"You have been weeping, little mother," he says to his mother, in his father's presence. "Do not hold the lamp under their eyes so," responds Golaud. Then follows the poetic and famous scene of Mélisande on the tower combing her unbound locks and singing in the moonlight. It is a magical picture. One recalls Lilith, that first wife of Adam, painted by Rossetti, who also combed dangerous silken tresses. Pelléas enters, and the ensuing duologue is rich in tenderness and amorous poetry. One in vain endeavours to recall so intensely vivid a scene in literature since Romeo and Juliet. The romance of the French Romantics always verged on the melodramatic and artificial, and the stately classics are not happy in moments of this kind. The similar scene in Cyrano, when compared to Pelléas and Mélisande, is mere rococo pasteboard, though theatrically effective. Rostand is, at his best, Orientally sentimental, as befits his blood; he is never truly poetic, for he is a winning rhetorician, a "rhyming Sardou," rather than a dramatic poet. The mad apostrophe to the hair of Mélisande is in key with the entire setting of this moving tableau. "I have never seen such hair as thine, Mélisande. I see the sky no longer through thy locks.... They are alive like birds in my hands." Even the surprising of the lovers by the sleepless husband has nothing theatric in it. He tells them that they are children--"what children!"--and bids Mélisande not to lean so far out of her window. In the next scene we see him with Pelléas in the vaults of the castle. There is something evil in his heart; in the brain of Maeterlinck there was Poe when he wrote this episode. Golaud leads Pelléas through the vault. Pelléas almost stumbles into an abyss--his brother has made a misstep. We feel ourselves listening here on the brink of a catastrophe that does not happen. It recalls Poe's Cask of Amontillado. A painful scene is the questioning of little Yniold by his father. He asked the boy what Mélisande and Pelléas talked of when together; asked of their movements. Then he lifts his son to the window and bids him look on and report. It is masterly in its cruel directness. "Are they near each other?" he demands. "No, little father." Other even more searching questions follow, and when the unfortunate spy is clutched in a fierce grip he cries, "Ah, ah! little father, you have hurt me." Unconsciously Golaud has betrayed his woful agitation.