The Forfeiture | Page 6

loveable object.
BELISE: Preceded by terror, considering my love. I am astonished to see this extreme change you've wrought in me in less than two weeks.
FRONTIN: I see with a kind of horror that you have effected a metamorphosis in me.
BELISE: Both of us, at the same time, think the same thing?
FRONTIN: The same thing, and always sympathy between us.
BELISE: What a coincidence! Oh, heaven! To take you for a spouse. That makes me tremble.
FRONTIN: I quiver, Madame, on account of the step I am going to take, by taking you for my wife.
BELISE: I, who by my example have kept my sister in the vow she made to guard her heart. She respected me as the most perfect. I must blush before my little sister.
FRONTIN: I who to my elders reprimanded passions, forcing even my sisters to celibacy, I who in history to distinguish my name would have gloried in the title of extinguisher of my race--
BELISE: I who abhorred even the name of marriage and would have become famous for it.
FRONTIN: I, Senechal Groux, caustic philosopher who jested at suitors, insulted them, apostrophized them.
BELISE: I called marriage a myth, a stumbling block.
FRONTIN: The prison of desires, the coffin of the living.
BELISE: (tenderly) The abyss. Now see what an unfeeling fondness--
FRONTIN: Towards the abyss, a slope--
BELISE: Yes, sweet--
FRONTIN: Imperceptible--
BELISE: Leads me to the brink--
FRONTIN: The foot slips and here I am.
BELISE: Here I am. But at least the world agrees I have chosen you from taste, from wisdom.
FRONTIN: Our marriage is the wisest type.
BELISE: But all my embarrassment is, that by marrying, I must--here's the trouble--, I must pay this forfeiture. What to do? This forfeiture note that I gave to Valere. That crazy sister of mine invented the forfeiture. We made two promissory notes to this cursed nephew. All falls on me, since I am marrying, so I will have to pay up all by myself, and I'm going to have to put up with all kinds of jesting from her. Blush to death.
FRONTIN: While our love remains secret, compose yourself and retrieve your promissory notes from Valere.
BELISE: That's my intention. I am going to my notary to take some money to my nephew. Without a doubt he will instantly return my promissory note to me. But if my sister should learn of it, oh, my heart palpitates. From reason and from shame, I avoid her carefully. After seeing you, I dare not see her.
(Exit Belise)
FRONTIN: We shall get to tap that money she's going to receive.
(Enter Lackey)
LACKEY: Sir, change clothes or hide yourself quickly. Araminte has returned.
FRONTIN: I ought to avoid her. But no. Let's pull it off! I am going to wait for her here. Time presses. Wait, take this wig. By knotting it this way, I will have the most comic look. Playful, negligent. It's the Chevalier Cique. To charm a madwoman you have to rave.
(Exit Lackey, enter Araminte)
ARAMINTE (assuming all passions, one after another) I run in thoughtless. They've just been plotting against me. I tremble; I still have a hundred things to say to you. And jests. First, I am going to make you laugh. But no. The serious is more pressing. My sister, seeing me there, passed by proudly. I was trembling. It's of this we will speak first. Let's begin by you admiring my conduct, the softness and complacency with which I hide my shame. Now, in secret, I hoped, but I fear. At the same time I sense an infinite joy. You are going to deliver me from the tyranny of my sister. And the more I hate that nephew, the more I going to settle everything for you on that score. But tell me first: what part should I take? Speak slowly, for I love to hear you. When you breathe I listen. Speak of your love and let me reply. Speak.
FRONTIN: If I am silent it's because the crowd of my passions is rolling in me, as in you, and are preventing me from speaking. For in vivacity, I dare equal you. But my love has reduced me to silence. I was unable to say a word, 'cause you were speaking.
ARAMINTE: You are all wit, although you are quiet. For you, your manners, your looks, all speak loudly. All speak your heart, my dear Chevalier de Cique!
FRONTIN: Everything in you is beautiful. All of me loves you. Everything in me, everything in you, a charming agreement that demands marriage.
ARAMINTE: It's true. But I fear this forfeiture which preoccupies me. And I fear still more this severe sister who believes that, alas, it is a crime to have a heart; she made me take a vow of indifference when I would have broken it in my childhood. That is to say from the age when my discernment had been able