that I should be about for nothing to be able to have birth....  I had suspected it of old....  In the time of my youth, I had many friends whose presence seemed to attract every adventure; but the days when I went forth with them, for the encounter of joys or sorrows, they came back again with empty hands....  I think I palsied fate; and I long took pride in this gift.  One lived under cover in my reign....  But now I have recognized that misfortune itself is better worth than sleep, and that there must be a life more active and higher than waiting....  They shall see that I too have strength to trouble, when I will, the water that seems dead at the bottom of the great caldrons of the future....  Alladine, Alladine!...  Oh! she is lovely so, her hair over the flowers and over her pet lamb, her lips apart and fresher than the morn....  I will kiss her without her knowing, holding back my poor white beard.... [He kisses her.]—­She smiled....  Should I pity her?  For the few years she gives me, she will some day be queen; and I shall have done a little good before I go away....  They will be astonished....  She herself does not know....  Ah! here she wakes with a start....  Where are you coming from, Alladine?

ALLADINE.

I have had a bad dream....

ABLAMORE.

What is the matter?  Why do you look yonder?

ALLADINE.

Some one went by upon the road.

ABLAMORE.

I heard nothing.

ALLADINE.

I tell you some one is coming....  There he is! [She points out a young knight coming forward through the trees and holding his horse by the bridle.] Do not take me by the hand; I am not afraid....  He has not seen us....

ABLAMORE.

Who dares come here?...  If I did not know....  I believe it is Palomides....  It is Astolaine’s betrothed....  He has raised his head....  Is it you, Palomides?

Enter PALOMIDES.

PALOMIDES.

Yes, my father....  If I am suffered yet to call you by that name....  I come hither before the day and the hour....

ABLAMORE.

You are a welcome guest, whatever hour it be....  But what has happened?  We did not expect you for two days yet....  Is Astolaine here, too?...

PALOMIDES.

No; she will come to-morrow.  We have journeyed day and night.  She was tired and begged me to come on before....  Are my sisters come?

ABLAMORE.

They have been here three days waiting for your wedding.—­You look very happy, Palomides....

PALOMIDES.

Who would not be happy, to have found what he sought?  I was sad of old.  But now the days seem lighter and more sweet than harmless birds in the hand....  And if old moments come again by chance, I draw near Astolaine, and you would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a soul that can be seen around her,—­that takes you in its arms like an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for everything....  I shall never understand it at all.—­I do not know how it can all be; but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak of it....