Three Plays Part 29

HENRY IV. (_puzzled_). Still? Still, you say? You know, then? But n.o.body knows! n.o.body must know!

DONNA MATILDA. But perhaps she knows, if she has begged so hard for you!

HENRY IV. (_looks at her and says_): And you love your daughter? (_Brief pause. He turns to the doctor with laughing accents_). Ah, Monsignor, it's strange how little I think of my wife! It may be a sin, but I swear to you that I hardly feel her at all in my heart. What is stranger is that her own mother scarcely feels her in her heart. Confess, my Lady, that she amounts to very little for you. (_Turning to Doctor_): She talks to me of that other woman, insistently, insistently, I don't know why!...

LANDOLPH (_humbly_). Maybe, Majesty, it is to disabuse you of some ideas you have had about the Marchioness of Tuscany.

(_Then, dismayed at having allowed himself this observation, adds_): I mean just now, of course....

HENRY IV. You too maintain that she has been friendly to me?

LANDOLPH. Yes, at the moment, Majesty.

DONNA MATILDA. Exactly! Exactly!...

HENRY IV. I understand. That is to say, you don't believe I love her. I see! I see! n.o.body's ever believed it, n.o.body's ever thought it. Better so, then! But enough, enough!

(_Turns to the doctor with changed expression_): Monsignor, you see? The reasons the Pope has had for revoking the excommunication have got nothing at all to do with the reasons for which he excommunicated me originally. Tell Pope Gregory we shall meet again at Brixen. And you, Madame, should you chance to meet your daughter in the courtyard of the castle of your friend the Marchioness, ask her to visit me. We shall see if I succeed in keeping her close beside me as wife and Empress. Many women have presented themselves here already a.s.suring me that they were she. But they all, even while they told me they came from Susa--I don't know why--began to laugh! And then in the bedroom.... Well a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. Undressed, we don't bother much about who we are. And one's dress is like a phantom that hovers, always near one. Oh, Monsignor, phantoms in general are nothing more than trifling disorders of the spirit: images we cannot contain within the bounds of sleep.

They reveal themselves even when we are awake, and they frighten us. I ... ah ... I am always afraid when, at night time, I see disordered images before me. Sometimes I am even afraid of my own blood pulsing loudly in my arteries in the silence of night, like the sound of a distant step in a lonely corridor!... But, forgive me! I have kept you standing too long already. I thank you, my Lady, I thank you, Monsignor. (_Donna Matilda and the Doctor go off bowing. As soon as they have gone, Henry IV. suddenly changes his tone_). Buffoons, buffoons! One can play any tune on them! And that other fellow ... Pietro Damiani!...

Caught him out perfectly! He's afraid to appear before me again. (_Moves up and down excitedly while saying this; then sees Berthold, and points him out to the other three valets_). Oh, look at this imbecile watching me with his mouth wide open! (_Shakes him_). Don't you understand? Don't you see, idiot, how I treat them, how I play the fool with them, make them appear before me just as I wish? Miserable, frightened clowns that they are! And you (_addressing the valets_) are amazed that I tear off their ridiculous masks now, just as if it wasn't I who had made them mask themselves to satisfy this taste of mine for playing the madman!

LANDOLPH--HAROLD--ORDULPH (_bewildered, looking at one another_). What? What does he say? What?

HENRY IV. (_answers them imperiously_). Enough! enough!

Let's stop it. I'm tired of it. (_Then as if the thought left him no peace_): By G.o.d! The impudence! To come here along with her lover!... And pretending to do it out of pity! So as not to infuriate a poor devil already out of the world, out of time, out of life! If it hadn't been supposed to be done out of pity, one can well imagine that fellow wouldn't have allowed it. Those people expect others to behave as they wish all the time. And of course, there's nothing arrogant in that! Oh, no! Oh, no! It's merely their way of thinking, of feeling, of seeing. Everybody has his own way of thinking; you fellows, too. Yours is that of a flock of sheep--miserable, feeble, uncertain.... But those others take advantage of this and make you accept their way of thinking; or, at least, they suppose they do; Because, after all, what do they succeed in imposing on you? Words, words which anyone can interpret in his own manner! That's the way public opinion is formed! And it's a bad look out for a man who finds himself labelled one day with one of these words which everyone repeats; for example "madman," or "imbecile." Don't you think is rather hard for a man to keep quiet, when he knows that there is a fellow going about trying to persuade everybody that he is as he sees him, than to fix him in other people's opinion as a "madman"--according to him? Now I am talking seriously!

Before I hurt my head, falling from my horse.... (_stops suddenly, noticing the dismay of the four young men_).

What's the matter with you? (_Imitates their amazed looks_).

What? Am I, or am I not, mad? Oh, yes! I'm mad all right!

(_He becomes terrible_). Well, then, by G.o.d, down on your knees, down on your knees! (_Makes them go down on their knees one by one_). I order you to go down on your knees before me! And touch the ground three times with your foreheads! Down, down! That's the way you've got to be before madmen! (_Then annoyed with their facile humiliation_): Get up, sheep! You obeyed me, didn't you? You might have put the straight jacket on me!... Crush a man with the weight of a word--it's nothing--a fly! all our life is crushed by the weigh of words: the weight of the dead.

Look at me here: can you really suppose that Henry IV. is still alive? All the same, I speak, and order you live men about! Do you think it's a joke that the dead continue to live?--Yes, _here_ it's a joke! But get out into the live world!--Ah, you say: what a beautiful sunrise--for us! All time is before us!--Dawn! We will do what we like with this day--. Ah, yes! To tell with tradition, the old conventions!

