MARY MAGDALENE, LUCIUS VERUS
(Enter LUCIUS VERUS. MARY MAGDALENE runs up to him and throws herself into his arms.)
You at last, my Verus!... For three days I have awaited you, for three days I have called you. Men grant me my beauty when its triumph brings me nothing but regret and disgust. And I ask myself, is that beauty really powerless when, at last, there is a question of the happiness which every woman has the right to expect in her life?...
VERUS
I know not if I shall be able to give you the happiness that is your due, Magdalene; but be assured that your beauty never gained a more complete victory....
MARY MAGDALENE
What care I now for its victory!... It is I who am vanquished, utterly vanquished beforehand, without daring to confess it to myself, without being able to hide it from my indifference, so odiously acquired, or from my vanity, which has never been more than the shameful crown of my shame!... But why keep me waiting so long?... I thought that everything was abandoning me, that all was lost because of the dreadful words which I spoke at our good Silanus’ and which were not true, which were only a profounder lie then my other lies, because I was mad, because I did not know, because I did not wish for an impossible happiness....
VERUS
You well know, Magdalene, that I never believed you the woman you depicted.... But now neither do I dare believe in the happiness that approaches.... I am quite dazzled, I doubt, I grope in the dark.... I do not recognize the voice that has so often and so harshly repelled me.
MARY MAGDALENE (IN VERUS’ ARMS)
It is not the same voice, it is not the same soul....
VERUS
And yet it is really you whom I hold in my arms, it is every parcel of you whom I have implored so long!... I ask myself still if all is indeed real, if all is indeed possible, if you are not trifling with a too-credulous happiness which you will fling aside among all those which beauty shatters when testing its power.... But no, when I question, when I follow your eyes that plunge into mine, I see that it is indeed true, that it was always true....
MARY MAGDALENE
Yes, yes, it is true, it is true and it was always true.... I did not know it, I searched my heart in vain and I was ignorant of all my feelings until these days of anguish.... I refused to see that you were coming towards me and that everything was awaiting you.... And yet I ought to have known it.... Already, at Antioch, do you remember, Verus, how I avoided you?... I received so many others; and you alone, the comeliest, the purest, I tried to ignore, to blot out, to destroy.... As soon as you appeared, I withdrew, like a shy and distrustful animal, to my lair; and, only the other day, at our good Silanus’, I felt all the evil, all the cruelty, or all the despair that fills my heart rise to my lips.... But, to-day, I see; I am no longer the same; I no longer know myself, because I am myself once more.... All that used to resist is broken within my soul.... I no longer understand myself and I did not know that happiness is so strange a thing.... I, who never wept in my worst moments of distress, am sobbing to-day when happiness awaits me.... I am glad and light-hearted and yet more shattered than if all the misfortunes that hover in the skies were about to burst over me.... (Embracing him more passionately) Help me, my Verus, help me, support me, you whom nothing threatens, you who have nothing to fear!...
VERUS
But what has happened? Can any one have dared, in my absence...?
MARY MAGDALENE
No, no, nobody; and it is not that; and I myself do not know the danger that surrounds me.... But I have no other shelter than your arms; and I feel myself lost if I lose you too.... Take me, bear me away on that heart to which I am listening, far from myself, far from this place and from my anxiety.... You alone can save me and I have no life but that which you give me.... But why did you forsake me so long in my tears, why did you not come until after the third day, abandoning me thus, without a word of pity, without a sign of hope?...
VERUS
You are mistaken, Magdalene, or else your slaves did not acquaint you with the truth.... The very day after our meeting at Silanus’, I came to Bethany to tell you that, by order of the Procurator, I was suddenly sent, at the head of a cohort, to suppress a curious riot that had broken out near Jericho. The slaves who keep your door would not allow me to approach you and replied to me in such a way that I dared not well insist.... I understood that they were obeying orders so precise and so stern that I must not try to thwart them....
MARY MAGDALENE
It is true.... I forgot.... I was mad and worn out, incapable of seeing, willing or hearing.... I was not yet awake.... It seemed to me that I was still struggling amid the hideous crowd in Simon’s garden, where I called in vain upon him who had delivered me.... He was abandoning me, he too.... I sent in search of him to no purpose. No one could tell me where he was hiding.... Have you not seen him since?... Do you not know where he is?...
