Ghostly Mysteries: A Mystery Of Love And The Posthumous Joke (Marquette Studies in Philosophy)

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Author: Gabriel Marcel | Katharine Rose Hanley

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A Mystery of Love A Drama in Four Acts

and The Posthumous Joke A Three Act Comedy

by

Gabriel Marcel

The Cover Illustrations depict the Commemorative Medal struck by L’Hôtel des Monnaies, the National Mint of France, honoring Gabriel Marcel’s outstanding contributions to the culture and nation of France. The face offers a likeness of Gabriel Marcel; the reverse side represents the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and bears the captions fidelity, availability, and hope. Orpheus was such a gifted musician that he was able to charm the Gods of the underworld and by doing so gained their permission to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld. There was one stipulation; he could not look back to see her until he had reached the world above. He could not resist however, turned around and lost her back to the netherworld. This myth highlights the importance of music in Marcel’s life as well as his concern with the presence of loved ones from beyond death.

A Mystery of Love A Drama in Four Acts

and The Posthumous Joke A Three Act Comedy

by

Gabriel Marcel Existential Playwright Philosopher (1889-1973)

Introduction and Reflections by the Translator

Katharine Rose Hanley

Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 39 Andrew Tallon, Series Editor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marcel, Gabriel, 1889-1973. [Iconoclaste. English] Ghostly mysteries / by Gabriel Marcel ; introduction and reflections by the translator Katharine Rose Hanley. p. cm. -- (Marquette studies in philosophy ; no. 39) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87462-662-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Marcel, Gabriel, 1889-1973--Translations into English. I. Marcel, Gabriel, 1889-1973. Divertissement posthume. English. II. Hanley, Katharine Rose. III. Title: Mystery of love. IV. Title: Posthumous joke. V. Title. VI. Series. VII. Marquette studies in philosophy ; #39. PQ2625.A755I313 2004 842’.912--dc22 2004017515

© 2004 K.R. Hanley

Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................................7 About the Translator and Author (of Introduction and Reflections)..........9 Introduction ...........................................................................................11 A Mystery of Love ....................................................................................17 The Posthumous Joke .............................................................................101 Reflections............................................................................................171 Sources .................................................................................................179 Gabriel Marcel Resources .....................................................................181 Additional Reading ..............................................................................183

Acknowledgements Profound gratitude to Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Anne Marcel for their cherished friendship, kind help and encouragement, and generous permission to publish the first English translation of these two Gabriel Marcel plays L’ Iconoclaste and Le Divertissement Posthume. Deep appreciation goes to Ellen M. McCauley for her faithful friendship, her longstanding and contagious enthusiasm for sharing the work of Gabriel Marcel and for her helpful association in producing this book. Special thanks to Penny Marten, for her artistic skill in creating the cover illustrations. To Le Moyne College alumni, whose generous contributions made this book possible, and to family, friends and members of the Le Moyne College community for all their encouragement I extend my sincere gratitude.

About the Translator and Author (Introduction and Reflections)

Dr. K. R. (Katharine Rose) Hanley received her Ph. D. from the Higher Institute of Philosophy at Louvain University in Belgium. An internationally respected expert on Gabriel Marcel’s theatre and philosophy, she has lectured extensively in the US and at various national and international philosophical meetings in France, Canada, China and Japan. Her first book, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1987, University Press of America), announced and illustrated her perspective for appreciating Marcel’s work. So that others could experience the benefits of this approach, she then published translations (and commentaries) of seven Gabriel Marcel plays. Dr. Hanley first met Gabriel Marcel when he lectured at Louvain University. They met again in 1965, (the 300th anniversary of Simon Le Moyne, S.J.), when he came to Le Moyne College, in Syracuse, NY, to lecture and receive an honorary degree. There was also an especially meaningful conversation, between the two, at Marcel’s home in Paris in September 1973, just three weeks before his death, when he inscribed his book Five Major Plays, to her, “In remembrance of a spiritual bond which once renewed shall not be broken.” Hanley has taught at Le Moyne College since 1961. Students’ enthusiasm for the realism and meaningfulness of Marcel thought, and its concrete accessibility through comedy and drama, encouraged and supported her continuing involvement with his work. Plays were staged, televised and preserved as videos, and performed on the road as dramatic readings. Most recently she produced two audio CDs of Marcel plays performed by professional actors. Dr. Hanley’s book Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, published by Marquette University Press in 1998, contains a gold mine of information: the play - The Broken World, his essay “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery”

10

Gabriel Marcel

reflecting on issues raised in the play, and appendices listing Marcel’s biblio-biography, his dramatic and philosophic works in French and their English translations, his books as drama critic, and titles of his musical compositions. This work GHOSTLY MYSTERIES presents, in a drama and a comedy, something of Marcel’s investigations and reflections on a theme dear to his heart, the presence of loved ones from beyond death. Hanley’s Introduction and Reflections serve as background information as well as grounds for personal inquiry. Dr. Hanley finds the Marcel inscription, written over thirty years ago to her, a fitting dedication for this volume; both to Gabriel Marcel and you, the reader… “In remembrance of a spiritual bond which once renewed shall not be broken.”

Ghostly Mysteries Introduction

In this volume we have chosen to present two Gabriel Marcel plays, A Mystery of Love and The Posthumous Joke. For those of you who are new to his work, some background information may be beneficial. He was born on December 7th, 1889 in Paris, where he lived most of his life, until his death on October 8th, 1973. He was a respected Paris drama critic, playwright and philosopher. Marcel had a distinguished career. An Existential Dramatist and Philosopher, he wrote some thirty plays and a similar number of philosophic works that essentially were his search to find meaning and value in his own life. Referring to his thought and life’s work, Marcel wrote in “The Secret is in the Isles”, that he saw his dramas as islands. One lands on an island with both feet. Audiences, or readers, of existential drama are moved to enter wholeheartedly into the situation. He then sees his philosophic writings as the continents. They can be mapped out, juxtaposed, and compared and contrasted to the thought of other philosophers whose boundaries are contiguous to them. ( 1 ) Marcel’s lead questions were “Who am I? Is Life Empty or Full?” in other words, what is a person’s authentic potential and what is the meaningful fulfillment one can hope to participate in? Marcel sought, and found through Drama, a method capable of focusing on, and clarifying, a person’s interpersonal encounters and relationships, including afterlife presence. Drama was always the first form of inquiry for Marcel. His dramatic imagination envisioned concrete individuals in particular situations of conflict. As the drama evolves, the differing fundamental attitudes of various protagonists become evident. In “The Invisible Threshold”, the Preface to his first volume of published plays, Marcel points out that his dramas deal with the spiritual level of human experience for without this transcendent dimension our lives would be diminished significantly. ( 2 )

12

Gabriel Marcel: Ghostly Mysteries

Inspiration for many of Marcel’s plays was drawn directly from his own experience. Marcel sought to bring to the light of the theatre, some of the questions that plagued him and some of the conflicts he himself experienced with his extended family and acquaintances. Central to his thought was the question of the presence of loved ones after death. We all experience the presence of loved ones in our lives; while nursing a baby, courting one’s fiancée, holding a dying elder or when thinking about a family member in a battle zone. When someone we love, a deceased parent, relative or friend, has died we may long for them; particularly on an anniversary or during the holiday season. At these times we may ponder this sort of communion and the mysterious presence that often accompanies it. This concern for presence dates from the loss of his Mother when he was barely four. A few years later, on a summer holiday walking in the Swiss Alps with his aunt, he asked her what becomes of people after they die. When she responded that no one knows, young Gabriel said simply that someday he would. Presence then became a theme in many, and a focus in seventeen of his thirty plays, centering on the experience of a loved one’s death and bringing to light various interpretations of its meaning. An early, and striking, example of presence is the first act of an unfinished play, “The Unfathomable”, an English translation of “L’Insondable” written in March 1919, when he was assigned by the Red Cross to notify the families of those missing in action in WWI. “The Unfathomable” reveals how family members’ different interpretations are influenced by their previous attitudes toward, and relations with, the individual who is MIA. A passionate exchange occurs between the Chaplain and a confirmed dead soldier’s sister-in-law where he tells her to no longer think of him, let go of memories and thoughts of him, and just pray for him. The sister-in-law rejects the chaplain’s interpretation and advice. She asserts “The only dead, the truly dead, are those whom one no longer loves.”, and further affirms, “When I think of him in a certain way -with tenderness, with recollection - there wells up in me something like a richer deeper life in which I know he participates. This life is not I, nor is it he; it is both of us.” (3)

K.R. Hanley: Introduction

13

Marcel’s awareness became intensified when he realized the families were not merely seeking facts about the case, but were voicing their passion to reunite with those they dearly loved. They sought grounds for their hope that their loved ones would survive, and return, and that their presence would be renewed and preserved to them. In his willingness to help find these grounds Marcel even served as a medium. His experiences demonstrated that valid communication can occur. While they can, and on occasion did, provide correct and helpful information, the communications were often deceptive and would always fall short of the genuine goal of those inquiring, namely the actual presence of the loved one sought. He also found that séances can endanger the medium with burn out. ( 4 ) In a later essay “Audacity in Metaphysics” Marcel challenged philosophers to pay more attention to the study of extra sensory perception and parapsychology. ( 5 ) He was able to think his way through, and beyond, the limits of the Idealism of his day to find a method capable of dealing, not just with empiric facts or a strict logic of ideas, but more importantly with the full gamut of human experience. He sought a method capable of investigating and interpreting peoples’ incarnate, affective and conscious encounters with the realities that are part of human life and enrich its meaning. An incident at a Philosophic Society Meeting emphasizes his preoccupation with presence after death. In a debate, a leading idealist, Léon Brunschwicg accused Marcel of attaching more importance to his own death than Léon Brunschwicg did to his. Marcel responded that it was not his own death that concerned him, but rather the death of his loved ones. ( 6) Indeed this incident highlights the uniqueness of Marcel’s perspective among philosophic traditions and circles arguing the possibility of personal immortality. Marcel reversed the traditional perspective for investigation and introduced a new focus for considering experiences and reflections on immortality now envisioned as the presence of loved ones beyond death. Ghostly Mysteries is the presentation of two recently translated Marcel Plays A Mystery of Love and The Posthumous Joke that have the presence theme. Both are period pieces, set in France during the 1920’s. They are presented at a safe distance from the world of today’s audiences, yet the characters are so realistically drawn that modern

14

Gabriel Marcel: Ghostly Mysteries

viewers can readily sympathize with the characters’ attitudes and directly relate to the confusing and troubling situations in which they find themselves. A Mystery of Love a four act play, originally entitled L’Iconoclaste, was written in Paris 1917, revised in Sens 1921, and dedicated by Gabriel Marcel to his grandmother. ( 7 ) It is a poignant drama dealing with romantic love and the threat of tragic outcomes through a deceived rival’s jealous manipulations. Marcel notes that it was at the end of this play that he first used the term “mystery”. Marcel distinguished between problem and mystery. A problem is something outside a disengaged impersonal spectator, who, as investigator, treats it as something to be solved and then dismissed. Mystery, by contrast, requires that the inquiring subject be engaged, or touched and affected, by the reality under investigation. The inquirer takes an active role in investigating and an indispensable role in interpreting, through critical reflective clarification, the meaning of a mystery. It is the opposite to empiric experience and impersonal scientific analysis of problems affecting mere physical objects. Mystery becomes Marcel’s foundation in designating existential experience, and central to the development of his philosophic method of reflective clarification. ( 8 ) The second play, The Posthumous Joke ( 9 ), a Three Act Play, is a satirical farce where Marcel makes fun of his most cherished presence theme. It is a hilarious comedy yet one that presents, in caricature, the nature and possibility of presence beyond death. Let the reader beware, Marcel’s plays are not thesis theatre intended to illustrate an idea or theory; on the contrary, he explores questions of concern in his own life situation. His first way of examining questions is always to consider them concretely in the way they affect individual lives. The unfolding of the play is the first reflection. The various personalities reveal their differing fundamental attitudes, and the interpretations of life situations those attitudes produce. The final scene does not offer a solution rather it leaves the audience with questions that invite them to reconstruct the play in retrospect.

K.R. Hanley: Introduction

15

Marcel’s plays do not provide answers but they do suggest paths of light for reflection whereby we might discover an authentic response to the challenge of the dramatic situation. Indeed after the curtain falls, spectators reflect on the questions raised not only in relation to the characters in the play but in relation to their own lives as well. Now to enjoy the Ghostly Mysteries present in A Mystery of Love and The Posthumous Joke.

A MYSTERY OF LOVE (Published in the Original French as “The Iconoclast”)

A Play in Four Acts by

Gabriel Marcel

In loving memory of my Grandmother Paris, 1921

18

Gabriel Marcel

Cast of Characters In order of appearance MADELEINE DELORME Jacques Delorme’s Second Wife MADAME CHAZOT Madeleine’s Mother MONSIEUR CHAZOT Madeleine’s Father JACQUES DELORME Madeleine’s Husband Viviane Breau-DELORME Jacques Delorme’s deceased first wife ROGER Jacques and Viviane’s Son MISS BULLFINCH The Delorme’s Governess ABEL RENAUDIER Jacques and Viviane’s Old Friend MADAME RENAUDIER Abel’s Mother FLORENCE BRÉAU Viviane’s Breau Delorme’s Sister

A Mystery of Love

19

ACT ONE (It is a July morning. The scene is set at the Delorme’s country estate, on a terrace with steps leading into their garden. They are finishing breakfast, served at a small table with wicker chairs around it.) MADAME CHAZOT: (To Madeleine.) Your husband hasn’t had breakfast yet? MADELEINE: No, I think he’s taking a walk in the garden. MADAME CHAZOT: He shouldn’t allow you to get up so early. MADELEINE: But, Mother, it’s late enough already. MADAME CHAZOT: (To her husband.) Aren’t I right, Albert? MONSIEUR CHAZOT: Hmm! MADAME CHAZOT: There’s no excuse as he should be well aware of the precautions your delicate condition requires. MADELEINE: Now, mother! MADAME CHAZOT: When a man has been previously married, and has already had children… MADELEINE: Jacques is as considerate of me as I could possibly wish. MADAME CHAZOT: Oh! MADELEINE: Don’t you realize you are hurting my feelings. MONSIEUR CHAZOT: (To his wife.) She’s right. MADAME CHAZOT: (Bitterly.) You, of course, always find me at fault. But, unfortunately, I can see clearly. Also concerning this matter, what was your husband thinking of when he invited Abel Renaudier and his mother to come for a visit? MADELEINE: Abel is Jacques’ oldest and best friend, you know that. MADAME CHAZOT: What difference does that make? Besides, I don’t like the man; I find his haughty airs unpleasant. MONSIEUR CHAZOT: That’s rash judgment! MADAME CHAZOT: As for his Mother why invite that old lady?

20

Gabriel Marcel Ghostly Mysteries

MONSIEUR CHAZOT: You’re as old as she is Adrienne. MADAME CHAZOT: That doesn’t matter. We’re visiting our daughter, at her home. MONSIEUR CHAZOT: Madame Renaudier is almost like a mother to Jacques. Apparently she’s exceptionally kind. MADAME CHAZOT: You say “apparently”. You yourself don’t really know, and after all it’s the mistress of the house who invites, not the husband. What’s more I’ve never met those people at your house before. MADELEINE: He travels a great deal; she doesn’t do much socially. Besides… (She hesitates.) MADAME CHAZOT: Finish your sentences, child. MADELEINE: I’m afraid you may not understand the sense of what I want to say. MADAME CHAZOT: Charming. MONSIEUR CHAZOT: Come, come. MADELEINE: She knew Jacques’ first wife very well, and was extremely fond of her. I find it quite natural that she show a certain reserve toward us at first. MADAME CHAZOT: In that case it’s tactless of him to have invited her, or I should have said to have her invited. He’s done every stupid thing possible. And this Florence Bréau? MADELEINE: Well, mother, she’s the children’s aunt. MADAME CHAZOT: She’s another one I find totally unpleasant. MONSIEUR CHAZOT: You obviously have a real gift for disliking people. MADAME CHAZOT: She doesn’t enter into conversations. One never knows what’s she’s thinking. She barely manages to be polite to me. Did your husband deliberately invite his sister in law, Florence and this Monsieur Abel Renaudier at the same time? MADELEINE: I don’t know. MADAME CHAZOT: Then he doesn’t explain things to you! And you put up with that? (Jacques comes in from the garden.)

A Mystery of Love

21

MADAME CHAZOT: Listen here Jacques, you should insist on your wife’s staying in bed later mornings. After all she’s not going to go to Mass, and while we’re on that subject, is the car ready yet? I wouldn’t want to be late again like we were last Sunday. I imagine Madame Renaudier will not be going with us? JACQUES: No she won’t. MADAME CHAZOT: Nor Florence Breau, either? JACQUES: They must be bringing the car around. Why don’t you go on ahead now; that will be quicker. MADAME CHAZOT: Very well, we’ll see you later. (She goes out with her husband.) MADELEINE: Haven’t you had breakfast yet? JACQUES: No. MADELEINE: I’ll get some fresh tea for you, what’s left here must be cold. JACQUES: Don’t bother dear, I don’t want anything. MADELEINE: How come? JACQUES: I’ll have some bread and hot chocolate later with the children. MADELEINE: Are they playing croquet? JACQUES: Probably. MADELEINE: Didn’t you check on them? JACQUES: No. Tell me; haven’t our guests come down for breakfast yet? MADELEINE: I haven’t seen any of them. JACQUES: Didn’t you find that Abel looked poorly last night? MADELEINE: Doesn’t he always look like that? You know, I’ve seen him so rarely, I really couldn’t tell. Besides, yesterday he’d been traveling. Did he come here often before? JACQUES: Almost every year. MADELEINE: But not since, the loss? JACQUES: No. MADELEINE: It’s only natural that he be quite moved. He seemed really disappointed that the children had gone to bed so early.

22


JACQUES: Is that so? He played with them so often when they were little. MADELEINE: It’s strange. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he was the kind of person who would enjoy little children. JACQUES: Well you know Abel is a complicated person. MADELEINE: That’s just it. JACQUES: No, I mean he has contradictory tastes and certain characteristics that one would think were mutually exclusive. I’ve seen him laugh uncontrollably for some silly thing; you wouldn’t expect that, would you? MADELEINE: Definitely not, just the opposite. He seems so serious. I’ll even admit he intimidates me. Tell me, Jacques, did he also intimidate Viviane? JACQUES: At first, yes certainly, but gradually they became good friends. She admired him very much, but I always felt that there was something about him that bothered her, something that made her feel uncomfortable. At times that saddened me. I would have liked there to be more trust and understanding between them. But given the way she was… (A long silence. Jacques stares off into space, his thoughts elsewhere; Madeleine watches him.) MADELEINE: Is Florence like her sister Viviane? JACQUES: That’s really strange. I was just thinking about Florence, did you sense that about me? MADELEINE: No, I don’t believe so. JACQUES: If I wanted to have Abel and Florence here at the same time, you might suspect that I had my reasons. Abel is thirty-seven, Florence thirty-six. (He pauses, looking off into space again.) So I would like to ask your advice about the best way of going about this. MADELEINE: But what can I tell you? Remember I don’t actually know either one of them. JACQUES: Do you think I should sound him out first? MADELEINE: Yes, I think you should start with him; but has he seen her enough to know how he might feel about her?

A Mystery of Love

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JACQUES: Well, they’ve been here on several different occasions in the past. MADELEINE: Then it’s possible, isn’t it, that he might have had this idea on his own? JACQUES: In those days, Florence was just a young girl; besides, I can’t be sure that Abel wasn’t involved with someone else at the time. MADELEINE: And you think that involvement is a thing of the past now? JACQUES: Naturally that’s something we’ll have to find out for sure. MADELEINE: It seems to me, that in any event you have to begin by talking with your friend first. JACQUES: Yes, but it’s very strange, just a moment ago you were saying that Abel intimidates you. Well I have to admit that now he intimidates me too. MADELEINE: How do you explain that? JACQUES: I don’t exactly know. (He reflects.) We haven’t seen each other much recently, in fact not for three years. At times I feared his feelings toward me had changed. I was overjoyed that he accepted this invitation. MADELEINE: Couldn’t you perhaps speak with his mother first? JACQUES: Yes, I could; that sounds like a good idea. MADELEINE: She may still be in the living room; she had several letters to write. JACQUES: Tell me, do you think it’s crazy, this idea of wanting Abel and Florence to get together. MADELEINE: Of course not, why? JACQUES: Well it’s just that I need to feel supported. In my mind I called on, you know who, and this time I felt as if my appeal received no response. So I was afraid. MADELEINE: (Softly.) Jacques dear, you shouldn’t let that discourage you. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea? JACQUES: I feel I have a duty toward Florence; her father and brother are so egotistical and a duty toward Abel too.

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MADELEINE: No, there you’re overdoing it; he has his mother. JACQUES: I assure you he frightens me. Our secret, I’ve never dared confide it to him. MADELEINE: (Painfully.) You mean your secret about you and her. JACQUES: (Warmly.) And you too, my dearest, it involves you too. MADELEINE: Oh, me. Well yes, if you like. JACQUES: It’s a secret that binds the three of us. MADELEINE: I find it perfectly natural that you didn’t tell Abel. JACQUES: Do you really? MADELEINE: It’s something so intimate. (Suddenly.) I would be angry with you if you told him. JACQUES: And what if he disputed it? What if he didn’t seem to take it seriously? I couldn’t bear that; to think that he might judge it an illusion. MADELEINE: Come now! Who would dare to say it’s an illusion? JACQUES: (Painfully.) You yourself, sometimes I ask myself with real anguish, what you believe, what you feel. MADELEINE: (Touched.) Is that true? Well, my dearest, that’s all I need, just to know that you think of me at times with tenderness, with compassion. JACQUES: Aren’t you happy? MADELEINE: Of course I’m happy, even very happy; only sometimes (with a different tone) it’s a little difficult. Come now, you must talk to Abel’s Mother; as for me I can see that Miss Bullfinch wants a word with me. JACQUES: Bye, dearest. (He kisses her and then goes into the house.) MISS BULLFINCH: I have something to tell you, Madam. MADELEINE: What is it, Miss Bullfinch? MISS BULLFINCH: It’s something a bit strange, and still I feel bound to tell you. Last night, you know I’m a very poor sleeper, I heard something in Roger’s room; Monsieur Renaudier was there.

A Mystery of Love

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MADELEINE: Monsieur Renaudier was in Roger’s room? MISS BULLFINCH: He was right next to the child’s bed, and he was crying. MADELEINE: Crying? You must have been dreaming! MISS BULLFINCH: I was not dreaming, Madam; I saw him as sure as I’m looking at you now. MADELEINE: And Roger didn’t wake up? MISS BULLFINCH: I don’t think so, I’m not sure. But I’d be very much surprised, if he did. He is such a sound sleeper, Roger is. MADELEINE: (After a silence.) Why are you telling me this? MISS BULLFINCH: But, I thought… MADELEINE: What importance can this have? Abel Renaudier knew the children when they were babies; he hasn’t seen them in years. MISS BULLFINCH: But Madam, he was crying. MADELEINE: Abel Renaudier was an old friend of Roger’s mother; perhaps Roger resembles what his mother looked like when she was young. MISS BULLFINCH: Oh! I didn’t know that. MADELEINE: It’s of no importance, no importance whatsoever. MISS BULLFINCH: Still it shouldn’t be repeated, should it? MADELEINE: It’s not worth worrying about. I shall mention it to my husband, if I think of it. MISS BULLFINCH: But what if he does it again? MADELEINE: I’ll ask him not to, it could upset Roger. MISS BULLFINCH: Of course it might. Oh, here comes Mademoiselle Florence. (She leaves.) FLORENCE: I’m embarrassed to be coming downstairs so late. MADELEINE: You should rest. Your life in Lyon is very tiring, I know. FLORENCE: No need to exaggerate. MADELEINE: I know from what Jacques has told me, that you don’t serve your charities in any halfhearted manner.

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FLORENCE: One has to kill time. Anything is better than idleness, even volunteer work. MADELEINE: Have you so little faith in what you do? FLORENCE: (Dryly.) As little as possible, having seen misery first hand, I realize how little any individual can do. MADELEINE: What is your answer then, is it socialism? FLORENCE: Not even that. I have no theories about anything, perhaps because I’ve always lived with people who have theories for everything. MADELEINE: What a contrary attitude! Have you seen the children yet this morning? FLORENCE: They came to my room to say good morning as usual. It seemed to me Roger acted a bit strangely. MADELEINE: Oh! FLORENCE: I had the impression he wanted to tell me something, but didn’t quite dare to. He’s very special, that child, don’t you think; far more sensitive than his sister. MADELEINE: (Lively!) But Odette has gifts Roger does not; to begin with she’s much more conscientious. FLORENCE: You really are determined to keep a fair balance between these two children! MADELEINE: That’s my first duty. FLORENCE: So be it. But I’ll tell you at the risk of scandalizing you that I find my young nephew infinitely more charming than his sister. Odette is a nice little girl, but she has nothing original about her, whereas Roger can be delightful. I suppose you know that the children idolize you? MADELEINE: (Embarrassed.) I believe they do love me. FLORENCE: You won your way into their hearts immediately, and that’s not easy, especially with Roger. MADELEINE: I never had any difficulty with them. They are very easy children. FLORENCE: In that they take after their father more than they do my sister. Jacques has always been extraordinarily gentle, I believe. (Abel enters.)

A Mystery of Love

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ABEL: Good morning, ladies. MADELEINE: Have you had breakfast? ABEL: I recall something was brought to my room. MADELEINE: That sounds a bit vague. ABEL: I don’t really remember what it was. FLORENCE: Great men don’t pay attention to small details. ABEL: How clever you are at noting paradoxes. I wasn’t aware of your way with words. MADELEINE: Have you seen the children? ABEL: I shall be delighted to see them. MADELEINE: You will find them changed. ABEL: Jacques sent me their pictures while I was in America. Above all they seem to have grown. Odette looks like Jacques did as a child. MADELEINE: Actually how old were you when you first met my husband? ABEL: We started first grade together, and before that we played in the park together. You see it all goes back to the beginning of time. MADELEINE: I’ve heard you were an extraordinarily precocious child. ABEL: Oh! MADELEINE: Just the other day Jacques read me a composition you wrote when you were twelve years old that he’d copied. ABEL: (With irony.) Is that so! MADELEINE: It startled me to read what you wrote at age twelve. You were to report on your summer reading; you had chosen Shakespeare’s Othello. ABEL: I remember, actually it was quite ridiculous. MADELEINE: I admit I’d be disappointed if our little Roger were that precocious. ABEL: I agree that would be disastrous. MADELEINE: One never knows if you are speaking seriously or not.

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ABEL: I am absolutely serious. The first duty of a child is to be a child. MADELEINE: I’m pleased to hear that. FLORENCE: (With sudden violence.) Unfortunately I remember Abel saying just the opposite. He pleaded the case of those little monsters, whose every word and gesture is written down, he asked that intelligent children be encouraged to keep a journal for the future pleasure of psychologists. ABEL: I don’t remember having said such absurdities, but it’s possible. FLORENCE: What’s one contradiction more or less? And, what’s more you’re quite proud to have read Othello at age twelve. Don’t think you’ve fooled us. (She leaves.) ABEL: What was that explosion all about? MADELEINE: I have no idea, I’m dumbfounded. ABEL: I sensed right from the start yesterday that our arrival displeased her, still… MADELEINE: Before, did you and she have disagreements? ABEL: In those days she never opened her mouth. Oh, I realized she was a bit strange, even a bit unbalanced. Her sister talked to me about her on several occasions with anxious concern. Not just worries about her ideas, but about the way she lived. MADELEINE: Do you know her father and her brother? ABEL: Yes, very well indeed. They are stuffed shirts. MADELEINE: It must be so sad for her living alone with them. ABEL: But I believe she has made a life for herself on her own. Besides, why hasn’t she ever married? She’s no worse than the next one; and these days eccentricity is considered attractive in a woman. MADELEINE: Here’s Jacques. (Jacques enters.) JACQUES: (To Abel, affectionately.) Well, tell me, how are you, my friend? ABEL: (Coldly.) Well. Thank you.

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JACQUES: Did you sleep well? (To Madeleine.) I remember when we used to travel together the slightest unexpected event would prevent him from sleeping. Sometimes it was ridiculous. Fear of not waking up on time, a letter that was delayed… ABEL: You always were more confident than I; that’s certain. JACQUES: You know, I often think of those trips together, what wonderful memories. ABEL: Do you think so? MADELEINE: He speaks of them often. ABEL: Those are memories I never recall. We were still too naïve about life then. JACQUES: That’s just what I love about the past. You were so full of ideas and projects. ABEL: The unfulfilled projects of others may seem poetic, but when it’s a question of one’s own. MADELEINE: I’m going to leave you two alone together; you must have so much to talk about. (She leaves.) JACQUES: It saddens me to hear you talk like that. You sound like your life has been a complete failure. ABEL: And it’s the truth. JACQUES: That doesn’t make sense for one who received his doctorate at thirty-two. ABEL: What’s a piece of paper? Do you think that’s what really counts for me? If so, you misunderstand me worse than I’d thought. JACQUES: What do you mean “worse than you’d thought”? ABEL: Let’s say, “less well”, it’s all the same to me. JACQUES: Abel my friend, something’s wrong. What’s the matter? ABEL: What will you imagine next? JACQUES: Last night when you arrived, I felt a kind of shock. I can’t explain it to you any more clearly, but those impressions never fail me. ABEL: (Disdainfully.) Yes, I know you have always believed in intuitions, in presentiments.

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JACQUES: No need to go that far. I know you well enough to see that you have changed. Even now you have an expression that I’ve never seen before, stone faced. And every now and then an ironic smile comes from who knows where. You’re hiding something from me. ABEL: Go on create a novel if that pleases you. JACQUES: You are not answering me truthfully. Come now, I suspected that behind those endless trips for no apparent reason there was some secret pain, sentimental, most likely. You had a mistress; she betrayed you or she left you. ABEL: That version doesn’t flatter my ego very much, but I won’t hold that against you. JACQUES: I’ve just had a long talk with your mother she didn’t hide from me that she’s very concerned about you. Actually, what’s happening to you doesn’t surprise me. ABEL: At least you believe in your own creations. JACQUES: (Following his own thought.) The longer I live the more I realize that I was right to marry young; otherwise one doesn’t escape situations like yours. ABEL: Go on, if that amuses you. JACQUES: Remember, I’ve been criticized enough. Not by you, I have to give you credit for that. ABEL: Thank you. JACQUES: But those others, still we were wonderfully happy. Until that catastrophe; since then, I’ve lived so much in the past. ABEL: (With irony.) Oh! JACQUES: Do you remember when we met her for the first time at the Bertrin’s home? ABEL: Yes. JACQUES: When I think that it was you who dragged me to that household. In those days I was wilder than you. I remember that at first Viviane didn’t impress me. I thought she was cold, distant, affected. ABEL: (In a half-whisper.) Show some respect Jacques, please. JACQUES: What I can’t understand is how I came to return there. I know it was you who insisted. ABEL: Was it I?

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JACQUES: Still there had to be a will more powerful than ours that intervened. ABEL: Oh! JACQUES: It was the next time that my eyes were opened. She sat down at the piano. Do you remember? She played a prelude, choral and fugue? ABEL: No, not a fugue. JACQUES: I can still see us there, in that little living room at avenue de Breteuil, the Bertrins not saying anything. ABEL: They never said anything. JACQUES: There must have been other people there that evening, a bald man to whom we were not introduced, and there were several others too. ABEL: Yes, on the couch, to the left of the piano, that’s right indeed. JACQUES: An elderly lady. It’s you who turned her pages. Those slight nods of her head to say, “Yes, now you may turn.” Tell me, my friend, aren’t you moved by the fact that the past lives on in such vivid detail? Moreover, is it really past? What does it all mean? ABEL: You’ve become a philosopher, congratulations. JACQUES: And since then, so much has happened. ABEL: Yes indeed. (A long silence.) (Madeleine enters.) MADELEINE: Listen, Jacques, I don’t feel all that well; I’d like to go upstairs and rest. JACQUES: But what’s wrong? I’ll go up with you. MADELEINE: No, don’t be silly, it’s nothing. Only I may not come down for lunch. Don’t fret; if I need you, I promise I’ll send for you. Above all, not a word to mother when she comes back, she gets so upset needlessly. JACQUES: You’re pale! MADELEINE: I know it’s nothing, so don’t fuss! (She leaves.) (Abel observes Jacques.)

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JACQUES: She’s not careful enough. I can’t get her to take care of herself properly, and since she’s not as strong as she looks these last two months are going to be difficult. ABEL: The baby is due in two months? JACQUES: Yes, about that. ABEL: (In an equivocal tone.) You wasted no time that’s for sure. JACQUES: And I can’t bear the thought of these new sufferings. There are moments when I would like to just go to sleep and wake up after it’s all over. I remember so clearly what it was like with Viviane. ABEL: Stop it! JACQUES: What’s the matter? ABEL: Nothing; it’s that sick way you have of always bringing up the past. JACQUES: I must tell you again, for me the present and the past are so intimately linked I cannot separate them. ABEL: You are extraordinary. JACQUES: For me it’s all connected with some very deep things that I must talk with you about some day. ABEL: No, old man, I don’t know what it’s all about, but I prefer that you spare me such confidences. It would certainly be too painful for me to enter into your way of seeing things. JACQUES: How discouraging you are, Abel. One would say you dread anything that might bring us closer together. ABEL: Confidences don’t always bring people closer together, believe me. JACQUES: Please excuse me; I’m going upstairs for a moment it wouldn’t be right of me not to, she never complains at all. (Jacques leaves.) (Abel leans on the terrace railing, a look of scornful irony on his face. At that moment Roger enters.) ROGER: Abelou! My Uncle Abelou! (He jumps up and throws his arms around Abel’s neck.) ABEL: My pal!

