Alladine and Palomides. _To Camille Mauclair_. Persons. ABLAMORE. ASTOLAINE, _daughter of Ablamore_. ALLADINE. PALOMIDES. THE SISTERS OF PALOMIDES. A PHYSICIAN. [NOTE: The translation of Ablamore's song is taken from the version of this play made by the editors of "Poet-lore." R.H.] Alladine and Palomides. * * * * * ACT FIRST. _A-wild part of the gardens_. ABLAMORE _discovered leaning over_ ALLADINE, _who is asleep_. ABLAMORE. Methinks sleep reigns day and night beneath these trees. Each time she comes here with me toward nightfall, she is hardly seated when she falls asleep. Alas! I must be glad even of that.... During the day, whene'er I speak to her and her look happens to encounter mine, it is hard as a slave's to whom a thing impossible has just been bidden.... Yet that is not her customary look.... I have seen her many times resting her beautiful eyes on children, on the forest, the sea, or her surroundings. She smiles at me as one smiles on a foe; and I dare not bend over her save at times when her eyes can no longer see me.... I have a few moments every evening; and all the rest of the day I live beside her with my eyes cast down.... It is sad to love too late.... Maids cannot understand that years do not separate hearts.... They have called me "The wise King."... I was wise because till now nothing had happened to me.... There are men who seem to turn events aside. It was enough that I should be about for nothing to be able to have birth.... I had suspected it of old.... In the time of my youth, I had many friends whose presence seemed to attract every adventure; but the days when I went forth with them, for the encounter of joys or sorrows, they came back again with empty hands.... I think I palsied fate; and I long took pride in this gift. One lived under cover in my reign.... But now I have recognized that misfortune itself is better worth than sleep, and that there must be a life more active and higher than waiting.... They shall see that I too have strength to trouble, when I will, the water that seems dead at the bottom of the great caldrons of the future.... Alladine, Alladine!... Oh! she is lovely so, her hair over the flowers and over her pet lamb, her lips apart and fresher than the morn.... I will kiss her without her knowing, holding back my poor white beard.... [_He kisses her._]--She smiled.... Should I pity her? For the few years she gives me, she will some day be queen; and I shall have done a little good before I go away.... They will be astonished.... She herself does not know.... Ah! here she wakes with a start.... Where are you coming from, Alladine? ALLADINE. I have had a bad dream.... ABLAMORE. What is the matter? Why do you look yonder? ALLADINE. Some one went by upon the road. ABLAMORE. I heard nothing. ALLADINE.