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Act III, Scene vi | CHRISTIAN: |  Come to my aid! |
| CYRANO: | | Not I! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | But I shall die, | | Unless at once I win back her fair favor. |
| CYRANO: | | And how can I, at once, i' th' devil's name, | | Lesson you in. . . |
| CHRISTIAN (seizing his arm): | | Oh, she is there! |
| (The window of the balcony is now lighted up.) |
| CYRANO (moved): | | Her window! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Oh! I shall die! |
| CYRANO: | | Speak lower! |
| CHRISTIAN (in a whisper): | | I shall die! |
| CYRANO: | | The night is dark. . . |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Well! |
| CYRANO: | | All can be repaired. | | Although you merit not. Stand there, poor wretch! | | Fronting the balcony! I'll go beneath | | And prompt your words to you. . . |
| CHRISTIAN: | | But. . . |
| CYRANO: | | Hold your tongue! |
| THE PAGES (reappearing at back—to Cyrano): | | Ho! |
| CYRANO: | | Hush! |
| (He signs to them to speak softly.) |
| FIRST PAGE (in a low voice): | | We've played the serenade you bade | | To Montfleury! |
| CYRANO (quickly, in a low voice): | | Go! lurk in ambush there, | | One at this street corner, and one at that; | | And if a passer-by should here intrude, | | Play you a tune! |
| SECOND PAGE: | | What tune, Sir Gassendist? |
| CYRANO: | | Gay, if a woman comes,—for a man, sad! | | (The pages disappear, one at each street corner. To Christian): | | Call her! |
| CYRANO (picking up stones and throwing them at the window): | | Some pebbles! wait awhile! |
| ROXANE (half-opening the casement): | | Who calls me? |
| CHRISTIAN: | | I! |
| ROXANE: | | Who's that? |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Christian! |
| ROXANE (disdainfully): | | Oh! you? |
| CHRISTIAN: | | I would speak with you. |
| CYRANO (under the balcony—to Christian): | | Good. Speak soft and low. |
| ROXANE: | | No, you speak stupidly! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Oh, pity me! |
| ROXANE: | | No! you love me no more! |
| CHRISTIAN (prompted by Cyrano): | | You say—Great Heaven! | | I love no more?—when—I—love more and more! |
| ROXANE (who was about to shut the casement, pausing): | | Hold! 'tis a trifle better! ay, a trifle! |
| CHRISTIAN (same play): | | Love grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating. . . | | Of this poor heart, which the cruel wanton boy. . . | | Took for a cradle! |
| ROXANE (coming out on to the balcony): | | That is better! But | | An if you deem that Cupid be so cruel | | You should have stifled baby-love in's cradle! |
| CHRISTIAN (same play): | | Ah, Madame, I assayed, but all in vain | | This. . .new-born babe is a young. . .Hercules! |
| ROXANE: | | Still better! |
| CHRISTIAN (same play): | | Thus he strangled in my heart | | The. . .serpents twain, of. . .Pride. . .and Doubt! |
| ROXANE (leaning over the balcony): | | Well said! | | —But why so faltering? Has mental palsy | | Seized on your faculty imaginative? |
| CYRANO (drawing Christian under the balcony, and slipping into his place): | | Give place! This waxes critical!. . . |
| ROXANE: | | To-day. . . | | Your words are hesitating. |
| CYRANO (imitating Christian—in a whisper): | | Night has come. . . | | In the dusk they grope their way to find your ear. |
| ROXANE: | | But my words find no such impediment. |
| CYRANO: | | They find their way at once? Small wonder that! | | For 'tis within my heart they find their home; | | Bethink how large my heart, how small your ear! | | And,—from fair heights descending, words fall fast, | | But mine must mount, Madame, and that takes time! |
| ROXANE: | | Meseems that your last words have learned to climb. |
| CYRANO: | | With practice such gymnastic grows less hard! |
| ROXANE: | | In truth, I seem to speak from distant heights! |
| CYRANO: | | True, far above; at such a height 'twere death | | If a hard word from you fell on my heart. |
| ROXANE (moving): | | I will come down. . . |
| CYRANO (hastily): | | No! |
| ROXANE (showing him the bench under the balcony): | | Mount then on the bench! |
| CYRANO (starting back alarmed): | | No! |
| ROXANE: | | How, you will not? |
| CYRANO (more and more moved): | | Stay awhile! 'Tis sweet,. . . | | The rare occasion, when our hearts can speak | | Our selves unseen, unseeing! |
| ROXANE: | | Why—unseen? |
| CYRANO: | | Ay, it is sweet! Half hidden,—half revealed— | | You see the dark folds of my shrouding cloak, | | And I, the glimmering whiteness of your dress: | | I but a shadow—you a radiance fair! | | Know you what such a moment holds for me? | | If ever I were eloquent. . . |
| ROXANE: | | You were! |
| CYRANO: | | Yet never till to-night my speech has sprung | | Straight from my heart as now it springs. |
| ROXANE: | | Why not? |
| CYRANO: | | Till now I spoke haphazard. . . |
| ROXANE: | | What? |
| CYRANO: | | Your eyes | | Have beams that turn men dizzy!—But to-night | | Methinks I shall find speech for the first time! |
| ROXANE: | | 'Tis true, your voice rings with a tone that's new. |
| CYRANO (coming nearer, passionately): | | Ay, a new tone! In the tender, sheltering dusk | | I dare to be myself for once,—at last! | | (He stops, falters): | | What say I? I know not!—Oh, pardon me— | | It thrills me,—'tis so sweet, so novel. . . |
| ROXANE: | | How? | | So novel? |
