Clair de Lune. Michael Strange

much to be loved in secret by a——

      1st Courtier [laying finger on his lips]

      Hush!

      2d Courtier [reprovingly]

      At court one must try not to think aloud or one is perhaps overheard by—[makes the motion of a blade across his throat].

      2d Lady

      O nonsense! Why, Phedro confides in everybody, and so nobody ever believes him. Yet he is always quite right.

      2d Courtier

      He puts his nose into the dust that is swept out of great corners. Indeed he looks in unthinkable places, and finds the incredible.

      1st Courtier

      Do you know what he told me lately?

      Lady

      I am ailing with curiosity.

      1st Courtier

      It was a fantastic tale about one of our own lot. Indeed about one wearing strawberry leaves and with two very young sons growing up, and she, apparently imagining the younger to be the living likeness, growing plainer every day, of a former indiscretion, gives directions to her favourite lackey to get rid of this wrong one and he, from spleen, gives the honest child away. The lady dies shortly after; the father never suspects anything. The bastard inherits, so the entire tragedy was in vain.

      3d Courtier

      Fear is always absurd. You should be quite sure you are found out first; even then you have only to look rather sharply at anyone you fear in order to reduce Him. Indeed, the best of defences is presumption upon the brotherhood of sin.

      A Lady

      O how true!

      Phedro

      [A person of shifty, wizened visage enters. In a jocular tone.]

      What is "O how true?" [He glances about him.] You are all looking very en rapport with the Almighty. In fact as if He had been telling you secrets. Did they concern me? I am always a prey to the desire of hearing what is said—just before and just after I am in a room.

      1st Courtier

      [With much pomposity hiding his embarrassment.]

      We were commanded to be in attendance on the Queen. Could you find Prince Charles? You were sent to find him, were you not?

      Phedro [nodding to the right]

      I have achieved my significant purpose. The Prince is playing at croquet with the Duchess, and says when the Queen arrives to let him know.

      1st Courtier

      He is very casual. How very indiscreet of him!—to show so plainly his passion for the Duchess.

      Phedro

      Oh no! Mountains cannot knock one another down. They can only be blown up, from underneath [smiles enigmatically].

      1st Courtier

      You are difficult to follow.

      Phedro

      My lord, I am speaking in metaphor. It is a dodge I learned from the poets.

      3d Courtier

      I repeat, you are difficult and poetry is impossible to follow. However, poetry is no longer the fashion.

      [Takes a pinch of snuff, and looks with agreeable enmity at 2d Courtier.]

      Phedro [deprecatingly]

      I merely try to match my words against your silks and laces, my lord. But—her Majesty is approaching.

      [Enter the Queen, a sharp-featured, neurotic-looking woman. One of her Cabinet is speaking earnestly to her and she is paying him scant attention.]

      Minister

      It is vitally necessary that we should discover upon what terms they would capitulate.

      Queen

      Yes, and they must be heavily taxed for holding out so long. Imagine other people presuming to be patriotic. It simply draws everything out to such an absurd length. Ah, how irritable it makes me to think. Phedro, where is the Prince, where is Prince Charles?

      [During the last of her speech she withdraws her arm from the Minister's, who, seeing there is no further hope of holding her attention, withdraws respectfully and quite unobserved.]

      Phedro

      Attending impatiently the arrival of your Majesty upon the other side of the copse. I go to make him aware of your presence.

      [He bows himself out, and the Queen looking anxiously in the direction of the vanishing Phedro espies Prince Charles and the Duchess upon a lawn.]

      Queen [adjusting her lorgnette]

      How silly people look playing croquet. The Duchess appears to me exactly like a bent hairpin.

      2d Courtier

      [Looking also in the direction of the Duchess and half admiringly.]

      Indeed, Madame, her Grace is too tall to look well bending down.

      Queen [turning upon him]

      I hope you are not hiding a mud-sling in your silk swallow-tail. Perhaps you forget a courtier's principal duty should be the culture of tact, and tact is nothing whatever but helping me exaggerate my humours until I tire of them.

      2d Courtier

      Indeed, indeed, Madame, your Majesty's brilliance blinds my eyes with humility.

      [Enter Prince Charles, a slender, exotic-looking gentleman.]

      Prince

      Dear Cousin, how delicious you are looking—so royal and alert. [He bends over her hand.] Ah! [His vitality seems suddenly to leave him at the thought.] I have just been trying to lessen Josephine's habitual ennui by making her my victim at croquet.

      Queen

      [With a slight lounge into sentimentality.]

      I am sure she, like many others, is easily your victim—at croquet. But come, let us be alone, let us dismiss this chain of faces, they confine my thoughts. I would like to talk well, I would like to talk fantastically, that is, I wish you would think of something original for tonight's entertainment.

      [She signals to the courtiers that they may leave.]

      After all it is the prelude to your nuptials. Let us think of something to surprise Josephine.

      Prince

      To surprise Josephine! But nothing could surprise Josephine.

      Queen

      You are probably mistaken. I believe any reality would surprise her. All her life she has watched life passing in a mirror. She has never touched a thing—I think she has very curious hands. But let us——

      [She perceives that some of the courtiers are still lingering about. Turns to them.]

      I have several times intimated that you may disperse.

      [Courtiers go out swiftly.]

      [Looking at Prince wistfully.] You can imagine that I am a little sad today. There is a mist between me and everything else, the gardens are dull, the flowers have lost their fragrance. A sirocco seems blowing up from the graves of all young people who have never been given a chance. Tell me, do you care much for Josephine?

      Charles [pompously]

      My Cousin, my Sovereign, this marriage has been arranged, I presume in lieu of my lost brother, the Prince of Vaucluse, and apparently in order