The fool enters.
THE QUEEN. Are you drunken, fool, as I bade you be?
THE FOOL. I am drunken, yes, but not with wine. I am drunken with bitterness. With the bitterness of love.
THE QUEEN. Of love, fool?
THE FOOL. With the bitterness of love. It will amuse you, and so I will tell you what I mean. It is you that I love.
THE QUEEN. Life grows almost interesting once more. But are you not afraid that I will have you whipped?
THE FOOL. You would have had me whipped a week ago if I had told you this. But now you will not. Now you know what it is to love. . . .
THE QUEEN. My secrets are on a fool's tongue. But what does it matter?
Go on.
THE FOOL. Why did I try to keep the man you love from going away? In the hope that one day I should see you kissing him in the garden, and thus I would be spared the trouble of killing myself. In a word, I am a fool. But I have tried to help you. Why did you not keep him?
THE QUEEN. I have been asking that question of my own heart, fool. I would that I had not come to him a virgin and a Queen, but a light woman skilled in all the ways of love. Then perhaps I could have held him. But now he is gone, and the world is black.