| CYRANO (off his balance, trying to find the thread of his sentence): | | Ay,—to be at last sincere; | | Till now, my chilled heart, fearing to be mocked. . . |
| ROXANE: | | Mocked, and for what? |
| CYRANO: | | For its mad beating!—Ay, | | My heart has clothed itself with witty words, | | To shroud itself from curious eyes:—impelled | | At times to aim at a star, I stay my hand, | | And, fearing ridicule,—cull a wild flower! |
| ROXANE: | | A wild flower's sweet. |
| CYRANO: | | Ay, but to-night—the star! |
| ROXANE: | | Oh! never have you spoken thus before! |
| CYRANO: | | If, leaving Cupid's arrows, quivers, torches, | | We turned to seek for sweeter—fresher things! | | Instead of sipping in a pygmy glass | | Dull fashionable waters,—did we try | | How the soul slakes its thirst in fearless draught | | By drinking from the river's flooding brim! |
| ROXANE: | | But wit?. . . |
| CYRANO: | | If I have used it to arrest you | | At the first starting,—now, 'twould be an outrage, | | An insult—to the perfumed Night—to Nature— | | To speak fine words that garnish vain love-letters! | | Look up but at her stars! The quiet Heaven | | Will ease our hearts of all things artificial; | | I fear lest, 'midst the alchemy we're skilled in | | The truth of sentiment dissolve and vanish,— | | The soul exhausted by these empty pastimes, | | The gain of fine things be the loss of all things! |
| ROXANE: | | But wit? I say. . . |
| CYRANO: | | In love 'tis crime,—'tis hateful! | | Turning frank loving into subtle fencing! | | At last the moment comes, inevitable,— | | —Oh, woe for those who never know that moment! | | When feeling love exists in us, ennobling, | | Each well-weighed word is futile and soul-saddening! |
| ROXANE: | | Well, if that moment's come for us—suppose it! | | What words would serve you? |
| CYRANO: | | All, all, all, whatever | | That came to me, e'en as they came, I'd fling them | | In a wild cluster, not a careful bouquet. | | I love thee! I am mad! I love, I stifle! | | Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, | | And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee, | | Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! | | All things of thine I mind, for I love all things; | | I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month, | | To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! | | I am so used to take your hair for daylight | | That,—like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, | | One sees long after a red blot on all things— | | So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision | | Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. |
| ROXANE (agitated): | | Why, this is love indeed!. . . |
| CYRANO: | | Ay, true, the feeling | | Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly | | Love,—which is ever sad amid its transports! | | Love,—and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! | | I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, | | —E'en though you never were to know it,—never! | | —If but at times I might—far off and lonely,— | | Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you! | | Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,— | | A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet, | | To understand? So late, dost understand me? | | Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? | | Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment! | | That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken! | | Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest, | | I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me | | But to die now! Have words of mine the power | | To make you tremble,—throned there in the branches? | | Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! | | You tremble! For I feel,—an if you will it, | | Or will it not,—your hand's beloved trembling | | Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! |
| (He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) |
| ROXANE: | | Ay! I am trembling, weeping!—I am thine! | | Thou hast conquered all of me! |
| CYRANO: | | Then let death come! | | 'Tis I, 'tis I myself, who conquered thee! | | One thing, but one, I dare to ask— |
| CHRISTIAN (under the balcony): | | A kiss! |
| ROXANE (drawing back): | | What? |
| CYRANO: | | Oh! |
| ROXANE: | | You ask. . .? |
| CYRANO: | | I. . . | | (To Christian, whispering): | | Fool! you go too quick! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Since she is moved thus—I will profit by it! |
| CYRANO (to Roxane): | | My words sprang thoughtlessly, but now I see— | | Shame on me!—I was too presumptuous. |
| ROXANE (a little chilled): | | How quickly you withdraw. |
| CYRANO: | | Yes, I withdraw | | Without withdrawing! Hurt I modesty? | | If so—the kiss I asked—oh, grant it not. |
| CHRISTIAN (to Cyrano, pulling him by his cloak): | | Why? |
| CYRANO: | | Silence, Christian! Hush! |
| ROXANE (leaning over): | | What whisper you? |
| CYRANO: | | I chid myself for my too bold advances; | | Said, 'Silence, Christian!' | | (The lutes begin to play): | | Hark! Wait awhile,. . . | | Steps come! | | (Roxane shuts the window. Cyrano listens to the lutes, one of which plays a | | merry, the other a melancholy, tune): | | Why, they play sad—then gay—then sad! What? Neither man nor woman?—oh! | | a monk! |
| (Enter a capuchin friar, with a lantern. He goes from house to house, looking | | at every door.) |
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