Well, go on! You will do nothing but repeat the old, old words, while you imagine you are living! (_Goes up to Berthold who has now become quite stupid_.) You don't understand a word of this, do you? What's your name?

BERTHOLD. I?... What?... Berthold....

HENRY IV. Poor Berthold! What's your name here?

BERTHOLD. I ... I ... my name in Fino.

HENRY IV. (_feeling the warning and critical glances of the others, turns to them to reduce them to silence_). Fino?

BERTHOLD. Fino Pagliuca, sire.

HENRY IV. (_turning to Landolph_). I've heard you call each other by your nick-names often enough! Your name is Lolo, isn't it?

LANDOLPH. Yes, sire.... (_then with a sense of immense joy_). Oh, Lord! Oh Lord! Then he is not mad....

HENRY IV. (_brusquely_). What?

LANDOLPH (_hesitating_). No ... I said....

HENRY IV. Not mad, eh? We're having a joke on those that think I am mad! (_To Harold_)--I say, boy, your name's Franco.... (_to Ordulph_) And yours....

ORDULPH. Momo.

HENRY IV. Momo, Momo.... A nice name that!

LANDOLPH. So he isn't....

HENRY IV. What are you talking about? Of course not! Let's have a jolly, good laugh!... (_Laughs_): Ah!... Ah!...

Ah!...

LANDOLPH--HAROLD--ORDULPH (_looking at each other half happy and half dismayed_). Then he's cured!... he's all right!...

HENRY IV. Silence! Silence!... (_To Berthold_): Why don't you laugh? Are you offended? I didn't mean it especially for you. It's convenient for everybody to insist that certain people are mad, so they can be shut up. Do you know why?

Because it's impossible to hear them speak! What shall I say of these people who've just gone away? That one is a wh.o.r.e, another a libertine, another a swindler ... don't you think so? You can't believe a word he says ... don't you think so?--By the way, they all listen to me terrified. And why are they terrified, if what I say isn't true? Of course, you can't believe what madmen say--yet, at the same time, they stand there with their eyes wide open with terror!--Why?

Tell me, tell me, why?--You see I'm quite calm now!

BERTHOLD. But, perhaps, they think that....

HENRY IV. No, no, my dear fellow! Look me well in the eyes!... I don't say that it's true--nothing is true, Berthold! But ... look me in the eyes!

BERTHOLD. Well....

HENRY IV. You see? You see?... You have terror in your own eyes now because I seem mad to you! There's the proof of it (_laughs_)!

LANDOLPH (_coming forward in the name of the others, exasperated_). What proof?

HENRY IV. Your being so dismayed because now I seem again mad to you. You have thought me mad up to now, haven't you?

You feel that this dismay of yours can become terror too--something to dash away the ground from under your feet and deprive you of the air you breathe! Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman--with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, the logic of all your constructions?

Madmen, lucky folk! construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather. Voluble! Voluble! Today like this and tomorrow--who knows? You say: "This cannot be"; but for them everything can be. You say: "This isn't true!" And why? Because it doesn't seem true to you, or you, or you ... (_indicates the three of them in succession_) ...

and to a hundred thousand others! One must see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not supposed to be mad! What a magnificent spectacle they afford, when they reason! What flowers of logic they scatter! I know that when I was a child, I thought the moon in the pond was real.

How many things I thought real! I believed everything I was told--and I was happy! Because it's a terrible thing if you don't hold on to that which seems true to you today--to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday. I would never wish you to think, as I have done, on this horrible thing which really drives one mad: that if you were beside another and looking into his eyes--as I one day looked into somebody's eyes--you might as well be a beggar before a door never to be opened to you; for he who does enter there will never be you, but someone unknown to you with his own indifferent and impenetrable world.... (_Long pause.

Darkness gathers in the room, increasing the sense of strangeness and consternation in which the four young men are involved. Henry IV. remains aloof, pondering on the misery which is not only his, but everybody's. Then he pulls himself up, and says in an ordinary tone_): It's getting dark here....

ORDULPH. Shall I go for a lamp?

HENRY IV. (_Ironically_). The lamp, yes the lamp!... Do you suppose I don't know that as soon as I turn my back with my oil lamp to go to bed, you turn on the electric light for yourselves, here, and even there, in the throne room? I pretend not to see it!

ORDULPH. Well, then, shall I turn it on now?

HENRY IV. No, it would blind me! I want my lamp!

ORDULPH. It's ready here behind the door. (_Goes to the main exit, opens the door, goes out for a moment, and returns with an ancient lamp which is held by a ring at the top_).

HENRY IV. Ah, a little light! Sit there around the table, no, not like that; in an elegant, easy, manner!... (_To Harold_): Yes, you, like that (poses him)! (_Then to Berthold_): You, so!... and I, here (_sits opposite them_)!

We could do with a little decorative moonlight. It's very useful for us, the moonlight. I feel a real necessity for it, and pa.s.s a lot of time looking up at the moon from my window. Who would think, to look at her that she knows that eight hundred years have pa.s.sed, and that I, seated at the window, cannot really be Henry IV. gazing at the moon like any poor devil? But, look, look! See what a magnificent night scene we have here: the emperor surrounded by his faithful counsellors!... How do you like it?

LANDOLPH (_softly to Harold, so as not to break the enchantment_). And to think it wasn't true!...

HENRY IV. True? What wasn't true?