Cyrano de Bergerac [33]
THE FRIAR: A quarter of an hour.
CYRANO (pushing them all toward the house): Go! I stay.
ROXANE (to Christian): Come!. . .
(They enter.)
CYRANO: Now, how to detain De Guiche so long? (He jumps on the bench, climbs to the balcony by the wall): Come!. . .up I go!. . .I have my plan!. . . (The lutes begin to play a very sad air): What, ho! (The tremolo grows more and more weird): It is a man! ay! 'tis a man this time! (He is on the balcony, pulls his hat over his eyes, takes off his sword, wraps himself in his cloak, then leans over): 'Tis not too high! (He strides across the balcony, and drawing to him a long branch of one of the trees that are by the garden wall, he hangs on to it with both hands, ready to let himself fall): I'll shake this atmosphere!
Scene 3.XI.
Cyrano, De Guiche.
DE GUICHE (who enters, masked, feeling his way in the dark): What can that cursed Friar be about?
CYRANO: The devil!. . .If he knows my voice! (Letting go with one hand, he pretends to turn an invisible key. Solemnly): Cric! Crac! Assume thou, Cyrano, to serve the turn, The accent of thy native Bergerac!. . .
DE GUICHE (looking at the house): 'Tis there. I see dim,--this mask hinders me! (He is about to enter, when Cyrano leaps from the balcony, holding on to the branch, which bends, dropping him between the door and De Guiche; he pretends to fall heavily, as from a great height, and lies flat on the ground, motionless, as if stunned. De Guiche starts back): What's this? (When he looks up, the branch has sprung back into its place. He sees only the sky, and is lost in amazement): Where fell that man from?
CYRANO (sitting up, and speaking with a Gascon accent): From the moon!
DE GUICHE: From?. . .
CYRANO (in a dreamy voice): What's o'clock?
DE GUICHE: He's lost his mind, for sure!
CYRANO: What hour? What country this? What month? What day?
DE GUICHE: But. . .
CYRANO: I am stupefied!
DE GUICHE: Sir!
CYRANO: Like a bomb I fell from the moon!
DE GUICHE (impatiently): Come now!
CYRANO (rising, in a terrible voice): I say,--the moon!
DE GUICHE (recoiling): Good, good! let it be so!. . .He's raving mad!
CYRANO (walking up to him): I say from the moon! I mean no metaphor!. . .
DE GUICHE: But. . .
CYRANO: Was't a hundred years--a minute, since? --I cannot guess what time that fall embraced!-- That I was in that saffron-colored ball?
DE GUICHE (shrugging his shoulders): Good! let me pass!
CYRANO (intercepting him): Where am I? Tell the truth! Fear not to tell! Oh, spare me not! Where? where? Have I fallen like a shooting star?
DE GUICHE: Morbleu!
CYRANO: The fall was lightning-quick! no time to choose Where I should fall--I know not where it be! Oh, tell me! Is it on a moon or earth, that my posterior weight has landed me?
DE GUICHE: I tell you, Sir. . .
CYRANO (with a screech of terror, which makes De Guiche start back): No? Can it be? I'm on A planet where men have black faces?
DE GUICHE (putting a hand to his face): What?
CYRANO (feigning great alarm): Am I in Africa? A native you?
DE GUICHE (who has remembered his mask): This mask of mine. . .
CYRANO (pretending to be reassured): In Venice? ha!--or Rome? DE GUICHE (trying to pass): A lady waits. .
CYRANO (quite reassured): Oh-ho! I am in Paris!
DE GUICHE (smiling in spite of himself): The fool is comical!
CYRANO: You laugh?
DE GUICHE: I laugh, But would get by!
CYRANO (beaming with joy): I have shot back to Paris! (Quite at ease, laughing, dusting himself, bowing): Come--pardon me--by the last water-spout, Covered with ether,--accident of travel! My eyes still full of star-dust, and my spurs Encumbered by the planets' filaments! (Picking something off his sleeve): Ha! on my doublet?--ah, a comet's hair!. . .
(He puffs as if to blow it away.)
DE GUICHE (beside himself): Sir!. . .
CYRANO (just as he is about to pass, holds out