All will be ready to-morrow. We cannot wait longer. He prowls like a madman through the corridors of the palace; I met him even now. He looked at me without a word. I passed; and as I turned, I saw him slyly laugh, shaking his keys. When he perceived that I was looking at him, he smiled at me, making signs of friendship. He must have some secret project, and we are in the hands of a master whose reason begins to totter.... To-morrow we shall be far away.... Yonder there are wonderful countries that resemble thine.... Astolaine has already provided for our flight and for my sisters'.... ALLADINE. What has she said? PALOMIDES. Nothing, nothing.... You will see everything about my father's castle,--after days of sea and days of forests--you will see lakes and mountains ... not like these, under a sky that looks like the vault of a cave, with black trees that the storms destroy ... but a sky beneath which there is nothing more to fear,--forests that are always awake, flowers that do not close.... ALLADINE. She wept? PALOMIDES. What are you asking?... There is something there of which we have no right to speak, do you understand?... There is a life there that does not belong to our poor life, and which love has no right to approach except in silence.... We are here, like two beggars in rags, when I think of it.... Go! go!... I could tell you things.... ALLADINE. Palomides!... What is the matter? PALOMIDES. Go! go!... I have seen tears that came from further than the eyes.... There is something else.... It may be, nevertheless, that we are right ... but how I regret being right so, my God!... Go!... I will tell you to-morrow ... to-morrow ... to-morrow.... [_Exeunt severally_. SCENE III.--_A corridor before the apartment of_ ALLADINE. _Enter_ ASTOLAINE _and the_ SISTERS OF PALOMIDES. ASTOLAINE. The horses wait in the forest, but Palomides will not flee; and yet your lives and his are in danger. I do not know my poor father any longer. He has a fixed idea that troubles his reason. This is the third day I have followed him step by step, hiding myself behind the pillars and the walls, for he suffers no one to companion him. To-day, as the other days, and from the first gleams of the morning he has gone wandering through the corridors and halls of the palace, and along the moats and ramparts, shaking the great golden keys he has had made and singing at the top of his voice the strange song whose refrain, _Go follow what your eyes have seen_, has perhaps pierced even to the depths of your chambers. I have concealed from you till now all that has come to pass, because such things must not be spoken of without reason. He must have shut up Alladine in this apartment, but no one knows what he has done with her. I have listened at the doors every night and whenever he has been away a moment, but I have never heard any noise in the room.... Do you hear anything?