.... These bent shoulders refuse to straighten themselves; my hair is colourless, like pale ashes after the flame has died away; my eyes, even my eyes, hardly recognize themselves.... They used to open, to laugh, to welcome life.... Now they blink and their glances avoid me like the glances of a knave.... Not a thing remains to me of what I was; my mother would pass by me and not see me.... It is finished.... (_Drawing the curtain of a tall window._) Let us hide ourselves; let complete dusk cover up all this!... (_He lies down in a dark corner of the room._) I give up, I consent.... I have done what love can never forgive.... I am losing my life at last, as I have lost Joyzelle.... She will not see me again, I shall not see her again....
[_A door opens. Enter JOYZELLE._
JOYZELLE.
(_Surprised by the darkness, she stands a moment on the threshold. Then, casting her eyes around the room, she perceives LANCÉOR lying in a corner and rushes towards him with outstretched arms._) Lancéor!... Ah, these last three days I have lived like a mad thing! I looked for you everywhere. I went to the tower.... The doors were closed, the windows too. I crouched on the sill to catch a glimpse of your shadow, I called, I screamed, no one answered.... But how pale you are, how thin!... I am talking to you without thinking.... Give me your two hands....
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 me, is it here?... Is it my hands, my eyes, my clothes, perhaps?...
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.... No, no, do not approach, lest disgust.... I am less like myself than if I had returned from a world which life had never visited.... You do not recoil? You are not astonished?... You do not see me as these mirrors see me?...
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 is dead in our one heart.... I have lost the confidence in which all my thoughts surrounded your thoughts, even as a transparent water surrounds a still clearer water.... I myself no longer believe in it, I no longer believe in myself; I have nothing pure left into which you can bend to find my shadow; and my soul is even sadder than my body....
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, for you would have to believe the incredible.... I was walking in a trance, in a sort of invincible, mocking dream.... My mind, my reason, my will were all farther from themselves than is this shattered body from what it was.... I would have liked to tell you, to shout to you again and again that I was a lie that had escaped control and that the shameful speeches that defiled my lips stifled, in spite of myself, the tearful confession and the ardent words of desperate love that were leaping towards you.... I made efforts fit to burst my throat, to break my heart; and I heard my faithless voice betray me and my arms, my hands, my eyes, my kisses were powerless to disown it; for, except my soul, which you did not see, I felt myself a prey to a hostile force, irresistible, alas, and incomprehensible!...
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 I find you!... Oh, I cannot tell how to explain that!... When one loves as I love you, she is blind and deaf, because she looks beyond and listens elsewhere.... When she loves as I love you, it is not what he says, it is not what he does, it is not what he is that she loves in the man she loves: it is he and only he, who remains the same, through the passing years and troubles.... It is he alone, it is you alone, in whom no change can come but that which increases love.... He who is all in you, you who are all in him, you whom I see, whom I hear, to whom I listen incessantly and whom I love always....
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!...