O brother! I have put my trust in you! Will you not help me? I beg you, soldier, head of gold, O my bright-haired brother! TÊTE-D'OR: Oh! That I could do as does the eagle, Who, letting fall a useless prey, perishes in his ravaged eyrie! Why did you cross my path? Why, like pride, having kneeled before me, did you clasp me in your arms like a tree or a fountain? On my heart, he pressed his face against this throbbing regret! And again he asks my help in the hour of his death! I do not understand! I have done my best And I have turned my steps towards that house of sin, And I thought that, having renounced all selfish hope, To-day I would work with my hands. You speak of desire, the necessity of the present hour constrains me! The rapacious desire drags me forward through this place of horror. And he asks, and I cannot reply to this poor luckless child, and he is dying before my eyes! CÉBÈS: You weep? Is that your only answer? TÊTE-D'OR: I beg you To leave me alone and not to question me. What do you want of me? Shall I hide you in my belly and give birth to you again? It is most horrible That you should draw these woman's tear-drops from me. You question me and, like a brutish thing, I can reply only by these vain waters! CÉBÈS: You shall not escape me thus. Answer and I will question you. For you are my teacher and must answer me. Answer! When a man dies does something still survive? TÊTE-D'OR: Be still, and try me no more. CÉBÈS: Answer! Is there an end of the personality? For as for the bodily form we know that it disappears. TÊTE-D'OR: I answer that man has been conceived according to the flesh. CÉBÈS: And to die is not to escape? TÊTE-D'OR: This world was made for man and a limit was set about him, That he might not escape and that no one might enter in. CÉBÈS: Then I shall die and shall no longer exist? TÊTE-D'OR: I will tell you what I know when I do not know it. And my answer is silence, and the breath that blows from the open and black abyss. You did not breathe in the days when you lay in the womb of your mother, But her blood entered into your body and flowed in you and your heart was moored to her heart through the middle of your belly, And having come out of her you breathed and uttered a cry! I also have uttered a cry, A cry like a babe new-born, and I have drawn the keen and burning sword, and have beheld Humanity divide before me like the separation of the waters! And now I return to you and find you in the lassitude of death! Must everyone that I love die and leave me alone? Must you wither in my hands like a flower of the stream before I had asked "Who are you?" and you had answered me? Pit of weariness! Horror in which I stand! Is there someone here? Is there something stable here? Who will carve a letter upon the face of the Mountain? We can eat; we can lay a dish before ourselves and feed; But the gravel sets our teeth on edge and ever from our eyes there flow invisible tears.