Yes, it is true, my Joyzelle, I am yearning to enjoy your delighted surprise, to follow your glances which seem to me so beautiful in their astonished flight, in which confidence dawns and which no longer know where to rest their wings, like sea-birds that have lost the shore.... I am taking my share of the happiness which I bestow.... I shall have no other.... But do not be anxious, we shall together enter into fate's secrets; and, when Lancéor.... JOYZELLE. Where is he? MERLIN. Ah, that name rouses you; and see, the shore appears to those glances lost in space!... Listen, I hear him.... Your heart, without our knowing it, has gone to tell him that you loved him to the point which love cannot surpass.... He is hastening, he is here!... [_The door opens. Enter LANCÉOR, followed by ARIELLE, invisible._ LANCÉOR. Father!... She is mine!... MERLIN. My son, she has triumphed; destiny gives her to you.... LANCÉOR. (_Taking JOYZELLE in his arms and covering her with wild kisses._) Ah, I knew it and I was sure of it!... Joyzelle, my Joyzelle!... I do not ask what you can have done to disarm fate.... I know nothing yet; but we know all beforehand who love each other as you and I love; and already I hail the new truth that must have been revealed at the first touch of your heart!... Ah, father, father, I told you, I told you!... But she does not understand why I am embracing you.... It is true, I go too fast.... Come here, Joyzelle, that I may unite you both in my arms.... We had with us an enemy who loves us; he was obliged to make us suffer; and that gentle enemy was my own father, whom I thought lost, my father here, my father found again, who awaits but a smile to embrace you too.... Oh, do not turn away, do not look at me with those eyes already laden with reproaches.... I have hidden nothing from you.... I knew it to-day, this evening, the moment you left me; and, so soon as I knew it, I had to fly far from you, lest I should betray myself, for all our happiness, it appears, depended on this last secret; and, when a secret is committed to love, it is as though one hid a lighted lamp in a crystal vase.... You would have learnt all merely by seeing my eyes, my hands, my very shadow; and I could not show you my happiness.... You were not to know of it till the great proof.... It was necessary that you should do an impossible thing.... What thing I do not know; but, smile as I might, I had to yield; I had to wait and patiently count the minutes of the hour which thus separated our two impatient passions.... But now, I hasten, I listen, I want to know.... Speak, speak, I am listening.... JOYZELLE. Since you are happy, I am happy, too.... I know nothing more.... I have scarce awakened from a horrible and incomprehensible dream.... MERLIN. Yes, my poor Joyzelle, the dream was horrible; but now it is overcome and the proof is past, establishing a happiness which nothing threatens now, except the enemy that threatens all men....