Sorin.  There won’t be anything in twice ten thousand years.

TREPLIEFF.  Then let them now show us that nothingness.

Arkadina.  Yes, let them—­we are asleep.

The curtain rises.  A vista opens across the lake.  The moon hangs low above the horizon and is reflected in the water.  Nina, dressed in white, is seen seated on a great rock.

Nina.  All men and beasts, lions, eagles, and quails, horned stags, geese, spiders, silent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the sea, and creatures invisible to the eye—­in one word, life—­all, all life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last.  A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature on her breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain.  No longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of beetles in the groves of limes.  All is cold, cold.  All is void, void, void.  All is terrible, terrible—­[A pause] The bodies of all living creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has transformed them into stones and water and clouds; but their spirits have flowed together into one, and that great world-soul am I!  In me is the spirit of the great Alexander, the spirit of Napoleon, of Caesar, of Shakespeare, and of the tiniest leech that swims.  In me the consciousness of man has joined hands with the instinct of the animal; I understand all, all, all, and each life lives again in me.

[The will-o-the-wisps flicker out along the lake shore.]

Arkadina. [Whispers] What decadent rubbish is this?

TREPLIEFF. [Imploringly] Mother!

Nina.  I am alone.  Once in a hundred years my lips are opened, my voice echoes mournfully across the desert earth, and no one hears.  And you, poor lights of the marsh, you do not hear me.  You are engendered at sunset in the putrid mud, and flit wavering about the lake till dawn, unconscious, unreasoning, unwarmed by the breath of life.  Satan, father of eternal matter, trembling lest the spark of life should glow in you, has ordered an unceasing movement of the atoms that compose you, and so you shift and change for ever.  I, the spirit of the universe, I alone am immutable and eternal. [A pause] Like a captive in a dungeon deep and void, I know not where I am, nor what awaits me.  One thing only is not hidden from me:  in my fierce and obstinate battle with Satan, the source of the forces of matter, I am destined to be victorious in the end.  Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the reign of freedom will begin on earth.  But this can only come to pass by slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining Sirius himself shall fall to dust.  Until that hour, oh, horror! horror! horror! [A pause.  Two glowing red points are seen shining across the lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see his dread and lurid eyes.