CYRANO (feigning great alarm): Am I in Africa? A native you? DE GUICHE (who has remembered his mask): This mask of mine. . . CYRANO (pretending to be reassured): In Venice? ha!--or Rome? DE GUICHE (trying to pass): A lady waits. . CYRANO (quite reassured): Oh-ho! I am in Paris! DE GUICHE (smiling in spite of himself): The fool is comical! CYRANO: You laugh? DE GUICHE: I laugh, But would get by! CYRANO (beaming with joy): I have shot back to Paris! (Quite at ease, laughing, dusting himself, bowing): Come--pardon me--by the last water-spout, Covered with ether,--accident of travel! My eyes still full of star-dust, and my spurs Encumbered by the planets' filaments! (Picking something off his sleeve): Ha! on my doublet?--ah, a comet's hair!. . . (He puffs as if to blow it away.) DE GUICHE (beside himself): Sir!. . . CYRANO (just as he is about to pass, holds out his leg as if to show him something and stops him): In my leg--the calf--there is a tooth Of the Great Bear, and, passing Neptune close, I would avoid his trident's point, and fell, Thus sitting, plump, right in the Scales! My weight Is marked, still registered, up there in heaven! (Hurriedly preventing De Guiche from passing, and detaining him by the button of his doublet): I swear to you that if you squeezed my nose It would spout milk! DE GUICHE: Milk? CYRANO: From the Milky Way! DE GUICHE: Oh, go to hell! CYRANO (crossing his arms): I fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, I carried safe away at no small risks, Will serve for asterisks i' the printed page! DE GUICHE: Come, make an end! I want. . . CYRANO: Oh-ho! You are sly! DE GUICHE: Sir! CYRANO: You would worm all out of me!--the way The moon is made, and if men breathe and live In its rotund cucurbita? DE GUICHE (angrily): No, no! I want. . . CYRANO: Ha, ha!--to know how I got up? Hark, it was by a method all my own. DE GUICHE (wearied): He's mad! CYRANO(contemptuously): No! not for me the stupid eagle Of Regiomontanus, nor the timid Pigeon of Archytas--neither of those! DE GUICHE: Ay, 'tis a fool! But 'tis a learned fool! CYRANO: No imitator I of other men! (De Guiche has succeeded in getting by, and goes toward Roxane's door. Cyrano follows him, ready to stop him by force): Six novel methods, all, this brain invented! DE GUICHE (turning round): Six? CYRANO (volubly): First, with body naked as your hand, Festooned about with crystal flacons, full O' th' tears the early morning dew distils; My body to the sun's fierce rays exposed To let it suck me up, as 't sucks the dew!