V. GOLAUD'S LOVE
This theme is sounded again, with peculiarly penetrating effect, in the divided strings, as Golaud entreats Mélisande not "to weep so" (page 9, measure 4), and, later in the scene (page 19, measure 1), when he tells her that she must not stay in the forest alone after nightfall, and urges her to go with him. As he informs her that he is "Prince Golaud, grandson of Arkël, the aged king of Allemonde," we hear, on the bassoons and horns, his own motive (page 14, measure 8):
VI. GOLAUD
"You look like a mere child," he says, and the Mélisande theme is given out, doux et calme, by the divided strings (page 18, measure 2). As the two go out together, the motive of Fate is quietly intoned by the horns (page 22, measure 3).
An interlude of some fifty measures, in which the Forest, Fate, and Mélisande themes are exploited, introduces the second scene of the act. To an accompaniment of long-sustained chords varied by recurrences of the Mélisande theme, Geneviève reads to the venerable Arkël Golaud's letter to his brother. The entrance of Pelléas is accompanied by the theme which characterizes him throughout—the second of the two motives (that of Mélisande being the other) which most conspicuously dominate the score. It is announced (page 33, measure 10) by three flutes and a clarinet, over a viola accompaniment:
VII. PELLÉAS
The scene closes with a variant of this, and there is an interlude in which the orchestra weaves a commentary out of the themes of Fate and Golaud's Love.