Clair de Lune | Page 2

to be in attendance on the Queen. Could you find
Prince Charles? You were sent to find him, were you not?

PHEDRO [nodding to the right]
I have achieved my significant purpose. The Prince is playing at
croquet with the Duchess, and says when the Queen arrives to let him
know.
1ST COURTIER
He is very casual. How very indiscreet of him!--to show so plainly his
passion for the Duchess.
PHEDRO
Oh no! Mountains cannot knock one another down. They can only be
blown up, from underneath [smiles enigmatically].
1ST COURTIER
You are difficult to follow.
PHEDRO
My lord, I am speaking in metaphor. It is a dodge I learned from the
poets.
3D COURTIER
I repeat, you are difficult and poetry is impossible to follow. However,
poetry is no longer the fashion.
[Takes a pinch of snuff, and looks with agreeable enmity at 2D
COURTIER.]
PHEDRO [deprecatingly]
I merely try to match my words against your silks and laces, my lord.
But--her Majesty is approaching.
[Enter the QUEEN, a sharp-featured, neurotic-looking woman. One of

her Cabinet is speaking earnestly to her and she is paying him scant
attention.]
MINISTER
It is vitally necessary that we should discover upon what terms they
would capitulate.
QUEEN
Yes, and they must be heavily taxed for holding out so long. Imagine
other people presuming to be patriotic. It simply draws everything out
to such an absurd length. Ah, how irritable it makes me to think.
Phedro, where is the Prince, where is Prince Charles?
[During the last of her speech she withdraws her arm from the
Minister's, who, seeing there is no further hope of holding her attention,
withdraws respectfully and quite unobserved.]
PHEDRO
Attending impatiently the arrival of your Majesty upon the other side of
the copse. I go to make him aware of your presence.
[He bows himself out, and the QUEEN looking anxiously in the
direction of the vanishing PHEDRO espies PRINCE CHARLES and the
DUCHESS upon a lawn.]
QUEEN [adjusting her lorgnette]
How silly people look playing croquet. The Duchess appears to me
exactly like a bent hairpin.
2D COURTIER
[Looking also in the direction of the DUCHESS and half admiringly.]
Indeed, Madame, her Grace is too tall to look well bending down.

QUEEN [turning upon him]
I hope you are not hiding a mud-sling in your silk swallow-tail. Perhaps
you forget a courtier's principal duty should be the culture of tact, and
tact is nothing whatever but helping me exaggerate my humours until I
tire of them.
2D COURTIER
Indeed, indeed, Madame, your Majesty's brilliance blinds my eyes with
humility.
[Enter PRINCE CHARLES, a slender, exotic-looking gentleman.]
PRINCE
Dear Cousin, how delicious you are looking--so royal and alert. [He
bends over her hand.] Ah! [His vitality seems suddenly to leave him at
the thought.] I have just been trying to lessen Josephine's habitual ennui
by making her my victim at croquet.
QUEEN
[With a slight lounge into sentimentality.]
I am sure she, like many others, is easily your victim--at croquet. But
come, let us be alone, let us dismiss this chain of faces, they confine
my thoughts. I would like to talk well, I would like to talk fantastically,
that is, I wish you would think of something original for tonight's
entertainment.
[She signals to the courtiers that they may leave.]
After all it is the prelude to your nuptials. Let us think of something to
surprise Josephine.
PRINCE
To surprise Josephine! But nothing could surprise Josephine.

QUEEN
You are probably mistaken. I believe any reality would surprise her. All
her life she has watched life passing in a mirror. She has never touched
a thing--I think she has very curious hands. But let us----
[She perceives that some of the courtiers are still lingering about.
Turns to them.]
I have several times intimated that you may disperse.
[Courtiers go out swiftly.]
[Looking at Prince wistfully.] You can imagine that I am a little sad
today. There is a mist between me and everything else, the gardens are
dull, the flowers have lost their fragrance. A sirocco seems blowing up
from the graves of all young people who have never been given a
chance. Tell me, do you care much for Josephine?
CHARLES [pompously]
My Cousin, my Sovereign, this marriage has been arranged, I presume
in lieu of my lost brother, the Prince of Vaucluse, and apparently in
order further to quilt your Majesty's exchequer.
QUEEN [interrupting him]
Your poor brother; your poor brother; if it had been he, how much
heartbreak I would have been spared.
PRINCE
Which means, your Majesty?
QUEEN
That I have been talking to myself, and you have been listening, which
is ungallant, as if you were to let me put rouge on my nose instead of
on my cheeks without stopping me.

PRINCE
[Rather uneasily returning to