[ACT V]
Scene I.—A Gallery in the Palace.
[Enter Merlin and Lancéor.
Lancéor.
Father!... Then it is true, and you are my father!... And indeed it seems to me, since you told me, as though I had always known it in my far-seeing heart.... (Coming closer.) But how wonderful it is!... I see you again at last as I saw you amid my childish sports; and, when I look at you, I see myself in a graver, nobler and more powerful mirror than those which reflect my features along this room. But what will Joyzelle say?... How she will laugh when she remembers her fears, for she imagined.... No, she herself shall tell you what she thought, to punish her for her senseless terror.... She used to hate you, but with a softened hatred that already smiled like one about to be pierced by the rays of love.... But where is she hiding? I have been seeking her for nearly two hours in vain.... Have you seen her? I must tell her at once of the unspeakable happiness which this evening has brought us....
Merlin.
Not yet. I must remain in her eyes, until the close of the day, the pitiless tyrant whom she curses in her heart. My poor, dear child!... How I have tortured your adorable love!... But I have already told you the object of these proofs.... In making you suffer, I have but been the instrument of fate and the unworthy slave of another will, whose source I do not know, which seems to demand that the slightest happiness should be surrounded by tears.... I have but hastened, in order to bring happiness more quickly, the coming of those tears which hung in suspense between your two destinies.... You shall know some day by what power, a power which has no magical or supernatural quality, but which still lies hidden at the bottom of men's lives, I at times command certain phenomena, certain appearances that bewildered you. You shall also learn that I have acquired the gift, often a useless one, of reading the future a little more clearly and a little further than the rest of men.... And so I saw you, groping for each other, in time and space, for an unparalleled love, the most perfect perhaps that the two or three centuries over which my eyes have turned concealed within their shade.... You might have met each other after many wanderings; but it was necessary to hasten the expected meeting, because of you, my son, whom death claimed in the absence of love.... And, on the other side, nothing marked out Joyzelle for the hoped-for love, save a few scattered and uncertain points and the proofs themselves which she was to surmount. I therefore hurried on the prescribed proofs: they have all been painful, but necessary; the last will be decisive and more serious....
Lancéor.