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ROGER: Uncle Abel! Why did you come into my room last night? ABEL: You’re imagining things, my little man. ROGER: I’m sure of it. ABEL: You were dreaming. ROGER: And you even stayed quite a while, Uncle Abel. You were crying. ABEL: Where did you dream up such ideas? ROGER: It was strange. But, you know, I was a little afraid. You were breathing hard, heavy, like that. You came near my bed to kiss me, and then all of a sudden you left. ABEL: Did I speak? ROGER: See! You no longer say it isn’t true! ABEL: I’m asking you if in your dream I spoke. ROGER: (Embarrassed.) I don’t know for sure. You looked so sad. ABEL: (Still acting as if it were a joke.) You must have been very scared. Why didn’t you call for help, silly boy? ROGER: Don’t you see it seemed to me that I shouldn’t, that you would have been even unhappier if I had cried out. ABEL: (In a different voice.) My friend, (He takes him on his knees; in a smothered voice.) you do love me a little bit, don’t you? You do like me, don’t you? ROGER: But why were you crying, tell me? It’s so strange for someone your age to cry. (Florence appears at that moment.) FLORENCE: What are you doing there, Roger? I thought you were with Odette. ROGER: But, Aunt Florence! FLORENCE: Off with you now. ROGER: I didn’t do anything wrong. (He leaves sadly.) FLORENCE: You realize I suppose, that I was not informed about your coming here. Jacques failed to tell me that he had planned for us to meet each other.

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ABEL: (Coldly.) So? FLORENCE: If I had known you were coming, I would have left. ABEL: Oh, really? FLORENCE: Not every one here is blind. ABEL: You know I’m not following you at all. FLORENCE: You realize one of us must leave. (Jacques joins them.) JACQUES: Well, I’m peaceful now, it was nothing. What would you say to a walk together before lunch, Abel? ABEL: As you wish. JACQUES: Florence, won’t you come with us? FLORENCE: No, I’ll stay here; I’ll go and keep your wife company. JACQUES: It’s better to let her rest, she is somewhat tired. But here’s Abel’s mother who I’m sure will be delighted to chat with you. FLORENCE: And I myself have something to tell her too. (Jacques and Abel leave.) FLORENCE: Good morning, Madame. MADAME RENAUDIER: How are you, Florence? I haven’t seen you since that terribly sad ceremony three years ago, and I find you’ve changed so much since then! I believe your likeness to your sister Viviane is even more striking now. FLORENCE: I don’t know; it’s possible. MADAME RENAUDIER: If you knew how often I think of her! We understood one another right from the start. From the day Jacques introduced her to me, I knew we’d be friends. To begin with she reminded me of a young cousin of mine whom I loved dearly, and who died at twenty-five. Why do you look away? Is it painful for you that I speak of your sister? FLORENCE: (Profoundly.) Yes, very painful, I can’t bear it. MADAME RENAUDIER: Still I assure you it was no ordinary feeling that she inspired. Her image stays with me throughout my life. Just the way she sometimes spoke to me about my son but what’s the matter with you?

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FLORENCE: Then you… I can’t, I just can’t. MADAME RENAUDIER: Come now, dear girl. FLORENCE: Forgive me, I am so alone, I tell you I can’t put up with it. MADAME RENAUDIER: (With a trembling voice.) What are you insinuating? FLORENCE: I beg you; don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You saw them together, and the idea must have crossed your mind. MADAME RENAUDIER: Never, do you hear me? That monstrous suspicion never even occurred to me. I can not pardon you for having expressed it. FLORENCE: (Bitterly.) Obviously. MADAME RENAUDIER: There is too much hate in your eyes. FLORENCE: (Strongly.) Not hate, horror. MADAME RENAUDIER: You don’t know my son at all. Just the thought of that betrayal is monstrous. FLORENCE: The facts are there. MADAME RENAUDIER: What facts? FLORENCE: First of all a letter, don’t ask me to show it to you, a letter of hers that I found. And then, last night your son went into the boy’s room, he stayed there a long time, he was crying. MADAME RENAUDIER: How do you know? FLORENCE: I heard some strange noises; I questioned that English governess. At first, she lied, but then she told me everything. MADAME RENAUDIER: Does she have any idea? FLORENCE: He must leave; I can’t answer for my behavior if he stays. If you have some influence over him, get him to leave, for heaven’s sake! MADAME RENAUDIER: Under what pretext? FLORENCE: A letter that just arrived, what do I know? He must leave, do you understand me. MADAME RENAUDIER: Above all we must not awaken this terrible suspicion in Jacques’ mind. But I can’t ask my son to play along with this comedy.

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FLORENCE: All right, then I’ll leave. MADAME RENAUDIER: That’s right, why shouldn’t it be you who leaves? (A silence.) FLORENCE: You don’t believe me do you? MADAME RENAUDIER: No. And then even, even if I did, even if you were sure what right have you to upset me like this. He’s my son; I have no one but him. FLORENCE: (Brutally.) What other means did I have to make him leave? My departure will arouse more suspicions than his. MADAME RENAUDIER: (Following her thought.) And for her, for the deceased, oh, you never loved her! FLORENCE: What do you know of me? (Abel comes in.) ABEL: I left Jacques playing croquet; that innocent game suits him. FLORENCE: (To Madame Renaudier.) Permit me to remind you of your promise. (She leaves.) ABEL: What’s all this about a promise? MADAME RENAUDIER: I made no promise, Abel, although she wanted to force me to talk to you. ABEL: You seem upset. (Affectionately.) Tell me now, what is it? MADAME RENAUDIER: You have no idea what she’s accused you of. ABEL: Just a while ago she said some things that intrigued me. MADAME RENAUDIER: There you are again with that pursed lip expression I know only too well. Tell me she lied. Abel for the sake of all our closeness in the past! Remember. It wasn’t so long ago that you shared confidences with me. You used to tell me your preoccupations. In those days I existed for you. Little by little you seemed to grow away from me; however it’s not I who has changed, you know that very well. (In a different tone.) It’s hard. Obviously at my age one shouldn’t make demands. It all shows that I’ve grown old. None the less, in my life, there was only you so…

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ABEL: Mother, can you believe that I’ve really distanced myself from you. MADAME RENAUDIER: Alas! I don’t believe it, I’m sure of it. Since after the death of your father you supported me; spoiled me. ABEL: Don’t you understand there are certain sorrows that can’t be shared with anyone. You sensed that I was unhappy, didn’t you? MADAME RENAUDIER: I feared you were, but with you it’s sometimes so hard to know. When you’re merely reflecting, sometimes you seem so somber. I remember when you started to work on your thesis. ABEL: (Sadly.) So, even you, you can’t tell when I’m merely preoccupied and when I’m suffering. MADAME RENAUDIER: I just told you, I was sure that you had some sorrow, but I didn’t dare ask you about it. Abel, sometimes I’m almost afraid of you. Right now, yes, there’s something frightening in your expression. Is it that dreadful accusation? ABEL: Kindly tell me exactly what that person said to you? MADAME RENAUDIER: That person, Abel! Viviane’s sister! Aha! You trembled! So it’s true then. ABEL: As reasoning that’s a bit simplistic, you must admit. MADAME RENAUDIER: That’s no answer. ABEL: (Bitterly.) Obviously you want a yes or a no answer. A soul like yours does not recognize nuances. Well then, no, I was not Viviane’s lover. MADAME RENAUDIER: You swear that to me? ABEL: (Strongly.) I have not been Viviane’s lover, Mother, I assure you. MADAME RENAUDIER: My son, I realize now that I believed you were guilty. Forgive me. How could I have? But the proof she talked about… ABEL: What proof? MADAME RENAUDIER: A letter, what do I know? Abel, it does my heart good to be able to look at you without blushing. That infidelity would have been something so odious, so… there’s no word to express it. Let me kiss you.

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ABEL: Your joy is beautiful. Your joy brings us close again; however who says that it depended on me whether that betrayal was consummated or not? (Monsieur and Madame Chazot enter.) MONSIEUR CHAZOT: Good morning. Do you know where my daughter is? MADAME RENAUDIER: I believe she’s in her room resting. MADAME CHAZOT: She must be totally exhausted, she’s the last one to give in to the way she feels. I presume my son-in-law is with her? ABEL: Jacques is playing croquet. MADAME CHAZOT: What’s that you say? MONSIEUR CHAZOT: He’s absolutely right to leave Madeleine alone to rest. MADAME CHAZOT: Come along, Albert. (They go into the house.) ABEL: That nice old man and that nagging harpy form an odd couple, don’t they? MADAME RENAUDIER: Abel just before they arrived, you had been saying that if it only depended on you, things would have happened differently. Surely you’re mistaken. There is no one less capable of deception and lying than you. ABEL: Just consider; did you ever suspect the immense love I had for Viviane? MADAME RENAUDIER: You say that in such a tone! ABEL: Take these words without trying too much to imagine what they refer to. Your good life, mother, has not prepared you to understand what a creature like Viviane can inspire in a heart like mine. Oh believe me, I’m not vain about this excessive love, believe me. Just know that whatever might have been, in another destiny, vital ideas, creation, all that was spent in this love. And little by little that intimate treasure was… no, I can’t say spent, it evaporated, if you like, in sterile outpourings, in dreams, in unrealistic projects. And there’s nothing left of this past but a sad memory. A memory that is everything and that is nothing.

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MADAME RENAUDIER: (Softly.) When did this love begin? ABEL: A love like that has no beginning. A love like mine, one knows it has existed forever. MADAME RENAUDIER: If she had known, perhaps it’s you she would have married. ABEL: Mother, I didn’t know myself that I loved her until after she was already married to Jacques. So I had no illusions about my chances. MADAME RENAUDIER: Abel! ABEL: Oh! I assure you if I had thought that Viviane might consent, nothing would have stopped me; but as soon as I became close to her I realized that an imprudent word would risk ruining our friendship forever. That risk was too dreadful; I didn’t dare to run it. MADAME RENAUDIER: Less pure, she would have been less dear to you. ABEL: (Dryly.) I don’t know about that. Had she guessed with what impatience I resigned myself to remain her friend? At certain times, I believe she did; but who knows if she didn’t take as temporary effervescence that boiling over of a love incapable of containing itself with no outlet. Little by little, as strange as it may seem, I reconciled myself to the idea that Viviane would never belong to me. Only you will never guess where I found the courage to accept this. And here comes the most awful part of my story. My poor mother, how you look at me! (With sadness.) It’s a real novel I’m telling you, one of those stories that you don’t like because of its complications. Well, it was actually here, one evening that I received a sort of revelation. She was a very private person and I didn’t realize exactly what she felt for Jacques. Suddenly I saw that she loved him passionately. It was a terrible blow. MADAME RENAUDIER: I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Viviane was a perfect companion for Jacques as she was an ideal mother for their children, irreproachable. ABEL: Mother, I sense too clearly that you don’t understand. Why did you pry from me a confidence so unfit for your ears? More complicated souls, you see, find resources where other more balanced folks don’t suspect there are any. The cruel jealousy I felt changed imperceptibly

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into an entirely different feeling which was primarily an act of will. It’s difficult for me to describe my feelings, that spring from deep secret levels to which I’m not sure you could follow me. I don’t deny the fact that this was a sort of morbid sentiment not appreciated except by someone who like me has lived only in his thoughts. MADAME RENAUDIER: If only you weren’t so proud of these complications! Ah! How right I was to worry years ago when I saw you gradually become estranged from religion and engulfed by all those dangerous doctrines. ABEL: It’s not a question of doctrine; at most it’s a question of method. MADAME RENAUDIER: You always win an argument because I use everyday words, not your technical terms. Still in this matter I’m so sure of the truth. ABEL: Poor mother, if it were only a question of the truth. MADAME RENAUDIER: What do you mean? ABEL: It’s not a question of having a right or wrong opinion, don’t you see; it’s a question of what one is. One’s being! And when you reproach me, my intellectual satisfactions, you forget that they have a terrible shadow side. I came to the point of thinking of their love, not just their affection, but their love, without revulsion. I would observe Jacques with the idea of finding him absolutely worthy of being loved, and I succeeded. Jacques is handsome; I recognized that for the first time. I mastered my own bursts of ego sufficiently so that I could see in him the presence of all the admirable qualities that I lacked, his natural grace, his confident manner the lack of which a woman never pardons. I saw myself as I really was, and I perceived that in loving me, Viviane would lower herself. MADAME RENAUDIER: Basically then, if I understand what you’re saying, Viviane seemed to you incapable of loving anything other than Jacques’ physique. That’s unfair even to Jacques. ABEL: (Without answering.) You see, I reasoned lucidly, at least I thought I did, without letting myself be tortured by desires that I thought could never be fulfilled. Perhaps at the beginning I experienced some pride about this victory over myself. With pride I enjoyed this power I had to love Viviane passionately, all the while, associating

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her with Jacques in a feeling that blended admiration, jealousy, and a studied resignation whose secret I sought for a long time. Did she perceive any of this? Did she guess what forbidden paths my heart was exploring? It’s terrible to say, but I don’t know. We often had long passionate discussions, but when we were together we never discussed ourselves. You knew her, mother; you remember her face, her intelligent expression, that mysterious light which sparkled in her bright eyes. When I want to analyze that mysterious soul, all I have is the memory of that look. MADAME RENAUDIER: But her death… ABEL: My loss didn’t matter. At first I thought I’d found in Jacques’ grief the sacred mourning that her departure should leave in the heart of the one she’d chosen as her life partner. I recall the conversation we had the evening after the funeral. Jacques shared confidences with me, even read some of her letters. It was as if he understood. But I entertained no illusions on this point; Jacques is not intelligent, still even if he were, but we became closer, he implied he could never find consolation not even diminishment of the pain of his loss. He planned to live from then on in solitary recollection. I had increasingly the impression of a three-way communion, an ideal trinity. She was still there; she presided over us, but from afar, from above. Yes, without a doubt, the physical desire lasts one’s entire life. Dreams that I’d forgotten wove a terrible agony the months following her demise. One night, I found myself on the bank of the Seine, in the wine soaked odor of warehouses. I still see myself leaning over the railing… MADAME RENAUDIER: Good heavens! ABEL: Shortly thereafter I left for Russia, and it was in Moscow one day in December that I received a letter from Jacques informing me that he was going to marry again. I burnt that letter, but unfortunately I know it by heart. I shall spare you the details, just know that beneath a thin veil of sentimental and hypocritical logic he could not hide a heart longing for contemptible and mediocre consolations. MADAME RENAUDIER: Now, Abel! ABEL: With what indescribable heartache I read that letter. This was the man before whom, in complete sincerity of heart, I had effaced myself, the man with whom I was honored to share a noble sorrow!

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I delayed my reply for a long time. Then I sent a curt reply, a polite formula of congratulations, four lines. That should have revealed my disgust and shown him in no uncertain terms that our friendship was finished. But no, he found out the time of my return, and showed up at the station to meet me; his face radiant with a smile that edified even me. He hadn’t understood a thing, didn’t suspect a thing. It was too much to expect that this spoiled child, clinging cowardly to moral consolations, could live as a recollected widower. Someone else, no worse at heart, but less cynical and less addicted to “proper ways” would have gone to brothels; he remarried. MADAME RENAUDIER: You’re out of your mind! Look here, Jacques’ second marriage had the unanimous and complete approval of all of us who’d known and loved Viviane. Even Viviane’s sister did not disapprove; you can see that for yourself. ABEL: Will we ever know what that one thinks! MADAME RENAUDIER: His first duty was to provide a mother for those little children. ABEL: Oh yes, that sentence was surely in his letter. MADAME RENAUDIER: It’s only too obvious, if he’d closed himself off in his sorrow that would have been an egotistical way of interpreting his duty. ABEL: Don’t forget that Madeleine is pregnant. You may say he wept at the critical moment. That is possible. MADAME RENAUDIER: That remark is revolting. You don’t think their marriage should be purely formal, do you? ABEL: It’s all the same to me. Socially even morally it may have been right for him to remarry. But for me, those points of view don’t exist. We know what those so-called social responsibilities amount to. They are a cover up for a cowardly fear of living alone and probably for sexual tensions justifying hydrotherapy. It’s easy to invoke all that: the children, society. But he had contracted a huge debt toward the two of us, he doesn’t seem to understand. He didn’t expect with Viviane dead, I would still be here to protect her sacred rights. MADAME RENAUDIER: You are out of your mind. Viviane herself, if she had known she was going to die, would have begged him to remarry.

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ABEL: Oh! You think that she disdained him? MADAME RENAUDIER: You only judge with your passion, but for me who’s in my right mind… ABEL: The measure of a man’s worth is the fidelity he is capable of. I don’t recognize any other virtue. He was faithful for as long as she was there to soothe his sensuousness. And when she was only a light at the depth of a remembrance, he started to look elsewhere for more, substantial gratification. No, don’t you see… (Jacques and the children enter.) JACQUES: (Wiping his forehead.) I’m dripping with perspiration. You know we’re going to eat lunch soon. ABEL: We’re coming. ROGER: I won three games, Uncle Abel. ABEL: Bravo, my friend. (Jacques and the children leave.) MADAME RENAUDIER: Why did you take the risk of going into that child’s room during the night? ABEL: Oh! You know about that? MADAME RENAUDIER: Besides, no definitely, I cannot understand your thinking. How could you accept to come here with me? ABEL: You mustn’t forget Mother that this is the only place where I’ve really lived. And about Roger, haven’t you noticed, he has Viviane’s eyes, large and anxious, and her long Boticelli-like lips. Why should I be cautious? What have I to fear? Tell me? MADAME RENAUDIER: Well, if people were to imagine what never happened! Just think. It would be frightful. ABEL: For whom? I ask you to reflect a moment before answering me. MADAME RENAUDIER: Well really, Abel, for Jacques. ABEL: Is it for Jacques? Suppose for a moment that he suspects we betrayed him. Well, he doesn’t deserve to keep an untarnished image of her; believe me an image only soils someone who is obsessed by it; it only corrupts the one it tortures. Viviane is beyond the reach of these demeaning attacks.

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MADAME RENAUDIER: Don’t you understand? Florence believes you’re guilty, she whom Jacques envisaged as a partner for you. ABEL: You’d expect a stupid idea like that from him. MADAME RENAUDIER: She demands that you leave. If not, then she will go. ABEL: Let her go. The departure of that sullen virgin won’t upset anyone. MADAME RENAUDIER: But how will Jacques interpret that sudden end to her visit. She was supposed to stay here another month. Abel, this situation is hopelessly entangled. ABEL: I agree it is awkward, if people insist that Jacques keep the platonic devotion he believes he owes Viviane, I agree it is awkward. But the one who is unfaithful doesn’t deserve to keep a pure memory of her intact in his heart. Peace of soul is a privilege; it must be merited. This man moved on in life like a good landowner. He’ll learn, and we’ll at least find out what that colorless cantankerous Florence is doing here. MADAME RENAUDIER: Won’t you let me tell him? ABEL: I forbid you to tell him, do you hear?

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ACT TWO Two days later. A small living room with French doors to the right that open onto the garden. Opposite the French doors an upright piano stands against the wall. Above the piano hangs the portrait of a woman. At the back there is a door opening onto a corridor. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon; but the day is rainy, and the lamp on the piano is lit. As the curtain rises, Florence is playing a nocturne by Fauré. Abel enters noiselessly through the French doors that are open. Florence doesn’t look around or see that he has come into the room. He sits on a couch next to the French doors and listens, his head in his hands. He nods his head with a sort of convulsive heaving of his shoulders. Suddenly he’s startled. ABEL: (Suddenly.) No! You struck a false note. (Florence turns around and sees him; she rises and stands with her back to the piano, her lips pursed her breathing heavy, her gaze fixed.) (A silence.) ABEL: (With curt politeness he has stood up.) I beg your pardon; I am sorry to have interrupted you in such a gross manner, but I know that nocturne so well. Continue playing, please. (Florence does not continue.) JACQUES: (Entering from the door on the left.) Why did you stop, Florence? I like that piece so much. It’s by Chopin, isn’t it? FLORENCE: (Exploding the word.) Fauré, my favorite. JACQUES: (To Abel.) Viviane played it often. I miss hearing the sound of music here. When I think, do you remember, every night, sometimes until midnight; Chopin, Schumann, everyone. ABEL: Most of the time you didn’t seem to be listening. JACQUES: It was like an atmosphere that enveloped me. I didn’t need to listen. Besides, when I begin to pay attention to music, it tires me. It has to remain accompaniment. ABEL: In that case, you have no reason to be demanding about performance, does your wife…? JACQUES: Madeleine isn’t exactly a musician. Besides… (He stops.)

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ABEL: Go on! JACQUES: She would find it difficult to play Viviane’s piano. ABEL: (In a neutral tone.) Oh! JACQUES: That’s quite natural. ABEL: It’s only natural. FLORENCE: One doesn’t know where to go this afternoon. It’s stifling outside, but it’s no better in here. It’s like a steam bath. JACQUES: (Looking out the window.) It won’t be this evening that we’ll see our project succeed. FLORENCE: What project? JACQUES: A moonlight stroll. ABEL: You’re really set on that agenda aren’t you? It’s the tenth time you suggested a moonlight walk since the day before yesterday. JACQUES: (Hurt.) I was only thinking of you. As for me I assure you I’m blasé about moonlight strolls in the forest. Besides you were with us in the past when we walked to the Diamond Pond. ABEL: Shh! JACQUES: Why? FLORENCE: Don’t you find it stifling in here? (She opens the French doors wide, and walks outside.) JACQUES: But it’s raining; Florence, it’s crazy to go out bare headed in this weather! FLORENCE: (From outside.) Let me be. I’m not a sugarplum. (She leaves.) JACQUES: Well what’s the matter with you two? ABEL: What do you mean? JACQUES: Florence and you, what’s going on? ABEL: There is Florence; and then there is me. What do you mean “you two”? JACQUES: My friend, let’s not split hairs! When I came in just a minute ago you were looking at each other so strangely! ABEL: You make me laugh. JACQUES: What’s more for the last two days I can’t figure out what’s happening.

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ABEL: I ask you now, what do you think is happening? We are leading a peaceful family life that you have invited us to share with you for several days. We eat, we go for walks, we sleep, and my mother plays bridge with your wife’s parents. JACQUES: All that’s a facade, but behind that façade? ABEL: (With irony.) Oh I see; you believe in a secret life? JACQUES: One fact is obvious; Florence is entirely different since your arrival. ABEL: A secret life! What a joke. I beg your pardon. JACQUES: You’re saying that sincerely? ABEL: That “feminine mystique” for worldly women makes me sick. JACQUES: Feminine mystique? Well, what the devil! We’re not fools. ABEL: Are you sure of that? JACQUES: Absolutely. ABEL: You are lucky. (A silence.) JACQUES: The truth is that since the day before yesterday I feel strangely uncomfortable. ABEL: Uncomfortable? JACQUES: It’s like an oppressive heaviness. ABEL: Years ago you never felt well when there was a storm brewing. JACQUES: You’re making fun of me? ABEL: No, it’s true, consult a doctor. JACQUES: You know I’ve always been sensitive to the atmosphere. (Vague gesture from Abel.) You don’t understand what I mean? Say, for example, as soon as there was some latent tension between my parents, I’d feel it without their mentioning it. ABEL: Very strange. JACQUES: It’s a kind of; intuition. ABEL: (Sarcastically.) You wouldn’t by any chance be a medium would you? JACQUES: Abel!

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ABEL: One of these evenings we must try and levitate a table. It’s wonderful after dinner entertainment. JACQUES: That’s enough, please. (A silence.) ABEL: I’m sorry if I angered you, but to get back to your uneasiness. JACQUES: You’re not speaking naturally. ABEL: What do you mean? JACQUES: I’ve asked myself these days if you haven’t adopted an attitude, if you are not playing some sort of role. ABEL: What kind of role, what attitude? JACQUES: I don’t know. ABEL: So? JACQUES: With Florence. ABEL: How; to please her? JACQUES: Or to not please her, and no, I don’t understand. ABEL: Well, what exactly are you complaining about, that the young lady doesn’t like me or that she gets on my nerves? JACQUES: She gets on your nerves? ABEL: It’s you who seem to think so. And besides, what does it matter to you? JACQUES: I had thought, perhaps having the two of you here together. ABEL: Ah! Ah! JACQUES: It was not by accident that I invited you both to come here at the same time. ABEL: Oh! (A silence.) You couldn’t be content just to organize walks. JACQUES: You must see that I’m speaking very seriously. My heart was set on the idea. ABEL: (In an ambiguous tone.) Very unwise of you, if you ask me. JACQUES: How is that? ABEL: Damn it, because… JACQUES: What was so imprudent about this plan?

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ABEL: One never knows. JACQUES: But what was I risking, anyway? Why don’t you answer me? ABEL: First of all, it’s obvious that trying to get people together is at best a delicate task. JACQUES: And then? ABEL: What do you mean, “and then?” JACQUES: It was you who said: “first of all.” ABEL: I don’t know; but what’s obvious is that you can’t forgive us for not falling in line with your fantasies. JACQUES: It’s not a fantasy. I know both of you well. ABEL: You think you know me? JACQUES: Yes, I think I do. ABEL: Ah! JACQUES: I love you both very much; and I’m convinced that you are… ABEL: Made for each other? Too bad we don’t seem to see it that way at all. JACQUES: Even your faults complement one another. So that animosity from the first moment is incomprehensible. Basically she just doesn’t know you very well yet. When she saw you here formerly, she was still practically a child. ABEL: Then, it’s she who is the problem? You abandon your suppositions? JACQUES: Which ones? ABEL: You accused me of adopting an attitude. You really are exaggerating. She doesn’t mean enough for me to bother that much. JACQUES: It’s as if she had a grievance against you, but what grievance? ABEL: You’re trying to arouse my curiosity. Unfortunately I have a principle never to worry about what others think, even those closest to me. For example you, you assure me that you know me, which means that you have a file card on me? I assure you I’m not interested in consulting it.

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JACQUES: (Following his own thought.) It’s as if she had a grievance against you, but what grievance? ABEL: You’re beginning to worry me seriously. The insinuated warnings that person sends toward me… JACQUES: She’s my sister-in-law. ABEL: She was your sister-in-law. JACQUES: Nothing can touch you without touching me in the same blow. ABEL: Thank you very much, but the imaginings of that young lady cannot affect me. JACQUES: Her imaginings! What imaginings? ABEL: I have no idea, but it seems that she has invented some crazy idea, some disagreeable story that she believes. If she actually has, as you say, thought seriously of advancing her departure. JACQUES: What do you mean? ABEL: Yes, it’s you who just told me so. JACQUES: Not on your life. ABEL: Well then I must have misunderstood. JACQUES: I had no idea. ABEL: Oh! I beg your pardon, I remember now, it was the chamber maid whom I overheard telling the cook, “Mademoiselle Florence is leaving now, she told me to get her trunk down from the attic?” JACQUES: But then? ABEL: She has changed her mind. JACQUES: How come? ABEL: In order not to… as a matter of fact, I have no idea. (Madeleine enters.) MADELEINE: It’s clearing; I’m going to take the children out for a while now. ABEL: Madame, come to my aid instead. MADELEINE: What’s the matter? JACQUES: Nothing at all. ABEL: I never would have thought he’d get so upset over such nonsense. It’s unbelievable. My friend, I leave you with your wife; I’m

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sure she’ll have no trouble helping you settle the affair. I’m off now, see you later. (He leaves.) MADELEINE: Jacques! Is it about what you discussed with me yesterday evening? JACQUES: Yes. MADELEINE: So what has happened, dearest? JACQUES: Let’s just drop it. (A silence.) MADELEINE: A little while ago, Roger made me laugh. We were talking about the Good Lord; I forget just how it came up. JACQUES: (Nervous.) Don’t say “the Good Lord”, Madeleine, it sounds syrupy. It makes me sick. MADELEINE: And he said to me: “Don’t you think God is very nosy to be always watching everybody? Me, there are times when I want to be sure no one’s watching me, not even God.” JACQUES: Anyway it surprises me that you don’t have any hesitation to talk to the children about God, when you yourself don’t have any religious faith. MADELEINE: You really are funny; it’s you yourself who asked me to do it. JACQUES: I only said I didn’t want them to grow up as I did, in complete ignorance of whatever pertains to religion. MADELEINE: Well then! What is your concern? JACQUES: Between that and lying. MADELEINE: I don’t think I lied. JACQUES: Well, when you talk about what God does, and what God doesn’t do. MADELEINE: Once again, you yourself… JACQUES: I never asked you to go against you own conscience. What kind of person do you take me for? MADELEINE: (Gently.) Obviously I misunderstood what you expected of me. (A silence.)

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JACQUES: (Bitterly.) I wonder then, if it’s so easy for you to pretend, if you don’t sometimes put on an act when you’re with me. MADELEINE: Pretend, with you? JACQUES: You know very well what I mean. Perhaps in the depth of your soul? MADELEINE: Listen; what you call the depths of my soul, it’s my love for you. JACQUES: Your pity, perhaps but then, to think that when you are alone, when you talk to yourself? MADELEINE: (Painfully.) No need to worry. I never talk to myself. JACQUES: But you do, everyone does. Perhaps you think I’m fooled. That idea is intolerable to me; if it were true (in a half-whisper) I could no longer live with you. MADELEINE: Jacques! It is I who should have the right to be angry with you; if I didn’t see how upset you are. (She stops.) JACQUES: Why don’t you finish what you were saying? MADELEINE: I just don’t understand dearest! You are so difficult today. JACQUES: Sometimes it seems to me that you understand all too well what’s going on inside me. MADELEINE: But, if I didn’t understand, you’d be angry with me. You really are not easy to please. JACQUES: (Sharply.) Then you consider yourself a victim, don’t you? MADELEINE: (Struggling to hold back her tears.) Don’t be stupid. (A silence; Jacques shakes his head sadly.) I’m going out now; I hope that when I get back you’ll be in a better mood. That angers you too? Decidedly today is not my day. JACQUES: No, stay! You haven’t even asked me what happened just a few moments ago. MADELEINE: I suppose you wanted to sound out your friend as to his feelings toward your sister-in-law, and that… JACQUES: I didn’t have to.

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MADELEINE: It seems to me, though, you’re attaching too much importance to that disappointment. I know you were really set on that idea, but since it doesn’t seem feasible; it was only an idea, just a thought, that shouldn’t be so hard for you to give up. JACQUES: (Harshly.) There you are! Right now, what you’re saying doesn’t ring true. You know that what is upsetting me is not any disappointment, as you say about Abel and Florence. Those two, they can throw away their lives in whatever ways they please, I couldn’t care less. Compared to the only thing that counts… MADELEINE: The only being who counts. (A silence.) JACQUES: My poor Mad. I’m so sorry. MADELEINE: Don’t call me Mad, please. That’s what you’d call a buddy. I’m more than a buddy to you, aren’t I? JACQUES: You deserve so much better than what I’ve given you! Are you crying? MADELEINE: No, dear, I’m not crying. JACQUES: Sometimes I’m a monster. MADELEINE: No, it’s not you, it’s not your fault; it’s life that is so terrible. JACQUES: And still it’s beautiful, that understanding among the three of us. MADELEINE: Jacques, it’s not you who has the right to say it’s beautiful; perhaps it might be my right, but I can’t, I just don’t have the strength. JACQUES: (Tenderly.) Think of the future. When Steven will be born… MADELEINE: Yes, when Steven will be with us. (A silence.) JACQUES: Did you know that Florence almost left us? MADELEINE: No. JACQUES: Abel’s presence must have really upset her! You’re not saying anything. MADELEINE: You’re imagining.

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JACQUES: Before Abel’s arrival, Florence was very happy; I’d never seen her so lively. MADELEINE: You’re exaggerating. JACQUES: He must disgust her. MADELEINE: Your mind is closed, there’s no use discussing it. JACQUES: You lower your eyes when you say that, still your voice gives you away; it lacks assurance. He is repulsive to her, but why? I need to know, do you hear me, I must know. MADELEINE: Listen to me Jacques; you have no right, not even for a moment, to pursue that line of thought. JACQUES: All the same, it’s occurred to you too, hasn’t it? MADELEINE: It’s you who imposed it on me. JACQUES: I never formulated it. MADELEINE: You maintain that I can read you. It’s a crime against the one who never abandons you. JACQUES: (In a half-whisper.) For three days now, I no longer feel her presence. When I call, the voices that answer come from within me; I recognize them. Formerly, even when she was silent, she was there; she filled the silence. But now… MADELEINE: Isn’t it perhaps because you have doubted? JACQUES: (Horrified.) I doubt? You think I doubted her? Oh! It’s impossible, I would go mad. MADELEINE: Give me your hands, now think of her; think of your wife. (A silence.) (Roger enters.) ROGER: (Coming in.) Mommy, aren’t we going to go out? MADELEINE: Shh! ROGER: Why is papa so still? MADELEINE: Go on, Roger, I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes. (Roger goes out.)

