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PDFPELLEAS.
Nothing can be seen any longer on the sea....
MELISANDE.
I see more lights.
PELLEAS.
It is the other lighthouses.... Do you hear the sea?... It is the wind rising.... Let us go down this way. Will you give me your hand?
MELISANDE.
See, see, my hands are full....
PELLEAS.
I will hold you by the arm, the road is steep and it is very gloomy there.... I am going away perhaps to-morrow....
MELISANDE.
Oh!... why do you go away? [Exeunt.
ACT SECOND.
SCENE I.—A fountain in the park.
Enter_ PELLEAS and MELISANDE.
PELLEAS.
You do not know where I have brought you?—I often come to sit here, toward noon, when it is too hot in the gardens. It is stifling to-day, even in the shade of the trees.
MELISANDE.
Oh, how clear the water is!...
PELLEAS.
It is as cool as winter. It is an old abandoned spring. It seems to have been a miraculous spring,—it opened the eyes of the blind,—they still call it “Blind Man’s Spring.”
MELISANDE.
It no longer opens the eyes of the blind?
PELLEAS.
Since the King has been nearly blind himself, no one comes any more....
MELISANDE.
How alone one is here!... There is no sound.
PELLEAS.
There is always a wonderful silence here.... One could hear the water sleep.... Will you sit down on the edge of the marble basin? There is one linden where the sun never comes....
MELISANDE.
I am going to lie down on the marble.—I should like to see the bottom of the water....
PELLEAS.
No one has ever seen it.—It is as deep, perhaps, as the sea.—It is not known whence it comes.—Perhaps it comes from the bottom of the earth....
MELISANDE.
If there were anything shining at the bottom, perhaps one could see it....
PELLEAS.
Do not lean over so....
MELISANDE.
I would like to touch the water....
PELLEAS.
Have a care of slipping.... I will hold your hand....
MELISANDE.
No, no, I would plunge both hands in it.... You would say my hands were sick to-day....
PELLEAS.
Oh! oh! take care! take care! Melisande!... Melisande!...—Oh! your hair!...
MELISANDE (starting upright). I cannot,... I cannot reach it....
PELLEAS.
Your hair dipped in the water....
MELISANDE.
Yes, it is longer than my arms.... It is longer than I.... [A silence.
PELLEAS.
It was at the brink of a spring, too, that he found you?
MELISANDE.
