Pelléas and Mélisande love. Golaud suspects it, and his jealousy, mixing with his love for brother and wife, is delineated masterfully. We now begin to see the fruits of the dramatist's careful study of moods. Evanescent as are the moods of the previous plays, they served as spiritual gymnastics. With them he proved his ability to portray the finer shades of terror, remorse, love, despair. In the jealousy of Golaud he takes a step nearer the concrete. Golaud is a hunter, a man whose temples are touched by gray. He adores his child-wife and trusts her. He begs the moody Pelléas to wait upon her. His marriage with her has surprised all, save his grandfather. Arkël says:-- "He has done what he probably must have done. I am very old, and nevertheless I have not yet seen clearly for one moment into myself; how would you that I judge what others have done?" A wonderful man, indeed. Pelléas wishes to visit his dying friend Marcellus--the Shakespeare nomenclature persists--but Arkël begs him to stay at home, where death approaches. Mélisande is well received by the King and Queen. She is astonished at the gloom of the gardens, and is pleased with the spectacle of the sea. In the ending of Act I we get a faint premonition of disaster. Pelléas and Mélisande watch the departure of the ship that brought Mélisande. (Maeterlinck here borrows an early effect from The Seven Princesses.) It flies away under full sail. _Pelléas_. Nothing can be seen any longer on the sea.... _Mélisande_. I see more lights. _Pelléas_. It is the other lighthouses.... Do you hear the sea? It is the wind rising. Let us go down this way. Will you give me your hand? _Mélisande_. See, see, my hands are full. _Pelléas_, I will hold you by the arm; the road is steep and it is very gloomy there.... I am going away, perhaps, to-morrow.... _Mélisande_. Oh! ... Why do you go away? [_Curtain_. Much sport has been made of the first scene in this play. Yet it only displays the poet's worship of Shakespeare. Maid-servants are discovered at the castle gate. They gabble as they knock for admission. It is as prosaic as the rest of the work is poetic. A porter of the "Anon, anon, I come" type holds parley. He is borrowed from Macbeth. However, it does not demand a close reading of this episode to discover that it sounds the keynote to music--always symbolical--of the drama that follows. IV