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JACQUES: (Bitterly.) You watch over me. You solicitude embarrasses me. You wait for “it” to happen. Ah! (Abruptly.) I insist that you question Florence. MADELEINE: But, my dearest? JACQUES: You must get the truth out of her, what ever it is, no matter how terrible it is. MADELEINE: That’s impossible; just think about it, she doesn’t have to explain her dislikes to me. You’re acting like a child. When there can be any number of reasons, perfectly simple explanations. JACQUES: Give me one plausible explanation, I challenge you. (He goes to the French doors and calls :) Florence! Where is she? (He goes out. Madeleine remains alone, she goes over, leans on the piano, and looks at the portrait of Viviane; a desperate expression comes over her face.) FLORENCE: (Coming in.) Jacques told me there is something you want to ask me? MADELEINE: Well that is, yes, he wanted me to ask you something. It’s about his friend. FLORENCE: What do you mean? MADELEINE: Jacques has the impression; first is it true that for a moment you were thinking of leaving us? FLORENCE: (Her eyes lowered.) Yes. MADELEINE: Jacques heard about this, and then… FLORENCE: Get to the point, please. MADELEINE: He cannot understand why his friend is so repulsive to you. FLORENCE: Decidedly here, you are forcing my hand, if people have no sympathy… MADELEINE: No, no, you know very well it’s not a question of sympathy or antipathy, but rather of open hostility that you don’t even try to hide. FLORENCE: I don’t know how to deceive. MADELEINE: That’s nothing to be proud of. That sort of bluntness is not a virtue. (Movement of Florence.) Your talk about leaving shows sufficiently…

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FLORENCE: But since I’ve stayed? MADELEINE: Listen, you don’t have to try and put me off the track. FLORENCE: What do you mean? MADELEINE: I think I’ve guessed. (She stops, Florence looks at her.) It’s atrocious, but these suspicions… FLORENCE: They are not merely suspicions. MADELEINE: Oh! Neither you nor I know the truth. It’s not because he went in to the child’s bedroom to say good night? FLORENCE: There are other proofs. MADELEINE: (With passion.) I forbid you, do you hear me? Proofs, you speak of evidence! Your sister is sacred to me because she’s all he has. I will not allow you to insult her in my presence. FLORENCE: I’m not following you. MADELEINE: His faith in her, that’s all that matters. As for the rest, your hypotheses, your suspicions, even your convictions… FLORENCE: Would you kindly explain to me what you mean? (A silence.) MADELEINE: No. FLORENCE: In that case… (She goes to leave.) MADELEINE: Not yet, please! There is one thing; your attitude has awakened in Jacques the worst uneasiness. I beg you to help me get rid of it. FLORENCE: Tell me how; there’s nothing I’d like better. MADELEINE: You don’t quite understand. It’s not enough to be willing. You’re going to have to invent some plausible explanation for your behavior. FLORENCE: How about his? MADELEINE: What do you mean? FLORENCE: What about Abel’s behavior? His disconnected remarks, his tenseness ever since he arrived, the annoyance he shows as soon as anyone brings up the past; all that will not be easy to explain.

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MADELEINE: Forget about these idiosyncrasies that neither you nor I can decipher. As for what concerns you… FLORENCE: What about me? MADELEINE: Well was it indignation that made you want to leave? You’ll have trouble convincing me of that. FLORENCE: (Pale.) What do you mean? MADELEINE: Even if you do know something, what business is it of yours? Everything of the past is dead. What gives you the right to stir up trouble all around you? FLORENCE: It was only natural that I couldn’t control my feelings. MADELEINE: As a matter of fact, I do believe that is so. FLORENCE: Anyway, since I’ve stayed. MADELEINE: The reasons that kept you here are probably not very different from the reasons that would have made you leave. Such contradictions among lov… FLORENCE: You insult me. MADELEINE: If you don’t find an explanation that reassures Jacques, then I shall tell him that you and… FLORENCE: That I… MADELEINE: Oh! You’ve understood. (To Jacques who has just appeared at the French doors.) You can come in. (Jacques enters.) JACQUES: Well now, how’s it going? MADELEINE: (With good humor.) I warn you that Florence is furious with you. JACQUES: Why is that? MADELEINE: Because you’re meddling in things that are none of your business. JACQUES: (To Florence.) Is that so? FLORENCE: Well, it seems to me… MADELEINE: She promised she’d tell me the secret of the enigma, provided you promise never to mention it to your friend. JACQUES: What is it?

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MADELEINE: But you have to promise on your honor, isn’t that right Florence? (Gesture of Florence.) JACQUES: We’ll see afterwards. MADELEINE: No, Jacques, we can’t tell you anything unless you promise first. JACQUES: If it’s a secret, of course I won’t betray it. MADELEINE: (To Florence.) Too vague, don’t you think, Florence? JACQUES: (In a half-whisper.) These playful manners astound me; I’m not duped. MADELEINE: (To Florence.) In that case, I know that in your place I wouldn’t say anything. JACQUES: (Beside himself.) All right! I agree. (A silence.) So what? MADELEINE: (To Florence.) Does his “O.K.” inspire your confidence? JACQUES: This just seems like a way of stalling for time. MADELEINE: Well, when your friend went to Lyon several months ago Florence learned that he had approached her father. That’s correct, isn’t it? It was your father? FLORENCE: (Indistinctly.) Yes. JACQUES: What did you say? FLORENCE: I said yes. JACQUES: Approached your father? He asked for your hand? MADELEINE: Not exactly, isn’t that right, Florence? FLORENCE: (Very hesitatingly.) He told my father he was ready to marry and he would be pleased… JACQUES: That’s extraordinary. No, it’s almost impossible. When I think of what he said just a while ago… MADELEINE: You have to hear the rest of it; don’t get ahead of the story. He told Florence’s father that he would like to get to know her better. FLORENCE: He came to our house for dinner.

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MADELEINE: He let it be clear what his intentions were. JACQUES: (His eyes constantly going back and forth between Madeleine and Florence.) But you just said, he did not ask for her hand. MADELEINE: Where’s the contradiction? Florence was naturally as evasive as possible. She pointed out that they didn’t know each other at all. JACQUES: Why are you doing all the talking? FLORENCE: You have no idea how painful all this is for me. MADELEINE: Thereupon, Florence’s father learned indirectly, but from a reliable source, that your friend had had an affair. JACQUES: Abel, an affair? I can’t believe that? FLORENCE: Then you doubt my word? JACQUES: (With irony.) Is it your word? FLORENCE: Mine, ours. MADELEINE: You’re not infuriated that, under those circumstances, he should ask the hand of a young lady? JACQUES: You began by saying… MADELEINE: Without even ending the affair, and what an affair! An infamous woman, it seems. JACQUES: This whole story seems to me… and for you to have gone and invented this romantic novel… FLORENCE: I wrote to him, you realize, to tell him what I thought of his conduct. JACQUES: A rather unusual approach. FLORENCE: Apparently the tone of my letter infuriated him. That explains his irony, his disdain, and his sarcasm and as for my feeling of disgust, I would think… (A silence. Jacques is reflecting.) JACQUES: (Suddenly.) And you want to prevent me from verifying this story? MADELEINE: Jacques! You promised. JACQUES: First of all, why did you demand that promise of me? What’s wrong with my asking Abel for certain clarifications? MADELEINE: Now Jacques please!

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JACQUES: Oh! Obviously if it’s fiction, I can understand your apprehensions. FLORENCE: I don’t want to be the cause of a break between you and him. JACQUES: (With irony.) A break! MADELEINE: In his present mood, it’s obvious that your friend would be gravely offended by some strong words that you might say to him. JACQUES: I will just ask him the question matter of factly, without saying anything else that might offend him. MADELEINE: You can’t be sure of that. Besides, what reason would you have to believe him? JACQUES: Let’s not confuse the questions please. MADELEINE: You’re lucky we’re even discussing it; remember you promised. (A silence.) JACQUES: Well, after all, there are other ways to verify the story; Florence’s father? (Abel enters.) ABEL: (Opening the door a crack.) Excuse me, Jacques; may I have a word with you? JACQUES: Come in. ABEL: It can wait my friend I don’t want to interrupt you. JACQUES: You’re not disturbing us at all. (To Madeleine.) I thought you were just about to go out with the children. MADELEINE: (Looking at the sky.) It’s going to rain any minute. By the time we get ready… JACQUES: In any event, it might be a good idea to go and see what they’re up to. MADELEINE: Florence, would you be so kind? FLORENCE: Certainly, I’ll go. MADELEINE: Although with Miss Bullfinch there is really no reason to worry. FLORENCE: I’ll see you later.

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(She goes out.) (A silence.) JACQUES: (To Abel.) You don’t mind Madeleine being here? ABEL: You must be joking. JACQUES: (Looking at Madeleine.) You look very tired; you should go upstairs and rest. MADELEINE: In a little while. JACQUES: Why not right now? (Madeleine gestures.) ABEL: Well here it is; I’ve thought about the conversation we had about an hour ago, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better if I leave. JACQUES: You’re out of your mind. ABEL: No, no, my friend. I assure you. I found that conversation extremely unpleasant, and I’m afraid that if we talked again it would be dangerous, even to our friendship. JACQUES: First of all, there’s no reason that we’d have to repeat that conversation and besides it was precisely for the sake of our friendship that I wanted to clear up any possible misunderstanding. ABEL: Are you sure we did that? JACQUES: What do you mean? ABEL: Yes, remember is not just a question of the two of us; there is a third person. JACQUES: (To Madeleine.) What shall I say? (A vague gesture from Madeleine.) ABEL: You wife is aware, I see. JACQUES: I have no secrets from her. ABEL: That’s just fine! In any event, if you got an explanation from the interested party about her strange behavior that you referred to a while ago I’d be very interested to hear it. JACQUES: If it only depended upon me, I’d be delighted to tell you. MADELEINE: Jacques, you promised me! JACQUES: (Bitterly.) You, you only stayed here to remind me of my promise.

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ABEL: You understand, even if I don’t put any faith in rumors, I cannot remain indifferent if people tell shameful stories about me here. JACQUES: Shameful? ABEL: I don’t know. Besides it would be very painful for my mother. JACQUES: Listen, it’s very simple; Florence told us what happened between the two of you. ABEL: How’s that? JACQUES: Between you and her. ABEL: Ah, between the two of us? JACQUES: So? MADELEINE: Jacques, I’m sick. Help me upstairs, I’m dizzy! JACQUES: A well-timed fainting spell! MADELEINE: How dare you! JACQUES: I merely observe. I will call your mother. (He looks at Madeleine and Abel.) Or rather, Abel, would you be so kind as to tell my mother-in-law who is in the billiard room that Madeleine needs her. ABEL: Of course. (He goes out.) MADELEINE: (In a hushed voice.) I never would have thought you capable of that. JACQUES: Admit that you did lie. MADELEINE: No. JACQUES: That’s not even intelligent. MADELEINE: Well if the truth were what you suspect, he would latch onto the first story that showed him innocent. It’s obvious that he’s not afraid. JACQUES: Yes. MADELEINE: So now what? (Abel comes in at that moment with Madame Chazot.) MADAME CHAZOT: Good heavens, what has happened? What have you done to strain yourself now?

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MADELEINE: Nothing, mother. JACQUES: Would you be so kind as to take Madeleine upstairs and help her get into bed? MADAME CHAZOT: Come, my child, we’re going to go upstairs with you, both of us. JACQUES: No, I have business with Abel; I’ll join you in a few minutes. MADAME CHAZOT: Ah! MADELEINE: (Begging.) Please come quickly. (She goes out leaning on her mother’s arm, after having turned back and looked at the two men with deep anguish.) ABEL: If I understand correctly, you promised not to tell me what they told you. JACQUES: Yes, oh, anyway! ABEL: I won’t ask. I’ll come back to what I just said. You yourself must understand that such a situation can’t go on much longer. I’ll let my mother know, I’ll tell her. As a matter of fact, what shall I tell her? Well, I’ll just have to see. In any event, I thank you for not trying to force me to stay. JACQUES: (Abruptly.) But I don’t want you to go. ABEL: Well, there’s something new. JACQUES: If you left, I’d conclude… ABEL: What? JACQUES: (In a half-whisper.) that you are afraid. ABEL: Afraid of what? Afraid of whom? JACQUES: You know very well what I mean. ABEL: Ah! JACQUES: You certainly do. You know exactly what I mean. ABEL: Without realizing it then. JACQUES: Moreover, you won’t look me in the eye. ABEL: You’re serious then? You think I’m afraid of you? That’s incredible. JACQUES: You’re bluffing; but if you think you’ve got me fooled!

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ABEL: My poor Jacques. JACQUES: No, don’t give me that! ABEL: It’s sad that a friendship like ours. JACQUES: Our friendship! ABEL: Since you promised not to tell me what they told you, perhaps I shall write to Maurice Bréau to see if he can shed some light on what you refuse to give up. JACQUES: You are still on good terms with Florence’s brother. ABEL: On the best of terms, I received a letter from him just the day before yesterday. (A silence.) JACQUES: In any event this is extremely awkward, the story they invented saved you. ABEL: You’ve got some strange expressions. JACQUES: And you just annihilated it. (Madame Renaudier enters.) MADAME RENAUDIER: Madeleine is not feeling well? JACQUES: It’s nothing, her mother is with her. MADAME RENAUDIER: And you, poor boy, you look awful. JACQUES: I didn’t sleep well. Abel, may I ask you to leave me alone for a moment with your mother? ABEL: Sorry old friend, but I refuse to be party to this new fantasy. MADAME RENAUDIER: Heavens, Abel, if Jacques? ABEL: (To Jacques.) You’re not yourself at the moment, just look at your hands. Mother is fragile. MADAME RENAUDIER: (Terrified.) What has happened? ABEL: I myself would be interested to learn. JACQUES: He’s lying, he’s lying. ABEL: Listen Jacques, an idea might have crossed my mind. JACQUES: Ah! ABEL: But don’t you dare! JACQUES: Good God! Oh my God! (A knock at the door.) What is it?

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CHAMBERMAID: Madame Chazot asks Monsieur Delorme to come upstairs immediately. Madame Delorme is not well. MADAME RENAUDIER: Go to her, Jacques. JACQUES: Madame could you, no, I don’t know, I’m too confused. (He goes out.) MADAME RENAUDIER: What’s your part in all this? Oh, you haven’t? ABEL: What, mother? MADAME RENAUDIER: I don’t know, deliberately upset him. That would be, you’re not saying anything, so it’s true? Your deliberate scheme to cause Jacques to… ABEL: I can’t tell you anything. The way I feel now, “deliberate”, “scheme”, such words just don’t make sense. MADAME RENAUDIER: Have you no pity for him? ABEL: I don’t know. (A silence.) MADAME RENAUDIER: If you don’t go to him immediately and admit everything… ABEL: Confess everything? MADAME RENAUDIER: You know what I mean. I’ll tell him everything you told me. ABEL: No. Besides, do you think he’d believe you? MADAME RENAUDIER: When one tells the truth, one finds the words necessary to convince others. ABEL: (With irony.) Ah? MADAME RENAUDIER: Such cold cruelty! ABEL: Mother, don’t take advantage of what I was led to confide in you. I pitied your anguish, and I could not abide that your memory of her be tarnished. Don’t force me to recognize that I was wrong. FLORENCE: (Entering.) Excuse me; I thought Madame Delorme was here. MADAME RENAUDIER: She is in her room; she suddenly didn’t feel well. Her mother and her husband are with her.

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FLORENCE: (Sharply to Abel.) Oh! Why didn’t you leave yesterday on some pretext or other? All this could have been avoided! ABEL: I beg you pardon Mademoiselle, what could have been avoided? FLORENCE: You know perfectly well. The story we invented, I saw right away that he didn’t believe it at all. ABEL: The two of you worked on it together? FLORENCE: If only you’d left yesterday, he wouldn’t be suspicious now. ABEL: What do you mean? FLORENCE: Nobody is fooled now. MADAME RENAUDIER: So you dare? On the basis of such flimsy hints, you dare sully the memory of your sister. ABEL: Mother don’t you realize how unworthy this scene is. FLORENCE: He doesn’t even bother to defend himself. MADAME RENAUDIER: He wants nothing better than to see himself accused. FLORENCE: How’s that? ABEL: Mother! FLORENCE: What do you mean? ABEL: Be careful! FLORENCE: Then why those disconcerting remarks, all those double meanings, but why? What was your motive? Was it to make amends? MADAME RENAUDIER: I swear to you there is nothing to atone for. ABEL: I shall leave this house today, and, as I suppose you won’t want to linger after I’m gone, it would be good if you began packing right now. MADAME RENAUDIER: But if you leave, Jacques will think, so is it to abuse him completely (Movement by Florence.) that you want to leave? No, I don’t care, I will not let you commit this crime; (pointing to Florence) and what about her? ABEL: (In white-hot anger.) Mother, what you are doing is dangerous!

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MADAME RENAUDIER: Her sister, Abel; well? FLORENCE: (Passionately, to Abel.) Why do you refuse to allow her to exonerate you? ABEL: (Deafly.) I don’t owe you any explanations. FLORENCE: (To Madame Renaudier.) Speak; are you really afraid of him? ABEL: (At the door.) Mother, are you coming? (A silence.) All right, then. (He goes out by the French door.) MADAME RENAUDIER: (Calling.) Abel! Abel! He didn’t look back. FLORENCE: Now that we are alone, tell me the truth. MADAME RENAUDIER: You have basely maligned them. FLORENCE: Explain. MADAME RENAUDIER: Unjustly. FLORENCE: I demand that you explain! MADAME RENAUDIER: (Violently.) You demand? What right do you have? FLORENCE: I hurt. (A silence.) MADAME RENAUDIER: (With sharpness.) Ah! I remember what your sister said about you. It was here one day. She was frightened to see you so closed. She was sad not to have ever won your confidence. FLORENCE: Did she try that much? MADAME RENAUDIER: She said to me, “that younger sister of mine, no one knows her.” FLORENCE: And you, do you think you knew my sister? MADAME RENAUDIER: “Does she have a heart? I don’t know.” And I defended you, I mentioned your monotonous life in that sad old house with two unimaginative men; she listened to me shaking her head. I never suspected that one day you would harm us so badly. FLORENCE: That’s a lie. MADAME RENAUDIER: Even now, I see clearly, you think only of yourself. And you may be ruining three lives.

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FLORENCE: Me, ruin lives? MADAME RENAUDIER: What does it matter to you; your grievances, your dislikes, your jealousies? FLORENCE: What are you saying? MADAME RENAUDIER: Come now, I know your secret. FLORENCE: (With passion.) You are only trying to humiliate me. You say I think only of myself; and you, do other people count so much for you? If you didn’t tremble before your son, if you didn’t fear losing the crumbs of his confidences, wouldn’t you have cleared up the terrible ambiguity in which he keeps me? However generosity is a luxury that one can afford at your age better than at mine. Just now, when to hurt me you evoked that silent individual who always listened, you don’t realize the world of memories you stirred up in me. One evening, I remember, I had come for several days. They invited me so I could enjoy the good country air for Viviane treated me too easily like an anemic child. We were there, the four of us, or more exactly three were there, since I, I didn’t count. I was just there for the fresh air. Abel was talking in that strange distant, singsong voice he adopts when he’s explaining something. Jacques was smoking, his mind elsewhere, I don’t know where; and she was listening her eyes half closed, with the quivering of her nostrils that was so characteristic of her. I can still see them. Gradually he faced her more and more, and I could see that it was for her that he was speaking, only for her. You can’t imagine what I felt at the moment. That dreadful evidence broke my heart. Yes, you can believe I had a heart. (A silence.) (Abel enters.) ABEL: (Very pale.) Haven’t you two finished yet? (Pause.) Mademoiselle, I don’t know what my mother could have said but you seem to be at ease. FLORENCE: She didn’t say anything to me. ABEL: But if I have one piece of advice for you, it’s to not put too much faith in these whitewashes and give up trying to understand; I fear that may be a bit difficult. In any event, if you were going to repeat a word of any of this to your brother-in-law?

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FLORENCE: So it is actually Jacques whom you want to look after? ABEL: (Without letting her finish.) Terrible consequences could follow. FLORENCE: You’re no longer lying, thank you for that; thank you I promise that I won’t question you any further. ABEL: You seem to me to be a bit too reassured. FLORENCE: Why do you regret that? And besides I don’t know if I am reassured. ABEL: I don’t want to talk about her anymore, neither to you, nor to the others, nor to anybody. FLORENCE: (With increasing kindness.) Don’t ask me anymore to condemn you. That is too painful. Despite your efforts, despite the rest, I want to trust you. MADAME RENAUDIER: If that confidence doesn’t disarm you… ABEL: What words you use! FLORENCE: You have already made me suffer a great deal. Oh, I know! What right do I have to suffer because of you? Ah, you are hard, you are cruel. It’s your great strength. ABEL: All the same it’s astounding that some few words from my mother succeeded in putting your suspicions to rest. FLORENCE: It wasn’t that. My certitude is only a feeling, if I reasoned? (To Madame Renaudier.) Why are you giving me such a harsh look? MADAME RENAUDIER: I am suspicious of you, Mademoiselle; that turnabout was too sudden. In the theater it would lack credibility. FLORENCE: We aren’t in the theater. MADAME RENAUDIER: Don’t you understand? FLORENCE: Madame, say no more, please. ( A silence. Abel observes them.) ABEL: Mother your suspicions are wicked. FLORENCE: No, they’re not evil; I don’t resent what she’s saying. Anything is better than that prison where I lived.

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ABEL: (With kindness.) I think you are hunting for some sort of a dream, and when you awaken from it, well, you’ll find all your grievances still there. FLORENCE: Don’t keep reminding me so much of what condemns you, since it is with my heart that I absolve you. ABEL: (To his mother who leaves slowly.) Mother, why are you leaving? (Madame Renaudier gestures not to detain her.) (Madame Renaudier exits.) ABEL: (Gently.) It appears that it is with your heart that you are thinking? Be careful, my poor child, you don’t realize! FLORENCE: Oh, yes I do! ABEL: Come now, I didn’t hear those words. Those words that you just said, I won’t recall them, I promise you. FLORENCE: You can remember them. ABEL: You mustn’t feel ashamed when you think of them. FLORENCE: I won’t feel ashamed; it was my first moment of courage. ABEL: You see if I weren’t convinced that you said these words in a sort of dream, that you would disavow them tomorrow… FLORENCE: I will never deny them. ABEL: It would be terrible and wonderful, it would be… FLORENCE: No, no, there was no need to respond. I preferred your irony. It’s strange! Since you no longer accuse yourself, I seem to distrust you even more, that letter? ABEL: What letter? (Jacques enters.) JACQUES: (Entering abruptly.) Do you have your bicycle? ABEL: No, I didn’t bring mine, why? JACQUES: Madeleine is running a fever; a few minutes ago she was delirious. I have to get a doctor and the car is out. ABEL: Do you want me to go? (Jacques goes out without replying.) What letter do you mean?

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FLORENCE: It is one of her letters. (She takes a letter out of her blouse.) ABEL: A letter to whom? How did it come into your hands? FLORENCE: I found it a while ago in the back of a drawer in the room Viviane used about five years ago when Jacques had to leave suddenly for England. ABEL: I remember. The children stayed in Paris with their governess. Your sister went and stayed two weeks in Lyon, it was I who drove her to the station; Jacques had asked me to take her to the train. FLORENCE: She wrote you from Lyon. ABEL: A post card with her signature. FLORENCE: A letter. ABEL: I never received it. FLORENCE: (Painfully.) Why did I mention it to you? ABEL: Show me that letter. FLORENCE: Then I would be betraying her. ABEL: It’s a bit late to think of that. Give me the letter. FLORENCE: (After a long interior debate, Florence hands him the letter.) Here it is. ABEL: (He reads in a low voice.) “My Abel, my love, (He rubs his forehead, Florence looks at him painfully.) I write you from the sad old gray house of which I’ve spoken so many times; you must see it some day. This is not the first love letter, I’ve written, my dear; but I tore up all the others. Will I tear this one up too? No, no, I shall mail it, and then, my heart leaps in my breast at the thought of what will happen the first time that we meet after you will have read this. It leaps with joy and with fear, an intoxicating excitement. Yesterday when we were shivering on the platform of the station at Lyon, those unforgiving lights, the anonymity of arrivals and departures, this conviction of useless flight from everything.” (He stops a moment, closes his eyes; in a low voice.) And when I saw her ten days later I found her cold, distant, a bit ironical and this is what it was! And I never guessed anything. (He weeps in silence; the curtain falls slowly.)

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ACT THREE A small second floor sitting room next to Madeleine’s bedroom. Several minutes after the end of the second act. (Madeleine enters in her robe, leaning on her mother’s arm.) MADAME CHAZOT: Why do you want to come in here? It’s another risk you’re taking, and if you could just see yourself in a mirror. MADELEINE: Now, if you will, please go see what the children are up to. They must be playing croquet, but it’s late, and they could be cold. It’s almost their supper hour; I don’t know what Miss Bullfinch is thinking of? Then, on your way, promise me you won’t refuse me this? MADAME CHAZOT: What? MADELEINE: Ask Monsieur Renaudier to come and see me here immediately, there is not a minute to lose. MADAME CHAZOT: What’s happening, for heaven’s sake? MADELEINE: Hurry, go. MADAME CHAZOT: You don’t have any confidence in me. MADELEINE: (Nervous.) Mother, please, later, afterward! MADAME CHAZOT: One would think you wanted to take advantage of Jacques’ absence. MADELEINE: Exactly. MADAME CHAZOT: I cannot allow that. After all he is my sonin-law. MADELEINE: Don’t you realize you are harming me terribly? MADAME CHAZOT: No one loves you as much as I do my child, you know that. MADELEINE: I’m going to call him myself. (She moves painfully toward the window.) He is there, with Florence. He’s reading a letter. Monsieur Renaudier! He can’t hear me. I have no strength. He’s absorbed in the letter. Look how she’s staring at him! Mother! MADAME CHAZOT: Since you insist. (She goes out shaking her head.) (Madeleine is exceedingly agitated, she mutters to herself constantly.)

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MADELEINE: He doesn’t hear her. Ah, he’s lifting his head; he doesn’t understand. Will she insist? He’s getting up, five minutes wasted. (She lights the lamp that is on the side table, Abel knocks at the door.) MADELEINE: Come in. ABEL: It seems you want to speak with me, Madame. MADELEINE: Yes, Monsieur, please sit down. (Abel sits.) It’s terrible that, knowing what I do about you, I have to tell you what you are about to hear. But I have no choice. This secret that I haven’t told anyone, I must tell you. (She stops.) ABEL: A secret, you say? MADELEINE: Yes. Excuse me if it’s hard for me to talk, I don’t need to tell you, do I, what Jacques thinks you are guilty of? ABEL: He told you? MADELEINE: He didn’t have to; he can’t hide anything from me. It’s an idea that has developed in him like a sickness; I’ve done everything I can to dispel it. But there was no way. And it seemed that encouraging his suspicions you did your best to undermine my efforts. ABEL: Yes. MADELEINE: How is that? ABEL: Yes, I can understand how you have that impression. MADELEINE: Was it intentional? ABEL: No, continue. MADELEINE: That pathetic story I tediously invented, you yourself, oh, you must excuse me, you can’t expect me to express myself clearly, my head hurts too much. But he found me out in my lie, and that lie affirmed the very fear he dreaded. It’s as if I admitted that there was something to be concerned about, isn’t that so? ABEL: Then, what did he say? MADELEINE: Nothing, nothing at all, he laughed; it was horrible. ABEL: Did he formulate the accusation? MADELEINE: I told you no; why would he have? All he said was that he did not understand your attitude.

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ABEL: Oh yes, naturally! MADELEINE: He still hopes it’s false, I assure you. If he no longer hoped, that would be the end of everything. ABEL: What do you mean? MADELEINE: The end of my poor happiness, madness and probably death. ABEL: I don’t understand why do you speak of your poor happiness? MADELEINE: My happiness, it’s rather special, one that would not satisfy most people. Oh, that I must confide this to you! ABEL: Listen to me. MADELEINE: I have been spared nothing. ABEL: Listen to me. We have not betrayed him, do you hear me? For reasons that I cannot tell you, it may be that I am no longer Jacques’ friend, but you… (He takes her hand.) MADELEINE: Why are you no longer Jacques’s friend? Why do you presume to take hold of my hand? ABEL: I don’t know what you’ll say to me; but I feel so strongly that we will understand each other, and I shall help you. You don’t know me. I’m not sure I know myself. MADELEINE: It can’t be for lack of scrutiny. ABEL: One is known only by ones acts; and I have never acted. MADELEINE: We’re wasting time. Thank you, I believe you are sincere, only… (She is upset and can no longer speak.) ABEL: Compose yourself. You’re pathetic. MADELEINE: It’s not a question of you or me. We are not important. Jacques is all that matters, nothing else. If you don’t restore his faith in her you might just as well have killed both of them. (Madame Chazot enters.) MADAME CHAZOT: The children are having supper. So there’s no need for you to worry about them. MADELEINE: That’s good, thank you, mother. MADAME CHAZOT: You seem upset, Monsieur. My daughter hasn’t yet had an opportunity to tell me why she asked you to come;

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but I feel I should remind you that she needs to be treated gently. You know, of course, that she’s expecting a baby. MADELEINE: Mother, please! MADAME CHAZOT: You know Jacques can return from one minute to the next. Now what did I say that was wrong? MADELEINE: Won’t you please leave us? MADAME CHAZOT: What are all these secrets about? (She goes out after having looked at Abel distrustfully.) ABEL: You were saying something I didn’t understand just as your mother came in. MADELEINE: If I had known that it would be this difficult, I think I never would have had the courage. When you came to see us after your return from Russia, I remember the first look you gave me. It was a strange, hostile, disdainful look that hurt me. I understood immediately that you had no idea of the circumstances in which our marriage was agreed upon. Moreover Jacques didn’t hide from me the fact that he never dared tell you about it. I was grateful to him for that, however. I read you correctly, didn’t I? Besides all that was so long ago. More useless words forgive me. My head really aches. So here’s the way it is, I don’t know if you suspected it, since the death of his wife Jacques lives a great deal in the beyond. ABEL: What do you mean? MADELEINE: It was difficult for him to go on living. It seems in the early days you helped him a great deal to, to carry on, and I loved you for that even before I met you. I think, even though he never said so, that he often wished he could just die. And then, little by little, it’s hard to explain, even I don’t understand exactly. It’s something one has to actually experience, gradually the realization dawned on him, first the feeling, then the certitude that his wife was still here, that she observed him; that she watched over him. ABEL: (Indistinctly.) Continue. MADELEINE: So then, it seemed to him that a sort of exchange developed between him and her. Yes, I have to say it was more than a feeling of intimacy it was also a real interaction. Why do you look at me with that frightened air? At such moments he was almost happy, with a serene happiness that was very calm, (Her voice trembles.) very

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pure, that, I can still visualize. It seems to me that he wanted it to always be there. But she didn’t agree, at least what he believed to be her, because we don’t actually know. Gradually that sort of presence became more and more rare, and he didn’t understand why and so he became inconsolable and one day, she once again, shall I say, “manifested” herself to him? He reproached her for abandoning him, and she replied that that was not the kind of fidelity she wanted because it was an egotistical fidelity. I can’t continue if you keep looking at me like that. She then told him the real way for him to prove that he still loved her, would be to not continue living as a widower, but to find a woman whom he would love, and who would be a mother for his children. ABEL: Ah! MADELEINE: And to whom he would tell all this, because it would not be right that such an important secret separate them. In the name of his love, their love, she asked this sacrifice of him, because she knew well that it would be a sacrifice. And she added that if he refused she could no longer communicate herself to him, and they would be forever separated by a sort of wall. He hesitated to promise, you understand, because he couldn’t help but ask himself if this were not a phantom of his imagination. However since she never came back, one day he prayed for her to return, and he promised. It was then that we met, and I was that woman. ABEL: (To himself.) What have I done? MADELEINE: And I know very well that for him it is she who unites us; and she even told him that someday I too will know her, and that she will watch over our happiness. ABEL: Did she keep her promise? MADELEINE: Not yet. Probably I will have to be more trusting for that to happen. ABEL: Yes. MADELEINE: I only need to remember that this has to last; and besides, I promised. The day he told me this story, he said to me: “Will you be strong enough to always live with this?” I answered by giving him my hand. ABEL: He loves you now.

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MADELEINE: (Painfully.) He loves me very much. (A silence.) ABEL: Why didn’t he ever tell me about this? Why didn’t he trust me? That seed would not have fallen on sterile ground. MADELEINE: These regrets are vain. Those words you said before, I want to believe that they were more than mere words, think of him. At this moment he’s coming back to me. Another fills his thoughts; but that doesn’t matter. It’s fine this way. ABEL: He doesn’t deserve you. MADELEINE: He’s more important than I am, I know that for sure. If I falter under the yoke, too bad for me, but if he loses faith in her, that faith which brought us together, that faith by which he lives, oh no, never that. I can just see it; try and you will see it as I do. He is terribly alone. Life has no meaning for him. He feels terribly betrayed. Everything is poor, shabby, and perishable. He’s ashamed of himself, and I horrify him. ABEL: Still who knows? Even if she were unfaithful during her life, why couldn’t she, purified through death, guide him from above? MADELEINE: (Indignant.) She’s a saint with whom he communes. ABEL: A saint with her halo. But isn’t there more joy in heaven? No, you’re right, I see him now as you do, through your eyes. Night has descended on him, and that night is darker and lonelier than ours, since the voice that filled his night has become silent and the memory of it has become agonizing. MADELEINE: (With fervor.) Save him! ABEL: (Looking at her steadily.) Are you sure that you want me to reassure him? MADELEINE: What do you mean? ABEL: That hallowed saint does stand between you. The erasure of this intrusive image is perhaps a victory for you. MADELEINE: Why do you tempt me? I want him to live, and this belief of his is his life. ABEL: Yes, that’s called love.

