THE IDYLL OF THE CARP (The SCENE is in a garden,-where you please, THE PRINCESS. THESE, DENISE, are my Suitors! DENISE. Where? THE PRINCESS. These fish I feed them daily here at morn and night (Throwing bread.) Make haste, Messieurs! Make haste, then! Hurry. Sec, See how they swim! Would you not say, confess, Some crowd of Courtiers in the audience hall, When the King comes? DENISE. You're jesting! THE PRINCESS. Not at all. Watch but the great one yonder! There's the Those gill-marks mean his Order of St. Luke; DENISE. I think I have. But there's another, older and more grave,- THE PRINCESS. Why that's my good chambellan with his seal. Equips my sweet-pouch, brings me morning flowers, Or chirrups madrigals with old, sweet words, birds And spoke the true note first. No suitor he, Yet loves me too,-though in a graybeard's key. DENISE. Look, Madam, look!- a fish without a stain! THE PRINCESS. FONTENAY. You know him not? My prince of shining locks! DENISE. Ai! what a splash! Who is it comes with such a sudden dash Plump i' the midst, and leaps the others clear? THE PRINCESS. Ho! for a trumpet! Let the bells be rung! DENISE. I'd rather wear E'en such a patched and melancholy air, As his, that motley one,-who keeps the wall, And hugs his own lean thoughts for carnival. THE PRINCESS. My frankest wooer! Thus his love he tells DENISE. "He loves?-he loves ?" Why all this loving's naught ! THE PRINCESS. And "Naught (quoth JACQUOT) makes the sum of Love!" DENISE. The cynic knave! How call you this one here ?— This small shy-looking fish, that hovers near, And circles, like a cat around a cage, To snatch the surplus. THE PRINCESS. CHERUBIN, the page. Tis but a child, yet with that roguish smile, And those sly looks, the child will make hearts ache Not five years hence, I prophesy. Meanwhile, He lives to plague the swans upon the lake, Denise. And these--that swim aside--who may these be? THE PRINCESS. Those are two gentlemen of Picardy. MOREUIL and MONTCORNET. They hunt in pair; I mete them morsels with an equal care, Lest they should eat each other, DENISE. And that-and that-and that? THE PRINCESS. or eat Me. I name them not Those are the crowd who merely think their lot The lighter by my land. |