FIRST SCENE

(The Auberge des Adrets:  a cafe in sixteenth century style, with a suggestion of stage effect.  Tables and easy-chairs are scattered in corners and nooks.  The walls are decorated with armour and weapons.  Along the ledge of the wainscoting stand glasses and jugs.)

(Maurice and Henriette are in evening dress and sit facing each other at a table on which stands a bottle of champagne and three filled glasses.  The third glass is placed at that side of the table which is nearest the background, and there an easy-chair is kept ready for the still missing “third man.”)

Maurice. [Puts his watch in front of himself on the table] If he doesn’t get here within the next five minutes, he isn’t coming at all.  And suppose in the meantime we drink with his ghost. [Touches the third glass with the rim of his own.]

Henriette. [Doing the same] Here’s to you, Adolphe!

Maurice.  He won’t come.

Henriette.  He will come.

Maurice.  He won’t.

Henriette.  He will.

Maurice.  What an evening!  What a wonderful day!  I can hardly grasp that a new life has begun.  Think only:  the manager believes that I may count on no less than one hundred thousand francs.  I’ll spend twenty thousand on a villa outside the city.  That leaves me eighty thousand.  I won’t be able to take it all in until to-morrow, for I am tired, tired, tired. [Sinks back into the chair] Have you ever felt really happy?

Henriette.  Never.  How does it feel?

Maurice.  I don’t quite know how to put it.  I cannot express it, but I seem chiefly to be thinking of the chagrin of my enemies.  It isn’t nice, but that’s the way it is.

Henriette.  Is it happiness to be thinking of one’s enemies?

Maurice.  Why, the victor has to count his killed and wounded enemies in order to gauge the extent of his victory.

Henriette.  Are you as bloodthirsty as all that?

Maurice.  Perhaps not.  But when you have felt the pressure of other people’s heels on your chest for years, it must be pleasant to shake off the enemy and draw a full breath at last.

Henriette.  Don’t you find it strange that yon are sitting here, alone with me, an insignificant girl practically unknown to you—­ and on an evening like this, when you ought to have a craving to show yourself like a triumphant hero to all the people, on the boulevards, in the big restaurants?

Maurice.  Of course, it’s rather funny, but it feels good to be here, and your company is all I care for.

Henriette.  You don’t look very hilarious.

Maurice.  No, I feel rather sad, and I should like to weep a little.

Henriette.  What is the meaning of that?

Maurice.  It is fortune conscious of its own nothingness and waiting for misfortune to appear.