Clair de Lune. Michael Strange

      Majesty, some mountebanks arrived at the park lodge last night. They crave to play before your Majesty.

      Queen [coming out of a reverie]

      Are they dancers, or do they act plays?

      Phedro

      Their performance I understand is peculiar. One of them is blind, the other is deformed in some way. With them is a doctor of philosophy, one who heals the scars of flesh or heart with powders or words befitting the case.

      Queen [wanly]

      They do not sound original.

      Phedro

      And yet from the effect they stir there must be something. It appears the clown causes those who are incurably sad to faint with laughter.

      Queen

      It would be charming to laugh, to be unable to help laughing. Have them sent to my porter in the northern wing and I will interview them before the masque. Ah, here comes the Duchess leaning upon her Prince's arm. I must say she looks as if there might be something more amusing to lean upon.

      [Enter Josephine and the Prince.]

      Queen

      Well, Josephine.

      Duchess

      Well, my sister.

      [Sighs and stoops over a bed of heliotrope.]

      Queen

      Why are you so melancholy, Josephine? You are standing in the portals of joy—I confess they do not appear very much to intrigue you.

      Duchess

      Possibly I am melancholy because I am not curious.

      Queen [sarcastically]

      No, rocks could hardly be curious about the waves or the wrecks washing against them. Come, Phedro.

      [She goes. Prince bows after the Queen and then comes back to the Duchess.]

      Prince

      Beauty like yours is a penance for other women to regard. You are very like an exquisite temple in which there is no god. Yet I would not put a god in your temple.

      Duchess [rather bored]

      No? What would you put there?

      Prince

      In the very centre of your temple I would place a faun with swift, strange limbs, crisp, serpentine hair, and the smile of a demon.

      Duchess [turning to him slowly]

      The smile of a demon? I think that would be enchanting. Ah, how tired I am, I think I will go and rest. What in the world is one tired from? What does one rest for——

      [She pauses in rather a lost manner.]

      Prince

      Yes, do go and rest, for tomorrow you must be radiant as a new-blown flower in the first rays of the sun.

      Duchess

      [Turning to him with a faint curiosity.]

      I suppose that afterwards my appearance will please you, even if my spirits are never particularly high.

      Prince

      I do not care about your spirits. I do not care about your soul. I love the pliant rippling motion of your pensive youth. I love your imperial beauty, for it throws open the last sealed chambers of my own fancy.

      Duchess

      Fancy—fancy—I have fancied so many things.

      [The sound of an approaching flute is heard together with the creaking of a carriage.]

      A strange sound, what can it be?

      [During the ensuing speeches the creaking and the flute come nearer.]

      Prince

      Josephine, our life together will be exquisite. It will be as the lives of the Romans in Greece—a bacchanale of peculiar formalities. We will bury conscience in the poppy-haunted air of exhausting revelry. We will——

      Duchess

      O Charles, you talk exactly like those men who design my dresses, but look——

      [Her eyes are riveted upon a curious cavalcade crossing from right to left of stage, first a very small house on wheels drawn by a large wolf-dog; at its side, walking, an old man, his head bent in deep thought. He wears the cap and gown of a doctor of philosophy. After him, with dark hair falling almost to the ground about her pallid face, is walking a girl of extraordinary beauty. She is looking rigidly ahead of her and is being guided by a white ribbon suspended from the back of the cart. A few paces behind her comes a sinuous, coffee-skinned slave girl with that erect majesty of one who has worn crowns or carried water pitchers through generations. Behind the slave follows the flute player, a mountebank, horribly twisted in some manner not visible in the twilight. The Prince, who has permitted the carriage to go by him in a wonderment intensified by the beauty of the blind girl, walks over to the mountebank.]

      Prince [arrogantly]

      Who are you all? What are you doing here?

      [Instead of answering, the mountebank hastily puts his flute into his pocket and executes a handspring, the third taking him altogether behind the scene, while from the front of the cavalcade, comes a high, cracked voice in answer to the Prince's question.]

      A Voice

      We are players, your Highness, mountebanks commanded for the pleasure of the Queen.

      [The Duchess has grown very white and is standing with her hand pressing her heart.]

      Duchess

      What was that tune he played upon his flute, and what dreadful thing was the matter with him?

      Prince

      I do not know, but as she walked by her face was beautiful. It was like a prayer coming into the presence of God.

      Duchess [regarding the Prince sharply]

      Really? What can be speaking in you? Surely not yourself?

      [She laughs shrilly and exits. The flute continues to play. The Prince absorbed, unheeding her departure, stands looking after the mountebanks.]

      CURTAIN

Scene 2

       Table of Contents

      [In the palace grounds at night. Lanterns are suspended everywhere from the trees. The front of the players' cart is seen protruding up-stage left. The philosopher is seated on the steps of the car smoking a pipe. The blind girl with strange, tentative footsteps and feeling hands is busy with duties around the cart.]

      Dea

      Think of it; we are in the park of the Queen, and these lilies and roses are brushed every day by the silken stir of her ladies-in-waiting.

      Ursus

      Well, I do not feel much elated at being here. An ambition gained is an ambition lost, and I am too old to have many ambitions.

      Dea

      It is wonderful to be in the park of the Queen—to think that the shade of these same trees darkens her jewels at midday, and that through them is cast over her a shawl of glittering ribbons upon moonlight nights.

      Ursus [patting her shoulder and smiling]

      Joy makes poets out of all of us. [Half to himself] But it is only a poet who can sing in the clutches