page 62

From "Your Five Gallants"

A Play.

Claude: Here's but one candle lit; I'll carry it.
Lean thy fatigue on me.

(Night has fallen; the stage is dark. During, the above scene Picard has closed and rebarred the doors, and lighted candles, one of which he takes on exit.—Claude and Henriette walk upstairs R.)

Henriette: How silent and how safe is all the house!
How comfortable gleams the light upon
The wooden balustrades, a little fret
Where all is peace at bottom! and that's home.
Claude, homeliness is sweetest of old wines,
And oldest of sweet riches. I do not think
In all the pallid vastness of the stars
There is the glory of a winter's fire;
The glory, after wild-grown woods and fields,
To come home to a tidy loveliness;
After the tameless kissing of wild winds,
Rest.
Claude: Thou lik'st tidy beauty.
Henriette: Is not Nature
Best dressed when banded, filleted, brushed in
From her wild natural looseness? I cannot fathom
These wild mysterious passionatenesses, Claude;
Thou 'It say I have a narrow instrument,
Can play well on one note; a cameo nature;
Not cleverness, but wit; spirit, not daring;
Sensitive, but not passionate. In the night
'Tis pleasant to be small and warm ourselves.