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MADELEINE: (Bitterly.) No, don’t admire me; perhaps at the bottom of this sacrifice is basically a shrewd calculation. If she is a phantom who has dropped him in my arms, can I hope that this phantom disappears? ABEL: He will be here soon. What shall I tell him? I cannot express what I feel. That letter I just saw… MADELEINE: What letter? ABEL: And now these disclosures of yours. If to die is truly to be born again, to wake up somewhere else, it must be something like this. The meaning that my mind thought it grasped was unstable and terrible, but at least it was mine and I controlled it. But this world is different; I don’t know myself anymore. MADELEINE: What are you trying to say? ABEL: The irony that wounded you was nothing but the last resource of a dying soul. I didn’t yet have the terrible sense of my nothingness. One could say my life is in front of me like a corpse and I’m nothing but an unseeing gaze. MADELEINE: Even now, you are only thinking of yourself. ABEL: (Fervently.) Forget perhaps that I am a miserable creature, and pray for me. MADELEINE: I’m not a believer. ABEL: Then pray in the darkness. (A Silence.) MADELEINE: You must go. Jacques will be coming back soon, and if he found you here… ABEL: What do you expect me to do? What lies must I fabricate, if sincerity is not enough? I will not know how to undo the knots I’ve already tied. MADELEINE: That you’ve already made? ABEL: Yes I myself: my secret is torn to shreds. You can gather up the remains of what was a will. (Madame Chazot enters.) MADAME CHAZOT: I can see your husband coming. MADELEINE: Well, what do we do?

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ABEL: He mustn’t find us here together. He mustn’t know that you came to speak with me. MADELEINE: Then I’ll leave you here? ABEL: Yes, and I shouldn’t give the impression I’m trying to hide from him. MADELEINE: (To Abel.) All my hope is in you. (Abel makes a sign with his head.) MADAME CHAZOT: Come now, let’s go. (Madeleine returns to her room to the right with her mother.) (Abel remains alone seated at a writing table, he takes a piece of letter paper and begins writing. Jacques appears at that moment. He crosses the room without seeing Abel and goes to the door at the right.) MADELEINE: (From inside her room.) Wait a minute; you can’t come in just now. JACQUES: I wasn’t able to reach a doctor! His maid promised that he would come later this evening. How are you feeling? MADELEINE: (As above.) Better, but still very tired. JACQUES: I’ll come back in a little while… (Turning around he notices Abel.) How long have you been there? ABEL: As you can see I was writing. (He looks directly at Jacques.) JACQUES: Why do you look at me like that? ABEL: (Simply.) I assure you I didn’t know I’d looked at you in any special way. JACQUES: (In a different tone.) Let’s not start again with that game we played earlier this afternoon. (To Abel who gets up.) No, please, why are you leaving? I wanted to talk with you. We can just as well stay here. It’s in this room that we’re the least likely to be disturbed. ABEL: Your wife will hear us. JACQUES: We can speak softly and then, good heavens, why do you keep looking away? ABEL: It’s your imagination. JACQUES: Still you answer with a hesitant voice. ABEL: First the look, then the voice, but between us, words alone should have meaning.

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JACQUES: And the silences that come into my memory? Don’t they mean anything? They’re full of meaning, and you know it all too well. (Abel gestures he denies it.) ABEL: All of that is hardly clear. Silences which return, looks which reveal, come now my friend I beg of you a bit more simplicity. JACQUES: This feigned good humor that you’ve gotten me unused to, leaves me cold. It’s like your words a moment ago; you can’t fool me, I can see through them. But what’s happening? Who are you? (Grabbing him by the arm.) Who are you? (Roger enters.) ROGER: Daddy, can I say good night to mother? Odette is being punished, so she won’t be coming. JACQUES: I don’t know my boy, leave us alone. ROGER: Tell me Uncle Abel; it’s not true is it that you are leaving tomorrow? ABEL: Yes, dear, it is. ROGER: I thought you were going to stay a long time. ABEL: Well, you see, it’s changed. ROGER: Why? And besides why aren’t you staying for dinner? JACQUES: Don’t tire us so with your questions. It’s time for you to go to bed. Mommy is very tired, it’s surely better that you not go in. ROGER: Tell me Uncle Abel, what time are you leaving? ABEL: Very early, dear, you’ll still be fast asleep when I leave. ROGER: Daddy let me go to the station with him. (Abel looks at Jacques anxiously; Jacques feels the look and turns his head away from it.) JACQUES: (Simply.) You would be too tired; but Uncle Abel will come and kiss you in your bed like last night. ROGER: You won’t forget, promise. ABEL: No, my dear, I won’t forget. (Roger goes to leave.) JACQUES: Is that the way you say good night?

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(Roger turns around and goes to kiss his father saying: “Good-night, Daddy”, then he leaves.) JACQUES: (With a trembling voice.) That child has a special affection for you. ABEL: He is quite comfortable with me. JACQUES: Why not admit that he loves you very much. What harm can that do? ABEL: Absolutely none. JACQUES: It’s like beating one’s head against a wall. I came here firmly resolved to have it out with you man to man, no matter what the cost. And now my resolutions falter in the face of your unnatural expression. ABEL: Listen to me, Jacques, I’m not the same person I was this afternoon; I assure you of that. JACQUES: Well, what has changed? ABEL: This explanation, I want it as much as you do. JACQUES: Meanwhile, you have not answered me. ABEL: The attitude of your sister-in-law offended me; wounded me, but since then I have had a conversation with her that dissipated all our misunderstandings. JACQUES: That’s a tasteful word. ABEL: Please, Jacques, in the name of everything that keeps us close! JACQUES: But what brings us together? I ask myself that now. It seems to me as if all our intimacy was nothing but appearance. If I could have known what you thought of me I’m sure it would have made me sick. What have I been for you; a nice guy, not much more? I remember now certain conversations; when I dared question some of your ideas, how abruptly you changed the topic of conversation as if to say: “Back off, such things are beyond you!” When it happened, I was annoyed; but then I forgot about it. I was wrong. ABEL: On the contrary, you were absolutely right; it was a ridiculous shortcoming that no one should have paid attention to. JACQUES: I’m not so sure. ABEL: Then why would I have continued to see you?

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JACQUES: A lifelong friend is not easy to drop. There were our families. And then perhaps I clung to you. ABEL: Still, you seem to forget what I was for you in certain circumstances. JACQUES: It is rather delicate to recall that memory. ABEL: You won’t deny though that at that time a profound communion linked us. JACQUES: In fact yes. Only in light of what I perceive now, the memory of that communion is, as you say, perhaps not the most reassuring. ABEL: Now, Jacques, that ridiculous, it’s outrageous, it’s… JACQUES: That litany of words fails to impress me. There’s not one of your gestures, not one of your reflections that isn’t contrived. At certain moments today, I asked myself if perhaps you weren’t trying to upset me; now you’re doing your utmost to placate me, that’s all. ABEL: What must I do? JACQUES: There are words, gestures that don’t deceive. ABEL: Teach me the secret of knowing them. JACQUES: Ah, that’s just it! ABEL: Do you believe in heartfelt appeals? JACQUES: There are some expressions that don’t lie, but yours! I’ll never forget that sad and controlled face. ABEL: (Strongly.) You must forget it. JACQUES: That’s easy to say. ABEL: I’m telling you again, I wasn’t myself, this afternoon! An obsessive idea, a morbid desire, inspired my words and even went so far as to dictate my silences. JACQUES: You agree. I dispense you from explaining the particulars. We’ve already wandered around the truth enough. If you have loved, then you understand that it’s not me I am speaking of now, in the name of that sentiment! It’s obviously careless to evoke that, perhaps you even find that it’s grotesque but walking earlier, I relived the past. There were hours here that couldn’t lie, privileged hours when we understood each other, all three of us; in the name of those

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hours that must be sacred to you as they are to me, don’t refuse me the light. ABEL: What can I say? Arguing against such suspicions can become a way of nourishing them. JACQUES: (With gentleness.) Yes, but, you see, it’s only one sentence; a sentence that is not very clear. (A silence.) And when I think of the past, Abel, I can assure you that never for one instant did I ever stop being your friend. I even admired you; naturally I didn’t tell you. I remember the joy I felt, the first time she praised you. Before that I was afraid she didn’t like you. There are some of your character traits she had a hard time getting used to. ABEL: (Weakly.) Oh. JACQUES: She found you too sarcastic; she criticized your lack of simplicity. But then little by little, it’s only now that I realize it, she began to resemble you. Her smile in that portrait, you know, she didn’t have that look in the early years of our marriage. I remember noticing it for the first time when I returned from England. ABEL: Yes? JACQUES: It’s so strange that I can talk to you about her like this; still one might say it gives me peace. I remember I got back in time for dinner. She was very affectionate, as always, inquiring about all the details of my trip, yet somehow I remember now having had the distinct impression that she had a secret preoccupation. All during dinner, I felt that she would tell me something after our meal was finished. I was neither worried nor intrigued. I was on the verge of asking her what she was concerned about, but then after dinner someone dropped in, my impression vanished and I forgot. But it was during that absence wasn’t it, that things got started? ABEL: You’re mistaken, I swear it. JACQUES: One day, much later, when I alluded to that trip to England, it seemed to me that reference troubled her. ABEL: You must realize that all this gets distorted now in your imagination. JACQUES: Is that all you can muster as a reply? ABEL: What else can I say? JACQUES: Alas!

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ABEL: (With effort.) Jacques, you know very well that it’s not true. She never would stoop to anything like that. You have no right to suspect her. JACQUES: No, I’m sure of nothing; that woman is only dust now. ABEL: Jacques! JACQUES: She’s only dust now. There is nothing left of her that can pass over into me, nothing that can sustain my life. I will only know whatever I can find myself. Reread old letters, compile, and collate. The work of an archivist, isn’t it? That’s all there is left for me. Naturally you won’t tell me anything, your role is difficult. I’ll grant you that. And besides, why should I believe whatever you say? Even if you confessed, I’d never know if it were really true. She is dead. Dead! And what’s so awful is the fact that I don’t hate you. If I wanted to kill you at least that would be something I could do. But no, is it because you, you still represent a part of her? And then, the moment that one dies, for good… Don’t try and understand. Leave it. It only makes sense to me. ABEL: (With dread.) No, I can tell what you’re thinking. For the first time you believe in death and that belief is going to kill you. Jacques what unites us is still so strong; I know what you’re saying, but it’s not true, for I too, have never stopped being your friend. JACQUES: My eyes aren’t sharp enough to see that. ABEL: That horrible deed, of which you accuse me, I might have, in my thoughts alone… JACQUES: Even if only in your thoughts! ABEL: But she never suspected it. Don’t you understand? Dear God, how can I convince you? JACQUES: Little by little you are succeeding; we’ve come quite a ways since a while ago. You see, Abel, I believe that at this moment, you pity me; and because of that what you say, can’t really convince me. ABEL: Jacques, calm down! Be silent within. Listen to her speak to us from the depth of the past that is so dear to you. Listen to her deep clear voice. I didn’t know that all of that remained sacred for you, I feared you had become forgetful, I…

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JACQUES: (Distrustful.) Who set you straight? ABEL: What do you mean? JACQUES: Who told you how it was? Has Madeleine also betrayed me? ABEL: Madeleine? Why it was you who set me straight. I see your sorrow, I see your reverence and it’s to that genuine love that I appeal. Remember how forcefully she would condemn disloyal people? You can’t imagine that she herself would be a disloyal soul? JACQUES: But I remember also that one day I found her in tears, and as I kept pressing her with questions, she ended up by saying: “We women, centuries of slavery have deformed us, we can no longer live according to the truth.” ABEL: That wasn’t her style, your memory deceives you. JACQUES: No, no. And all those moments of sadness that came over her without cause, sometime quite suddenly. ABEL: Jacques, you know that for quite a while she saw her death approaching from a long way off. JACQUES: That’s not true. (A silence.) Or, did she confide in you things that she never shared with me? ABEL: Of course she told me about some of her fears that she carefully kept from you; that only proves that she wanted to spare you until the last possible moment the anguish that was consuming her. JACQUES: (Exploding.) So, it’s true? Aha! This time you gave yourself away. She confided her fear of death to you! That agony that I had a right to share, she reserved for you. ABEL: Only once did she speak to me of that fear. I found her alone in her sitting room; she was arranging flowers in a vase. She was pale, and her thoughts were far away. When I came in, she didn’t even greet me; and then, after a minute, in that brusque tone she sometimes used, she said to me: “Does death frighten you? It frightens me, terribly. I’m horribly afraid, and I feel death is near.” JACQUES: (Feverishly.) So she did talk to you about death? What did she say? What did she believe? MADELEINE: (From inside her bedroom.) Jacques! JACQUES: What did she expect from death?

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MADELEINE: Jacques, will you please come here an instant? JACQUES: In a minute! Repeat to me faithfully everything she said to you that day. You can’t imagine how important this is for me. (He goes out.) ABEL: Good God; to invent? Yes, perhaps. (Abel recollects himself. Jacques’s voice is heard from the bedroom, “They’ll ring when the Doctor gets here. Yes, Abel’s still there. Don’t worry about that. Yes, I understand.” Jacques reenters the sitting room.) JACQUES: Well, what is it? ABEL: Please understand, I can’t recall her words exactly, but the sense of them is branded on my mind. JACQUES: Why have you never ever spoken of this before? ABEL: I feared it might have been too painful for you to learn that she knew she was going to die. Besides she forbade me to tell you. JACQUES: Then why are you telling me all this now? ABEL: To explain to you those sudden moments of sadness that occurred with no apparent cause. (A silence.) She said something like this to me: “Yes, I know I’m soon going to die. Sometimes all I feel in the face of death is a sort of strange religious curiosity.” JACQUES: What did she mean by that? ABEL: She said, “At other times I tell myself that to die is merely to not know anything anymore, become a thing, and not even have the awful satisfaction of recognizing that everything is only an illusion. But sometimes I pray with abandon, and there follows the feeling that my prayers give birth to a new life in me that will perhaps last.” JACQUES: (With eager hopefulness.) She said that to you? She prayed? She already believed in the sovereign power of prayer? ABEL: What do you mean “already”? JACQUES: It doesn’t matter. ABEL: Explain. JACQUES: Sometime later on, perhaps. ABEL: (Encouraged.) “Sometimes even”, she added, “and this may seem like superstition to you, but sometimes I think that others in praying for me, could help to weave the fabric of that new life.” (He anxiously watches Jacques who doesn’t move.) “Even when I shall no

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longer be there, it seems to me that those who loved me can still do something for me, and that I too, by a sort of mystical exchange…” JACQUES: She actually spoke of an exchange? ABEL: “I will be able to work for their happiness.” JACQUES: Why didn’t she ever say anything about that to me? ABEL: She thought you wouldn’t understand and then it would have upset you too much. She went on to talk to me about you with an almost maternal concern. She said, “I know he will be profoundly unhappy and perhaps he will never get over his grief. But I also know he cannot go on living alone with the children. It would be too hard on him. When he comes home tired, he needs to find a smiling face that will encourage him, like when a tired child comes home from school. If ever the power were given to whatever of me survives, to inspire his thoughts and to guide his acts.” JACQUES: (Breathless.) Can you swear to me that she said that to you? No, not yet. Recollect yourself in order to be absolutely sure. It’s too, decisive. In a little while after dinner, we will get together, and you will have had a chance to reflect. Shh! Not another word, we’ll talk later. (He leaves closing the door gently. Abel left alone collapses into an armchair. Madeleine not hearing anything more enters quietly.) MADELEINE: Well what happened? ABEL: (Overwhelmed with dismay.) He’s saved and I am wretched.

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ACT FOUR The same evening after dinner; the same setting as Act Three. MADAME RENAUDIER: Would you dare swear to him? ABEL: Can I refuse him that? Oh, it’s only another sentence I pronounce. If he attaches some sacred significance to it, that’s his fault. MADAME RENAUDIER: You really are irreligious? ABEL: (Bitterly.) Do you think so? What is religion anyway if it isn’t a spirit of fidelity? MADAME RENAUDIER: Blasphemy! ABEL: How you misunderstand me. You have no idea of the horror this lie causes me. Certainly, it’s not what you would call remorse; no, nothing like that fortunately. MADAME RENAUDIER: You trample God’s law underfoot. ABEL: I suppose for you, a law is only divine so long as it is incomprehensible. Christian humility! After all, perhaps it is to be admired. (A silence.) MADAME RENAUDIER: You are leaving tomorrow morning, is that definite? ABEL: Yes. MADAME RENAUDIER: You will have dinner at home? ABEL: No. I’ll probably have dinner on the train. I plan to leave Paris tomorrow evening. MADAME RENAUDIER: Where can you go? ABEL: To Moscow, and from there… (A vague gesture.) MADAME RENAUDIER: Russia again? That country that did you such harm! The letters that you wrote me from there! Will that nightmare start all over again? ABEL: You have no idea what Russia is like, mother. One dives in, one gets lost there; it’s the only place on earth that teaches one how to die. MADAME RENAUDIER: In fact, you think only of death. This is not a departure, it’s a suicide. That’s what life holds for me.

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ABEL: Don’t be unjust toward life. It seems to me that on balance life has not treated you that badly. You’ve had a few disappointments but surely paradise is worth the price. MADAME RENAUDIER: You always directed your ironies either against my Catholic faith or your father’s irreligion. ABEL: Alas! (A silence.) It’s all too much, don’t you see. I played the avenger, the sword bearer, and now, I’m not talking about the harm I’ve done, that will come up later, what overwhelms me is an unexpected discovery. A word not only expresses, it acts; one who has lied will never find his betrayed thought intact when he wants to reconsider it. Everything escapes me. Is this how the spirit of fidelity rewards those who served it too zealously? MADAME RENAUDIER: So, when your thoughts should be focused on Jacques? ABEL: Be careful, it’s pity for Jacques that counsels contemplating the oath that your religion forbids. That invented story from the other side of the grave stands between us like a loathsome third thing that finally imposes itself as necessary. I hate it. Still it only perpetuates into the beyond, those qualities I adore. Oh, I don’t know anymore. That fabrication has too much power. Minute by minute it pushes further into the shadows the mysterious face that I only glimpsed in the light of that letter. An unknown face! Ah! I’ll have to reconstruct all the past now that I have the key to it. But will this cherished past that I love too much; will it allow itself to be renewed? No, it wants to remain intangible. So in that case what: fidelity to a lie; idolatry? FLORENCE: (From outside.) Madame, are you there? MADAME RENAUDIER: Come in, please. (Florence enters and draws back on seeing Abel.) FLORENCE: I didn’t know… MADAME RENAUDIER: Was there something you wanted to tell me? FLORENCE: Yes, but… ABEL: Should I leave? FLORENCE: No, you can stay. Perhaps it is better this way. MADAME RENAUDIER: He told me everything.

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FLORENCE: Even about the letter! MADAME RENAUDIER: Yes. FLORENCE: I came to ask your mother to forgive me. I am ashamed of myself now. That revelation that I had no right to make… ABEL: You couldn’t have suspected that it would be a revelation for me. It’s obvious that if you had realized that I didn’t know, you would not have said anything. And nothing would have happened. I don’t hold it against you, you see; I’m not giving you any explanation. I don’t know if you could have guessed part of the truth. It’s unfortunate that this letter fell into your hands. FLORENCE: (In a low voice.) Yes. ABEL: And I also believe that it’s unfortunate that I read it. FLORENCE: But I would have thought… ABEL: Alas! FLORENCE: I don’t even have the consolation of having put, of course without having intended it, some tenderness into your thoughts. ABEL: You see that letter showed that she struggled, suffered as I did, and that is what I never suspected. FLORENCE: Yes. ABEL: And that’s not all there is to it. FLORENCE: If it were only what you say, perhaps I could reassure you. Between her and me, there never was any closeness. However I believe I knew or sensed that despite this letter, I don’t think she was unhappy. Forgive me if I speak frankly. It seems to me that in that struggle, Viviane, who was proud, must have found a certain pleasure. A plain and simple life with Jacques, or even with you, wouldn’t have been enough for her. There’s a kind of simple happiness to which she never could have resigned herself. She must have long enjoyed a sort of strong and bitter joy in that forbidden love that she never spoke of to you. (Animatedly.) In writing that letter, believe me, she knew very well, that she would not send it. ABEL: (Profoundly.) If you knew her so well, how could you have been so mistaken about her?

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FLORENCE: (Blushing suddenly.) I don’t know. One doesn’t always see clearly. Something misled me. ABEL: (Profoundly.) I am not worthy of this regard Florence, I am a very limited man. And besides when I look at the balance sheet of my life. (He shakes his head.) Yes, of course, I sowed some ideas, awakened some intellects, and then what? FLORENCE: You’re not giving yourself due credit. ABEL: Tonight I feel a passionate desire to find myself guilty. Except for me, she would have been happy with Jacques. FLORENCE: Still when I recall the slightly condescending affection with which she sometimes spoke of him. ABEL: As a rule she was very tender with him. Remember coming back from our walks, the two of them hung back walking slowly, and if anyone interrupted their conversation, she seemed vexed. One evening… FLORENCE: All the same, we don’t know what that tenderness was made of. A lucid friendship… ABEL: That’s true. Viviane always was strangely lucid. I remember how deeply her eyes shone when she would say, “I like to understand.” But as for him, didn’t he deserve something infinitely better than friendship? Oh, life is wicked! FLORENCE: (To Madame Renaudier.) What is happening to him? MADAME RENAUDIER: I don’t know. ABEL: Again I see her, as she would come to sit with him after having silently closed the piano. She would put her hand on his shoulder fondly yes it’s true. One day when he was going to praise what she had played, it was the Andante of Dukas’ Sonata I recall, and she gently put her hand on his mouth. He piously caresses these memories, and inhales their deceiving perfume! FLORENCE: Is it for Jacques that your heart bleeds? ABEL: One’s soul instinctively clings to what tortures it. There is a savoring that comes only gradually and that nothing replaces. You don’t know how ferociously our sentiments resist new images that might alter them, and it is perhaps those sentiments, where suffering has settled in slowly, that are the most tenacious and rebellious. The

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woman you revealed to me is someone I didn’t know; the woman I knew lived only for Jacques, and if ever she suspected what she meant to me, she at least never showed any sign of it. Yes perhaps she was all the more precious to me as I was sure of loving her with no return. I accustomed myself to this sad monotonous horizon; and here you come to trouble me by suggesting the image of a different person. MADAME RENAUDIER: (Pointing to Florence.) How can you express all these morbid sentiments in front of her? FLORENCE: (To Madame Renaudier.) Permit me to see in these confidences, even if I am wrong, a proof of friendship that I scarcely deserve. Yet I can understand the uneasiness of a disoriented heart. (To Abel.) Yes, I excuse you and I feel sorry for you, as my sister would have done in my place. ABEL: Do you think then, that she would have understood? FLORENCE: Remember her love of sincerity above all else? ABEL: Yes, that’s true. She would have excused because she would have understood. Excused? That hardly says enough. Her intelligent heart would have been able to understand where others would merely pardon. I can see what would have been her ironic, tender and painful smile. The other, the one who is in heaven… FLORENCE: What are you trying to say? ABEL: It’s not my secret, and I can’t answer you. With one word, the significance of which you can’t measure, you have awakened an obsession that will not leave me. I can imagine her, her head tilted slightly to one side, listening pensively to all this strange dialectic without becoming indignant. All these dissonances of a soul out of tune, she would have known how to accept them and blend them into harmony. Oh, why, why so late? FLORENCE: (Painfully.) Now your dream is going off in other directions. This cruel fantasizing of yours now animates an image that previously appeared unclear and enigmatic to you. ABEL: You see I was right; all you can expect from me is insult and deception. Happy those who have known how to share their affection! Pity the man who has only one love. Passion is merely an obsession. FLORENCE: Good-bye. We will probably never see one another again. You will hardly be tempted to come to Lyon to find memo-

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ries that you will not have the strength to bear, as for me, I… Don’t formulate some well wishing platitude that would only wound me. Don’t hope to erase the imprint you have left on my destiny since… excuse me; I was going to say that I forgive you. (They shake hands in silence. Florence leaves.) ABEL: (Painfully.) She loves me, and that love will remain sterile. Oh, when I think of all that tenderness, strewn uselessly in this world! If only one could conceive of a marvelous flowering of all that, if one could! MADAME RENAUDIER: She loves you as you are, even though she knows the worst of you. You’ll never find anything worth more than a love like that. Jacques’ idea was right! ABEL: How ironic! MADAME RENAUDIER: Basically that’s what you’ve been missing from your life up until now. You never felt loved for yourself. ABEL: It’s you who say that, Mother, you who have always idolized me? Still it seems you are right. Excessive pride in me allied itself with humility, the bitter sadness of mattering so little to others, and alas rightly so. MADAME RENAUDIER: Let me tell you something, Abel; you know I don’t claim to enter completely into your pain. It’s just because you describe it so well that it remains for me a bit, impenetrable. ABEL: (With a smile.) Are you too now suffering from the contagion of subtlety? MADAME RENAUDIER: (With ardor.) But what I know is that there is only one way for you to put an end to this sickness that is destroying you. Jacques was right, she alone could save you. Don’t think I can’t understand your cult for Viviane. But she herself, if… ABEL: She would give me the same advice as for Jacques? It would be that same easy social wisdom. Oh, let’s not call upon the dead! Don’t insist; you can’t know what I’m experiencing, you said so yourself, I’m too alone. (Jacques enters.) MADAME RENAUDIER: Jacques, you were right. Florence let her true feelings show and Abel…

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ABEL: (With a glint of madness in his eyes.) Mother, be careful. JACQUES: (With joy.) So Florence has agreed to be his wife? Of course I acted like a fool. Abel, forgive… MADAME RENAUDIER: Yes, you can ask his pardon. JACQUES: (Timidly.) You know everything now. MADAME RENAUDIER: Yes. May Viviane also forgive you! JACQUES: (In a low voice.) I shall pray that she forgive me. ABEL: (To his Mother in an ambiguous tone.) Mother, would you kindly leave us for a moment, I think Jacques has something he wants to ask me. MADAME RENAUDIER: Oh! JACQUES: What is it? MADAME RENAUDIER: (Standing up.) I’m going to leave you now. Abel, come and say good night to me when you come upstairs. Surely I won’t have gone to sleep yet. ABEL: It will be late, (in a softer tone) but I will certainly have something to tell you. MADAME RENAUDIER: (Leaving.) In the name of heaven! ABEL: (Under his breath.) I told you I was not someone completely without religion. Thank you for having reminded me. JACQUES: What are you whispering about? ABEL: Something about Paris that my Mother was afraid of forgetting. (Madame Renaudier leaves.) ABEL: All right. I’m ready to hear what you have to say. JACQUES: (Embarrassed.) No, I’ve thought it over. It would be cruel of me to insist; surely you told me what she said as you remembered it, and I have no right to ask any more. ABEL: You’re absolutely right. Still I would have refused to swear to it; the very idea is shocking, as you yourself say. Besides it’s been such a long time I can no longer be sure of her exact words. JACQUES: Yes.

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ABEL: I remember distinctly we had spoken of you and she had told me she just couldn’t see you being a widower for a long time. JACQUES: How’s that? ABEL: Moreover, she thought it absolutely natural, if you will, that you remarry; she accepted the idea. JACQUES: (Very upset.) She was resigned to it? ABEL: No, she didn’t say that, she meant simply that it was normal. JACQUES: (Very softly.) Yes. ABEL: She understood men, you know. You especially, she knew you very well, and she was not one to ask the impossible. JACQUES: (Still very softly.) But that’s not what you told me before dinner; you quoted her as saying, “I know he will be terribly unhappy.” ABEL: Yes, of course. She knew how you loved her, that’s obvious, you proved it. (Jacques stares at him.) JACQUES: You said she added, “If the power were given to me.” ABEL: (Nonchalantly.) Yes, it seems that she did say something like that, “If it were possible for me when I’m no longer of this world, I would be the first to give him this advice.” JACQUES: Was that just a passing thought or something she seemed to feel deeply? ABEL: Since I’m not absolutely sure she said it… JACQUES: Oh! ABEL: What’s so important about it anyway? Do her exact words mean so much to you? JACQUES: But, you must have realized that is was only after a long period of terrible hesitations that I resolved to marry Madeleine. My letter, the one I wrote to you in Moscow which you responded to so tersely, didn’t it reveal something of my agony. ABEL: (Moved.) No, I don’t believe so. JACQUES: Thus, I cherish, as most precious, whatever can confirm me in my belief that she is not angry with me. ABEL: (Gently.) Yes, I understand.

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JACQUES: Honestly, can’t you make yourself remember her exact words? ABEL: No, I assure you. Besides… JACQUES: What? ABEL: It’s only the feeling that really matters. JACQUES: That’s not true. ABEL: (Strongly.) She would not have resented what you did, you can be sure of that. JACQUES: Abel. ABEL: What, my friend? JACQUES: It’s crazy what I’m about to ask you, but alas the night is dark, and after all you are more reflective than others. ABEL: (With dread.) What can you want to ask me? JACQUES: Do you think that all we can say is: “She would not have been angry with you!” Do you think it is madness to speak of the dead in the present? ABEL: Good God! Why do you ask me that? JACQUES: Suppose I have reasons to think, well to imagine, that everything is not ended; that everything of our relationship has not ceased. For you, would that necessarily be an illusion? ABEL: No, why should it be since we don’t know anything for sure? JACQUES: You see that sentence that she pronounced, or that perhaps she said… ABEL: Ah! JACQUES: It’s something that would sort of confirm, don’t you think so? ABEL: (Tortured.) I don’t know. JACQUES: We are so much in the dark. I can’t explain exactly what happened. These are things that I don’t even have the right to speak about to others. ABEL: Yes, Jacques. JACQUES: Actually there are some days when it seems that it is all so solid and I have no remaining doubt at all. On those days, it’s

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wonderful to live. But then there are other days when everything crumbles horribly and then I’d prefer it were all over. Either I’d be reunited with her, or there would be nothing at all. Oh, obviously none of that shows. I probably look like a contented man. Especially when compared with you who always seem to harbor a secret anguish. But appearances can deceive. Therefore that sentence, try to remember it. (He buries his face in his hands.) ABEL: Listen, no, I can’t. JACQUES: One would say you’re holding back. ABEL: (To himself.) At this depth, one can no longer lie. JACQUES: Naturally, who’s talking about lying? ABEL: I no longer know what courage calls for. I don’t know anything. You, at least, you can pray, call out! Me, oh, it’s… (Suddenly he gestures desperately.) Dear friend, you mustn’t cling to that sentence; I am certain she never said it. JACQUES: Oh! ABEL: Then think, what would that change, even if she had said it? Would that be a guarantee? Think, a guarantee? It would only be a coincidence. JACQUES: Then, why did you put words in her mouth? ABEL: (Stuttering.) But you must understand, I believed… JACQUES: You are upset. ABEL: Not at all, but… JACQUES: It’s not just by chance that you made it up and when you said to me: “for the first time you believe in death.” For the first time! That phrase gave you away. (Harshly.) You knew everything! ABEL: You’re mad, come now. JACQUES: And it’s not something you saw; that’s not possible. ABEL: How could I have guessed? JACQUES: You didn’t guess. Madeleine told you everything. That’s why I found you in that little room where you never go. She dragged herself there to inform you, to beg you to humor me, as someone who’s sick. Oh, I can’t breathe! Help! Help me! (He collapses. Abel holds him in his arms; a silence.)

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MADELEINE: What’s the matter? He called out. What’s happening? Why are you holding him? ABEL: Shh! JACQUES: (Reopening his eyes.) What happened? (To Madeleine.) Ah! You’re here, you too? You betrayed me! MADELEINE: Dearest, forgive me! I believed I had to. You don’t know what that cost me. (To Abel.) But you, what have you done? ABEL: What could I do? There is a point in human suffering where truth breaks through. It’s something more powerful than we are. When I wanted to go back to what I’d said earlier, I no longer could. MADELEINE: Go back to what you’d said earlier? JACQUES: When you were alone with me and I saw that awful smile. ABEL: First I felt that if I deceived you any longer I would be betraying her, and then a terrible feeling of pity took hold of me. JACQUES: (To Madeleine.) You planned all this together. ABEL: No, no. You’re mistaken. JACQUES: Any means were permissible to blind me. And now, I no longer believe in anything. I don’t believe anyone. There is nothing. (To Madeleine.) It was just an illusion that put you on the path of my life; a trick of nature. (To Abel.) There you are! Am I beginning to sound more reasonable again? MADELEINE: (Profoundly.) I envy that woman. JACQUES: Perhaps she would never have pardoned me. ABEL: (Passionately.) Jacques, listen to me. JACQUES: I’ve already heard too much. What new face do you have to show me? ABEL: At this moment, Jacques, it’s I who speak to you, and there is no deception behind these words. You see, at the end of this frightful day all those haunting obsessions have left me, for one blessed moment. Pity performed that miracle. Unfortunately maybe all that will come back, but I am speaking to you now from the depth of my soul and as if she heard us. Perhaps she does hear us. I swear to you this oath; she would have forgiven you. She does pardon you, because in a sense she is surely here!

