Act Second
Scene I _A Fountain in the Park
Enter_ PÉLLÉAS and MÉLISANDE.
PÉLLÉAS.
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.
Mélisande
Oh, how clear the water is!…
Pélléas
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.”
Mélisande
It no longer opens the eyes of the blind?
Pélléas
Since the King has been nearly blind himself, no one comes any more….
Mélisande
How alone one is here!… There is no sound.
Pélléas
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….
Mélisande
I am going to lie down on the marble.—I should like to see the bottom of the water….
Pélléas
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….
Mélisande
If there were anything shining at the bottom, perhaps one could see it….
Pélléas
Do not lean over so….
Mélisande
I would like to touch the water….
Pélléas
Have a care of slipping…. I will hold your hand….
Mélisande
No, no, I would plunge both hands in it…. You would say my hands were sick to-day….
Pélléas
Oh! oh! take care! take care! Mélisande!… Mélisande!…—Oh! your hair!…
MÉLISANDE (starting upright). I cannot,… I cannot reach it….
Pélléas
Your hair dipped in the water….
Mélisande
Yes, it is longer than my arms…. It is longer than I…. [A silence.
Pélléas
It was at the brink of a spring, too, that he found you?
Mélisande
Yes….
Pélléas
What did he say to you?
Mélisande
Nothing;—I no longer remember….
Pélléas
Was he quite near you?
Mélisande
Yes; he would have kissed me.
Pélléas
And you would not?
Mélisande
No.
Pélléas
Why would you not?
Mélisande
Oh! oh! I saw something pass at the bottom of the water….
Pélléas
Take care! take care!—You will fall! What are you playing with?
Mélisande
With the ring he gave me….
Pélléas
Take care; you will lose it….
Mélisande
No, no; I am sure of my hands….
Pélléas
Do not play so, over so deep a water….
Mélisande
My hands do not tremble.
Pélléas
How it shines in the sunlight I—Do not throw it so high in the air….
Mélisande
Oh!…
Pélléas
It has fallen?
Mélisande
It has fallen into the water!…
Pélléas
Where is it? where is it?…
Mélisande
I do not see it sink?…
Pélléas
I think I see it shine….
Mélisande
My ring?
Pélléas
Yes, yes; down yonder….
Mélisande
Oh! oh! It is so far away from us!… no, no, that is not it … that is not it…. It is lost … lost…. There is nothing any more but a great circle on the water…. What shall we do? What shall we do now?…
Pélléas
You need not be so troubled for a ring. It is nothing…. We shall find it again, perhaps. Or else we will find another….
Mélisande
No, no; we shall never find it again; we shall never find any others either…. And yet I thought I had it in my hands…. I had already shut my hands, and it is fallen in spite of all…. I threw it too high, toward the sun….
Pélléas
Come, come, we will come back another day;… come, it is time. They will come to meet us. It was striking noon at the moment the ring fell.
Mélisande
What shall we say to Golaud if he ask where it is?
Pélléas
The truth, the truth, the truth…. [Exeunt.