THE LADY OF LYONS
Robert Bulwer Lytton
ACT II, SCENE I
Characters: Pauline Deschappelles, the beautiful daughter and heiress of an aspiring merchant of Lyons, France; Claude Melnotte, the gardener's son, madly in love with Pauline.
Pauline aspires to an alliance with some prince or nobleman. Melnotte in the hope of winning her uses his small inheritance in educating himself and becomes an accomplished scholar, a skillful musician, a poet, and an artist. He pours forth his worship in a poem, but his suit is rejected and he is subjected to violent insult. Stung to remorse he enters into a plot to personate a prince, woo her in that guise, and take her as a bride to his mother's cottage on their wedding night. And, in the faint hope of winning her as a prince and keeping her love as an untitled man after he has revealed his identity, Melnotte enters into a binding compact.
Scene: The garden of M. Deschappelles' house at Lyons.
Enter Melnotte as the Prince of Como, leading Pauline
Mel. You can be proud of your connection with one who owes his position to merit—not birth.
Pauline. Why, yes; but still—
Mel. Still what, Pauline?