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JACQUES: (Bitterly.) In our thoughts! ABEL: (Strongly.) No Jacques not merely as an idea. JACQUES: Is it she who spoke to me? ABEL: We have not understood her, neither you nor I, and very likely she did not understand herself clearly. JACQUES: There is nothing, mere phantoms in the night, that’s what we are. ABEL: That’s not true, since we suffer. JACQUES: Everyone has lied to me. ABEL: These errors, these lies are a ransom. JACQUES: Words, only words. ABEL: The terrible ransom for our reality. JACQUES: Nothing but words. ABEL: Perhaps it’s only at the cost of erroneous straying that the soul finally finds itself. JACQUES: (Bitterly.) The soul! ABEL: (Solemnly.) Our living soul, our eternal soul! JACQUES: Was it Viviane who spoke to me? ABEL: We have wandered in the shadows of darkness, but now for a few seconds this past so full of errors and suffering appears to me in a light that cannot deceive. From all this confusion it seems an order emerges. Oh, not a lesson, a harmony! JACQUES: There can be no rest for me if I do not know that she hears me. ABEL: (Strongly.) No Jacques, even if it is true, even if she has spoken to you, it is not in this one precarious interview, a dubious dialogue, that you will find the assurances for which your heart thirsts. JACQUES: (Passionately.) To see, to hear, to touch… ABEL: A temptation that does not deceive the truest part of yourself. Come now, you could not be satisfied long in a world devoid of mystery. That’s the way we humans are. JACQUES: What do you know about humanness? ABEL: Believe me; knowledge exiles to infinity whatever it claims to grasp. It is perhaps mystery alone that reunites. Without mystery, life

would be suffocating! (He turns toward Madeleine who has remained seated, motionless, staring into space.) And then, don’t you see, we don’t have the right, no, we do not have the right. MADELEINE: (Very softly, in a pleading voice.) Be quiet. ABEL: Ask her pardon, humble yourself; there is no other wisdom. (With a sort of sob.) The judges, the iconoclasts, life itself will confound them. Life or He who is beyond our words, it is late; my mother is waiting for me. She may be getting worried. Let me embrace you. (He gives Jacques a brotherly embrace and goes toward Madeleine to whom he says in a whisper :) Be confident. Trust love. (He leaves. A very long silence.) JACQUES: (In a hushed voice.) Order, harmony… (Curtain)

THE POSTHUMOUS JOKE A Three Act Play

by GABRIEL MARCEL

Paris, 1923

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Cast of Characters In Order of Appearance JACQUES FAUCONNEAU: Temporary Nursing Home Patient ROBERT CARTERON: Nursing Home Resident, Emile Favier’s Uncle EDWARD: The Waiter EMILE FAVIER: Robert Carteron’s Nephew LOUISE FAVIER: Emile Favier’s Wife SUZANNE FAVIER: Emile and Louise Favier’s Daughter DOCTOR’S VOICE: (Off Stage) ALPHONSINE: The Favier’s Maid MADAME SORBIER: The Faviers’ Landlady CORBIGNY: Emile Favier’s Gentlemen’s Club Colleague MADAME THOMASSET: Charles Thomasset’s Mother CHARLES THOMASSET: Suzanne Favier’s Suitor PUPIL’S VOICE: (Off Stage) PLANTUREUX: School Superintendent MADAME PLANTUREUX: Superintendent’s Wife CLEMENCE FAIRFIELD: Boarding House Director POKROVSKI: Boarding House Guest MONTCHABERT: Boarding House Guest

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ACT ONE The action takes place in a private nursing home, on the outskirts of Lausanne, Switzerland in 1923. The scene is a spacious lounge, part living room and part hall, with a large bay window overlooking Lake Geneva. FAUCONNEAU: (Ending a speech in a moralizing voice.) On this point, Keynes is correct. No doubt about it. All my colleagues at the Bureau of Finance are of the same opinion. What’s more, a very interesting article on the subject was published in Peoples’ Life. CARTERON: Thank you very much, Monsieur. That’s a very instructive exposé. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take a short walk. I’m supposed to exercise, and I see the rain has just stopped. FAUCONNEAU: I won’t follow your lead. The ground is still wet. CARTERON: I’ll see you later then, Monsieur. (He goes out.) FAUCONNEAU: (Alone.) In five minutes it will be raining again. (He taps the barometer and nods his head.) We’re stuck with this weather for the day! What luck! (He goes to the door at the left.) Oh well, and my hot chocolate? (From off stage is heard, “Right away, Monsieur”.) (Having nothing to do he picks up a newspaper from a table in the middle of the room, and immediately tosses it onto an armchair. Brusquely, he goes to the telephone, near the door on the right, grabs the phone book from a side table and holding it flops into an armchair and closes his eyes.) Page fifteen, sixth name from the top. (He opens the phone book.) Damn! It’s a hotel that’s no fun. (He closes his eyes again.) Page eighteen; third name from the bottom. (He opens the phone book again.) A funeral home! Oh no! (Same routine as before.) Page eight. Last line at the bottom of the page. (He opens the phone book.) Guillot. (He makes a gesture of not recognizing that name at all.) Here we go! (He picks up the receiver.) Operator, Lausanne 48, please. To whom am I speaking? Monsieur Guillot himself? Monsieur, don’t you recognize my voice? Oh come now, try to remember, just guess! (In a different tone.) A joke in poor

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taste? Me, a bad joke? But my friend, you speak to me in such a tone. (Visibly disconcerted, he hangs up, shouting.) We’ve been disconnected! (During this time, Carteron has quietly come in and seated himself at an obscure angle where Fauconneau cannot see him. Fauconneau picks up the phone book again, opens it at random, and puts his finger in the middle of the page; he picks up the receiver and says) Ninety seven, at Montreux, please. (Imitating a woman’s voice.) It’s me. (Pause.) You think my voice has changed? This telephone is no good. (Pause.) You’re counting on me for this afternoon? Not before five p.m. Yes. Poor Bertrand, hmm? How’s that? (Pause.) Yes, Ferdinand, that’s what I said, Ferdinand? Ah! What’s that you’re asking me? (His expression shows that it would be very difficult for him to continue. He hurriedly hangs up; however Carteron, astonished by the falsetto voice, is standing on his tip toes. Fauconneau, in hanging up the phone, notices Carteron, and steps back a stride.) I don’t know what’s wrong with people these days. (Very embarrassed.) I was mistaken for a woman! CARTERON: Imagine that! FAUCONNEAU: But Monsieur I assure you, we were taught in acoustics… CARTERON: Forget it; distractions are few and far between here at Val Fleury. FAUCONNEAU: But once again Monsieur… CARTERON: And this one is inoffensive. FAUCONNEAU: If my colleagues… CARTERON: They’ll never know. I’m terribly sorry I interrupted you, but it’s raining again, a downpour. FAUCONNEAU: What will you think of me? CARTERON: Haven’t they spoken to you about the Japanese doctor? FAUCONNEAU: No, Monsieur. CARTERON: Who treats patients with leaps and jumps? FAUCONNEAU: With jumps? CARTERON: This exotic scientist thinks we all suffer from repressed frolicking. FAUCONNEAU: I beg your pardon?

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CARTERON: We are all on a tight rein, on edge all day long. When we walk, for example (he takes several steps), see how restrained we are. Neither you nor I can, without troublesome risks, simply start to wiggle, to twist and turn in whatever directions our body might like, so it seems. But consider at what cost such decency. Unnamed illnesses, secret desires, neuroses. Such neuroses! So my Japanese doctor brings together in a drained pool ambassadors, university professors, and cabinet members and invites them to jump in what ever ways they please, to pretend they are big cats of prey. FAUCONNEAU: I don’t see… CARTERON: But of course you do. Our minds suffer from a similar constraint. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t aspire, perhaps without realizing it, to some secret relaxation. (Pointing to the telephone.) Yours, is the telephone! FAUCONNEAU: Monsieur, how intelligent you are! CARTERON: (In a different voice.) I don’t think so, Monsieur. If I had been intelligent… (A silence.) FAUCONNEAU: Dare I ask if you yourself…? CARTERON: (Dryly.) I’ve never had a telephone at my house. FAUCONNEAU: Monsieur, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt the desire on a trolley for example, when you see certain people, to yell something crazy at them, or holler an indecent question, like, “Hey! How long have you been one?” or, “When are you going to run off with the cash box?” It’s torture. CARTERON: No, Monsieur, it’s not torture. (A silence.) Age, or, yes it’s age that has made me more exacting and more creative. (Fauconneau pulls his chair up closer.) On the whole, these little games, even when they’re not imaginary, seem rather harmless. FAUCONNEAU: (Mortified.) Obviously… CARTERON: And I was always afraid they might be a bit, disappointing. FAUCONNEAU: Good heavens! CARTERON: When you’ve had your fun surprising someone, don’t you feel very refreshed, relaxed? FAUCONNEAU: Ugh!

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(Edward, the waiter, comes in carrying a tray.) FAUCONNEAU: You’ve decided to bring me my lunch, Edward? It’s none too soon. THE WAITER: We made fresh hot chocolate just for you Monsieur. It took time to heat up. (Fauconneau settles down with his tray.) FAUCONNEAU: You’re not…? CARTERON: A cup of hot water when I wake up is all they allow me in the morning. FAUCONNEAU: A cup of hot water? CARTERON: With some kind of powder to spoil the taste. FAUCONNEAU: Things go from bad to worse. However my mother, who like me, is here for a treatment . . . CARTERON: She’s just starting? FAUCONNEAU: Her treatment? CARTERON: Or her illness? Curiously, it amounts to the same thing. FAUCONNEAU: That’s funny. What are you still doing here, Edward? THE WAITER: I’m waiting for Monsieur to finish so I can take away his tray. FAUCONNEAU: (Grumbling.) That’s not very pleasant. CARTERON: (Coming close.) That all looks very tasty. FAUCONNEAU: If you’d like some? CARTERON: (Dryly.) Thank you. (To the waiter.) Do you know if the doctor has started his rounds? THE WAITER: And is he ever in a bad mood! Eighteen people left yesterday evening when the exchange rate rose. CARTERON: (Anxious.) Then he’s having one of his bad days. FAUCONNEAU: Tell me, Edward; is it true that someone has died at Les Fleurs Nursing Home? (Carteron jumps.) THE WAITER: I don’t know, Monsieur; but that would surprise me. Ordinarily they manage things better than that. (He gives a sign toward Fauconneau.)

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FAUCONNEAU: (Who hasn’t seen, says to Carteron.) I must say to die in a Nursing Home. Brrr! CARTERON: (In a lifeless voice.) I’m going to take a look around. FAUCONNEAU: Don’t you think that dying in a hospital? (Carteron has gone out.) FAUCONNEAU: (To the waiter.) Say, what is that man’s name? He knows who I am, but I don’t even know his name. THE WAITER: That is Monsieur Carteron. (Softly.) I wanted to tell you that the poor old guy is unraveling; that’s why I didn’t want to seem, à propos of Les Fleurs. He gets upset very easily, he can’t help it. (Proudly.) But the two deaths they had this week, that’s rotten bad luck, isn’t it? FAUCONNEAU: So this poor Monsieur Carteron isn’t well? THE WAITER: They’ve even told the cleaning lady on his floor not to bother cleaning his room thoroughly. They figure he’ll be gone by next week. FAUCONNEAU: Under what pretext? (The waiter gestures his ignorance.) THE WAITER: They’re used to handling that sort of thing. FAUCONNEAU: He’ll notice that they’re not cleaning his room. THE WAITER: Oh, a man living alone is disorderly; he won’t notice. FAUCONNEAU: What does Monsieur Carteron do? THE WAITER: Seems he had a wallpaper factory. He sold his business when he had enough money to retire. Still he hasn’t had much pleasure in life, poor old man. The elevator attendant told me. He’d seen him here before the war. FAUCONNEAU: The elevator operator is only sixteen years old. THE WAITER: He was sixteen then too. FAUCONNEAU: You mean he’s always sixteen? THE WAITER: He has to be, to keep that job. If he gets any older, they’ll fire him. In those days Monsieur Carteron was here with his wife. FAUCONNEAU: He’s a widower?

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THE WAITER: Seems so. Apparently she was very disagreeable, even rather bitchy, to tell the truth. She went so far as to read him the riot act in front of the staff, and that’s something to avoid at all costs. But he was always gentle, polite, never raised his voice. FAUCONNEAU: How about that! THE WAITER: Two years ago, I was here then, he came back with someone who wasn’t… well, I don’t mean anything bad, but that person wasn’t very refined. He probably hoped they’d have some good times. Well, just the opposite. He just didn’t know how to pick them. They found his girl with a colleague. FAUCONNEAU: A colleague? THE WAITER: Yes, one of mine. That wasn’t flattering. FAUCONNEAU: For whom? THE WAITER: For my colleague! A young man from a good family, I told him off. But he answered: «What do you expect? The clients are skimping on the tips; you have to get fringe benefits somehow.» I tell you, Monsieur, that’s not how I think. FAUCONNEAU: So what about Monsieur Carteron? THE WAITER: I don’t know if Monsieur is like me, but I wouldn’t have hesitated, I’d have given her a good slap. Instead he took her to the jewelers. I don’t call that goodness, that’s just stupidity! (Carteron comes back in at that moment.) Has Monsieur finished? May I take the tray now? FAUCONNEAU: (Embarrassed.) Of course, of course, I don’t know what you were waiting for. (The waiter goes out.) (Fauconneau can’t help but look at Carteron in an uncomfortable manner.) CARTERON: (Dryly.) So what now? FAUCONNEAU: Nothing, nothing at all. Have you seen the doctor? CARTERON: Not yet, he’s delayed on the first floor. FAUCONNEAU: Monsieur, just now you intrigued me, I can’t hide the fact, these distractions, these amusements, couldn’t we try one?

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CARTERON: Ah! But it seems to me that you don’t exactly fulfill the necessary conditions. FAUCONNEAU: Are there requisite conditions? CARTERON: Damn! Yes, look there, for example, without this button that lets you hang up at will… FAUCONNEAU: Yes? CARTERON: I’m not sure that you would have dared… FAUCONNEAU: (In a lively manner.) Never, Monsieur, that’s obvious! CARTERON: Well, it’s the same thing with the practical jokes that I sometimes plan in my head, just for the pleasure of it. FAUCONNEAU: What do you mean? CARTERON: There too, it’s indispensable that one can “hang up”. But in my game, it’s once and for all. FAUCONNEAU: Ah! Good heavens! “Hang up”! Do you by any chance mean…? CARTERON: It’s an ingenious way of saying… FAUCONNEAU: (Shivering.) Yes, yes, quite ingenious. CARTERON: At your age it’s a long way off. FAUCONNEAU: Oh! One never knows who’s to live and who’s to… CARTERON: Nor who’ll “hang up”. FAUCONNEAU: And one has to have… CARTERON: Then it only becomes funny, afterwards. FAUCONNEAU: Funny, a joke, amusing for whom? Because actually… CARTERON: Come now. FAUCONNEAU: Once you’ve “hung up” you’re no longer in a position to really enjoy the spectacle. Either one has “to be or not to be”, isn’t that the question? CARTERON: You’re well read, I can see, Monsieur. Admittedly there is a risk, but what can we do? After all, even if the curtain falls, (with a slight shiver), for good there still are the others. FAUCONNEAU: You’re not one of those who think…

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CARTERON: “Peace in my time?” No, Monsieur, I think a great deal about others. I owe them that. FAUCONNEAU: You’re a good one. CARTERON: You flatter me; I have some memory left, that’s about all, and this occurred to me of late, perhaps too late, it’s rather curious. As for your fear, in no way do I share that. The world we live in seems to be intelligently ordered. Don’t you believe that? I have the impression that one waits, in the wings behind the scenes or at least in the corridors backstage so that when the play ends one has earned the right to hope for a curtain call. Just long enough to catch a glimpse, or have a quick look. FAUCONNEAU: You may think I’m meddling in what is none of my business, but if I were in your place, well, if I wanted to get revenge on someone, I’d rather not wait. CARTERON: Revenge? Who said anything about wanting vengeance? FAUCONNEAU: I thought I understood? CARTERON: But you’re mistaken. Me, seek revenge? Good heavens, first of all against whom, and then what for? And do you think that would amuse me? No more than receiving a bill. We were talking about entertainment; vengeance is very unpleasant business. Besides, I’ll tell you a secret, it’s only random chance that I find exciting. It always seemed so remarkably intelligent to me. FAUCONNEAU: But when you were bragging about your memory? CARTERON: Let’s suppose someone owes me a debt, but the debtor’s name is unknown. Now when you open up the phone book, you open it at random, and if I ever decided to play my little joke, I would proceed exactly like that. FAUCONNEAU: To amuse yourself, but what about the others? CARTERON: My concern would be rather to instruct them. FAUCONNEAU: To teach by teasing? CARTERON: I beg your pardon. To teach in a way that amuses me is not the same as teaching by amusing them.

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THE WAITER: (Coming in, to Carteron.) Monsieur, it’s those people who came yesterday while you were out. CARTERON: Oh! That’s just fine. Show them in. (The porter goes out.) (To Fauconneau.) Who knows? Perhaps the phone directory has just opened. (Emile, Louise and Suzanne Favier are shown in.) EMILE FAVIER: Hello. LOUISE FAVIER: Hello, Uncle. We apologize for coming so early in the morning but our train leaves at noon. CARTERON: How can that be? You must be joking! You just got here. Let me introduce Monsieur Fauconneau, one of the youngest inspectors of Finance. (The Faviers bow.) Monsieur Favier, Professor at the University, Madame Favier, Mademoiselle Favier. (Greetings.) I was terribly sorry to have missed your kind visit, and I would have asked you to join me for dinner except that I remember that Alphonsine has spoiled you, serving you only the best meals. That’s her name, isn’t it, Alphonsine? LOUISE FAVIER: Oh! Uncle, you remember Alphonsine? SUZANNE FAVIER: We must tell her. CARTERON: I remember her plum pie. LOUISE FAVIER: That’s Uncle Robert! SUZANNE FAVIER: Always a compliment to make others feel good. CARTERON: In those days, I could still eat fancy desserts. EMILE FAVIER: How are you now, Uncle? CARTERON: Hmph! Hmph! Not so well. EMILE FAVIER: Sugar still high? CARTERON: Like the exchange rate for Swiss Francs. LOUISE FAVIER: That’s awful. CARTERON: Is this the first time you’ve come to this part of the world? EMILE FAVIER: Louise and I came here on our honeymoon, on the way back from Venice but for Suzanne it’s new territory. CARTERON: (To Suzanne.) And do you like it here, Suzanne?

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SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! Uncle, I was just saying to mother: it’s like a picture postcard. CARTERON: Is that a complement? (Suzanne, who doesn’t understand, laughs nervously. Fixed in his concentration, Carteron turns toward Favier.) Well, Emile, still no prospects on the horizon for a change of situation for you? EMILE FAVIER: For heaven’s sake, you know how it is; we’ve been at Nowairsville for ten years now, long enough to become set in our ways. LOUISE FAVIER: Besides Emile is not one to be ambitious. EMILE FAVIER: I enjoy my work, I admit. Oh! I know that’s no longer fashionable to say. LOUISE FAVIER: (Laughing.) No, my dear, you certainly are not the latest model. CARTERON: (Reflecting.) Oh well! That’s just fine, just fine. (To Fauconneau who, out of boredom, has picked up the phone directory.) My friend if you want to phone, don’t hesitate. FAUCONNEAU: (Annoyed.) Thank you so much. LOUISE FAVIER: What’s more, at Nowairsville, everyone’s our friend. CARTERON: Only friends? (During all this part of the scene, Carteron’s tone of voice shows that he is pursuing an idea, thinking about something else. Fauconneau observes him.) EMILE FAVIER: Oh, it’s just a manner of speaking; women always exaggerate. CARTERON: That’s all fine, just fine. LOUISE FAVIER: After all Emile, you haven’t got a single enemy, you can’t deny that. SUZANNE FAVIER: Uncle Robert, you look skeptical. CARTERON: Oh no, not at all. LOUISE FAVIER: Fortunately, Emile won’t have anything to do with politics. CARTERON: Bravo! And besides if you did have any enemies, most likely you wouldn’t know about it. (A silence.)

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THE WAITER: (Coming in.) Madame Fauconneau, your mother, has asked that Monsieur come immediately; the doctor is with her. FAUCONNEAU: (Getting up.) Please excuse me, but my mother is very nervous. Mesdames, Monsieur, it was a pleasure. (He goes out.) CARTERON: Well now! I’m delighted with all you tell me. Emile is right not to be ambitious. SUZANNE FAVIER: Still, a person should have some ideals, don’t you think, Uncle? LOUISE FAVIER: (Excitedly.) And by any chance does your father lack them? And professional responsibility, don’t you think that’s important? SUZANNE FAVIER: There’s no connection. I meant don’t you think, Uncle that a man like papa should be teaching in Paris? CARTERON: I suspect the young lady would like to see what’s fashionable, go to plays… SUZANNE FAVIER: For intellectuals, Paris is the place to be. LOUISE FAVIER: You can’t find an apartment. And the cost of living there is sky high. CARTERON: Your financial situation could change. EMILE FAVIER: (Only half sincerely.) I can hardly see how… LOUISE FAVIER: Besides, neither Emile nor I like going out evenings. SUZANNE FAVIER: There are others besides you. Oh! Uncle, I assure you, if you ever lived with us, you would find our life so boring. LOUISE FAVIER: Wait until you hear her ambitions! EMILE FAVIER: We offered her a nice trip. Do you think she was satisfied with that? SUZANNE FAVIER: There is no connection. CARTERON: Of course! The child has needs, and we will remember that. LOUISE FAVRIER: Uncle, you are so kind; we say that so often, don’t we, Emile? CARTERON: (Dryly.) Let’s not talk about me.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: We worry about you when we think that you are here all alone. CARTERON: (More and more dryly.) I am not alone. And what’s more, solitude is very restful. EMILE FAVIER: Uncle Robert doesn’t like people to pity him. CARTERON: I even hate it. LOUISE FAVRIER: If Aunt Naomi were still alive… CARTERON: (More and more impatient.) No, no, it’s better this way. (Trying to recover.) The poor women already had enough burdens, if she had had to care for me? LOUISE FAVRIER: (To her husband.) Mark my words! If I had passed on, you wouldn’t be expressing such feelings! EMILE FAVIER: (With a touch of uncertainty.) Perhaps, I don’t… LOUISE FAVRIER: Uncle Robert, you really are special in our family. CARTERON: (No longer able to contain his nervousness.) Please excuse me I’m a bit nervous I’m expecting the doctor any minute and as he wants to review the test results with me himself. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Who is thinking of school tests.) Test scores and examination grades, here? EMILE FAVIER: No, results of tests; clinical tests. CARTERON: Yes. (A silence.) THE WAITER: (Enters the room.) Doctor Wurm will see you now Monsieur in room eighteen. (He leaves.) CARTERON: (To the Faviers who have gotten up.) You can wait here; it won’t take long. LOUISE FAVRIER: We have to watch the time for our train. CARTERON: No, don’t go. I’ll be back very soon. (He leaves.) SUZANNE FAVIER: Mother, did you notice, he was certainly alluding to… EMILE FAVIER: (To his wife.) He really is a character. LOUISE FAVRIER: And he has a heart of gold. You know, I’ve always said that. EMILE FAVIER: Must you always quote yourself?

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SUZANNE FAVIER: Say, didn’t you get the impression… LOUISE FAVRIER: Stop talking like that Suzy! I hope poor Uncle Robert will have many more years to live. SUZANNE FAVIER: Of course, I do too. But that has no connection. LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you mean? EMILE FAVIER: It’s a real habit, she’s says that all the time. LOUISE FAVRIER: We’re not in school. LOUISE FAVRIER: My child, you really are very disagreeable. When I think what this trip cost us, what sacrifices we had to make, your attitude is disgracefully insensitive and ungrateful. SUZANNE FAVIER: But you are expecting a nice inherita… LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re shameless, you who were speaking of ideals! SUZANNE FAVIER: There’s no connection? Oh! Shit! I can’t say anything without… LOUISE FAVRIER: When one has bad thoughts, it’s better not to express them. SUZANNE FAVIER: (In tears.) When I see Daddy working himself to death with all his extra tutoring… LOUISE FAVRIER: My child, is “working himself to death” the appropriate expression? SUZANNE FAVIER: Admit it, you’d much rather relax and read your newspaper. EMILE FAVIER: I’m not saying that it doesn’t demand an effort. LOUISE FAVRIER: But that effort is its own reward. EMILE FAVIER: (To his daughter.) There you are! (Suzanne, vexed, has opened a magazine, and is leafing through it.) (To Louise, lowering his voice.) It did seem to me that Uncle Robert… LOUISE FAVRIER: In any case, I find it unpleasant to think about. EMILE FAVIER: (Naively.) It isn’t for me. (Movement by Louise.) I thought for a minute that you were going to invite him to come and live with us. LOUISE FAVRIER: I really was considering it, but now…

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EMILE FAVIER: You think it might appear as if . . . LOUISE FAVRIER: Damn! EMILE FAVIER: But what does it matter since it isn’t for that reason? (A silence.) We can’t say it was to get in his good graces, since we are already there. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Embarrassed.) Listen! EMILE FAVIER: You mentioned his solitude. LOUISE FAVRIER: That’s just too bad. EMILE FAVIER: Poor old guy! You sacrifice him for the sake of your scrupulous conscience. That doesn’t strike me as good judgment. (Fauconneau enters.) EMILE FAVIER: This gentleman came in perhaps to telephone. FAUCONNEAU: No, no Monsieur, not at all, thank you. I just left my mother. The doctor is in a terrible mood today. He put her on fasting for two days, she’s in tears. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! But it must comfort her that you are here; whereas our uncle who is here all alone…. FAUCONNEAU: I believe he has considerable inner resources. EMILE FAVIER: I’m surprised. FAUCONNEAU: In any event, his conversation is full of surprises. EMILE FAVIER: He went to a very good high school, but that was years ago now. LOUISE FAVRIER: Above all, he has a noble character, courageous and resigned. FAUCONNEAU: (Troubled.) Yes, that well may be. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Annoyed.) No question about it, Monsieur. (At that moment the voice of the Doctor can be heard coming from the corridor.) “You French, you always want the pill sugarcoated. And then, afterwards the family comes and complains that the patient didn’t have time enough to prepare!” CARTERON: (Who cannot yet be seen.) Yes, yes thank you. Thanks. (He opens the door and appears to have lost his composure.)

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EMILE FAVIER: (Following an impulse.) Uncle, if you would like, if you are tired of this nursing home, we would be happy to have you at our home in Nowairsville, we have a room for you. CARTERON: (In a colorless voice.) In Breuil? EMILE FAVIER: Think about it and make up your mind. We would be so pleased; you could meet our friends. CARTERON: (with an enigmatic smile.) Ah! Yes, that’s right; your friends. Well! I will think about it, I will indeed. I’ll get in touch with you later on. LOUISE FAVRIER: Good-bye, Uncle. SUZANNE FAVIER: Good-bye Uncle Robert. We’ll see you again soon. (They go out after having nodded to Fauconneau.) (A very long silence. Fauconneau spellbound waits. Carteron’s facial expression changes slowly. He takes on a hateful, sardonic, spiteful expression.) CARTERON: (In a half whisper.) Why not them? (He goes to the table, begins to write muttering indistinctly. All that can be understood is:) My dear children, my dear children. (He’s obviously choosing his words carefully. He gets up, wipes his forehead; his whole body shakes with shivering.) FAUCONNEAU: What are you doing? CARTERON: (With a strident laugh.) Don’t you see? Now it’s my turn to have fun. The joke will be on them. This time it’s I who will telephone them and then hang up! ACT TWO Scene One A year later, in Nowairsville, at the Favier’s home. The stage is divided into two levels from downstage to upstage. (Upstage) At the back is a vestibule that leads to a staircase. (Downstage) In the front is the living room furnished in a tasteless fashion. Against the left wall is an upright piano. The door between the vestibule and the living room is open when the curtain rises. Alphonsine, her broom in her hands, is talking with

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the landlady, Madame Sorbier, a little old lady, who looks like a maid herself, is wearing big glasses and hair curlers. MADAME SORBIER: Well, are your people going to replace the broken attic window with a new pain of glass or not? ALPHONSINE: They replaced it with a piece of cardboard. MADAME SORBIER: A piece of cardboard! Don’t they have any pride? ALPHONSINE: For an attic window… MADAME SORBIER: An attic window in MY house is like a parlor in the house across the street. There’s not another like in all Nowairsville, I assure you. You can tell them that. ALPHONSINE: Fine! MADAME SORBIER: And another thing, if I put a door mat at the bottom of the stairs, it’s not for the tenants to wipe their feet on. ALPHONSINE: Then why else is it there? MADAME SORBIER: For show, of course! The metal boot-scrapper is obviously not for the cats and dogs. With all the feet that cross this threshold, it will be worn out in less than six months. All those school boys and girls. Why does your employer tutor? ALPHONSINE: That’s not hard to figure out. MADAME SORBIER: (Thoughtful.) They can’t have much besides his salary. That’s the problem with teachers. Otherwise they are no trouble, no cat or dog, only one child at most. How will they manage when I raise their rent? And their daughter, why isn’t she married? She seems nice enough. ALPHONSINE: She has a young man who comes to call every week now. MADAME SORBIER: Every week? (A silence.) Here I am talking my time away; that won’t get my work done. See you later, girl. ALPHONSINE: (Grumbling.) See you. (Madame Sorbier leaves.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (In her bathrobe.) I can’t stand people who stand and talk in the vestibule.

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ALPHONSINE: It’s not my fault, Madame. That woman always wants to talk; it’s as if she wants to pick your brains. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Shocked.) What’s that you say? ALPHONSINE: She’s a real witch. (Favier arrives at that moment.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Did we get any mail, Alphonsine? ALPHONSINE: (Talking a registered letter out of her pocket.) The postman brought this. He didn’t have time to wait for a signature, and you weren’t up yet. He said he’d stop back later today. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Taking the letter.) That’s fine. “Office of Attorney Lescoe”. What does this mean! More papers! (She goes into the living room with Emile and closes the door behind her.) EMILE FAVIER: Give it to me. (Louise hands him the letter which he opens.) “I have the honor.” LOUISE FAVRIER: Good heavens! A letter from Uncle Robert. EMILE FAVIER: Yes! A posthumous letter. (He pronounces the words complacently.) LOUISE FAVRIER: A farewell note. But why leave it with the lawyer? EMILE FAVIER: Besides it should have come with the inheritance; and look at this: “Excuse me for having omitted the enclosed”. Those paper shufflers are so negligent. No professional conscience. LOUISE FAVRIER: My friend… EMILE FAVIER: It’s true; that really annoys me. (He adjusts his eyeglasses. Louise opens the second envelope with a paper cutter.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Good heavens! Look at that handwriting! See how shaky it is? EMILE FAVIER: He must have already been very sick. LOUISE FAVRIER: I’d never be able to decipher that. EMILE FAVIER: (Reading.) “My dear children”. (To Louise who is weeping.) Please don’t get so upset. LOUISE FAVRIER: It’s the first time he’s written “My dear children”; before it was always “My dear Emile, my dear Louise.” It’s so kind of him. EMILE FAVIER: He would have done better…

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LOUISE FAVRIER: To do what? EMILE FAVIER: Nothing, I know what I mean. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Shocked.) That’s ungrateful, Emile. EMILE FAVIER: No it’s not. Suzanne and us, that makes two. (Reading.) “When you will read this, I shall have ceased to graze on this pitiable planet.” What chicken scratches! It’s worse than my school boys, my word, “ceased to graze”… LOUISE FAVRIER: He didn’t write “graze”? EMILE FAVIER: Just take a look. (He shows her the letter.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Right you are! EMILE FAVIER: “… on this pitiable planet.” LOUISE FAVRIER: What strange expressions. EMILE FAVIER: He was a strange character. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Mechanically.) With a heart of gold; you don’t have to tell me. EMILE FAVIER: Although I was a little surprised… well, let’s forget it for now. “But I think of you, my poor children”… LOUISE FAVRIER: He knew we would be very sad. EMILE FAVIER: He certainly deluded himself, because after all… “My heart aches when I think…” Well now, he really is exaggerating, I can’t read what follows. LOUISE FAVRIER: You’ll have to figure it out! It’s like a message from the other side of the grave; I still can’t get over the shock. EMILE FAVIER: “… the candor you displayed… “ LOUISE FAVRIER: What does that mean? EMILE FAVIER: “… when you told me that you had only friends in Nowairsville.” LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! Why that’s awful! (Suzanne enters.) SUZANNE FAVIER: What are you reading? EMILE FAVIER: A letter from Uncle Robert. SUZANNE FAVIER: How’s that? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Solemnly.) Yes, a posthumous letter. EMILE FAVIER: Further on, there is a sentence underlined.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: Well read on. EMILE FAVIER: I’m losing my eyesight, trying to read it. He could have taken the trouble to write legibly. LOUISE FAVRIER: This means he spent his last strength sending us a tender message. EMILE FAVIER: Just goes to show you that everyone should learn to type. LOUISE FAVRIER: A typewritten posthumous letter. You’re not making sense. SUZANNE FAVIER: Give it to me, Daddy. Where were you? EMILE FAVIER: There. (He gives the letter to her.) SUZANNE FAVIER: “When this message from the other side of the grave…” LOUISE FAVIER: Didn’t I just say that? SUZANNE FAVIER: “reaches you, in… infamous rumors…” LOUISE FAVRIER: Good heavens! SUZANNE FAVIER: “… that some miserable creature, who greets you politely, has spread about you…” EMILE FAVIER: That’s not possible! It doesn’t say “infamous”, does it? SUZANNE FAVIER: Yes, he wrote “infamous,” just look. “…will have inevitably reached your ears by now.” Here’s the underlined sentence now. “I don’t want you to imagine for a moment that I gave any credence to these terrible…” EMILE FAVIER: “depraved acts.” SUZANNE FAVIER: “… that I blush even to mention.” The next sentence is underlined twice. “For my part, right up to the end, I held you in the same affection, the same esteem.” The word “esteem” is underlined four times. EMILE FAVIER: That cuts us off at the knees! LOUISE FAVRIER: Emile! SUZANNE FAVIER: “It seems to me that you will find some desolation”, no, “consolation in receiving from me this posthu…” EMILE FAVIER: “posthumous.”