VERUS
Who?
MARY MAGDALENE
The Nazarene....
VERUS
Let us not speak of that wretched man: his hours are numbered....
MARY MAGDALENE
His hours are numbered?... What do you mean?...
VERUS
No matter: that does not interest us now and soon we shall know nothing of aught that does not touch our love; for it is wonderful to see how the thoughts of those who love each other meet and unite in spite of the distance and of the ill-natured speeches that come between them. Is it not astonishing that, after leaving you at Silanus’, where I had heard words that should have deprived me of all hope, I for the first time felt our young happiness swell and blossom in all its strength and all its certainty?... While you were calling me, I called you also with all the deep and wonderful voices of my heart. I was kept far from you by a duty unworthy of a soldier; for that expedition to Jericho, the last, I trust, upon which I shall be sent, was almost odious and often ridiculous. I counted with rage the minutes stolen from our new life, which was already beginning in a soul that feared none of my reasons for fearing....
MARY MAGDALENE
It will not really begin until we are far from this land where I suffocate, where everything darkens and threatens happiness, where I can no longer live.... Verus, I beseech you, if you love me as I love you, let us hasten, let us leave everything; there is no time to lose....
VERUS
You are right: a joy so long awaited must not be born among these sinister rocks, where floats an odour of death and madness.... And yet, even here, our thoughts came to an understanding long before our words.... Like you, I have resolved to leave this hated city, where really my obedience is abused.... I am at the orders of the Procurator, but not at the venomous service of the Jewish priests, nor of the clamorous and perfidious nation whom my old legionaries have conquered. I have had enough of this ambiguous life. Before to-night, I shall find a pretext for evading an order which I was to execute this very day, an order of which I but too well know the origin.... If the pretext appear insufficient, let Caiaphas and Annas go and complain to Cæsar.... Nothing counts in the presence of our love; and the inglorious errand which they claim the right to impose upon me repels me all the more inasmuch as it was to be accomplished, so to speak, before your eyes....
MARY MAGDALENE
Before my eyes?... Of what are you speaking?...
VERUS
Nothing that interests you; let us think only of our happy escape....
MARY MAGDALENE
I know that some danger threatens him....
VERUS
Whom do you mean?...
MARY MAGDALENE
It is impossible, after what he has done, that you should become the instrument of his worst enemies.... You owe him my life and perhaps our happiness.... What do they want with him? What orders have you received?...
VERUS
I am charged to arrest him before this evening, together with the principal leaders of his band. It is a vulgar constabulary measure, directed against sick men and vagrants, of a kind that has never yet been exacted of the legionaries.... It shall not take place; do not let us speak of it....
MARY MAGDALENE
But why arrest him? What has he done? What is he accused of?... He is innocent, I know; besides, one need but see him to understand.... He brings a happiness that was not known before; and all those who come near him are happy, it seems, like children at their awaking.... I myself, who only caught a glimpse of him among the olive-trees, felt that gladness was rising in my soul like a sort of light that overtook my thoughts.... He fixed his eyes for but a moment on mine; and that will be enough for the rest of my life.... I knew that he recognized me without ever having seen me and I knew that he wished to see me again.... He seemed to choose me gravely, absolutely, for ever....
VERUS
What does this mean? Are you speaking of him? What happened?... Have you seen him again?... I was told, for that matter, that he is an intriguer, ready for everything; but I should never have believed that he would have dared....
MARY MAGDALENE
He has dared nothing.... I have not seen him again, I shall never see him again, now that we are about to leave everything, to be only we two alone....
VERUS (clasping her more closely)
To be one alone, Magdalene, in a happier land, where everything encourages happiness, smiles upon lovers and blesses beauty....
MARY MAGDALENE (bursting into convulsive sobs on VERUS’ breast)
I love you.... I know it....
VERUS
Come, I know these tears that well at the same moment from our two hearts in our one joy.... But here, between the columns of the vestibule, come the greatest ornaments of that beautiful Rome which we shall soon astonish with our love.... I am right: it is our good Silanus, accompanied by the faithful Appius; led by the immortal gods, they descend the marble steps to hallow with their fraternal presence the first smiles of a happiness born under their eyes.…