Act III: Roxane’s KissScene 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 bombI 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 chooseWhere 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 onA 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 spursEncumbered 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 his leg as if to show him something and stops him
In my leg—the calf—there is a toothOf the Great Bear, and, passing Neptune close,I would avoid his trident’s point, and fell,Thus sitting, plump, right in the Scales! My weightIs marked, still registered, up there in heaven!
Hurriedly preventing De Guiche from passing, and detaining him by the button of his doublet
I swear to you that if you squeezed my noseIt would spout milk!
De Guiche
Milk?
Cyrano
From the Milky Way!
De Guiche
Oh, go to hell!
Cyrano
Crossing his arms
I fall, Sir, out of heaven!Now, would you credit it, that as I fellI saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True!
Confidentially
The other Bear is still too small to bite.
Laughing
I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord;
Grandiloquent
I mean to write the whole thing in a book;The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak,I carried safe away at no small risks,Will serve for asterisks i’ the printed page!
De Guiche
Come, make an end! I want…
Cyrano
Oh-ho! You are sly!
De Guiche
Sir!
Cyrano
You would worm all out of me!—the wayThe moon is made, and if men breathe and liveIn its rotund cucurbita?
De Guiche
Angrily
No, no!I want…
Cyrano
Ha, ha!—to know how I got up?Hark, it was by a method all my own.
De Guiche
Wearied
He’s mad!
CYRANO(contemptuously):
No! not for me the stupid eagleOf Regiomontanus, nor the timidPigeon of Archytas—neither of those!
De Guiche
Ay, ’tis a fool! But ’tis a learned fool!
Cyrano
No imitator I of other men!
De Guiche has succeeded in getting by, and goes toward Roxane’s door. Cyrano follows him, ready to stop him by force
Six novel methods, all, this brain invented!
De Guiche
Turning round
Six?
Cyrano
Volubly
First, with body naked as your hand,Festooned about with crystal flacons, fullO’ th’ tears the early morning dew distils;My body to the sun’s fierce rays exposedTo let it suck me up, as ‘t sucks the dew!
De Guiche
Surprised, making one step toward Cyrano
Ah! that makes one!
Cyrano
Stepping back, and enticing him further away
And then, the second way,To generate wind—for my impetus—To rarefy air, in a cedar case,By mirrors placed icosahedron-wise.
De Guiche
Making another step
Two!
Cyrano
Still stepping backward
Or—for I have some mechanic skill—To make a grasshopper, with springs of steel,And launch myself by quick succeeding firesSaltpeter-fed to the stars’ pastures blue!
De Guiche
Unconsciously following him and counting on his fingers
Three!
Cyrano
Or (since fumes have property to mount)—To charge a globe with fumes, sufficientlyTo carry me aloft!
De Guiche
Same play, more and more astonished
Well, that makes four!
Cyrano
Or smear myself with marrow from a bull,Since, at the lowest point of Zodiac,Phoebus well loves to suck that marrow up!
De Guiche
Amazed
Five!
Cyrano
Who, while speaking, had drawn him to the other side of the square near a bench
Sitting on an iron platform—thenceTo throw a magnet in the air. This isA method well conceived—the magnet flown,Infallibly the iron will pursue:Then quick! relaunch your magnet, and you thusCan mount and mount unmeasured distances!
De Guiche
Here are six excellent expedients!Which of the six chose you?
Cyrano
Why, none!—a seventh!
De Guiche
Astonishing! What was it?
Cyrano
I’ll recount.
De Guiche
This wild eccentric becomes interesting!
Cyrano
Making a noise like the waves, with weird gestures
Houuh! Houuh!
De Guiche
Well.
Cyrano
You have guessed?
De Guiche
Not I!
Cyrano
The tide!I’ th’ witching hour when the moon woos the wave,I laid me, fresh from a sea-bath, on the shore—And, failing not to put head foremost—forThe hair holds the sea-water in its mesh—I rose in air, straight! straight! like angel’s flight,And mounted, mounted, gently, effortless,…When lo! a sudden shock! Then…
De Guiche
Overcome by curiosity, sitting down on the bench
Then?
Cyrano
Oh! then…
Suddenly returning to his natural voice
The quarter’s gone—I’ll hinder you no more:The marriage-vows are made.
De Guiche
Springing up
What? Am I mad?That voice?
The house-door opens. Lackeys appear carrying lighted candelabra. Light. Cyrano gracefully uncovers
That nose—Cyrano?
Cyrano
Bowing
Cyrano.While we were chatting, they have plighted troth.
De Guiche
Who?
He turns round. Tableau. Behind the lackeys appear Roxane and Christian, holding each other by the hand. The friar follows them, smiling. Ragueneau also holds a candlestick. The duenna closes the rear, bewildered, having made a hasty toilet
Heavens!