TYLTYL
I know, I know.... It's Light being so near, perhaps....
DESTINY
Light and I have nothing in common.... In any event, I alone am master and I order a halt....
LIGHT
By all means; there is no need to go any farther. We have arrived; we are here without taking another step, at the abode of the Ancestors....
(The curtain parts and opens upon the next scene.)
SCENE VII
The Abode of the Ancestors
A large open space, under an Elysian light, which imparts to all things an aspect of ethereal and lasting felicity and unchanging gladness. The back and the two sides of the square are formed of dwelling-places of different periods, some stately, some lowly, but all radiant and a little unreal. In the foreground, on the right, for instance, is the entrance to the cottage of TYLTYL'S grandparents; next comes the gable of a farm-house of older date; then the front of a little eighteenth-century shop; and thus in succession, running from right to left and across the back, a seventeenth-century town-house, a sixteenth-century prison, tavern and hospital, a fifteenth-century mansion; some thirteenth-century hovels, a twelfth-century church, a Gallo-Roman farm and villa, and so on. Intersecting the background at the middle is a street in endless perspective, bordered with the very oldest houses and leading to the huts and caves of primitive mankind. In the foreground are a few stone benches standing under fine trees, laurels, plane-trees or cypresses.
(TYLTYL, LIGHT, DESTINY and THE SIX GIRLS come forward, followed at a distance by THE WHITE PHANTOM, who keeps to one side as usual. They have taken but a few steps when GAFFER and GRANNY TYL come hurrying out of their cottage and, with exclamations of delight, throw themselves into TYLTYL'S arms.)