Maurice Maeterlinck

“ How can you believe that Joyzelle would ever be the cause of a tear or the cause of a shadow?... There is nothing in Joyzelle, not even the suffering which she might inflict, there is nothing in her but brings health, happiness and love!... Ah, how well I see that you know little of the living triumph, the endless dawn contained in her voice, her eyes, her heart!... One must have held her in his arms to know what treasures of hope, what torrents of certainty issue from the least word murmured by her lips, from the slightest smile that plays upon her face.... ”

“ Joyzelle.
Lancéor!... What have I done?... Perhaps, without knowing....
Lancéor.
Nothing, it is not that.... But I am not what you thought and I do not care to be.... I am like other men; I wish you to know it and make the best of it.... I want all our promises to be scattered to the wind of some new dream, like this dead leaf which I crumple in my hand.... Ah, the love of women!... Well, so much the worse for them!... I shall live like other men in a faithless world, where no one loves, where all oaths yield to the first test.... Ah, tears!... ”

“ Do not hide your tears.... The sadder you appear, the more I feel that you love me.... Now it is for me to take care of you, now it is for me to call back your soul, to warm your disconcerted hands, to pursue your lips and bring you back to the midst of the happiness which we had lost.... We shall soon be there, since love is our guide.... It triumphs over everything when it finds two hearts that give themselves to it fearlessly and without reserve.... All the rest is nothing, all the rest is forgotten, all the rest withdraws to make way for love.... ”

“ Ah, Joyzelle, Joyzelle! I am but a phantom lost in the night, more lost than you, for all my clear-sightedness, and nearer the tomb where happiness expires.... I am not my own mistress; I obey my master, I can give nothing but an invisible kiss, which cannot wake you and is not even mine.... But I love you, I love you, as a less happy sister loves her whom love has chosen first.... I love you, I encompass you with all the powers that are not named in the prayers of men ”

“ Ah, at such moments as this, one would see clear in the depths of a darkness which worlds have never traversed!... Oh, I entreat you, tell me what to do!... I am no longer Joyzelle, I am no longer fierce and I have no more pride.... I am broken and dead: I drag myself at your feet; and it is no more a question of this or that, of love or kisses, or of trifling things!... Life and death stand face to face, they are fighting under our eyes and must be separated.... You do not move a step!... Ah, I know how great your hatred is and how you detest that defenceless man!... ”

“ She looks around her, stupefied; for, since Lancéor's entrance, without their noticing it, the gloomy garden has become gradually transfigured by magic. The wild plants, the weeds that poisoned it have grown and each, according to its kind, has increased its flowers, blooming to a prodigious size. The puny bindweed has become a powerful creeper, whose wonderful blossoms engarland the trees weighed down with ripe fruits and peopled with miraculous birds. ”

“ 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!... ”

“ There are skies that open! There are gods of love! There are gods of life!... We must thank them and love one another, since they also love!... Come, come, come to my arms; your eyes still seek me, but your lips find me.... ”

“ Joyzelle is discovered in the garden, alone.
Joyzelle.
This is the garden which no one visits. The sun does not enter here; the poor wild flowers upon which men wage war because they are not beautiful here await death; and the birds are silent. Here are the violet, which has lost its perfume, the trembling, shrinking buttercup and the scarlet poppy, which sheds its petals without ceasing.... ”

“ A movement can bring him back to life; a movement can make him fall on the other side.... Well, at the very moment when you say yes and before the echo which slumbers yonder under those marble vaults has time to repeat that you have consented, I will make the certain movement which will snatch him from the darkness, provided that you promise to come to-night, here, in this room in which I shall restore him to you and on this same bed over which you are leaning, to give yourself to me, without shame, without reserve....
Joyzelle. ”

“ Merlin.
Ay, for all men the hour of love is an important hour!...
Arielle.
For Lancéor, alas, it is the inexorable hour!... Within these next few days he will reach the summit of his life. With groping hands, he touches happiness and the tomb.... He is dependent entirely on the last steps which he is taking and on the act of the virgin who is coming to meet him....
Merlin.
And if Joyzelle be not she whom fate selects?...
[7]
Arielle.
Indeed, I fear that the proof which we are about to attempt is the only one which it offers; but man must never lose courage in face of the future.... ”