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LOUISE FAVRIER: (To Suzanne.) Your hair looks awful today. EMILE FAVIER: What a lesson! SUZANNE FAVIER: There’s a post-script: “It goes without saying that I never mentioned any of this to a living soul. Rest assured.” LOUISE FAVRIER: Just like him, he still tried to reassure us. EMILE FAVIER: (To his wife.) Well! What a lesson. LOUISE FAVRIER: About what, Emile? EMILE FAVIER: Never mind about what! I simply say it’s a lesson. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Without conviction.) Very well. (Another Silence.) (Favier takes his collar off.) Is it choking you? Still it isn’t one of the new ones. EMILE FAVIER: No, it’s fantastic. It’s as if someone dropped a bomb! SUZANNE FAVIER: If you want my advice, don’t pay any attention to it. In a small town there are always gossips. That’s just shows again that people like us belong in Paris. EMILE FAVIER: Same old song! It’s becoming an obsession. LOUISE FAVRIER: People like us! What’s so special about us? SUZANNE FAVIER: We’re special, we’re intellectuals. EMILE FAVIER: That child is stupid. LOUISE FAVRIER: I always believed we had only friends here. SUZANNE FAVIER: The proof! (Randomly.) Besides all you need to do is open your ears. EMILE FAVIER: So! Then you’ve heard something? SUZANNE FAVIER: Well, I suppose. EMILE FAVIER: No evasive answers! SUZANNE FAVIER: Well for example, mother’s clothes. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Furious) My clothes! Look who’s talking about style! EMILE FAVIER: There are “infamous rumors.” SUZANNE FAVIER: Infamous, infamous, he confused his words; he meant to say, of course, it’s not “infamous” it’s “famous”. (Favier takes the letter and shrugs his shoulders.)

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EMILE FAVIER: There is the faintly dotted “i” that can be clearly seen. And then “famous rumors”, I ask you? SUZANNE FAVIER: That’s what I’m saying; he wasn’t really in his right mind. LOUISE FAVRIER: Your uncle was a character, but I won’t let you dismiss him as senile. That’s downright ungrateful especially when I think of all he did for you! EMILE FAVIER: I could have done without him, I’ll admit. SUZANNE FAVIER: Ten thousand francs is very nice; but still you must agree… LOUISE FAVRIER: (Exasperated.) My dear child, please leave us; your high pitched voice is giving me a migraine. SUZANNE FAVIER: (To her father.) Come on, Dad, don’t let it upset you. (She goes out.) EMILE FAVIER: The child’s right, you know. LOUISE FAVRIER: What are you saying? EMILE FAVIER: It would be a mistake to get upset over so little. (Louise moves.) We just have to remember that at the end he was… (He taps his forehead.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Emile! EMILE FAVIER: It’s something that could happen to anyone. There’s no shame in that. LOUISE FAVRIER: So that’s how you thank him for his last gesture of thoughtfulness! And besides, just a minute ago, you thought there was a lesson to learn from this. EMILE FAVIER: No way. LOUISE FAVRIER: That’s saying too much! EMILE FAVIER: I simply said: what a lesson! SUZANNE FAVIER: (From outside.) There’s no connection. LOUISE FAVRIER: She’s eavesdropping. (A silence. Favier, really annoyed, taps his fingers on the table.) Besides just to look at you… EMILE FAVIER: I don’t want to make a scene. I will exercise self control, that’s it, I will control myself. LOUISE FAVRIER: You are right. And then, what we have to tell ourselves…

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EMILE FAVIER: What now? LOUISE FAVRIER: Well, as long as our consciences are clear. (A silence.) Don’t you agree? EMILE FAVIER: (Irritated.) Well yes! Of course, that’s obvious! Then what? LOUISE FAVRIER: It’s a real comfort. EMILE FAVIER: (Ironically.) Indeed. It’s frightening the number of useless words you utter in one day. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Wounded.) But, Emile, think what it would be like if we did have something to reproach ourselves. That would be really awful. (Favier stands at the window, drumming his fingers on the window pane.) I’m amazed you don’t share my feelings. EMILE FAVIER: What difference does it make whether I do share them or not? The roof is falling in on our heads, and that’s no time to split hairs. LOUISE FAVRIER: How you vacillate. EMILE FAVIER: Who me? These rumors, I, I, I spit on them. LOUISE FAVRIER: But you say that in such a tone of voice. We must remain calm, and try to clear all this up. EMILE FAVIER: Clear up all this confusion! LOUISE FAVRIER: Yes. EMILE FAVIER: Another one of your famous phrases! How can we clear it up? LOUISE FAVRIER: We could, I don’t want to say, make inquiries. EMILE FAVIER: (Ironically.) Oh really? LOUISE FAVRIER: Naturally; but we could cleverly ask around. (Favier bolts.) EMILE FAVIER: Are you crazy? Ask around? Have you lost your mind completely? LOUISE FAVRIER: It’s a question of tactfulness. EMILE FAVIER: Go ahead, admit it; you think this is funny. LOUISE FAVRIER: Who knows? Perhaps?

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EMILE FAVIER: You’re out of your mind! (He points to the door and says in a stage whisper.) Do you want to give her reason to be suspicious? LOUISE FAVRIER: Suspicious? EMILE FAVIER: No! Everything is upside down and backwards here. LOUISE FAVRIER: Don’t shout dear, please; no telling what that girl will think. EMILE FAVIER: I don’t give a damn! LOUISE FAVRIER: That’s not true. (She calls.) Alphonsine! (Alphonsine enters.) ALPHONSINE: (Coming in, a basket on her arm.) Madame called? LOUISE FAVRIER: Ah! You are going to the market to shop. ALPHONSINE: Same as every Thursday, Madame. LOUISE FAVRIER: Yes, yes, of course. EMILE FAVIER: Very well then, Alphonsine, go along. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Keeping her there.) Your reliability pleases us very much, and Monsieur Favier and I have been thinking that come January… EMILE FAVIER: What’s that? LOUISE FAVIER: Perhaps we can give you a bit of a raise, perhaps 300 francs a month. EMILE FAVIER: We’ve thought about that but we’ll have to see, we must consider, it will depend on a number of things. ALPHONSINE: (Disdainfully.) Three hundred francs a month! I was just about to tell Madame that it can’t go on like this. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Excitedly.) You see we anticipated your desires. You really are fortunate, Alphonsine. I hope you appreciate that. ALPHONSINE: (Dryly.) I’m not complaining. LOUISE FAVRIER: The more I think about it, the more I realize, you really are lucky; People must tell you that, don’t they? ALPHONSINE: Oh Madame, I don’t pay attention to what other people say.

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EMILE FAVIER: (Excitedly.) You pay no heed to what others say, and you’re absolutely right to be that way. LOUISE FAVRIER: But what do people say? (Movement by Favier.) Let’s ask Alphonsine. Well? ALPHONSINE: Well the maid, across the street, she gets four hundred francs just for twiddling her thumbs. EMILE FAVIER: (Whispering to his wife.) There, see what it gets you! LOUISE FAVRIER: But that young girl is working for someone who’s not very reputable. ALPHONSINE: All I know is that she has money. LOUISE FAVRIER: Not a nice woman, whereas you, you work for, well I don’t have to tell you. ALPHONSINE: It seems she’s going to get a car. LOUISE FAVRIER: Ill begotten money, Alphonsine, you’d want no part of it. ALPHONSINE: Oh! Madame, money doesn’t smell. People only speak badly of it when they don’t have it. Oh! There’s the butcher who always wonders why Monsieur and Madame take the cheapest cuts of meat; he says, for that it’s hardly worth paying teachers the salaries they get. LOUISE FAVRIER: Alphonsine, do you know how much your employer earns? EMILE FAVIER: Shh! Shh! LOUISE FAVRIER: The door bell rang. Go answer it. (Alphonsine goes out.) That girl has a very bad attitude. EMILE FAVIER: You can be sure that your questions put a bee in her bonnet. LOUISE FAVRIER: Listen to that, your choice of words. EMILE FAVIER: She will spread it all over. LOUISE FAVRIER: What? What will she tell? ALPHONSINE: (Knocking at the door.) Monsieur Corbigny asks if he may see Monsieur Favier. EMILE FAVIER: Corbigny! Say I’m not at home. LOUISE FAVRIER: A colleague! You’re not thinking.

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EMILE FAVIER: All right then! Show him in. LOUISE FAVRIER: But I don’t want him to see me dressed like this. (She leaves, from the left.) EMILE FAVIER: (Nervous.) Oh yes! That’s important, isn’t it? (Corbigny enters.) CORBIGNY: Hello, my friend; I hope I’m not disturbing you? EMILE FAVIER: Why no, not at all. CORBIGNY: (After having looked at him.) Well now, I imagine you have some inkling of what brings me here. EMILE FAVIER: No, I don’t. CORBIGNY: I must admit I hesitated. But our colleagues said go ahead, go right ahead and so… EMILE FAVIER: And so? CORBIGNY: But I must say I wasn’t enthusiastic about it. EMILE FAVIER: But why? What are you talking about? CORBIGNY: Oh! We mustn’t exaggerate things. I’m sure you’ll respond to the situation in the proper way. So I won’t beat around the bush. EMILE FAVIER: Fine. CORBIGNY: Besides, you know me well enough to realize I’m not someone who circles for an hour before landing. EMILE FAVIER: Out with it then! CORBIGNY: All right then! I came to ask you… but, my friend, don’t look at me like that. EMILE FAVIER: Get it over with. CORBIGNY: To withdraw! EMILE FAVIER: Here we are, now it begins! I should withdraw? CORBIGNY: You are a candidate? EMILE FAVIER: Withdraw from being a candidate? CORBIGNY: For election as President of the Gentlemen’s Club. EMILE FAVIER: This is incredible! CORBIGNY: Then you were not… EMILE FAVIER: (Exploding.) I mean I considered the election a mere formality.

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CORBIGNY: Of course, if you stay in the race… EMILE FAVIER: Good grief! I maintain my candidacy formally. CORBIGNY: Listen to me a minute! EMILE FAVIER: What do people think I am? CORBIGNY: The presidency means that much to you. EMILE FAVIER: You’re damned right! CORBIGNY: That’s strange. EMILE FAVIER: You really are beyond belief. CORBIGNY: I would have thought that you were above such small things. EMILE FAVIER: Do you think that I want the office only for myself? Why, it will only bring me tedious tasks. CORBIGNY: So then, why? EMILE FAVIER: It’s my duty. It’s a burden but I’ll carry it. CORBIGNY: (Ironically.) Bravo! EMILE FAVIER: Absolutely, I want it… No, I see you don’t know me! CORBIGNY: As a matter of fact, you’re right! EMILE FAVIER: And may I ask, under what pretext? CORBIGNY: What difference does it make? EMILE FAVIER: Excuse me, but I want to know. CORBIGNY: You have adopted such an attitude. EMILE FAVIER: Please. CORBIGNY: All right then! Huey and I thought that it would be a charity to offer the presidency to poor old Villemot. He has always dreamed of being president of something. EMILE FAVIER: So what’s that to me? CORBIGNY: They’ll replace him next year, or the following certainly. EMILE FAVIER: And rightly so! He’s half senile now! CORBIGNY: His life has been very sad. He’s had one son killed, another seriously wounded. EMILE FAVIER: But, Sir?

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CORBIGNY: I say it again, it seemed cruel to us to deprive him of this small satisfaction. EMILE FAVIER: (Coldly.) I tell you that doesn’t work with me. CORBIGNY: What do you mean, that doesn’t work? EMILE FAVIER: You haven’t taken me in at all. A son killed, another mutilated, why not add that he’s been cuckolded. CORBIGNY: (Startled.) Oh come now! EMILE FAVIER: You only have to look at him and you can tell. CORBIGNY: Oh really! EMILE FAVIER: Besides everybody knows it. CORBIGNY: (Getting up.) Let’s leave it at that. EMILE FAVIER: On the contrary, I demand an explanation. I’m entitled to one. CORBIGNY: An explanation? EMILE FAVIER: How is it that you come, as you say in the name of your colleagues (Movement by Corbigny) to ask me a, a favor that is an insult (Corbigny raises his eyes to the sky) and you think that I am just going to accept this, this affront? CORBIGNY: We’re not even speaking the same language. EMILE FAVIER: That’s because I like things to be said clearly, in an outspoken manner; do you understand? I’m fed up with all these insinuations. CORBIGNY: What insinuations? EMILE FAVIER: Don’t pretend to be innocent. It’s obvious what you’re trying to do. CORBIGNY: (Going out.) My friend, I’ll give you one piece of advice, take your temperature. (Corbigny exits.) EMILE FAVIER: (Going to the door on the left.) Louise! LOUISE FAVRIER: (Appearing at the door.) What is it? EMILE FAVIER: Something amazing. Imagine that Corbigny had the audacity to ask me to withdraw my candidacy and concede the election to Villemot. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Delighted.) What a wonderful idea!

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EMILE FAVIER: What are you saying? LOUISE FAVRIER: That way you’ll get rid of a burdensome job, and at the same time you’ll make an old man happy. EMILE FAVIER: But don’t you see that… LOUISE FAVRIER: What? EMILE FAVIER: There’s something else going on underneath it all. LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you mean? EMILE FAVIER: Well, it confirms that… it’s the result of those rumors. LOUISE FAVRIER: Are you crazy? EMILE FAVIER: (Embarrassed.) I refused! LOUISE FAVRIER: (Going to the window and opening it.) Fortunately he’s still there. EMILE FAVIER: He’s talking with the landlady. Heaven knows what she’s telling him, that witch. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Calling.) Monsieur Corbigny! Would you come back upstairs again for a minute? EMILE FAVIER: Then you want me to… but how will that make me look? LOUISE FAVRIER: That doesn’t matter. EMILE FAVIER: I beg your pardon. LOUISE FAVRIER: How did he interpret your refusal? EMILE FAVIER: (Mumbling.) He thought I had a fever. LOUISE FAVRIER: What did you say? EMILE FAVIER: Nothing. LOUISE FAVRIER: I’ll go to the door to greet him. (Louise exits.) EMILE FAVIER: Ah! But I don’t want it to appear that it was you who made me change my mind, do you understand Louise! (She has gone out. Favier paces back and forth.) (Corbigny enters.) EMILE FAVIER: Come in. Now here’s how it is. I’ve reflected. CORBIGNY: (With great reserve.) Oh!

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EMILE FAVIER: There’s plenty of food for thought in what you just told me. Oh! I still maintain my point of view; that I do absolutely. CORBIGNY: So? EMILE FAVIER: Well out of consideration for poor old Villemot… Oh! I still think that you are asking me to shirk my duty; I am usually not a quitter. What’s more you know how I think about these matters. The common good… CORBIGNY: If that’s the way you see things, then of course, but in that case was it worth calling me back? EMILE FAVIER: (Putting his foot in it.) But I didn’t… (Trying to recover.) Yes indeed, most certainly. You might have thought that I was influenced by personal motives, actually it’s quite simple: I really didn’t want to stand for election. CORBIGNY: Even so. EMILE FAVIER: Peace at all costs. Now you are giving me a chance to get off the ballot, and I accept, eagerly. CORBIGNY: But just a moment ago? EMILE FAVIER: There was a misunderstanding. CORBIGNY: What misunderstanding? EMILE FAVIER: It’s too long to explain. I… What’s more, you were right, I’m not well. I should take it easy. CORBIGNY: (Very politely.) Nothing serious, I hope? EMILE FAVIER: Upset stomach. But you know, you can’t be sure, it might be, it might be an angina, or again, it might not be anything at all. CORBIGNY: (To Louise who comes in at that moment.) Madame, I am so sorry to hear that your husband has not been well. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Astounded.) Emile, not well? EMILE FAVIER: Come now, you know very well. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Trying to correct herself.) Yes, yes that’s right. Oh! Just minor upsets, like you get at the change of each season. EMILE FAVIER: It’s easy for you to say that. CORBIGNY: Well that’s good news. Good-bye, my friend.

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EMILE FAVIER: So, tell them I am very happy; it’s one less burden. (Corbigny has gone out.) EMILE FAVIER: Congratulations, you just made a real mess, I had just told him that I was sick. LOUISE FAVRIER: Why did you say that? EMILE FAVIER: You don’t understand anything do you? (He goes to the window and opens it.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Are you going to call him back again? EMILE FAVIER: (Shouting out the window.) I’m not taking back anything I said about you know who. LOUISE FAVRIER: Who are you talking about? EMILE FAVIER: Villemot. LOUISE FAVRIER: What did you say? EMILE FAVIER: That he was cuckold. LOUISE FAVRIER: Emile! EMILE FAVIER: Everybody knows it. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Shocked.) That can’t be. EMILE FAVIER: (Realizing that he’s made a mistake.) There’s no connection. LOUISE FAVRIER: Madame Villemot is President of our Red Cross Chapter. EMILE FAVIER: (Who has picked up his newspaper that he reads fitfully while biting his nails.) All right then! Your president is a hussy. LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re really not yourself today… I think I should call Doctor Jobin to come and to see you. EMILE FAVIER: That’s the last thing I need! I’m as strong as an ox. LOUISE FAVRIER: I’m not disappointed that young Vacarel isn’t coming for his lesson today. EMILE FAVIER: Isn’t coming? LOUISE FAVRIER: His mother stopped by yesterday evening to tell me that the child was sick.

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EMILE FAVIER: He was in class yesterday. That’s too much. LOUISE FAVRIER: What difference does it make to you, Emile? EMILE FAVIER: It would have been a change of pace. LOUISE FAVRIER: Well now it’s an hour of free time you hadn’t counted on. EMILE FAVIER: Well, what am I supposed to do with all this “liberty?” LOUISE FAVRIER: Come take a walk with me on the promenade. EMILE FAVIER: Oh no, thank you! LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re not very affectionate, my dear; especially for our anniversary. EMILE FAVIER: (Exclaiming.) Is it really? LOUISE FAVRIER: I know we agreed not to exchange gifts, but you could at least be less disagreeable. EMILE FAVIER: My Louie, I’m sorry! Let’s go for a short walk anyway. LOUISE FAVRIER: No, thank you. EMILE FAVIER: And then, of course people will talk about it. LOUISE FAVRIER: Since you brought it up. (Movement by Favier.) While I was dressing, I thought it over. Well, Emile we have to either forget that letter completely… EMILE FAVIER: That’s easier said than done! LOUISE FAVRIER: Or proceed methodically. Let me finish. In any case we have to stop looking for confirmation in every thing that happens. As soon as we start looking for proof we find it everywhere. EMILE FAVIER: That’s true. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Encouraged.) It would be better to ask very frankly what in our lives could have caused… EMILE FAVIER: I haven’t done anything wrong. LOUISE FAVRIER: Of course not. EMILE FAVIER: Obviously, I can only speak for myself. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh!

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EMILE FAVIER: And if by chance, there is someone up there, I defy him to find anything reprehensible in my past. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! That’s going too far! EMILE FAVIER: (Raising his voice.) I dare him. LOUISE FAVRIER: Emile! EMILE FAVIER: (Yelling.) I defy him, for heaven’s sake. (A silence.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Coldly.)First of all, my friend, since you don’t believe in God… EMILE FAVIER: And I’m proud of that. LOUISE FAVRIER: That dare doesn’t mean much. EMILE FAVIER: I beg to differ. LOUISE FAVRIER: A little humility please. EMILE FAVIER: That’s hypocrisy, and you know it. LOUISE FAVRIER: That’s too bad. EMILE FAVIER: The bigot’s taking aim. LOUISE FAVRIER: I am not a bigot. EMILE FAVIER: Scratch the surface… LOUISE FAVRIER: One thing I’m sure of, I don’t pretend to be a know it all do I? EMILE FAVIER: I’m not saying a word. LOUISE FAVRIER: It’s easy to remember from your past… EMILE FAVIER: Be precise. LOUISE FAVRIER: an incident… EMILE FAVIER: Tell me exactly. LOUISE FAVRIER: It’s hardly the appropriate moment. EMILE FAVIER: (Mopping his brow.) I’ve never been calmer. LOUISE FAVRIER: All right, how about, during the war? EMILE FAVIER: Go on. LOUISE FAVRIER: Some people could have inferred? EMILE FAVIER: Name them. LOUISE FAVRIER: That if you had really wanted to serve? EMILE FAVIER: You haven’t answered me.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: Some men served whose health wasn’t as good as yours. EMILE FAVIER: So you are insinuating? LOUISE FAVRIER: I’m not insinuating anything at all I’m not claiming it was my opinion. EMILE FAVIER: Great. That damned letter will at least have served to uncork your flood of grievances so now I can do likewise. LOUISE FAVRIER: You don’t want to understand. EMILE FAVIER: And then I can tell you all my suspicions. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Having difficulty controlling herself.) I am only saying that the gossips… EMILE FAVIER: Fine, fine, you’re covering your tracks. But it’s too late. So the sacrifices I made for the two of you, what I did as a dutiful father, well, that’s a bitter and unexpected blow! LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you mean? Then you regretted not… EMILE FAVIER: Of course! LOUISE FAVRIER: You would have liked to be on the front line? EMILE FAVIER: Certainly! LOUISE FAVRIER: And I had no idea. I’m sorry, but you hid your sadness so well. EMILE FAVIER: It’s elementary. LOUISE FAVRIER: It was for us? Oh dearest! (She kisses him.) But, then how come you asked Monsieur “What’s His Name” you know, to write a letter to the major, you remember? When in 1917 they were reclassifying those who had medical exemptions? EMILE FAVIER: So? LOUISE FAVRIER: That too was for us? EMILE FAVIER: Who else could it have been for? LOUISE FAVRIER: I had thought it was because of your diarrhea, your stomach problem. EMILE FAVIER: My diarrhea!

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LOUISE FAVRIER: Yes, at that time you complained quite a bit otherwise I probably would not have advised you… EMILE FAVIER: I beg you? LOUISE FAVRIER: I would not have presumed to ask this sacrifice of you. EMILE FAVIER: That’s exactly why I did it without talking to you about it. I’ve always abhorred attacks of generosity. (A long silence; then with a vague uneasiness.) Aren’t you coming? The weather looks good. LOUISE FAVRIER: No thank you. EMILE FAVIER: Just now it was you who wanted… LOUISE FAVRIER: I forgot I had to straighten up the house. EMILE FAVIER: (Going toward the door.) I’ll go alone. LOUISE FAVRIER: You pretended (a flinching movement by Favier.) that you were sick. If someone recognizes… (Favier does an about face.) On the other hand you can’t hide all your life. (He does another about face.) EMILE FAVIER: (Furious.) So what? LOUISE FAVRIER: Leave by the side door; that way you won’t meet anyone. (Favier goes out.) SUZANNE FAVIER: (Opening the door a crack.) Mother, can I speak with you a minute? You know, something occurred to me. (Louise raises her eyebrows.) I can’t help it. It’s bothering me, I can’t help it. First of all, Monsieur Charles… LOUISE FAVRIER: Yes? SUZANNE FAVIER: He still hasn’t declared his intentions. What if by chance these rumors have gotten to him? LOUISE FAVRIER: Don’t be silly! If he believed them, he wouldn’t be calling so frequently. He hasn’t heard a thing. SUZANNE FAVIER: But it’s so strange that he doesn’t propose. LOUISE FAVRIER: He’s taking his time; he’s reflective, weighing the pros and the cons.

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SUZANNE FAVIER: It’s not very pleasant for me. And what do you think about this: the maid whom we let go two years ago, the one we caught drinking perfume in a cordial glass? LOUISE FAVRIER: Felicity? SUZANNE FAVIER: Didn’t you tell me she had said: “I’ll get even with you?” LOUISE FAVRIER: Never. SUZANNE FAVIER: It happens all the time. LOUISE FAVRIER: In cheap novels. You’re reading trash. SUZANNE FAVIER: In real life too. LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you know about life! Besides, just listen to me, what could she have to tattle about us? SUZANNE FAVIER: She could have made something up. Besides, sometimes maids like that know little secrets. Remember Rosalie at the Salaberts? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Indignant.) Rosalie at the Salaberts! Well I’ll tell you there are reasons why she knows the family secrets, more so than poor Jane Salabert. SUZANNE FAVIER: And it’s the same thing at the Paulets. Lucy was telling me again yesterday. LOUISE FAVRIER: What are you saying? SUZANNE FAVIER: They have a cute little Italian maid, and by damn Monsieur Paulet! LOUISE FAVRIER: (Violently.) Are you implying that your father? SUZANNE FAVIER: (Cautiously.) I don’t know, but you understand. LOUISE FAVRIER: Your father has too delicate a conscience, he is so sensitive. I noticed it again just now. Where did you ever get such an idea? (She paces nervously.) SUZANNE FAVIER: You know we don’t always choose our thoughts. LOUISE FAVRIER: That letter! Oh! If poor Uncle Robert could have guessed, why he’d turn over in his grave! Your father, your father

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who never caused me five minutes grief. It’s quite simple, I just don’t know of any other marriage like ours. SUZANNE FAVIER: Then why did he fire that maid? (Favier comes in, followed by Madame Sorbier who is yelling at him.) EMILE FAVIER: (Turning around.) All right, all right, that’s enough! MADAME SORBIER: He hit me! He dared lay a hand on me! A tenant who pays six thousand francs! LOUISE FAVRIER: What’s happening here? EMILE FAVIER: She had the gall to ask me when we’re going to replace the broken window in the attic! She claimed the piece of cardboard makes the front of the house look unsightly. What business is that of hers? MADAME SORBIER: Of course it’s my business. I don’t want shabby, poverty stricken people in my house. EMILE FAVIER: Don’t you remember; this is our home? MADAME SORBIER: He’s going to strike me again, you’ll see! EMILE FAVIER: I didn’t touch you. You’re too disgusting for that. MADAME SORBIER: And you a tenant who pays minimum rent! But you’ll see, you piker, you’ll see. I’m going to the police station right now! LOUISE FAVRIER: Come, come, Madame, be calm, surely there’s some misunderstanding. My husband was just telling me at lunch that there was no one like you when it came to good house keeping. MADAME SORBIER: You’ll see. (She goes out screaming.) It’s just like Monsieur Corbigny was telling me! EMILE FAVIER: Corbigny! Corbigny! What have those two been stirring up? (The crazed landlady is still yelling.) A tenant who pays minimum rent! A tenant who pays minimum rent!

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ACT TWO Scene Two Same Setting MADAME THOMASSET: So, Madame Favier doesn’t see anyone until after four o’clock? ALPHONSINE: Sometimes Madame is here all afternoon, but as for seeing people… MADAME THOMASSET: (Looking at her watch.) And look at what time it is. ALPHONSINE: Well Madame surely won’t be long; I’m surprised. There’s the bell! Well! There certainly are a lot of visits today! (She goes out and comes back after a moment escorting Monsieur Charles in, saying:) Monsieur Charles your mother has just arrived. (She closes the door as she goes out.) MADAME THOMASSET: What does this mean? CHARLES THOMASSET: I confess I wasn’t at all reassured; you have a way of beating people down when you set your mind to it. MADAME THOMASSET: I want to put an end to a situation which, by your fault, has dragged on too long. Charles, my son, it was you yourself who first recognized it. But now I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay. (She coughs.) By October the twenty fifth a respectable home should have a fire going, and I don’t want to catch pneumonia, anyway it’s better you settle this matter. CHARLES THOMASSET: (Flabbergasted.) Then you think that I will… MADAME THOMASSET: You acted foolishly. It’s only just that you suffer the consequences. Imagine there are people already saying you are engaged! CHARLES THOMASSET: But what am I going to tell her, the poor thing? MADAME THOMASSET: You just have to make her understand. After all, you’re not engaged, at least not that I know. Are you?

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CHARLES THOMASSET: But she must have the impression… MADAME THOMASSET: That doesn’t matter. CHARLES THOMASSET: I’ve come every week. MADAME THOMASSET: Explain that you are very busy. CHARLES THOMASSET: She’s very nice, a sweet girl. MADAME THOMASSET: If you have a choice, you don’t marry a teacher’s daughter. As decent as can be, and no doubt a good person, but they all look like cooks who are over thirty years old. It’s a fact. And then, just look at these rugs! (She lifts up a cushion and exclaims with a triumph cry.) I knew it, a big hole! CHARLES THOMASSET: If there were just some excuse, yes, like if she had compromised herself! MADAME THOMASSET: You’re too soft, and you’re too scrupulous, just like your father. Now a day’s ideas like that get you nowhere. CHARLES THOMASSET: I’m not ambitious. MADAME THOMASSET: That’s where you’re wrong. (She looks at her watch.) Five minutes after four; and they receive from four o’clock on. A detail, but it’s significant. No manners. CHARLES THOMASSET: Your watch is fast. MADAME THOMASSET: It’s symbolic. (Charles looks at his mother with admiration nuanced by irony; she opens the piano.) I bet it’s out of tune. (She plays a chord.) What did I tell you? CHARLES THOMASSET: Mother! MADAME THOMASSET: They’re not our kind of people. What do you expect? People like us just don’t marry people from families like theirs. CHARLES THOMASSET: People like us? MADAME THOMASSET: Refined people, people with taste. You realize full well it’s not money; do I consider money important? Do I? Tell me? No, but there are people who are not fit for each other. (Delighted with her discovery.) No one should marry beneath their cultural level. It’s a spiritual incompatibility. Enough now, I must go. Tell them that I was expected at the garden party after the dress rehearsal but don’t do anything stupid. I warned you there could be

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terrible consequences for you. You know very well, it’s for your own good! CHARLES THOMASSET: But what am I going to say to the poor girl? MADAME THOMASSET: Take her aside, in a quiet corner… CHARLES THOMASSET: (Indicating the tiny room.) In a quiet corner! MADAME THOMASSET: You’ll find the words, in the style of Racine. CHARLES THOMASSET: I’d rather leave with you and never come back. MADAME THOMASSET: (Speaking with an English accent.) Charles! Remember what your father said, always behave like a gentleman! (She leaves.) (Charles left alone moves various objects.) ALPHONSINE: (Coming in.) Monsieur Charles is alone? CHARLES THOMASSET: Yes, my mother didn’t have time to wait any longer. (Alphonsine winks knowingly.) ALPHONSINE: I’m amazed that Madame and Mademoiselle Favier are not back yet. Fortunately Monsieur Charles is very patient. If Monsieur Charles would like to look at the Monthly Review, it just arrived. There’s a charming novel that began last week. That will surely interest Monsieur Charles. It’s a love story. CHARLES THOMASSET: (Dryly.) Thank you. (Alphonsine leaves. Mechanically, Charles goes to the piano and begins to play with one finger, humming vaguely “The Romance of Sybil”.) (Favier comes in at that moment.) CHARLES THOMASSET: (To himself.) That’s a huge mistake! EMILE FAVIER: Ah! Ah! Very good! I didn’t realize you were a musician. Please continue. I think my daughter will be home soon, my wife too. They must be visiting our landlady who made a ridiculous scene yesterday, and with the housing shortage these days. Please sit down. (They have nothing to say to one another. Favier looks at Charles smiling. Charles lowers his eyes.)

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CHARLES THOMASSET: This morning I thought it was going to rain. EMILE FAVIER: (Always with the same smile.) Yes, yes. CHARLES THOMASSET: And actually not a drop of rain has fallen. That happens often at this time of year. EMILE FAVIER: That right. (Charles raises his eyes and sees that Favier is still smiling.) CHARLES THOMASSET: (Getting up.) It’s getting late, I really think… EMILE FAVIER: (Forcing him to sit down again.) No, no. She’ll be right back. Come now, you’ll survive. (Suzanne enters.) EMILE FAVIER: Oh! You see everything’s… Your fian… Monsieur Charles had already begun to worry about you. (He looks at the time.) I am going to ask you to excuse me; I’m expecting a student any minute now. SUZANNE FAVIER: Mother is always ready to argue with that shrew. Oh! it’s not easy to pacify her. EMILE FAVIER: See you later. (He goes out.) CHARLES THOMASSET: (To himself.) Racine-like sentences, classic cadence sentences. SUZANNE FAVIER: (With light laughter and light gestures.) What does this mean! Papa leaves us all alone! What can he be thinking of? CHARLES THOMASSET: (Dryly.) It’s because he is waiting for a pupil. SUZANNE FAVIER: But nevertheless. I really don’t know. CHARLES THOMASSET: Please, Mademoiselle. Do you like Racine’s plays? SUZANNE FAVIER: Of course! I like all the classics! CHARLES THOMASSET: All the classics! Hmm! I don’t know if you share my opinion, but I find that there are heart-rending situations in Racine’s plays. I have in mind, one play in particular; can you guess which one it is?

