Lancéor monologue (Act 5) — Joyzelle

(_Taking JOYZELLE in his arms and covering her with wild kisses._) Ah, I knew it and I was sure of it!... Joyzelle, my Joyzelle!... I do not ask what you can have done to disarm fate.... I know nothing yet; but we know all beforehand who love each other as you and I love; and already I hail the new truth that must have been revealed at the first touch of your heart!... Ah, father, father, I told you, I told you!... But she does not understand why I am embracing you.... It is true, I go too fast.... Come here, Joyzelle, that I may unite you both in my arms.... We had with us an enemy who loves us; he was obliged to make us suffer; and that gentle enemy was my own father, whom I thought lost, my father here, my father found again, who awaits but a smile to embrace you too.... Oh, do not turn away, do not look at me with those eyes already laden with reproaches.... I have hidden nothing from you.... I knew it to-day, this evening, the moment you left me; and, so soon as I knew it, I had to fly far from you, lest I should betray myself, for all our happiness, it appears, depended on this last secret; and, when a secret is committed to love, it is as though one hid a lighted lamp in a crystal vase.... You would have learnt all merely by seeing my eyes, my hands, my very shadow; and I could not show you my happiness.... You were not to know of it till the great proof.... It was necessary that you should do an impossible thing.... What thing I do not know; but, smile as I might, I had to yield; I had to wait and patiently count the minutes of the hour which thus separated our two impatient passions.... But now, I hasten, I listen, I want to know.... Speak, speak, I am listening....