TYLTYL Why not?....
NIGHT Because it's not allowed....
TYLTYL Then it's here that the Blue Bird is hidden; Light told me so....
NIGHT (maternally) Listen to me, child ... I have been kind and indulgent ... I have done for you what I have never done for any one before ... I have given up all my secrets to you.... I like you, I feel pity for your youth and innocence and I am speaking to you as a mother.... Listen to me, my child, and believe me; relinquish your quest, go no further, do not tempt fate, do not open that door....
TYLTYL (a little shaken) But why?...
NIGHT Because I do not wish you to be lost.... Because not one of those, do you hear, not one of those who have opened it, were it but by a hair's breadth, has ever returned alive to the light of day.... Because every awful thing imaginable, because all the terrors, all the horrors of which men speak on earth are as nothing compared with the most harmless of those which assail a man from the moment when his eye lights upon the first threats of the abyss to which no one dares give a name.... So much so that I myself, if you are bent, in spite of everything, upon touching that door, will ask you to wait until I have sought safety in my windowless tower... Now it is for you to know, for you to reflect....
(MYTYL, all in tears, utters cries of inarticulate terror and tries to drag TYLTYL away.)
BREAD (with chattering teeth) Don't do it, master dear!... (Flinging himself on his knees) Take pity on us!... I implore you on my knees.... You see that Night is right....
THE CAT You are sacrificing the lives of all of us....
TYLTYL I must open the door....