Car. But what’s the matter with you? My God! I don’t understand.
Laz. You don’t understand that I love you more than my life, and that I have never told you so?
Car. Yes, you have many times told me so.
Laz. But in very poor fashion—coldly, lifelessly. The fact is that there is no way of saying these things. Commonplace words, commonplace phrases! “I love you more than my life, more than my soul; you are my happiness, you are my hope, my dream....” Pshaw! Everybody says that. It has become profaned on all lips.
Car. When I heard you speak so, it seemed to me that you were the only one in the world who said such things.
Laz. No, you little goose, they all say them. And I don’t wish to say what everybody says; because you are not like other people, and for you it is necessary to invent other things. Let me see, what shall I invent?
Car. What you like. But while you are inventing, you may go on saying what you used to say, for it sounds well to me—and if it doesn’t trouble you....
Laz. You will never have understood how I love you, for I have not known how to explain myself; I have not understood it myself until now. I saw surrounding me an immeasurable horizon, and I was lost in the contemplation of it: worlds and marvels and splendours and sounds and melodies. But now all is obscured, all has become confined: a sombre background which folds itself up, something like a stupendous eyeball which becomes contracted, and in the centre nothing is left but a small circle of light, and in that circle is an image—it is yours;—now all has become blotted out, and there remains no more than Carmen, and in Carmen I reconcentrate all that lies before me of life, of longing, of thought, of love. Let not the eyeball close up finally, for then I shall be left in darkness.
Car. Then you love me more than I thought? What joy for me!
Laz. There is no reason to be joyful, for they wish to separate us.