Breaks and empties out entrails and excrements. Is it not horrible? But our life, Spreading a feast, stuffs itself with a banquet of crawling maggots Till, like a dog who vomits worms and morsels of meat, The loaded belly revolts and disgorges it all on the table! I long for happiness! But I am like a man beneath the earth in a cell no sound can enter. Who will open the door? Who will descend into the blackness of my dungeon, bearing in his hand the yellow flame? SIMON: I also lie in that secret place. I shall arise and burst open the door and I shall appear before men! Ah! Ah! CÉBÈS: What is it? SIMON: Do not speak! Ah! _(He stops._ CÉBÈS: What ails you? Why do you snuff the air? What do you smell? SIMON: The air and the earth. Ah! O the Spring that renews the year and the strong love that triumphs over virginity! O the ferment of life when the Springtime prepares its nuptials! There is not a thing that grows But feels the divine delirium entering like a creator, producing the flower and the seed. CÉBÈS: The wind is warm. SIMON: I have in my mouth the bitter savor of buds! The block Of my body Like a clod of frozen earth Thaws! O juice of life! Force and acquisition! Strength and the rising sap! I will open wide my jaws and I will raise my arms and hold them extended like branches! But come! CÉBÈS: Where are you taking me? Why have we left the road? SIMON: Why do we need a road? I know my way. Follow me! O Cébès in this you were right that not to an older man nor to any one of an age unlike your own did you address yourself so obscurely, For they could not answer you, not knowing what you ask. But if one can tell the vintage of a wine by its taste Why should we not believe that each generation of men Springing from the maternal furrow in its season Keeps a common secret, a changeless knot in the hidden texture of its wood? (Or rather I think of a carpet whose maker disposes the colors one after the other) --And a baby is weaned at eleven months, but the weaning of the spirit is slower. And till he learns to forage for himself (the amount being equal to the expenditure) the breast is not taken away, the communication with the source. --So if you put your ear against my heart--... But I myself am full of sorrow. CÉBÈS: We are going further and further. SIMON: As for me, I have never tried to fathom What lay in the heart of anyone, young or old. But a tree has been my father and my preceptor. For often when I was a child A black and bitter humor overwhelmed me, Making all company hateful, the air breathed by others a poison, So that I fled into solitude there to obscurely nourish this grief that I felt unfolding itself within me. And there I met this tree, Like some primordial man, surviving antiquity, And I embraced it, clasping its trunk in my arms. For it was there before I was born and will be there when we are here no longer, And the measure of its time is not the same as ours.