the Vicomte, Baro, the whole Academy ...

CYRANO Enough! You steep me in bliss!

LE BRET But whither will the road you follow lead you? What can your object be?

CYRANO I was wandering aimlessly; too many roads were open ... too many resolves, too complex, allowed of being taken. I took ...

LE BRET Which?

CYRANO By far the simplest of them all. I decided to be, in every matter, always, admirable!

LE BRET [shrugging his shoulders] That will do.—But tell me, will you not, the motive—look, the true one!—of your dislike to Montfleury.

CYRANO [rising] That old Silenus,24 who has not seen his knees this many a year, still believes himself a delicate desperate danger to the fair. And as he struts and burrs upon the stage, makes sheep‘s-eyes at them with his moist frog’s-eyes. And I have hated him ... oh, properly! ... since the night he was so daring as to cast his glance on her ... her, who—Oh, I thought I saw a slug crawl over a flower!

LE BRET [amazed] Hey? What? Is it possible? ...

CYRANO [with a bitter laugh] That I should love? [In a different tone, seriously.] I love.

LE BRET And may one know? ... You never told me ...

CYRANO Whom I love? ... Come, think a little. The dream of being beloved, even by the beautiless, is made, to me, an empty dream indeed by this good nose, my forerunner ever by a quarter of an hour. Hence, whom should I love? ... It seems superfluous to tell you! ... I love ... it was inevitable! ... the most beautiful that breathes!

LE BRET The most beautiful? ...

CYRANO No less, in the whole world! And the most resplendent, and the most delicate of wit, and among the golden-haired ... [with overwhelming despair] Still the superlative!

LE BRET Dear me, what is this fair one?

CYRANO All unawares, a deadly snare, exquisite without concern to be so. A snare of nature’s own, a musk-rose, in which ambush Love lies low. Who has seen her smile remembers the ineffable! There is not a thing so common but she turns it into prettiness; and in the merest nod or beck she can make manifest all the attributes of a goddess. No, Venus! you cannot step into your iridescent shell, nor, Dian, you, walk through the blossoming groves, as she steps into her chair and walks in Paris!

LE BRET Sapristi! I understand! It is clear!

CYRANO It is pellucid.

LE BRET Magdeleine Robin, your cousin?

CYRANO Yes, Roxane.

LE BRET But, what could be better? You love her? Tell her so! You covered yourself with glory in her sight a moment since.

CYRANO Look well at me, dear friend, and tell me how much hope you think can be justly entertained with this protuberance. Oh, I foster no illusions! ... Sometimes, indeed, yes, in the violet dusk, I yield, even I! to a dreamy mood. I penetrate some garden that lies sweetening the hour. With my poor great devil of a nose I sniff the April.... And as I follow with my eyes some woman passing with some cavalier, I think how dear would I hold having to walk beside me, linked like that, slowly, in the soft moonlight, such a one! I kindle—I forget—and then ... then suddenly I see the shadow of my profile upon the garden-wall! LE BRET [touched.] My friend ...

CYRANO Friend, I experience a bad half hour sometimes, in feeling so unsightly ... and alone.

LE BRET [in quick sympathy, taking his hand] You weep?

CYRANO Ah, God forbid! That? Never! No, that would be unsightly to excess! That a tear should course the whole length of this nose! Never, so long as I am accountable, shall the divine loveliness of tears be implicated with so much gross ugliness! Mark me well, nothing is so holy as are tears, nothing! and never shall it be that, rousing mirth through me, a single one of them shall seem ridiculous!

LE BRET Come, do not despond! Love is a lottery.

CYRANO [shaking his head] No! I love Cleopatra: do I resemble Caesar? I worship Berenice: do I put you in mind of Titus?25

LE BRET But your courage ... and your wit!—The little girl who but a moment ago bestowed on you that very modest meal, her eyes, you must have seen as much, did not exactly hate you!

CYRANO [impressed] That is true!

LE BRET You see? So, then!—But Roxane herself, in following your duel, went lily-pale.

CYRANO Lily-pale? ...

LE BRET Her mind, her heart as well, are struck with wonder! Be bold, speak to