“ Lancéor.
I hold your hands and your eyes, your hair and your lips, in the same kiss and at the same moment, all the gifts of love which I have never had and all its presence!... My arms are so surprised that they cannot carry them; and my whole life cannot contain them.... Do not [33] turn away your face, do not draw back your lips!...
Joyzelle.
It is not to escape you, but to be closer to you....
Lancéor.
Do not turn your head; do not deprive me of a shadow of your lashes, a gleam of your eyes: it is not the hours, but the very minutes that threaten our happiness.... ”

“ Lancéor.
And the joy of returning to the arms which press one and which still tremble, because they had ceased to hope!... Do you feel yours quiver and mine adore you?... They seek, they enlace one another, they fear lest they should lose one another, they no longer dare to open.... They no longer obey, they do not know that they are hurting us and are like to stifle us in their blind intoxication!... Ah, they know at last the worth of clasping a glowing body; and one would die to learn life and to know love!...
Joyzelle. ”

“ The future is a world limited by ourselves, in which we discover only that which concerns us and sometimes, by chance, that which interests those whom we love the most.... I [9] see very clearly all that unfolds itself round Lancéor, until his road meets Joyzelle's road. But around Joyzelle the years are veiled. It is an effulgent veil, a veil of light, but it hides the days as profoundly as a veil of darkness.... It interrupts life. Then, beyond the veil, I again find happiness and death awaiting him, like two equal, indifferent, inscrutable hosts ”

“ The pale pimpernel is now a tall shrub of a warm and tender green, with bursting flowers larger than lilies. The pale scabious has lengthened its stalks, from which spring tufts like mauve heliotrope.... Butterflies flit to and fro, the bees hum, the birds sing, the fruits swing and fall, the light streams down. The perspective of the garden has become infinitely extended; and the audience now sees, to the right, a marble basin, half-hidden behind a hedge of oleanders and turnsoles cut into arches. ”

“ Merlin.
Do not raise your voice to interrupt a crime which you do not wish to see.... They will not hear you; they listen only to the sound of their lips!... But turn, Joyzelle, I beseech you!... Your life is at stake and all the happiness to which you have a right!... Do not reject the proffered truth that comes to save you if you have the courage at last to accept it! ”

“ Joyzelle.
(Sleeping, talking as in a dream.) Is that you, Lancéor?... How sweet your lips are at the breath of dawn!... I swoon beneath the flowers that fall from paradise....
Arielle.
Faithful in sleep and constant in her dreams!... The demons of the night will steal nothing [71] from the love that fills the past and future of a heart!... Ah, my master and father!... It is she whom your only hope awaited, in vain, to avert the fate that threatens your old age!... O master, if you be willing, there is yet time; and happiness is here: you have but to gather it!... ”

“ Lancéor, for pity's sake!... If your voice is too weak, give a sign of life!... I take you in my arms, my arms that love you!... Come, come, come to yourself, in our great love!... See, see, it is my hands that are lifting your head.... Do you recognize my hands, as they stroke your hair?... You so often told me, when we were happy, [87] that the least caress of these dear hands would recall your soul, even from the greatest happiness of paradise, from the greatest darkness in the depths of.... ”

“ Ah, I will open your lips!... (She places her lips on Lancéor's.) Lancéor! Lancéor! All the ardour of my life shall enter your heart!... Do not fear, do not fear! It is the saving flame and life that restores life!... Breathe it all in the last efforts of my breath which loves you!... I would gladly suffocate in exchanging my life for yours!... I give you my strength, my hours, my years!... Here they are, here they are!... You have but to make a movement, to open your lips!... It must be so!... It must be possible thus to give new life to those whom [88] we love better than ourselves!... ”

“ 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 [64] is dead in our one heart.... ”

“ Her sweet hair lies spread like a flood of motionless light; and the moon cannot tell to whom belongs the gold that mingles with the azure in which its beams float.... Her bright eyes are closed; and yet the light that falls from the stars tremulously raises her loving eyelids to seek [69] beneath them the last memory of the fair day that is past.... Her mouth is a moist, breathing flower; and the lilies have poured dewdrops on her bare shoulder, to give her her share of the pearls which night distributes in silence, in the name of the heavens that open over the treasure of the worlds.... ”

“ No, Joyzelle, and soon proofs and facts will show you that it is not enough and that an honest look, an innocent smile and ingenuous words often conceal more dangerous snares than those of thankless old age or of love that has but little hope.... ”