Wherein Hermocrate has a private exchange with "Phocion," the Princess Léonide disguised as a man.

Hermocrate. – Either I am deceived , Sir, or you are not entirely a stranger to me.

Phocion. – Me, my lord?

Hermocrate. – It is not for idle interest that I wanted to have a word with you in private; I have suspicions which would best be investigated quietly; and it is in your interest, I believe, that it happen with discretion.

Phocion. – And what might these suspicions be?

Hermocrate. – That your name is not Phocion at all.

Phocion, (aside). – He remembers the forest.

Hermocrate. – And that’s not the whole of it. In fact your assumed name proposes the least of the errant paths onto which you would wish to lead us.

Phocion. – Now you’ve lost me, my lord.

Hermocrate. – These clothes do not belong to you; admit it, Madame, I have seen you somewhere else.

Phocion, affecting surprise. – I confess you speak but truth, my lord.

Hermocrate. – Witnesses, as you see, were not necessary; at least this way you blush before no one but me.

Phocion. – If I blush, I do myself an injustice, my lord, and it is an event whose meaning I disclaim; the disguise in which I am veiled conceals no intentions which would be shameful to me.

Hermocrate. – By contrast I, who glimpse but a sliver of those intentions, see in them nothing that suits the innocent purity with which alone your sex should ally itself; to my mind your intentions reveal nothing for which you should be applauded. In fact, your design in coming here is for the objective, in effect, of abducting Agis, my young student; to subject him to your most dangerous ruses and attractions, to kindle in his heart the most perilous desires – and it seems to me that such intentions would not be those of a person predisposed to blushing, Madame!

Phocion. – Agis! Who? you can’t mean the young man who was just here? These then constitute the suspicions you were just speaking about? Is there anything in me to justify them? Is there anything in my looks that inspire such notions in you, and do they do my face justice? Must it be that you of all people would subject me to such outrageous assumptions? Is it that the air I project around myself somehow attracts them? And the gods, who fully know the nobility of my intent, should they not spare me troubles such as these? No, my lord, I do not come here to incite trouble in the heart of Agis; accomplished as he might be as a student under your guidance, however well he might have absorbed your teachings, a disguise such as this one would not have been needed for his sake. Were I to love him, I would expect the conquest to be achieved at a lesser cost; it would have been necessary but to appear to him, to let my eyes speak to his: I do not doubt but that his youth and my charm would have quickly combined to reach his heart. But his heart is not the one toward which mine tends; the one whose affections I seek is a prey far more redoubtable, and more difficult to surprise; he finds no magic in the light of my eyes; my charms do nothing for him; you can see by how I am attired that I am not relying on them, that I am not making a lure out of the attractions I possess. I have not made myself up to please, in fact the opposite: I conceal my charms under this disguise because I know them to be useless to attract the one I want.

Hermocrate: – But, this time you’d like to spend at my residence, Madame, how is that related to your purposes if you have, as you say, no designs on Agis?

Phocion: – Ohh heavens! still Agis! Ahh! My lord, spare your noble nature the need to regret having offended mine; please don’t malign me by misinterpreting the appearances of an adventure that is not only innocent but even praiseworthy; an adventure that lets you bear witness to a courage the sight of which should undermine your suspicions, and from which I dare to expect your esteem when you learn the truth of its motives. Don’t speak to me still of Agis; my heart does not dream of him, I repeat it. Would you like me to provide irrefutable evidence of this? It won’t uphold the pride of my gender, but then I bring here neither vanity nor calculated ruses: I come here with a purpose more noble than any which could concern itself with mere vanity; you will see, my lord. At this moment there is no issue but your suspicions, and one phrase will shatter them. The one whom I love, I now ask, will he give me his hand? – for here is mine. And Agis is not here to accept this offer.

Hermocrate. – I no longer comprehend to whom these words might be addressed.

Phocion. – You know well to whom they are addressed, my lord, and I have come to say them to you; but, to dispel all ambiguity, I can explain myself no better than by naming Hermocrate.

Hermocrate. – Me, Madame?

Phocion. – You are fully enlightened, my lord.

Hermocrate. – In effect that is not how I feel, and I can find no way of getting out of the confusion into which this information has plunged me: how is that I could be the object of the amorous impulses of a heart such as yours?

Phocion. – My lord, listen to me; I must now, after having made such a confession, have a chance to fully explain myself.

Hermocrate. – No, Madame, I will listen to no more; all justification is useless; and you have nothing to fear from my opinions: calm yourself on that account; and, by grace, let me be. Was I created to be loved in such a manner? You are assaulting a solitary and savage soul to whom romantic love is a stranger; I am an alien to the ways of the world, a fact that should suffice to ward off both your youth and your charms; and my heart can give you, to put it in a word, nothing.

