They gaze into each other’s eyes! DE VARDES What is Thy name? YVETTE Yvette. SÉRAPHINE Ay, ay, ‘tis so!—Yvette. Called also The Right of the Seigneur!— DE VARDES The Right of the Seigneur! SÉRAPHINE (_nodding_) Just so. LALAIN (_aside_) Recall Just one of a great seigneur’s privileges! _Baiser des mariées_, in short, my friend! SÉRAPHINE O holy Saints! the night that she was born! The thunder pealed, the sea gave forth a cry, The forked lightnings played, the winds were out And in the hut her mother lay and wailed, And called on all the saints, the while Jehan (That was her mother’s husband, monseigneur), He stood and struck his heel against the logs. Up flew the sparks, for all the wood was drift, Salt with the sea, and every flame was blue. I held the babe—Yvette, show monseigneur The mark beneath the ear! YVETTE No! SÉRAPHINE Stubbornness! ‘Tis there! LALAIN A birthmark—a small blue flower! DE VARDES Ah! SÉRAPHINE Ay! a little mark.—Jehan Charruel! He was a violent man,—the sea breeds such! He cursed Yvonne upon her pallet there, So pale she was, and dying with the tide! He cursed the saints, the purple mark, the babe, And some one else I dare not name— LALAIN I dare! Henri-Etienne-Amaury de Vardes, Late Baron of Morbec! SÉRAPHINE Then out he goes, A-weeping hard—Jehan—into the night. Ouf! how it blew!— The sea ran high, he met it in the dark, Was drowned! Yvonne went with the ebb. Behold Yvette! [SÉRAPHINE _retreats to the table, where she furtively drinks from a half-emptied wineglass_. LALAIN _follows her and the two talk together_. DE VARDES That purple flower, that violet By nature limned upon thy slender throat,— From north to south, from east to west ‘tis known! A De Vardes bore that mark at Poitiers. The marshal, Hugues the Fair, and black Arnaud, The late baron—Why, what hast thou to do With burning down châteaux to make a light To show the Morbihan that purple flower? YVETTE O Our Lady of Thorns! DE VARDES