Clair de Lune | Page 4

than the rest--then we may plan.
QUEEN
But the fête. We are continually forgetting about the fête.
PHEDRO
[Thinking, with his finger against his lips.]
Out of one purpose often comes another perfected.
QUEEN
You are talking in enigmas, and it is growing late. See how long and
slender the poplar shadows are getting on the grass. When the wind and
sun touch them they look a little like obelisks flashed over with strange
writings.
PHEDRO
Your Majesty is adding the accomplishment of a poet to the genius of a
sovereign.
QUEEN [shivering]

No, I would not like to be a poet. They are always dying of ennui or
madness. But, Phedro, to the point.
PHEDRO [suddenly]
Majesty, some mountebanks arrived at the park lodge last night. They
crave to play before your Majesty.
QUEEN [coming out of a reverie]
Are they dancers, or do they act plays?
PHEDRO
Their performance I understand is peculiar. One of them is blind, the
other is deformed in some way. With them is a doctor of philosophy,
one who heals the scars of flesh or heart with powders or words
befitting the case.
QUEEN [wanly]
They do not sound original.
PHEDRO
And yet from the effect they stir there must be something. It appears
the clown causes those who are incurably sad to faint with laughter.
QUEEN
It would be charming to laugh, to be unable to help laughing. Have
them sent to my porter in the northern wing and I will interview them
before the masque. Ah, here comes the Duchess leaning upon her
Prince's arm. I must say she looks as if there might be something more
amusing to lean upon.
[Enter JOSEPHINE and the PRINCE.]
QUEEN

Well, Josephine.
DUCHESS
Well, my sister.
[Sighs and stoops over a bed of heliotrope.]
QUEEN
Why are you so melancholy, Josephine? You are standing in the portals
of joy--I confess they do not appear very much to intrigue you.
DUCHESS
Possibly I am melancholy because I am not curious.
QUEEN [sarcastically]
No, rocks could hardly be curious about the waves or the wrecks
washing against them. Come, Phedro.
[She goes. PRINCE bows after the QUEEN and then comes back to the
DUCHESS.]
PRINCE
Beauty like yours is a penance for other women to regard. You are very
like an exquisite temple in which there is no god. Yet I would not put a
god in your temple.
DUCHESS [rather bored]
No? What would you put there?
PRINCE
In the very centre of your temple I would place a faun with swift,
strange limbs, crisp, serpentine hair, and the smile of a demon.

DUCHESS [turning to him slowly]
The smile of a demon? I think that would be enchanting. Ah, how tired
I am, I think I will go and rest. What in the world is one tired from?
What does one rest for----
[She pauses in rather a lost manner.]
PRINCE
Yes, do go and rest, for tomorrow you must be radiant as a new-blown
flower in the first rays of the sun.
DUCHESS
[Turning to him with a faint curiosity.]
I suppose that afterwards my appearance will please you, even if my
spirits are never particularly high.
PRINCE
I do not care about your spirits. I do not care about your soul. I love the
pliant rippling motion of your pensive youth. I love your imperial
beauty, for it throws open the last sealed chambers of my own fancy.
DUCHESS
Fancy--fancy--I have fancied so many things.
[The sound of an approaching flute is heard together with the creaking
of a carriage.]
A strange sound, what can it be?
[During the ensuing speeches the creaking and the flute come nearer.]
PRINCE

Josephine, our life together will be exquisite. It will be as the lives of
the Romans in Greece--a bacchanale of peculiar formalities. We will
bury conscience in the poppy-haunted air of exhausting revelry. We
will----
DUCHESS
O Charles, you talk exactly like those men who design my dresses, but
look----
[Her eyes are riveted upon a curious cavalcade crossing from right to
left of stage, first a very small house on wheels drawn by a large
wolf-dog; at its side, walking, an old man, his head bent in deep
thought. He wears the cap and gown of a doctor of philosophy. After
him, with dark hair falling almost to the ground about her pallid face,
is walking a girl of extraordinary beauty. She is looking rigidly ahead
of her and is being guided by a white ribbon suspended from the back
of the cart. A few paces behind her comes a sinuous, coffee-skinned
slave girl with that erect majesty of one who has worn crowns or
carried water pitchers through generations. Behind the slave follows
the flute player, a mountebank, horribly twisted in some manner not
visible