Merlin monologue (Act 3) — Joyzelle

The proof is grave and sad; I would have liked to spare you.... But you know better than I that there are salutary sufferings, before which it is shameful to fly.... A sign will be enough to overturn a world.... A little movement of that neck which as yet bends without anxiety, a single glance of those eyes, too confident and too full of innocence, will destroy before my sight the most beautiful thing that love has created in a woman's heart.... And yet, it must be.... It is right, it is well that this thing should to-day be lost in tears which it may yet be possible to wipe away; for later it would have had to sink in sorrows which nothing could have consoled....