LISE (to Cyrano, who, as he passes by the counter, has absently shaken hands with her): What's wrong with your hand? CYRANO: Naught; a slight cut. RAGUENEAU: Have you been in some danger? CYRANO: None in the world. LISE (shaking her finger at him): Methinks you speak not the truth in saying that! CYRANO: Did you see my nose quiver when I spoke? 'Faith, it must have been a monstrous lie that should move it! (Changing his tone): I wait some one here. Leave us alone, and disturb us for naught an it were not for crack of doom! RAGUENEAU: But 'tis impossible; my poets are coming. . . LISE (ironically): Oh, ay, for their first meal o' the day! CYRANO: Prythee, take them aside when I shall make you sign to do so. . .What's o'clock? RAGUENEAU: Ten minutes after six. CYRANO (nervously seating himself at Ragueneau's table, and drawing some paper toward him): A pen!. . . RAGUENEAU (giving him the one from behind his ear): Here--a swan's quill. A MUSKETEER (with fierce mustache, enters, and in a stentorian voice): Good-day! (Lise goes up to him quickly.) CYRANO (turning round): Who's that? RAGUENEAU: 'Tis a friend of my wife--a terrible warrior--at least so says he himself. CYRANO (taking up the pen, and motioning Ragueneau away): Hush! (To himself): I will write, fold it, give it her, and fly! (Throws down the pen): Coward!. . .But strike me dead if I dare to speak to her,. . .ay, even one single word! (To Ragueneau): What time is it? RAGUENEAU: A quarter after six!. . . CYRANO (striking his breast): Ay--a single word of all those here! here! But writing, 'tis easier done. . . (He takes up the pen): Go to, I will write it, that love-letter! Oh! I have writ it and rewrit it in my own mind so oft that it lies there ready for pen and ink; and if I lay but my soul by my letter-sheet, 'tis naught to do but to copy from it. (He writes. Through the glass of the door the silhouettes of their figures move uncertainly and hesitatingly.) Scene 2.IV. Ragueneau, Lise, the musketeer. Cyrano at the little table writing. The poets, dressed in black, their stockings ungartered, and covered with mud. LISE (entering, to Ragueneau): Here they come, your mud-bespattered friends! FIRST POET (entering, to Ragueneau): Brother in art!. . . SECOND POET (to Ragueneau, shaking his hands): Dear brother! THIRD POET: High soaring eagle among pastry-cooks! (He sniffs): Marry! it smells good here in your eyrie! FOURTH POET: 'Tis at Phoebus' own rays that thy roasts turn! FIFTH POET: Apollo among master-cooks-- RAGUENEAU (whom they surround and embrace): Ah! how quick a man feels at his ease with them!. . . FIRST POET: We were stayed by the mob; they are crowded all round the Porte de Nesle!. . . SECOND POET: Eight bleeding brigand carcasses strew the pavements there--all slit open with sword-gashes! CYRANO (raising his head a minute): Eight?. . .hold, methought seven.