How many an afternoon I have passed beneath its shadow, having quieted the clamor of my thoughts. CÉBÈS: And what has it taught you? SIMON: Now, in this hour of anguish! Now I must find it again! _(They come to the foot of a huge tree._ O tree, receive me again! Alone I left the protection of your branches. And now it is alone that I return, O immovable father! Take me once more beneath your shadow, O son of the Earth! O wood, in this hour of sorrow! O murmuring branches, impart to me That message which I am and of which I feel within me the terrible striving. For you yourself are only a ceaseless striving, the unwearied drawing of your body out of inanimate matter. How you suck the earth, old tree, Thrusting down, stretching out in every direction your strong and subtile roots! And the sky, how you cling to it! How your whole being breathes it in through one great leaf, Form of Flame! The inexhaustible earth in the grasp of all the roots of your being And the infinite sky, with the sun, with the stars in their constellations, Of which you lay hold with that mouth made of all your arms, with the cluster of your branches, with the clutch of all there is in you that breathes. All the earth and all the sky, these are what you require that you may hold yourself erect! Let me also hold myself erect! Let me not lose my soul! That essential sap, that innermost secretion of my ego, that effervescence Which constitutes my true self, oh let me not squander that to make a useless tuft of leaves and flowers! Let me grow in my unity! Let me remain unique and erect! But it was not to hear your murmuring that I came, O branches that now are bare mid the air opaque and nebulous! But it is you that I would question, deep-reaching roots and that primal depth of the earth where you are nourished. _(He stands beneath the tree.--Pause of indefinite duration._ SIMON (_sighing, like one awakening from a dream_): Let us go. CÉBÈS: O Simon, you will not leave me so! Have you learned nothing then, under that tree of knowledge? SIMON: Nothing that I can tell you. CÉBÈS: Well, the thing that you cannot tell, that is what I demand. Oh, if indeed Some law is graven on your heart, if some commandment And edict of Nature Pushes you as from its knee into the midst of us, miserable wretches.... _(He kneels before him._ SIMON: What do you want? CÉBÈS: Do not forget me! SIMON: Why do you wish to make me speak? Leave me, for my spirit smokes and boils, and I am shaken through all my being! CÉBÈS: I am the first to summon you. SIMON: What do you seek? CÉBÈS: Your hands! Let me take them! Do not refuse me! SIMON: Ah! ah! CÉBÈS: What is it? SIMON: A spirit has breathed upon me and I vibrate like a post. --Cébès, a force has been given to me, stark, savage! It is the fury of the male. There is no woman in me. CÉBÈS: I implore you. SIMON: Do not hope to know more than I wish to tell you.