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SUZANNE FAVIER: I don’t know. Is it Esther or Athalie? CHARLES THOMASSET: No. It was Bérénice that I was thinking of. SUZANNE FAVIER: (Uncertain.) Bérénice, that’s a lovely name, don’t you think so? CHARLES THOMASSET: Don’t you know Bérénice? SUZANNE FAVIER: I know it’s performed often at the Comédie Française. CHARLES THOMASSET: So then it goes without saying invitus invitam, you don’t understand? That’s nothing, it doesn’t matter at all. (A silence.) SUZANNE FAVIER: (Without effort.) It seems to me we haven’t seen you as often as usual, recently. CHARLES THOMASSET: And unfortunately you’ll see me even less in the future. SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! That’s not good. CHARLES THOMASSET: I’m going to be extremely busy. SUZANNE FAVIER: But you’ll find a free moment now and then? CHARLES THOMASSET: I’m afraid that will be very difficult for me. SUZANNE FAVIER: Sundays? CHARLES THOMASSET: Even Sundays. SUZANNE FAVIER: (Greatly vexed.) Oh! All right; that’s just fine. (A silence.) CHARLES THOMASSET: (Embarrassed.) Mademoiselle, you understand that there must be serious reasons, even exceptionally serious. SUZANNE FAVIER: What reasons? CHARLES THOMASSET: I can’t disclose them to you. That would be quite impossible. SUZANNE FAVIER: Don’t you trust me, Monsieur Charles? CHARLES THOMASSET: Of course I do, Mademoiselle. Oh I do! It’s just that, (just for something to say), the human heart is so complex.

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SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! Come now! I see what it is. CHARLES THOMASSET: What do you see? SUZANNE FAVIER: It’s not difficult, only you could have… Oh! I know that there are other girls who are prettier. CHARLES THOMASSET: That’s not true. SUZANNE FAVIER: Who are rich, much richer. Oh! Money! CHARLES THOMASSET: Do you believe I’m capable? Oh, Mademoiselle! SUZANNE FAVIER: Who is it? Tell me. CHARLES THOMASSET: There’s no one else, I swear to you. SUZANNE FAVIER: Why then? CHARLES THOMASSET: (Randomly.) It’s a secret. I cannot tell you. SUZANNE FAVIER: You’re not allowed to? CHARLES THOMASSET: (Very awkwardly.) Besides may I remind you that there has never been, between us, a question of… SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! That’s dastardly, not worthy of you. CHARLES THOMASSET: Mademoiselle? SUZANNE FAVIER: I assure you, there could have been no mistaking, but you say you haven’t the right, would that be perhaps because of what people are saying? CHARLES THOMASSET: People? I don’t understand what you mean. SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! Don’t pretend you’re surprised! It’s just what I was saying to Mother today. Good heavens! This is terrible! (Louise enters.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (She crosses the room and goes to the door on the left.) Well, here I am, but oh, that wasn’t easy! EMILE FAVIER: (His voice is heard. He’s in a bad mood.) Don’t you see I have a pupil with me! LOUISE FAVRIER: You’ll never guess what I had to agree to. (She turns again toward Charles and Suzanne.) Oh! Good afternoon, Monsieur Charles, I beg your pardon, but things here are enough to drive anyone crazy. Emile! I had to invite her to dinner.

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EMILE FAVIER: (Appearing.) That Sorbier woman! LOUISE FAVRIER: Tonight. SUZANNE FAVIER: But Mother, we are not alone! LOUISE FAVRIER: Exactly. She said to me. “Your maid told me that tonight you are having special guests.” EMILE FAVIER: (Closing the door.) That’s just great! (He leaves.) LOUISE FAVRIER: “You must invite me.” She argued that we owe her at least that. SUZANNE FAVIER: What will people say? CHARLES THOMASSET: (In a muffled tone.) Once again, these “people”. LOUISE FAVRIER: My dear child, remember our lease expires in two months! Were the two of you alone together when I came in? SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh! Mother, if you only knew! LOUISE FAVRIER: Well I can guess. SUZANNE FAVIER: (Cutting her off.) Not at all! In fact, just the opposite! CHARLES THOMASSET: Mademoiselle! LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you mean, just the opposite? SUZANNE FAVIER: Monsieur Charles has come to say goodbye. And I’m sure it’s because of those awful gossips. CHARLES THOMASSET: Madame, I swear! SUZANNE FAVIER: (To her mother.) Maman, please, tell him, tell him! LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh no, my child, that’s not possible. Remember your dignity! SUZANNE FAVIER: I assure you I couldn’t care less about dignity. Dignity is a pre-war concept! (She goes out.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Monsieur Charles, you see I’m upset, even overwhelmed. Since you’ve been coming here so often, I can’t help but say that the idea has crossed my mind. I even thought I’d recognized that you two cared for each other.

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CHARLES THOMASSET: (In a lamentable tone.) I know, Madame. LOUISE FAVRIER: Some things my daughter has said gave me that impression and then the fact that instead of spacing out your visits, you have made them more and more frequent. CHARLES THOMASSET: I know, Madame. However my last visit was two weeks ago. LOUISE FAVRIER: And I must say that my husband and I, we both like you so much that if… CHARLES THOMASSET: Thank you, Madame. You were right. As a matter of fact, I had for quite a while cherished this. Oh, I must call it a dream but, unfortunately it’s only a dream, I’m sorry! LOUISE FAVRIER: But, excuse me, Monsieur, because with your education, and then you are too kind to risk the heart of a young girl, it’s so… CHARLES THOMASSET: Yes, Madame, if… LOUISE FAVRIER: A complication has arisen! You’re not answering me. (She goes to the door on the left and that she opens a slit.) Emile! EMILE FAVIER: (From the next room.) What now! LOUISE FAVRIER: I think you’d better come in here. EMILE FAVIER: (Happy.) Oh! Oh! LOUISE FAVRIER: No, no, not at all, on the contrary there’s trouble. EMILE FAVIER: Shoot! (He slams the door violently.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Coming back in.) Young man, please tell me the truth, whatever it is. My daughter seemed to believe… CHARLES THOMASSET: But I don’t know; I didn’t understand. LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re not being sincere, Monsieur Charles. CHARLES THOMASSET: Madame, I swear! LOUISE FAVRIER: Why swear? The way you deny everything shows for sure that those rumors have reached your ears. CHARLES THOMASSET: What rumors? What rumors are you talking about? LOUISE FAVRIER: My poor husband.

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CHARLES THOMASSET: (Vivaciously.) But, Madame, how could you believe? LOUISE FAVRIER: Then, they are about me? CHARLES THOMASSET: Madame! LOUISE FAVRIER: About my daughter, perhaps? CHARLES THOMASSET: You’re joking. LOUISE FAVRIER: There, you see! (A silence.) But what can people say against us? CHARLES THOMASSET: I have no idea. LOUISE FAVRIER: Why? Monsieur Charles, are you trying to spare me? CHARLES THOMASSET: No, never! LOUISE FAVRIER: I’m going to call him. (She goes to the door.) Emile! CHARLES THOMASSET: (To himself.) What a mess! Still I can’t possibly… LOUISE FAVRIER: (She goes to the door.) Emile! (Favier can be heard storming around, giving the key a turn in the lock. She comes back overwhelmed.) My husband hates to be interrupted when he’s giving a lesson. Work, work, he lives only for his work that makes it very hard. CHARLES THOMASSET: But, Madame, do you think that it’s because of these hearsay rumors? LOUISE FAVRIER: What rumors? CHARLES THOMASSET: That I had to give up, but there could also have been other reasons. Suppose for example, it’s only a hypothesis that I discovered I had… LOUISE FAVRIER: Well, go on. CHARLES THOMASSET: Some, some unusual needs, (very quickly), that I need three cars, a yacht… LOUISE FAVRIER: Come now, Monsieur Charles, what do you take me for? You are such a fine young man, how could you be swayed by such petty considerations? CHARLES THOMASSET: What do you mean, petty? After all, luxury…

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LOUISE FAVRIER: (In a preemptory tone.) You care neither about luxury, nor about comfort. You are like your mother. Oh! But such generosity doesn’t surprise me coming from you. Come now, your mother has made you a man of conscience, a person with soul, as she likes to say. CHARLES THOMASSET: (With hidden irony.) How well you know her! LOUISE FAVRIER: That doesn’t matter. What you have just done now, it’s, it’s magnanimous. Only whatever they’re reproaching my husband for, must be awful. CHARLES THOMASSET: (To himself.) Obviously her mind’s made up! LOUISE FAVRIER: What did you say? CHARLES THOMASSET: I didn’t say anything. LOUISE FAVRIER: Terribly serious… CHARLES THOMASSET: (Aside.) Here we go. (Aloud.) Good heavens, Madame, it all depends… LOUISE FAVRIER: But, in your opinion? CHARLES THOMASSET: You are really embarrassing me. LOUISE FAVRIER: Be honest. CHARLES THOMASSET: It is difficult to evaluate. LOUISE FAVRIER: Would you shake the hand of a man who had done the things my husband is accused of? (Vague gesture from Charles.) No? You’re saying no? CHARLES THOMASSET: Let me… LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! I can read. But in order for you to take that resolution, there must have been more than mere rumors. Admit it, you were told the facts? CHARLES THOMASSET: Not at all, not at all, no details! ALPHONSINE: Madame, a package has arrived for you from the frame shop. It’s eighty five francs. I have no money on me, and the man wants to be paid right away. LOUISE FAVRIER: Wait a minute. I’ll be right there. Excuse me, Monsieur. (She goes out with Alphonsine.)

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CHARLES THOMASSET: (Alone.) Oh! This isn’t funny at all. What does she want me to say? No one realizes how… No way do I want to go on trial for defamation of character. No! No! What a sticky situation! LOUISE FAVRIER: (Coming in, a huge package under her arm. She unwraps it, and opens it so that it’s facing the audience, a large photograph of Robert Carteron.) Here you are, young man, this is the portrait of the most honest man I’ve ever known, my Uncle Robert. (Charles bows.) Can you swear on his head? No, no, I beg your pardon. Are there charges laid against my husband? CHARLES THOMASSET: Good heavens, Madame, precise information… LOUISE FAVRIER: Will you help me to hang this picture, please? It seems to me that, once my poor Uncle is here with us, we will be able to see things more clearly. I’m not superstitious, young man, but I believe that certain influences… (She goes to the door at the back and opens it.) Alphonsine, bring me the tool box please. (She comes back upstage.) You haven’t answered me. You are embarrassed. Obviously you are in a very difficult position. CHARLES THOMASSET: Worse than you could imagine, Madame! LOUISE FAVRIER: And you are so discreet. (To Alphonsine who brings in a small tool kit.) Thank you, Alphonsine. Here, young man, please hammer this nail into place. (Stopping.) But perhaps it’s not right to ask you. CHARLES THOMASSET: But of course, Madame, every day… LOUISE FAVRIER: I can’t help but think of you as part of the family; and then this, this secret. Right here, please. (Charles starts to hammer the nail into the spot marked.) Now these things that people reproach my husband for… CHARLES THOMASSET: Don’t insist on knowing them. LOUISE FAVRIER: (In a hushed tone.) Are they too shameful to mention? (Charles pretends not to hear.) But then, the informers? CHARLES THOMASSET: I don’t have the right to name them.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: (Getting angry.) Don’t you see that you are putting us in an impossible situation? How can he defend himself against rumors he doesn’t even know? CHARLES THOMASSET: If it were only a question of rumors! LOUISE FAVRIER: I have complete confidence in my husband. CHARLES THOMASSET: I don’t doubt that, Madame. LOUISE FAVRIER: Complete, unlimited! Anonymous rumors won’t do. Nor is discretion a worthy excuse. CHARLES THOMASSET: I fear, Madame, that you are interpreting my discretion in the wrong way. LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you mean? CHARLES THOMASSET: Suppose it’s a matter of, after all there are facts that in the presence of a lady. Oh! I’m not saying that it’s so in this case; you notice I’ve revealed nothing at all. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! Oh! (She moves toward the door.) CHARLES THOMASSET: No, Madame. No confrontation, please! But if your husband were to inquire of Monsieur Jacquinot, (boldly), Victor Jacquinot, I have reason to believe that he could provide all the details. LOUISE FAVRIER: Victor Jacquinot! But he’s dead! I met your mother at his funeral. CHARLES THOMASSET: (With feigned surprise.) Oh dear! That’s true! What a shame! LOUISE FAVRIER: What bad luck! It’s unbelievable; everybody who knows about it is dead. And this Monsieur Victor Jacquinot, he hadn’t been out of his house for ten years. Does it all date back so far? CHARLES THOMASSET: It’s a terribly old story. LOUISE FAVRIER: Perhaps his children? CHARLES THOMASSET: (Strongly.) Not on your life. He was a man of discretion, he too… LOUISE FAVRIER: All the same, he spoke to you about it. But now that I think about it, you have known for a long time.

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CHARLES THOMASSET: I’m not saying that’s the case. I haven’t said anything, not anything, but still there are those… Oh, the depths of human nature! (He intentionally hits his thumb with the hammer.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! Did you hurt yourself? EMILE FAVIER: (Coming in.) What’s all this racket? There’s no way anyone can work here! CHARLES THOMASSET: (To Louise.) No, no, it’s nothing. Only I’ll be going home now. You understand it’s bleeding. I’d soil everything. (He makes his exit, his hand wrapped up in his handkerchief.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Calling) Monsieur Charles! EMILE FAVIER: (Dumbfounded.) What? You had the photograph of Uncle Robert enlarged? Oh, no! I don’t want him here in my house! (He starts to take the portrait down.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Emile, be careful! SUZANNE FAVIER: (Coming in.) Monsieur Charles has left? But Papa, what are you doing? EMILE FAVIER: (Trying vainly to remove the nail.) The brute! I don’t know how he did this! Oh well, I’m going to use the pliers. (He hunts in his tool box.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (To Suzanne.) Leave us alone for a moment, will you please? Your father and I have something to discuss. SUZANNE FAVIER: But tell me, what did he say? LOUISE FAVRIER: Go on. (Suzanne leaves.) THE PUPIL: (From Offstage opening the door on the left a crack.) Monsieur, is the lesson finished? EMILE FAVIER: Of course, yes, go on now, off with you! THE PUPIL: Thank you, Monsieur. (He goes out.) LOUISE FAVRIER: How familiarly you speak to your students, Emile (He’s in his shirt sleeves.) EMILE FAVIER: So? LOUISE FAVRIER: I thought it was rude.

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EMILE FAVIER: Says who? LOUISE FAVRIER: My dear, these last thirty six hours, I just don’t know what’s got into you. EMILE FAVIER: Well I recognize you; you are always the same, always as bossy and crass as ever. LOUISE FAVRIER: Listen to me, Emile. EMILE FAVIER: What’s the matter with you? LOUISE FAVRIER: First of all, would you let go of those pliers? EMILE FAVIER: No. LOUISE FAVRIER: Then you should put your jacket back on; it’s my day to receive callers. EMILE FAVIER: No one ever comes. LOUISE FAVRIER: Nevertheless just a while ago I received a very interesting visit. EMILE FAVIER: Who was that? Oh yes, that dandy, Charles Thomasset. Is he ever going to make up his mind yes or no? LOUISE FAVRIER: He cannot ask for Suzanne’s hand. EMILE FAVIER: What’s that? LOUISE FAVRIER: He cannot ask for Suzanne’s hand. EMILE FAVIER: Why not? Has he got the pox? LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re very funny. EMILE FAVIER: Thank you. LOUISE FAVRIER: But perhaps it’s better to reserve these, these witticisms for a more opportune moment. Listen to me, Emile! EMILE FAVIER: Again! LOUISE FAVRIER: Yesterday morning, reading that letter, I immediately had the impression… EMILE FAVIER: I beg your pardon; I’m the one who noticed… EMILE FAVIER and LOUISE FAVIER: (together.) that you didn’t seem as surprised as I. EMILE FAVIER: What do you mean? LOUISE FAVRIER: Would you repeat that please. EMILE FAVIER: What did you just say? LOUISE FAVRIER: That you did not seem as surprised as I.

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EMILE FAVIER: It was I who just said that. LOUISE FAVRIER: It was I. EMILE FAVIER: What do you mean? LOUISE FAVRIER: Then you have the audacity? EMILE FAVIER: What nerve! LOUISE FAVRIER: If heaven fell on my head… EMILE FAVIER: A bomb! I said a bomb! (Going to the door.) Suzanne, did I or did I not say a bomb? SUZANNE FAVIER: (Entering.) You said it. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Furious.) So you’re listening at keyholes again. Off with you. (Suzanne goes out.) As for you, my dear, you don’t seem to have the slightest idea of the charges being levied against you. EMILE FAVIER: What does that mean? LOUISE FAVRIER: Monsieur Charles told me every thing just a while ago. EMILE FAVIER: What’s that? LOUISE FAVRIER: And what kinds of things! EMILE FAVIER: About me? (Louise sighs.) Oh, I’ll kick that twerp. LOUISE FAVRIER: Violence has never proven anything. EMILE FAVIER: (Exasperated.) No, but look at who’s putting on airs! LOUISE FAVRIER: And for your own good you’d do well to learn to exercise some self control. EMILE FAVIER: Nobody tells me what to do. LOUISE FAVRIER: There’s a servant in the house. EMILE FAVIER: If I feel like yelling, that’s my business. LOUISE FAVRIER: Fine. EMILE FAVIER: What a mess! Well, what did he say, that bugger? LOUISE FAVRIER: All right! First of all he said there were witnesses. EMILE FAVIER: Witnesses? LOUISE FAVRIER: Eyewitness.

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EMILE FAVIER: Witnesses who are alive? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Lying.) I don’t know. EMILE FAVIER: And for that matter, witness to what? LOUISE FAVRIER: That, my dear friend, is what you must tell me. ALPHONSINE: (Announcing.) Superintendent and Madame Plantureux. (She goes out.) PLANTUREUX: (Pronounced accent from the south of France.) Madame, my compliments. Good afternoon my dear colleague. Madame Plantureux and I wanted to make our first official visit, to the Dean of Professors at the Nowairsville School. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Bowing.) Superintendent, we are very touched. PLANTUREUX: It’s just fortunate for us that you live on the first floor, my dear colleague, because the delicate condition of Madame Plantureux who is as you can see very pregnant. LOUISE FAVRIER: Are you…? PLANTUREUX: This is the fifth time I shall be indebted to Madame Plantureux for giving me the joys of paternity. Yes, Madame Plantureux, who was a nurse during the war… MADAME PLANTUREUX: (Softly.) You exaggerate. PLANTUREUX: …has the highest sense of her patriotic duty. In spite of the hazards, she is again ready to face, and with what courage, the pangs of giving birth. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Feebly.) Do you like it here? PLANTUREUX: Madame Plantureux is getting used to it here, she gets used to it everywhere; but I, who am from Nice; I’m languishing under this cloudy sky. LOUISE FAVRIER: (As above.) Are you pleased with your living quarters? PLANTUREUX: You tell her, my dear for I pay no notice to such things. MADAME PLANTUREUX: Damn! There’s only one closet. What’s more, at Draguignan, life was more interesting. Just imagine we were across the street from the post office.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: But your apartment overlooks the school garden. PLANTUREUX: Its shadows are ancient, Madame, and I must say they are marvelous, having sheltered the dreams of many adolescents but they trouble my rheumatism. MADAME PLANTUREUX: I massage him morning and evening. PLANTUREUX: A devoted wife showing every care, my goodness, a quotable quote! I’ll have to write that down. (He takes a small notebook from his pocket. In a low tone.) It’s for a poem I plan to give to her when she presents me with the baby. Oh yes! In the sunny south, poetry blossoms as naturally as flowers. As I said to Madame Plantureux the day I led her to the altar, oh don’t misunderstand, no, it was an accommodation we had to make to tradition, I must tell you that Madame Plantureux comes from an old family of judges from the Île de France. MADAME PLANTUREUX: (Blushing.) My father was a court stenographer at Pontoise. PLANTUREUX: Where was I? Oh yes, I think that we are, I must say, an ideal couple. Madame is naturally romantic, and I am expansive, she is modest and I am exuberant. Oh Henrietta, another poetic phrase; I’m just getting warmed up. You’ll have to help me remember if need be. I am from the North and, oh no, pardon me, she is from the north and I am from the south. The two of us together, it seems to me that in miniature we are all of France. (A silence. The speech falls flat.) MADAME PLANTUREUX: (Timidly.) Madame, I need to ask your advice on a small point. I believe that you have a daughter who is a young lady. She went to the college didn’t she? I too have two little girls. Can I let them walk to school alone? There are such terrible things happening these days. PLANTUREUX: Again yesterday there were three exhibitionists. People say that there is a lecher at Nowairsville. LOUISE FAVRIER: (With no second thoughts.) Emile? EMILE FAVIER: (Startled.) What? LOUISE FAVRIER: What do you think?

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EMILE FAVIER: (Exploding.) What do you mean? Why are you looking at me? Well, what does all this mean? LOUISE FAVRIER: My dear, I don’t understand you. EMILE FAVIER: (Grabbing her by the shoulders.) Oh! I’m beginning to be fed up, I demand an apology immediately. Yes, absolutely and in front of them. PLANTUREUX: Come, come now, dear colleague. EMILE FAVIER: You, keep quiet! MADAME PLANTUREUX: (Moaning.) You see, you see, we were warned. EMILE FAVIER: What do you mean! People warned you? PLANTUREUX: No, no, no! She’s pregnant and easily upset she doesn’t know what’s she’s saying. Come my dear, come. (He leads her out.) EMILE FAVIER: That’s unbelievable! LOUISE FAVRIER: You wretched man, what came over you? EMILE FAVIER: What came over me? You tell me, yes or no; didn’t you act as if I were the lecher? LOUISE FAVRIER: Me accuse you? EMILE FAVIER: Oh! And what’s more, I saw the way you looked at me. LOUISE FAVRIER: Everything you saw in my eyes, you projected there. EMILE FAVIER: And I who haven’t set foot in a bordello since I’ve known you! Oh! But I see through your little game. You accuse me so you don’t have to defend yourself. LOUISE FAVRIER: Defend myself! EMILE FAVIER: Only you can’t fool me. (A silence.) Prove to me that Suzanne is my child. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Horrified.) Suzanne?! EMILE FAVIER: That brings you up short, doesn’t it? LOUISE FAVRIER: But Emile, you can’t be serious. EMILE FAVIER: Oh! You think not? There’s no “but Emile, dear”. I ask you for proof, and you won’t bother to give me any. Is that

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natural? Only you won’t get away with it. Look, it’s this simple. I give you two minutes to prove that my daughter is my child. Otherwise, you’re out. LOUISE FAVRIER: (With a shrill voice.) Bravo, just brilliant. EMILE FAVIER: You’re wasting time. LOUISE FAVRIER: If you think you can intimidate me! EMILE FAVIER: Thirty seconds. LOUISE FAVRIER: You’re that convinced, are you? Very well my friend. As you like; you are not mistaken, Suzanne is not your child! There, are you happy now? EMILE FAVIER: Whose is she? LOUISE FAVRIER: I don’t remember. EMILE FAVIER: That’s fine, just fine, because for my part too I had so many… ALPHONSINE: (Coming in, beside herself.) Monsieur, Madame, Please be careful. The guests are coming. EMILE FAVIER: To hell with them! (Louise leads him off to the left.) (Madame Sorbier, ridiculous, dressed more for a carnival than a dinner party, appears in the doorway and muffled voices of additional guests can be heard behind her.) LOUISE FAVRIER: Then you admit it! EMILE FAVIER: Everything is true! Everything! SUZANNE FAVIER: (In a quieter tone.) I beg you, please; the guests are here. LOUISE FAVRIER: What’s true? EMILE FAVIER: Everything you suspect! Everything you’d like to believe! LOUISE FAVRIER: Exactly what do you mean? EMILE FAVIER: You want to know exactly! Hold on, old girl, I’ll curl your hair. All right! Yes, if you like, I’m the lecher! I molested four little girls in one afternoon!! Did you hear? Four little girls in one afternoon!

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(Madame Sorbier, Alphonsine and the guests cry out in horror, and run out.) ACT THREE (As the curtain rises the stage is in total darkness; figures emerge only gradually. They are all seated, motionless around a table; their hands are poised over a Ouija board. The scene is the office of the Director of a lowclass boarding house in Neuilly.) (Before any sense can be made of the scene on stage, one hears voices off stage) CARTERON’S VOICE: Enough! Enough! THE SECOND VOICE: Shh! Carteron! CARTERON’S VOICE: I told you I’ve had enough of this. THE SECOND VOICE: Keep quiet! CARTERON’S VOICE: It’s no fun anymore. It’s not funny at all. I want it to end. I want to tell them. THE SECOND VOICE: Tell them what? CARTERON’S VOICE: Eh! Well… THE SECOND VOICE: You, you’re going to try to keep still. They’re on the other side, so it’s none of your business. CARTERON: It is my business. (Weaker.) It is my business. I’m going to try, to try to (these last words are said in a ghostly voice.) ************ LOUISE FAVRIER: The silence is impressive. SUZANNE FAVIER: That’s true; we can’t hear anything at all. LOUISE FAVRIER: Suzanne child, you’re pushing. SUZANNE FAVIER: No mother, I swear, I’m not moving anything. Just look at my hands! LOUISE FAVRIER: I can’t see a damned thing. (To Clemence, the Director.) Just think! To have to leave like that at a moment’s notice, from one day to the next! I tell you it’s not easy and now to be reduced to living in a family hotel. CLEMENCE: (Sternly, with a British accent.) This is not a hotel, Madame; it is a residence for families.

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LOUISE FAVRIER: But when we were used to living in our own home. CLEMENCE: (Acidly.) Well yes, you have had your troubles. It’s the sort of thing that can happen to anyone. In the eighteen years that I’ve been running our “Family House” I’ve seen greater misfortunes than yours; more interesting ones. POKROVSKI: (With a Russian accent.) A creaking in the wall, did you hear it? CLEMENCE: Oh! My heavens! POKROVSKI: Some creatures are dying to reveal themselves. SUZANNE FAVIER: I’m afraid. POKROVSKI: (Dryly.) Of what? SUZANNE FAVIER: Why, I don’t know. POKROVSKI: Then be quiet. There it is again! (Snickering by Montchabert.) If you laugh I shall oblige you to leave. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Timidly.) Maybe it was a mouse. CLEMENCE: There are no mice in Family House; such a thing would be impossible. POKROVSKI: If you are a skeptic, you’d better leave the room. CLEMENCE: Madame has a bad aura, very bad. LOUISE FAVRIER: Good heavens! And I who have so much good will. CLEMENCE: You need to have faith! Oh! This is getting much more serious. LOUISE FAVRIER: I think it’s my husband who’s dozed off. Emile! (She pulls on his sleeve.) EMILE FAVIER: (Sleeping.) Four little girls! CLEMENCE: Why is he always talking about little girls? SUZANNE FAVIER: The table moved. POKROVSKI: That’s right. SUZANNE FAVIER: That’s fantastic. MONTCHABERT: (Crudely.) Well! If it moved, it’s because someone pushed it. Don’t expect me to get all excited for nothing.

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CLEMENCE: One more word and tomorrow you’re out of Family House. MONTCHABERT: Well! The Inquisition has returned. But I’ll have you know, I am a member of the League of Human Rights. So, what do you say to that! POKROVSKI: Shh! (This time the table moved noticeably.) CLEMENCE: (Ecstatic.) Oh, gracious! It’s speaking. SUZANNE FAVIER: Is someone there? CLEMENCE: Stupid girl! Of course someone’s… Will you tell us your name? Tap once for yes, twice for no. (Pause.) It doesn’t want to. Do you have a message for us? Yes? Oh, it’s speaking. Watch, s...l... e...e...p......c...l...e... It says I must sleep! Oh! I am the medium! My dream has come true! POKROVSKI: (With decisiveness.) Listen to me! I am going to put you to sleep. (Clemence lies down; Pokrovski, standing in front of her, waves his hands over her.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Shaking her husband.) Emile! (Grumblings from Favier.) He’s unbelievable. SUZANNE FAVIER: What do you expect? It’s an ordeal at his age. LOUISE FAVRIER: And what about me, child! If anyone had predicted this twenty five years ago! Then I had my choice of all the eligible bachelors of Nontron. SUZANNE FAVIER: It’s not you who is suffering the most. LOUISE FAVRIER: Pardon me? SUZANNE FAVIER: I’m the victim! EMILE FAVIER: (Yawning and stretching.) Isn’t it time to go to sleep? LOUISE FAVRIER: You’ve already been asleep for an hour. EMILE FAVIER: Not me! I haven’t slept. POKROVSKI: Shh! EMILE FAVIER: (Pointing to Clemence.) There, look at her; she’s sleeping. LOUISE FAVRIER: She seems to be the medium. (Favier goes back to sleep.)

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POKROVSKI: Sleep, you are in a deep sleep. (Favier snores.) No, no, Monsieur, not you. VOICE OF CARTERON: (Weakly, off stage.) To try to… must try. POKROVSKI: She wants to speak. She’s an incarnating medium. For fifteen months I’ve suspected as much. She will affect the manners, tone of voice, respiratory rhythms of the personality who wants to communicate to us. (A silence.) She’s moving her lips. MONTCHABERT: Speak? She’s going to throw up, yes, I’m going to get a basin! CLEMENCE: (In an altered voice.) Fk… Fk… SUZANNE FAVIER: Oh, Mother! CLEMENCE: Fk… Fk… Fokono. POKROVSKI: What’s that? CLEMENCE: (Whispering.) FOKONO. POKROVSKI: Is that a name? (Clemence makes a sign that it is.) It’s a very unusual name. LOUISE FAVRIER: How do you spell it? POKROVSKI: Excuse me, but it’s I who ask the questions. Can you say how that is written? (She makes a sign to say no.) Using the table perhaps? (The table makes some very feeble movements.) It must be F-o-k-o-n-o-. MONTCHABERT: It’s a Japanese name, like Motono. SUZANNE FAVIER: What does Motono mean? MONTCHABERT: Motono, Motono, everybody knows. LOUISE FAVRIER: That’s strange that name sounds familiar as if I’ve been introduced to someone by that name. MONTCHABERT: (Doubling over with laughter.) Japanese people are introduced to you in Nontron? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Furious.) I didn’t spend my whole life at Nontron, you know. POKROVSKI: Somewhere else then? Think. LOUISE FAVRIER: No, I guess not.

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MONTCHABERT: Aha! Then you are making a mistake, you don’t know any Fokono. That’s all it means. POKROVSKI: (In front of Clemence.) She is shaking her head, no, no. MONTCHABERT: You see it must be someone from the Sino Russian war. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Who has stood up and she watches.) No, No, that’s still not it. MONTCHABERT: (Pretentious.) A samovar, no, I mean a samurai, Fokono that sounds like kimono. EMILE FAVIER: (Waking up with a bound.) Fauconneau! MONTCHABERT: What? Fauconneau? Ah! Good! Where’s he coming from, that one? EMILE FAVIER: Fauconneau! Why I know him. POKROVSKI: She’s making a sign yes, yes. SUZANNE FAVIER: Yes, of course, you’re right. MONTCHABERT: Now, she too . . . SUZANNE FAVIER: It’s the gentleman we met at the hospital the day we went to see Uncle Robert. LOUISE FAVRIER: Exactly. POKROVSKI: Yes, always yes. MONTCHABERT: How’s that, for a bunch of crazies! But see here my little lady. (He takes Louise by the arm.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Exasperated.) Monsieur I don’t permit anyone such familiarity. It’s not because pitiless misfortune… MONTCHABERT: (Joking.) You would think we were at the Comédie Française. LOUISE FAVRIER: What a jerk! POKROVSKI: She’s going to speak. CLEMENCE: I t- t- telephone: it’s I who t- telephone! MONTCHABERT: (Bursts out laughing) Oh that! That’s interesting! So you have telephones in the other world? Tell me then, are there also bathrooms and even sewers too? (Pokrovski takes him by the

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shoulders and throws him out the door. He comes back a minute later without anyone noticing.) CLEMENCE: I t- telephone: it’s I who t- telephone! (She laughs the same strident laugh as Carteron at the end of Act One.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (Astonished.) It’s Uncle Robert’s voice! SUZANNE FAVIER: Mother! LOUISE FAVRIER: Is it possible? POKROVSKI: Everything is possible, Madame, it is perhaps a sentence he spoke before he died in a moment of emotion. For some strange reason or other, it’s engraved in his memory, like an obsession. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! Monsieur, ask him, that letter that he wrote us… And then why does he speak of Monsieur Fauconneau? Should we telephone him? POKROVSKI: She is saying yes, nodding her head. EMILE FAVIER: Telephone whom? SUZANNE FAVIER: First of all, does he have a telephone? LOUISE FAVRIER: I remember now they told us he was an Insurance Inspector. EMILE FAVIER: A Finance Inspector. LOUISE FAVRIER: Let’s not quibble, I beg you. Where is the phone book? SUZANNE FAVIER: We’ll have to ask Madame Clemence. POKROVSKI: There is no longer any Madame Clemence (The others look at him dumbfounded.) I mean for the moment. LOUISE FAVRIER: But the phone book? (She searches reaching here and there with her hands.) Here it is. (She opens it.) Fauconneau… MONTCHABERT: No! She thinks she is going to find him in the phone book! LOUISE FAVRIER: Jaques Fauconneau, Inspector of Finances, 21 boulevard Péreire. MONTCHABERT: Then he really exists! LOUISE FAVRIER: Of course. We’ve seen him!