Phocion. – Ah! But your heart need not be invited to share my sentiments; I have no hope of that, and had I any, I disavow them; but please bear with me while I complete my explication. I have told you that I love you – but would you now desire that I remain as prey at the mercy of the wounds that this impulsive discourse will have wrought, had I no chance to explain it all?

Hermocrate. – But reason itself forbids me to listen to more of this!

Phocion. – But my honor and my reputation, which I have just put at great peril, require a continuation. Once more, my lord, listen to what I have to say. To re-achieve your esteem is the sole prize to which I aspire, the sole compensation which my heart would jealously seek : what would really keep you from listening? There is nothing threatening or dangerous in me, merely the very same feminine  charms that have just been humiliated by my confession  – they, and a weakness that you scorn, and which I have brought you in order to be able to overcome it myself.

Hermocrate. – I’d much rather remain in ignorance on all of that.

Phocion. – Yes, my lord, I love you; but do not be deceived, for it is not a matter of an ordinary romantic attachment; and this confession does not escape my lips by accident; I make with full awareness. It is not for the sake of love that I offer my disclosure, and love would never have wrested in from my lips; it is my nobility and reputation for the sake of which I have offered it. If I tell you that I love  you, it is because I need to experience the very chaos of emotions that saying it to you engenders; I need to say it because entering this  whirlpool  might provide the only chance I have to be cured of it. In order to conquer, I must to be made to blush at my  weakness; I need to afflict my pride, in order to force it to rise up in revolt against you. I am not telling you that I love you so that you will  return the sentiment in kind; I say that I love you so that you can teach me how to stop. Show me how to hate love, how to scorn it; to  any measure you might take to reach those ends, I consent; but make me, in the end, resemble you in having acquired that hatred and  that scorn. Teach me how to take my heart back from you; forbid to me the attraction I find in you. I don’t ask to be loved, it’s true, but  still I desire to be; tear away from my heart that desire, return my heart; it is against what you possess that I implore you to act. 

Hermocrate. – Oh, well, Madame, here is the only aid that I will extend: it is to tell you that I do not care to be in love with you at all. May this indifference serve to cure you, and bring you to the end of this discourse of which every word I hear is poisoned.

Phocion. – In the name of heaven and the gods! to what damnation are you about to cast me? To an indifference that, in fact, I have foreseen. Is this how you respond to the noble courage, the generosity of soul, with which I exposed my heart to your gaze? Is the sage of no use to anyone?

Hermocrate. – I am not what you think at all, Madame.

Phocion. – Oh, well then. So be it! But let me be the judge of who and what you are; in the meantime, I pray you will allow me to continue.

Hermocrate,  still moved. – What else were you going to tell me, Madame?

Phocion. – Listen to me. I have heard everyone speaking, your name is on everyone’s lips.

Hermocrate. – Let’s let that be as it may, and let’s pass on, Madame.

Phocion. – You must excuse the tendencies of a soul that loves to praise that which it loves. My name is Aspasie; and it was in solitudes like this that I lived, like you, as mistress of my heart and of an abundant fortune; but knowing nothing of love, and scorning all efforts that others made to inspire such feelings . . .

Hermocrate. – How ridiculous in the face of this is my forbearance!

Phocion. – It was thus in such solitudes where I encountered you, each of us out walking in meditation; I did not know who you were at first; however, gazing upon you, I felt myself deeply moved; and it seemed that my heart whispered: "Hermocrate."

Hermocrate. – No, I can no longer bear listening to this recitation. In the name of the honor which you cherish, Aspasie, let's leave this discourse where it is, let's end it. The only question remaining is, what are your plans now?

Phocion. – This tale seems frivolous to you, without question; but the project of restoring my honor is not!

Hermocrate. – Perhaps, but the project of guaranteeing mine is even more precious to me; unworldly as I am, I still have eyes, those eyes see that you have your charms and that you are in love with me.

Phocion. – I have charms, you say? And, then? My lord, is it that you see them, but that you fear what they make you feel? 

Hermocrate. – In truth, I don't want to even get to the place where I might have to fear them!

Phocion. – Since you are avoiding them, are you not thus already afraid? You don't yet love me, but you are already afraid of loving me – all of which means, that you will love me, Hermocrate; and I am incapable of preventing myself from believing that it will be so!

Hermocrate: – You trouble me, my responses are all backwards, so I will keep silent. 

Phocion. – Ah, well! My lord, let's withdraw from this place, let's walk to rejoin Léontine; I plan to stay here for some time, and you will tell me in a while what you have resolved on that account.

Hermocrate: – Let's go then, Aspasie; I will follow you.
 
 

Translation © 1999 by Studios Saint-Sulpice. All rights reserved.

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