water in the world....

ALLADINE.

I dare not look upon it longer....

PALOMIDES.

See how about us all is luminous.... The light dares hesitate no
longer, and we kiss each other in the vestibules of heaven.... Seest
thou the precious stones that gem the vaults, drunken with life, that
seem to smile on us; and the thousands and thousands of glowing blue
roses that climb along the pillars?...

ALLADINE.

Oh!... I heard!...

PALOMIDES.

What?

ALLADINE.

Some one striking the rocks....

PALOMIDES.

No, no; it is the golden gates of a new Paradise, that open in our
souls and sing upon their hinges!...

ALLADINE.

Listen.... again, again!...

PALOMIDES (_with voice suddenly changed_).

Yes; it is there.... It is at the bottom of the bluest vaults....

ALLADINE.

They are coming to....

PALOMIDES.

I hear the sound of iron on the rock.... They have walled up the door
or cannot open it.... It is the picks grating against the stone....
His soul has told him we were happy....

[A silence; then a stone is detached at the very end of the vault,
and a ray of daylight breaks into the cavern.]

ALLADINE.

Oh!...

PALOMIDES.

It is another light....

[Motionless and anxious, they watch other stones detach themselves
slowly in an insufferable light, and fall one by one; while the
light, entering in more and more resistless floods, reveals to
them little by little the gloom of the cavern they had thought
marvellous. The miraculous lake becomes wan and sinister; the
precious stones about them are extinguished, and the glowing roses
appear as the stains and rotten rubbish that they are. At last,
the whole side of rock falls abruptly into the crypt. The sunlight
enters, dazzling. Calls and songs are heard without. Alladine and
Palomides recoil.]

PALOMIDES.

Where are we?

ALLADINE (_embracing him_).

I love thee still, Palomides....

PALOMIDES.

I love thee too, my Alladine....

ALLADINE.

They come....

PALOMIDES.

[_Looking behind him as they still recoil_.] Have a care....

ALLADINE.

No, no; have no more care....

PALOMIDES (_looking at her_).

Alladine?

ALLADINE.

Yes ...

[They still recoil before the invasion of light or peril, until
they lose their footing; and they fall and disappear behind the
rock that overhangs the underground and now gloomy water.--A
silence. Astolaine and the sisters of Palom