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MONTCHABERT: Now that’s remarkable! After this, I’m ready to believe anything! LOUISE FAVRIER: What a jerk! EMILE FAVIER: Do you realize what time it is? It’s after midnight! LOUISE FAVRIER: So, what difference does that make? EMILE FAVIER: Wake up an Inspector of Finances! LOUISE FAVRIER: Don’t underestimate me. (She picks up the phone.) Hello? Wagram 88-17, please. Oh, all of a sudden I’m frightened! Let’s hope nobody answers. SUZANNE FAVIER: But look at the table! It’s gone crazy! MONTCHABERT: (Sarcastically.) That does it! Now it’s the table which is crazy. EMILE FAVIER: What did you expect? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Menacing.) Don’t you understand? Uncle Robert could have confided in this Monsieur Fauconneau. EMILE FAVIER: (Uneasy.) Confided what? LOUISE FAVRIER: I can understand that such a prospect frightens you. EMILE FAVIER: So we’re at it again, that ridiculous charade. Oh no! But then, don’t forget that you’re under suspicion too. LOUISE FAVRIER: Good heavens! Someone’s answering. Hello, who is there? Am I speaking with Monsieur Fauconneau? Yes, yes, it’s very late; actually it’s very early. A joke? What do you mean a joke Monsieur? I’m Madame Favier telephoning you from the Boarding House 118 rue Léon-Benoit, at Neuilly. But of course, Monsieur, at the clinic at Val Fleury, my Uncle Robert Carteron introduced us. C as in crazy, A as in anarchy, R as in… Yes, that’s it. Yes Monsieur, some information. We are more than anguished as the result of a letter, a letter. (Favier pulls her from behind and forces her to let go of the receiver.) Are you crazy, Emile! POKROVSKI: She’s going to speak. CLEMENCE: My- My- mystif… EMILE FAVIER: What’s that mystification? There, you see, it wasn’t worth the trouble to disturb that gentleman!

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POKROVSKI: The medium is showing signs of fatigue; I’m going to wake her. Shh! LOUISE FAVRIER: All this is very disturbing. MONTCHABERT: I’m not troubled at all. Oh, la di da! I’m not amazed by such little things. SUZANNE FAVIER: What a pin wheel! MONTCHABERT: (To Favier.) I don’t buy any of this nonsense because I, I’m a scientific thinker, you understand. CLEMENCE: (Waking up.) Oh, fancy that! Did I communicate some revelations? MONTCHABERT: (Ironically.) Sensational! CLEMENCE: I want to enter the Morning Mail contest. MONTCHABERT: First of all, is everybody beginning to believe that people come back from the dead and that there are spirits inhabiting tables, and all that bull? EMILE FAVIER: Careful, there are ladies. MONTCHABERT: And to go from there to believing that God exists isn’t a big step. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Furious.) Of course God exists. MONTCHABERT: I never argue with women, it’s against my principles. LOUISE FAVRIER: What an honor you pay us. There is a God, but not for people like you. EMILE FAVIER: You’re talking foolishly, Lou Lou. LOUISE FAVRIER: Not for people who don’t deserve Him? EMILE FAVIER: Well after all, why wouldn’t there be a God? MONTCHABERT: (Moving to the front of the stage, to address the audience.) Let me tell you, I believe only in what I see. Here (he indicates the room.) There’s a wall. Don’t you agree? So then, I say: “There is a wall”. It’s that simple. Now if you are going to try and tell me that there are people looking at us, listening to us, who know what we are thinking, but whom we can’t see, well, I’ll just reply that you are ready for the funny farm. POKROVSKI: (Seriously.) You’re nothing but a tadpole. MONTCHABERT: What’s that?

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POKROVSKI: I said a meager tadpole. MONTCHABERT: And how about you? What are you, a toad? It is true that you have frog’s eyes. POKROVSKI: You flatter me, Monsieur. I am more evolved than you, you just affirmed that. You say: “There is no one there, there is a wall.” As for me, I say: “We are on stage; we are performing before an invisible audience.” MONTCHABERT: What foolishness! POKROVSKI: You don’t even know you’re performing, I know that much. That’s why you are only a tadpole and I am a frog. CLEMENCE: (To Montchabert.) I’ve just prepared your bill. You can check it, if you like. Tomorrow you leave the Family House. (Montchabert is stunned.) MONTCHABERT: (To Favier, with pathos.) Are you going to permit this infamy to happen? EMILE FAVIER: My good man, it is your turn to get thrown out. (Montchabert staggers out; a silence.) LOUISE FAVRIER: What are we waiting for? EMILE FAVIER: I have no idea, but we’re surely waiting for something. POKROVSKI: The entire human tragedy. SUZANNE FAVIER: (Timidly.) In that case, maybe we’d better go upstairs to bed. POKROVSKI: The child has no poetic soul. (The doorbell rings.) Did you hear that? EMILE FAVIER: Another big joke! CLEMENCE: Sacrilegious talk. But there may be another hooligan there. EMILE FAVIER: He wouldn’t ring. CLEMENCE: Great reasoning! (She goes to the window and opens it a crack.) Who’s there? What’s that you say? LOUISE FAVRIER: (Who’s also moved closer to the window.) Fauconneau? It’s him. He’s come. Good heavens! He’s come here! SUZANNE FAVIER: Then he’s the one we’re waiting for? LOUISE FAVRIER: Of course.

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CLEMENCE: (Through the window.) Can’t you talk to us from where you are? I don’t like to let strangers in at this time of night. He says it’s impossible. All right then, someone will open the door for you. Suzanne! SUZANNE FAVIER: Me? Open the door? (Feeling no one supports her, she obeys.) LOUISE FAVRIER: (To Favier.) Aren’t you excited? EMILE FAVIER: Not at all. LOUISE FAVRIER: Well there’s reason to be. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me the truth now? EMILE FAVIER: You’re getting on my nerves. And how about you, aren’t you going to make up your mind? LOUISE FAVIER: I might still have forgiven you. EMILE FAVIER: I could say the same to you. LOUISE FAVRIER and EMILE FAVIER: Too late! (Faconneau has come in; he is wearing pajamas and an overcoat.) POKROVSKI: First of all why don’t you take off your trench coat? Your attire is not appropriate for this occasion. (He begins to unbutton Monsieur Fauconneau’s raincoat.) FAUCONNEAU: (Defending himself.) But… (He stands there in his pajamas.) POKROVSKI: All right, put it back on. SUZANNE FAVIER: You’re going to make him lose his train of thought. CLEMENCE: (Delighted.) Isn’t it thrilling? POKROVSKI: We are listening, (a silence), but we don’t hear you. First of all, why did you come? FAUCONNEAU: (Pointing to Louise.) Madame, I now believe that you recog… LOUISE FAVRIER: Perhaps you don’t recognize me, Monsieur; I’ve aged a hundred years. EMILE FAVIER: Come now. LOUISE FAVRIER: A hundred years. FAUCONNEAU: You spoke, if I heard you rightly, of a letter about which you wanted to receive certain clarifications?

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EMILE FAVIER: (Brusquely.) That letter needs no explanation. SUZANNE FAVIER: He’s lying! Excuse me. LOUISE FAVRIER: Look at what that letter has done to a model family. For we were people… SUZANNE FAVIER: Yes, that’s absolutely true! People… LOUISE FAVRIER: People like every body else. FAUCONNEAU: Well, your Uncle Robert Carteron was not a man just like any body else. LOUISE FAVRIER: No need to tell me, Monsieur? The proof is I had his photograph enlarged. FAUCONNEAU: He was a character. LOUISE FAVRIER: A character? FAUCONNEAU: Let’s say an eccentric individual, rather peculiar. LOUISE FAVRIER: Peculiar? FAUCONNEAU: I’d even say a bit strange. EMILE FAVIER: What do you mean by that? LOUISE FAVRIER: Be careful of what you say, Monsieur. We cherish my uncle’s memory. EMILE FAVIER: Hmm! LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! Emile, you probably have your reasons. EMILE FAVIER: Yes, I know what you’re up to. LOUISE FAVRIER: What I’m up to? SUZANNE FAVIER: Monsieur, if you only knew! FAUCONNEAU: What? LOUISE FAVRIER: How dare you Monsieur, it’s we who have questions for you. FAUCONNEAU: It doesn’t seem like it. LOUISE FAVRIER: Unfortunately, I remember just now that, if we can trust the terms of his letter, my uncle told no one. FAUCONNEAU: That letter was posthumous, wasn’t it? EMILE FAVIER: Couldn’t have been more so. FAUCONNEAU: You don’t want to tell me what was in it? LOUISE FAVRIER: But?

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EMILE FAVIER: No way. FAUCONNEAU: Well, I’ll be! That will teach me to listen to my conscience. EMILE FAVIER: Rather your curiosity. FAUCONNEAU: Lovely! I imagined that you were perhaps tormented by a few words …an old man let slip. EMILE FAVIER: Hold on! Just a minute there! LOUISE FAVRIER: My uncle was not an old man. FAUCONNEAU: Very well then, this aging gentleman. Well, I don’t know what’s in that posthumous letter, but I have reason to believe that it must be a practical joke. (All three are taken aback.) EMILE FAVIER: (In a thundering voice.) Monsieur, the door! LOUISE FAVRIER: You scoundrel! EMILE FAVIER: Out! Get out of here! LOUISE FAVRIER: Insulting the dead! EMILE FAVIER: (To his wife.) But then, when you think about it. LOUISE FAVRIER: Oh! My dear! (They have taken one another’s hands.) POKROVSKI: I remind you that just a while ago the medium pronounced the word “mystification”. EMILE FAVIER: Good heavens! He’s the practical joker. Ah, young man, the finances of France are in good hands! I would bet that you are one of those pathetic pranksters. FAUCONNEAU: Monsieur! EMILE FAVIER: Exactly, who use the telephone for; I won’t say what, kinds of facetious amusement? FAUCONNEAU: (Horrified.) Good heavens! What makes you think that? LOUISE FAVRIER: He’s admitted it! So Monsieur, that’s why you came in pajamas? EMILE FAVIER: At one o’clock in the morning. LOUISE FAVRIER: You make fun of the living as well as the dead!

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FAUCONNEAU: (Backing out.) To tell the truth I should have… EMILE FAVIER: He calls that the truth! (A silence.) A jo… LOUISE FAVRIER: A joke. SUZANNE FAVIER: A joker. LOUISE FAVRIER: Fortunately we’re not fooled. EMILE FAVIER: Oh no! We’re not fooled. LOUISE FAVRIER: You’d be happy if we were fooled. EMILE FAVIER: And you wouldn’t be! LOUISE FAVRIER: So, you lose nothing by waiting. EMILE FAVIER: Nor you. LOUISE FAVRIER: Besides I have an idea. EMILE FAVIER: Me too. LOUISE FAVRIER: (Going out.) As a young woman I stayed a while with my aunt. EMILE FAVIER: I remember a young man who had an eye for you. (He goes out.) SUZANNE FAVIER: (Throwing up her arms toward heaven.) They’ll never run out of suspicion and doubts! (She goes out.) (CLEMENCE and Pokrovski remain alone; they have fallen asleep.) ************* CARTERON’S VOICE: (Moaning.) Failed! Failed to get through! THE SECOND VOICE: Come on! Don’t torture yourself. Eventually they’ll dig up some truth. CARTERON’S VOICE: Oh! Oh! It sounds so hopeless! THE SECOND VOICE: The truth they deserve! AN ECHO THAT FILLS THE ROOM: The truth they deserve! CURTAIN

REFLECTIONS

A Mystery of Love and The Posthumous Joke, each with its own tone and mood, explore essential aspects of the presence of loved ones beyond death. Each play, upon reflection, clarifies the essential features and necessary conditions of possibility for such existential encounters. The creation of the play, A Mystery of Love, grew from an encounter with a gentleman in Switzerland who shared with Marcel that following the death of his first wife, he no longer desired to live; but when he was convinced that his first wife clearly communicated her insistence that he should marry again, he did so, assured that he married the second wife at the behest of the first. Marcel wondered how the second wife, Madeleine, must have felt knowing she was espoused at the wish of the first wife. As Marcel lets the situation develop through his dramatic imagination, to provide an element of conflict, he added Abel, a friend who had secretly loved Viviane, Jacques’ first wife. Out of loyalty to his friend Jacques, Abel never revealed or gave open expression to that love. When traveling in Russia, Abel learned of Jacques’ hasty second marriage and judged his friend Jacques as disloyal and undeserving of an untainted memory of Viviane’s faithfulness. So Abel proceeds to sow seeds of suspicion about Viviane’s fidelity. The atmosphere of angry suspicion intensifies in as much as Viviane’s sister has discovered, concealed in Viviane’s writing desk, a letter professing her love for Abel. Only after direct accusation and rude dismissal, does she realize that Abel didn’t know the content of this letter for it was never mailed. Abel tries to undermine Jacques’ confidence in the after death communications and ongoing communion with his first wife. But then Madeleine, the second wife, warns Abel that Jacques’ confidence in these communications is what enables him to go on living. So in order to support Jacques’ trust in an ongoing communion, Abel fabricates a lie saying that prior to her death Viviane had shared with him the hope and wish that Jacques would remarry. Jacques is frightened and confused. Abel finds he can’t let him base his future on a lie so he begs him not to build a foundation on a few words remembered, but

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to recognize that in his heart Jacques could not be content to live in a world devoid of mystery. ( 10 ) So out of a situation of suspicion and anger, clouded by rash judgment, resentment and half truths, Abel challenges Jacques to be open to the experience of mystery that draws us to a horizon of light and hope. The invitation is to found one’s hope, not on the words of a verbal communication, but on a mysterious life dimension that, renewed by moments of presence from loved ones after death, opens onto a communion of love Thus it is that A Mystery of Love lets us participate in a poignant and suspenseful drama about a communion of love that transcends death. Through the actor’s art we are able to experience this mystery from within and witness the various attitudes toward the possibility and nature of such communication. Finally we are moved to openly consider the conditions where we too can participate in moments of presence, breaching what would otherwise be a wall of despair. The second play, The Posthumous Joke, is by contrast clearly a farcical satire. Marcel admits that the idea for this play occurred when he considered the irritation he felt upon meeting an excessively conceited person on the Metro. “Wouldn’t it be amusing,” Marcel thought, “to write him a letter referring to scandalous rumors that were supposedly circulating about him, all the while assuring him of my absolute and indignant refusal of ever believing these stories?” Thus the central idea of the play was born; it had only to align itself to Marcel’s meta-psychical preoccupations. As the plot developed he decided to be effective, and avoid confrontation or any direct inquiry, such a joke would have to be played posthumously. Much of the humor resides in the ridiculous situations that develop out of the excessive and burlesque reactions of the various characters. Uncle Carteron, the prankster, leaves all his worldly possession to the Faviers, (his nephew and his nephews wife and daughter), relatives with whom he has had a longstanding relationship. Carteron has also given a letter for his lawyer to send posthumously to them. In it he affirms esteem for the Faviers despite the scandalous rumors circulating about them. This Carteron devised as a practical joke, like placing a prank phone call and then hanging up, making it very difficult to trace and recognize its rhyme, reason or humor.

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This prank becomes a “posthumous joke”, an “after death” communication that influences. It was not a letter of love and genuine concern, but one whose purpose was to sow confusion and suspicion in the minds and lives of the Faviers. The Faviers then imagine all sorts of scandalous situations and accuse one another of dreadful behaviors trying to uncover what Uncle Carteron may have been referring to in his letter. They undo their lives and relationships to no avail. Finally they are reduced to living in a boarding house and agree to consult a medium and hold a séance. Although a message is spoken, and its partial deciphering leads to a summoning of an acquaintance of Uncle Carteron, the Faviers are so crazed that they can not hear out his explanation and chase him from the premises. It is noteworthy that Marcel does not hesitate to poke fun at even his most cherished ideas. In fact he affirms that his comedies show the importance of introspective reflection that is essential to preserve a spirit of truth without which humans too easily fall prey to senseless notions and extreme behaviors. Indeed Marcel had an instinctive and sometimes mischievous sense of humor and his rich comic gifts punctuate most of his plays. His humor is spontaneous yet, upon reflection, he notes that the comedy in his work is often stop gap relief from tense moments, and at times a break from characters that are just too good to be true. So he refers to the comic in his theatre as the “yes, but…” inviting introspective reflection upon one’s ambitions, especially one’s apparently noble and righteous ones. Marcel’s Comedy also serves to show the danger in a lack of reflective self criticism and in taking oneself too seriously. ( 11 ) The Posthumous Joke’s burlesque character raises the question of whether there could ever be a valid or sane communication to the living from individuals beyond death. It highlights the flaws and excesses that short circuit their attempts to decipher messages from beyond the grave and it draws in broad brush strokes a satirical caricature of the main features of the nature, and conditions of possibility, for such communications. The letter is not really posthumous; and it is not a genuine communication or real expression of a communion of love. The uncle knows that the Faviers only visited him for the sake of “having”, i.e.

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assuring that he grant them his inheritance. The “Posthumous Letter” is his revenge giving them an unsettling message and thus a troubling inheritance of suspicion and confusion. The final lines of The Posthumous Joke “can’t get through”…”the truth they deserve” suggest that the Faviers’ feelings toward Uncle Robert were only those of “desire”, a will for covetous “having”, not feelings of generous, or other directed love, “hoping” for the well being of Uncle Robert and “hoping” for ongoing communion or loving communication with his spirit. This satirical farce lets us laugh at our own and others’ shortcomings, and go on to critically clarify our understanding of the nature and conditions of possibility for an inter-subjective communion providing for renewed moments of presence of loved ones from beyond death. All this farcical pandemonium is hilariously portrayed but in the end the Faviers are very nearly ruined and tormented by anger and distrust. Marcel’s research, plus the experience of many, tells us that where an “us” or close bond exists in this life, that this spiritual kinship endures. The person from beyond death can communicate their light of truth to one who invokes a gifted conferral of their distinctive presence and welcomes it by way of inwardness and depth. It depends upon the receiver to be open and permeable and invite this presence, yet gratuity and otherness characterize its actual conferral. Such presence from beyond death can ground and strengthen one’s personal acts; and an incitement to create is always the distinctive mark of such gifted moments of presence. The after death communication in The Posthumous Joke is in no way an active intervention in an ongoing relationship of faithful love, nor a creative way of continuing to be with and for an “other”. Clearly the message is communicated and does influence the thoughts, feelings, and lives of the recipients. The Faviers certainly are open and permeable to receive the message, expecting a gift but receiving instead a costly practical joke. They take it very much to heart, amplifying suspicions and increasing animosity, intensifying antagonism and unreasonableness. They interiorize and exaggerate the grain of suspicion that the letter has planted.

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Certainly, the acting out of suspicious accusations provides the humor in the play but it also shows the danger of not being critically introspective about one’s own convictions, revealing the excesses to which uncritical thought and commitment can lead. The final scene also exemplifies the consequences of failed communication. The Faviers are so beside themselves that they refuse to hear any reasonable explanation of the letter and its intended prank. Uncle Carteron can’t get through to them now. The audience is left to reflect on why? Is it because survival and communication after death are not possible? Could it be for want of openness and permeability by way of inwardness and depth? Or perhaps it is simply for the lack of love, recognized since the time of Plato, as the sine qua non condition for any commerce or communication between the gods and humans or among humans themselves? The final reflection may very well be this; will we, like the Faviers, get the truth that we deserve? Both these plays suggest perspectives for a philosophic or second level reflection. At the end of A Mystery of Love, as clouds of angry suspicion and misjudgments disperse in the dawning light of truth, a spirit of compassion and hope emerges as “desire” gives way to “hope”. The ending of The Posthumous Joke, with a dismal failure to establish communication or peace of mind, strongly suggests that the necessary conditions for after death presence and communication are an attitude of hope and other directed love, rather than merely coveting the tangible inheritance a friend or relative could provide. Marcel stressed that a central preoccupation of his was to conceive how a transcendent, a subject which was in no way an object could be present to him in his subjectivity. After his wife’s death (1947) Marcel penned a critically reflective essay clarifying his understanding of presence. This essay, originally entitled “Existential Premises of Immortality” appeared in English in Presence and Immortality, a volume containing: Marcel’s essay “My Fundamental Purpose” (1937), “Journal Entries 1938-1943”, “Existential Premises of Immortality” (1951) later entitled “Presence and Immortality”, and The Unfathomable (March 1919) a first act of an unfinished play, published by Duquesne University Press in 1967. ( 12 ) And in this philosophical essay reflecting on the existential premises of immortality, Marcel critically clarifies the nature of inter-subjec-

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tivity through and beyond death, and identifies attitudes that are requisite conditions for its occurrence. Although Marcel’s essay has a conversational tone, it presents a critically reasoned explanation of his position. He there identifies two requisite conditions for clarifying the possibility of presence of loved ones from beyond. (1) One must recognize that one’s notion of presence should not be modeled on the mode of presence that characterizes relations between physical objects or material things. (2) Inter-personal presence should be conceived according to the distinctive mode of being that human existence is. It is a co-presence, co-constituted by a dialogue of freedoms. The dialogue involves an appeal, a response that can create a gratuitous and reciprocal agreement to be with and for one another. This communion of inter-subjectivity is a “co-esse”. Presence, especially presence from beyond death, is essentially experienced as a spiritual influx, encountered by way of inwardness and depth. Presence uplifts one’s spirit, and strengthens one’s personalizing acts, such as hope, love, and creativity. It depends upon one to be open, permeable, and to actively await and invoke presence, but not in fact to summon it forth. Presence when it is conferred and renewed occurs as a gratuitous event; and whenever presence occurs it always brings an incitement to create. Inter-subjectivity is the mode of presence proper to persons who can choose, through a dialogue of freedom and grace, to create and preserve inter-subjectivity of being, (a communion and communication of love). Marcel recognizes that where there has been an inter-subjective relation of being with, and for, each other in this life that bond of spiritual kinship endures after death and is most likely to provide renewed moments of presence continuing the fruitfulness of this interpersonal relation. In simpler terms, for the loved one beyond death, “to continue to live, is to continue to live for an ‘us’.” Moments of presence will be experienced as renewed expressions of active involvement in an ongoing bond of inter-subjectivity. Marcel noted that when each person confronts the inevitability of his or her own death, there is a natural aspiration to life, at least a prenatal palpitation of hope, which none the less carries within it a temptation to despair. Despair leans to abandon hope and precipi-

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tate the very downfall one dreads. Such wavering between free will’s options of hope or despair Marcel sees as the struggle between love and death. He also observed that one’s grounds for hope, in personal or interpersonal survival, are stronger as one has increased experience of spiritual dimensions in life - e.g. Milton’s immortality, the sacred enduring quality of Mozart’s music, or the lasting nature of spiritual kinship and faithful love. He sadly notes that the increasing deprivation of such experiences in our times makes pessimism and the gravitation toward despair increasingly prevalent. ( 13 ) Marcel stresses the importance of hope. He notes that as one grieves, one mourns the loss of the familiar incarnate presence of the loved one; yet the desire for “having” the benefits and advantages that the loved one could provide, can give way to hope. Desire is covetous when it focuses on “having”. Hope, by contrast, is an other-directed, generous love, that is willing to let the other be in a transformed mode of existence while still anticipating the future with assurance founded on inter-personal grounds that lets us look forward to renewals of presence and a “fullness of life for us”. Hope’s well spring is liberty, and its expression is an act of free will. Hope expresses itself in its intensity in situations that carry a temptation to despair. Hope looks forward to a fullness of life for us. Hope enjoys an assurance of the essentials of that fullness of life without being privy to its particular details. Marcel describes hope’s vision, as a memory of the future, “as before…but as never before. If what we hope for “as the essentials of a fullness of life for us”, deserves to be hoped for and we hope for it with all our hearts, there cannot but be some force within, being more powerful than ourselves, that hopes with and for us. To Gabriel Marcel, hope in its most intense form expresses itself as “I hope in Thee for us.” ( 14 ) Thank you for reading Ghostly Mysteries. I believe Marcel’s greatest gift is his hope that we too experience the presence of our own loved ones after death.

SOURCES

(1.)“Le Secret est dans les îles,» («The Secret is in the Isles») Preface to Le Secret est dans les îles, Paris: Librairie Plon, 1967, p.8. (2.)«The Invisible Threshold», Préface to Le Seuil Invisible, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1914, p.8. (3.)“The Unfathomable” in Presence and Immortality, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967, pp. 277, and 280; “L’Insondable” pièce inachevée (mars 1919) in Présence et Immortalité, Paris: Flammarion, 1959, pp. 195 - 234. (4.)“An Essay in Autobiography,” in Gabriel Marcel’s Philosophy of Existentialism, NY, Philosophical Library, Citadel Press, 1956, pp. 122-124, 128; “Postface” of “L’Horizon,” in “Percées vers un ailleurs, Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1973, pp. 367 - 369 of 367 - 378. (5.).”L’Audace en métaphysique,» in Percées vers un ailleurs, Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1973, pp. 407 - 421. (6.)«Existential Premises of Immortality» later entitled «Presence and Immortality» in Presence and Immortality, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967, pp. 230-231.; French, pp. 179 - 193. (7.)“A Mystery of Love” is an English translation of a four act play originally entitled “L’Iconoclaste”, (“The Iconoclast”) written Paris 1917, revised Sens 1921, and published in Paris, Librairie Stock, 1923, pp. 1 - 47. (8.)“Drama of the Soul in Exile,” in Gabriel Marcel Three Plays, NY: Hill and Wang, 1965, p. 29; Creative Fidelity, Ch. VIII, Creative Fidelity, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002, pp. 149 - 154; Existential Background of Human Dignity, Ch. III, Existence, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 52 - 53; “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery”, in Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998, pp.178 - 183. (9.)“The Posthumous Joke” is an English translation of “Le Divertissement Posthume,” pièce en deux actes avec prologue et épilogue, (1923), published in Théâtre Comique, Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1947, pp. 230 - 355. (10.)«A Mystery of Love» is an English translation of «L’Iconoclaste» (The Iconoclast), Paris: Stock, 1923, pp. 1-47. Cf. Creative Fidelity, Ch. VIII, pp. 150 - 153; “The Drama of the Soul in Exile,” in Gabriel Marcel Three Plays, pp. 28 - 30; The Existential Background of Human Dignity, pp. 50-53.

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(11.)“From Comic Theatre to Musical Creation” a previously unpublished essay by Gabriel Marcel, in Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel: The Lantern and The Torch of Peace, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988, (copyright 1997 K.R. Hanley), pp. xvii - xxii, esp., pp. xix, lines 5 - 20, pp. xviii-xix, pp. xxi - xxii. Confer. Renascence, Essays on Values in Literature, Critical Perspectives on Gabriel Marcel, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, Vol. LV, No. 3, Spring, 2003, pp. 243 - 244. (12.)“An Essay in Autobiography,” in Gabriel Marcel’s The Philosophy of Existentialism, New York: Citadel Press, 1956, p. 127; “Presence and Immortality” in Presence and Immortality, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967, pp. 230 - 244. (13.)“Death and Immortality” in Searchings, NY: Newman Press, 1967, Ch. IV, pp. 55 - 72. Auf der Suche nach Wahrheit und Gerichtigkeit, Freiburg im Bresgau: Verlag Knecht, 1964, Editor: Wolfgang Ruf ,Chaplain of the Catholic Student Community of Freiburg University, Germany. (14.)“Sketch of a Phenomenology and a Metaphysic of Hope,” in Homo Viator, An Introduction to a metaphysic of Hope (Le Peuch, January 1942), Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publishers, 1978, pp. 29 - 67, translated from the French “Esquisse d’une phénomènologie et d’une métaphysique de l’espérance” in Homo Viator, Une Prolégomènes d’ une métaphysique de l’espérence, (Philosophie de l’Esprit), Paris: Aubier- Editions Montaigne, 1944, pp. 35 - 124. Cf. “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery”, pp. 183-190. Cf. also “Existential Premises of Immortality” later entitled “Presence and Immortality” in Presence and Immortality, pp. 230 - 231.

GABRIEL MARCEL RESOURCES

(For Further Information about Marcel and His Works) In French and English, www.gabriel-marcel.com E-mail: [email protected] Présence de Gabriel Marcel, 21 rue de Tournon, Paris 75006, France Fax (33) (1) 43 54 53 42 Intérnationale Association Présence de Gabriel Marcel 85 boulevard de Port Royal, Paris 75013 In English Gabriel Marcel Society www.lemoyne.edu/gms, [email protected]

President: Prof. Brendan Sweetman, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO 64110, E-mail: Brendan.Sweetman@rockhurst .com Secretary/Treasurer: Prof. Teresa Reed, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO 64110, E-mail: [email protected] Newsletter Editor: Prof. Tom Michaud, Editor-GMS Newsletter, Dept. of Philosophy, Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, WV 26003. E-mail: [email protected] For the new, or seasoned, Marcel admirer, we recommend the Marcel “Live Theater” Audio CDs Dot the I & The Double Expertise, ISBN 0-09715192-0-X presenting a poignant drama and a light hearted comedy; and The Lantern, ISBN 0-09715192-3-4, as well as the books Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, ISBN 0-87462-617-X 1998, Marquette University Press, which includes a four act play The Broken World and a profound reflection on the haunting question: “Who am I?”, and its inseparable counterpart, “Is Life Empty or Full?”, plus a bibliography and eight appendices, Gabriel Marcel’s Autobiography, Awakenings, ISBN 0-84762-6536, Marquette University Press, 2002 and Creative Fidelity, ISBN 0-8232-2184-9, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002. The two audio CDs of Marcel Plays, Dot the I & The Double Expertise, and The Lantern, may be ordered by credit card at www.lemoyne. edu/gms or by mail from K. R. Hanley, Marcel Studies, Philosophy

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Dept., Le Moyne College, 1419 Salt Springs Rd., Syracuse, NY 13214. Plays also available in English are Three Plays: A Man of God, Ariadne, The Votive Candle, NY: Hill and Wang; The Unfathomable in Presence and Immortality, Pittsburgh,PA: Duquesne University Press; Dot the I & The Double Expertise, and The Lantern and The Torch of Peace , in Two One Act Plays by Gabriel Marcel, and Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel, (currently out of print but to be combined in a new volume for publication in 2005). Information about videos of The Lantern, Dot the I, The Double Expertise, and The Rebellious Heart can be obtained at www.lemoyne.edu/gms or by contacting [email protected].

ADDITIONAL READING

for Gabriel Marcel’s Dramatic and Philosophic Perspectives on Presence and Immortality Belay, Marcel La Mort dans le théâtre de Gabriel Marcel, Paris: Vrin, 1980. Chenu, Joseph Le Théâtre de Gabriel Marcel et sa signification métaphysique, Paris: Aubier, 1948 Fessard, Gaston Théâtre et mystère, Introduction à Gabriel Marcel, Paris: Tequi, 1938. Hanley,Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Katharine Rose Theatre and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973), Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987, copyright returned to K. R. Hanley 1997. Marcel, GabrielCreative Fidelity, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002. Marcel, GabrielThe Philosophy of Existentialism, NY: Citadel Press, The Philosophical Library, 1956. Marcel, GabrielExistential Background of Human Dignity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Marcel, GabrielSearchings, NY: Newman Press, 1967. Marcel, GabrielPercées vers un ailleurs, Paris: Fayard, 1973. Marcel, Gabriel Presence and Immortality, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967. Marcel, GabrielLe Siècle à Venir, Paris: Fondation Roland de Jouvenel, 1971. Marcel, GabrielAwakenings, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2002. Marcel, GabrielGabriel Marcel: Gaston Fessard Correspondance (1934-1971) présentée et annotée par Henri de Lubac, Marie Rougier et Michel Sales, introduction par Xavier Tilliette, Paris: Beauchesne, 1985. Parain-Vial, Jeanne Gabriel Marcel Un Veilleur et un éveilleur, Lausanne: Editions L’Âge d’Homme, 1989. Plourde, Simone Vocabulaire Philosophique de Gabriel Marcel (Recherches. Nouvelle Série-6), Montréal: Bellarmin, Paris: Cerf, 1985. Sacquin, MichelleGabriel Marcel: Colloque organisé par la Bibliothèque Nationale et la «Présence de Gabriel Marcel», Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1989.

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Schilpp, Paul The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: Library of Living and Hahn, Lewis Philosophers, Vol. XVII, La Salle, IL: Opencourt, 1984. Troisfontaines, Roger, S.J. De L’Existence à L’Être. La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel, Louvain: Nauwelaerts, Paris: Beatrice /Nauwelaerts - Vrin, 2 vols. 1953, 2e édition.

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Suarez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity (Marquette Studies in Philosophy)

God & The Modern World (Marquette Studies in Philosophy)

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Augustine of Hippo: Philosopher, Exegete and Theologian: A Second Collection of Essays (Marquette Studies in Philosophy)

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