Sight was horrible to me; I went to bed. O Sleep, Kill me with your leaden dart! But I cannot sleep and I open my eyes again in the black Nothingness. It has no knowledge nor any real existence But the gloom takes weight and stiflingly presses upon us. Oh! oh! I shudder from head to foot and I cry aloud in my anguish! And I leap out of bed and run hither and thither, striking my head against the walls. And I see again these frightful places and I meet Only Madness and Horror! --Am I keeping you awake, my child? CÉBÈS: I cannot sleep. THE KING: Well, I will wait here with you. CÉBÈS: How far away is the enemy? THE KING: Not more than a day's march. I think the battle must have already been fought. --Still five hours till dawn! We shall see. Very soon we shall know. CÉBÈS: This very morning! It must be so. THE KING: Where are your parents, Cébès? CÉBÈS: I do not know, Sire. The war has swept them away. THE KING: I have only one daughter and I have no male child. CÉBÈS: Are you speaking to me, Sire? THE KING: How pale you are, my poor boy! You are very ill. Tête-d'or Was wise to leave you here. We will look after you, lad. I look at you! I wish to contemplate A thing still young, as I myself have been, And the dawning of power in astonished eyes! The young man sleeps very tranquilly. He dreams, and in his dream is the morning sun. The evening has been glorious, a golden day awaits him. I also have been young. I have been a young man also, And I have been a little, little child. Now I have lived three score and fifteen years, and I am old and at the end of my life. And this is what I am, and this is what I see! CÉBÈS: I shall be the first to die. I have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. I have not strength enough to rise and walk. Yes! What a thing it is to live! What an astonishing thing it is Only to live! What a mighty thing it is, only to live! He who lives And treads the earth under his feet, what does he envy the gods? I die, And only ask to once again behold him. THE KING: Of what are you dreaming? CÉBÈS: I dream of the day. THE KING: Go, die! CÉBÈS: What did you say? THE KING (_rising and running about distractedly_): Go, die! We all must die! O my country! My country! Behold your King wanders alone through his palace and can give you no aid. I am weaker than a woman in childbirth. _(He is seized with a fit of coughing._ A-ha! A-hha! O my country! You were weary of me. And everyone said that I built too much and did not know what I was doing and they took the money from me. But what of that! I loved you, O my realm! And must I see you thus destroyed and ravaged! Ah! Ah! Ah! Tremble, you lofty chimneys that tower to the stars and midst the marguerites and glow-worms are mirrored in the brimming moat. Uproot yourself, Ancestral beech whose branches shade the courtyard! Down to the dust with you, genealogy! And let the walls be rent asunder from base to battlement!