Tête-d'Or. Paul Claudel

his feet, what does he envy the gods?

      I die,

      And only ask to once again behold him.

      The King: Of what are you dreaming?

      Cébès: I dream of the day.

      The King: Go, die!

      Cébès: What did you say?

      The King (rising and running about distractedly): Go, die! We all must die!

      O my country! My country! Behold your King wanders alone through his palace and can give you no aid.

      I am weaker than a woman in childbirth.

      (He is seized with a fit of coughing.

      A-ha! A-hha! O my country!

      You were weary of me. And everyone said that I built too much and did not know what I was doing and they took the money from me.

      But what of that! I loved you, O my realm!

      And must I see you thus destroyed and ravaged!

      Ah! Ah! Ah! Tremble, you lofty chimneys that tower to the stars and midst the marguerites and glow-worms are mirrored in the brimming moat.

      Uproot yourself,

      Ancestral beech whose branches shade the courtyard!

      Down to the dust with you, genealogy!

      And let the walls be rent asunder from base to battlement!

      —Hola! You there! Wake up!

      (He jostles against a sleeper, who grunts.

      What are you muttering down there?

      (He kicks him.

      The Watcher (asleep): Oh hum!

      The King: Wake up there, sack of wool! Wake up, block!

      (He kicks him.

      The Watcher (talking indistinctly in his sleep): Ho! Ho!

      Do not push me! I am falling! I am falling!

      The King (catching him by the foot and dragging him across the hall): Will you wake up, or won't you?

      The Watcher (waking and rubbing his eyes): Eh? Eh?

      What's that? What? What? What?

      What? What time is it?

      Eh?

      (He sees the king.

      (The king goes to the middle of the hall and strikes furiously on a gong. All awake and look at him, dumbfounded, not moving from their places.

      The King: Well, Watchers!

      (Silence.

      Behold you sleep, and the first part of the night is not yet spent!

      They care for nothing but eating and drinking and talking to each other!

      Like brutes, like dogs that wag their tails! And when they cease their chatter, they fall asleep.

      Their souls are simple! They are not capable of thinking for themselves.

      Do you know where we are? Do you know for what we are waiting?

      We must watch and listen! We must listen and wait!

      (The song of the nightingale is heard.

      The nightingale is singing. All night he pours out his soul.

      All night the tiny bird sings of the marvels of God.

      And you, could you not watch? The worries of your wretched trades cannot trouble you now. That care has been taken from you. Could you not watch and wait?

      But, like hulking lackeys you sleep!

      And it may be that someone has entered and looked at you,

      Like the bird that flies and does not alight.

      But they sleep and leave me all alone!

      And I David, The King, with my white hairs,

      I wander through the palace in the pangs and agony of death,

      And I tread my mitre under my feet and like an infant or an animal that one clutches to one's breast,

      I hold back with my hands my escaping soul!

      The First Watcher: Pardon us, O King.

      The Second Watcher: O King, why do you waken us and keep us from sleeping?

      Go! Put out the light and lie down with us. Pillow your head on my side. All too soon will come the day.

      The light troubles my eyes. I am going to sleep.

      (He drops his head on his chest. The king gazes at him and, opening his mouth little by little, begins to yawn.

      The Third Watcher: O King, you yourself are yawning!

      It is weariness. It is the wind, the exhalation of the void within us.

      We talked and our words were only an empty sound; and from morning until evening we gave ourselves no rest.

      In truth we are dead.

      As tired

      As a man who comes home drunk in the morning and goes to bed without undressing or taking off his boots.

      At first the heart was silent,

      And then, like a tom-cat that yowls very softly, it began to voice its lament.

      The Second Watcher: Be still, heart! Be still, poor heart! What would you have?

      The Fourth Watcher: And even now they come to extinguish us

      As you quench a stinking lamp with a damp cloth.

      The First Watcher: O night! O chasm of blackness!

      O open door through which whistles the wind!

      We had come hither and stretched ourselves on your threshold.

      But the abyss gave back no words. Who can fathom its secret ways?

      So we remained here and the thought has come to me that there is nothing that can be changed.

      The night is black and there is no more hope.

      The Third Watcher: They die together. All the people shall be found cold in death, men and women and children and babes at the breast.

      Therefore let us lie here and sleep,

      Or go, if you have a wife, and lie with her.

      And let not the maid-servant make too much noise in the kitchen or the baby in the room below,

      Or the mouse in the cupboard or the fly against the pane.

      We have begged and it has been in vain. Our sin has found us out. Who can conquer our ignorance?

      Why are we born, since now it seems better to die?

      What should we do and why should we do it?

      We cannot attain to ability and we sway and stagger like a man who stands in a hot bath,

      Or one who yawns from the fumes of a reeking opium pipe.

      This parish dreams and is like a people who, like a nation of hens

      Ranged on the ramparts of the quay, watch how the red sun drops away into a night that knows no day. …

      (Pause.

      The First Watcher: Such is the report that we have to make to you.

      The King: Wretched nonentities! He is a fool who puts his trust in you!

      I knew you and your fathers before you, a broken reed to lean