CYRANO, LE BRET, and the CADETS, who are eating and drinking at the tables on the right and left.

[CHRISTIAN has just entered, and has tried to mingle with the cadets, who do not speak to him. He has seated himself at a table, where LISE serves him.]

CYRANO:

[bowing mockingly to those who go out without daring to salute him] Gentlemen… Gentlemen…

LE BRET:

[coming back, with an expression of despair] Oh, what a fine mess!

CYRANO:

Oh, go ahead! Scold away!

LE BRET:

You must admit that destroying every opportunity that comes your way is a little extreme!

CYRANO:

Yes, I admit it. I am sometimes extreme.

LE BRET:

[triumphantly] Ah!

CYRANO:

But to take a stand, or to defend a principle, sometimes requires one to act in extreme ways.

LE BRET:

Oh, lay aside your pride for a moment. Fortune and glory await you!

CYRANO:

Oh, yes? But what would I have to do for it? Seek a patron to support me and protect me? Be like the wretched ivy that clings around a big tree and creeps upward not by its own strength but by trickery? No, thank you! Dedicate poems to bankers, like other poets have done? Act like a cringing fool just for the hope of seeing a condescending smile on a patron's lips? Thank you, but no! Learn to swallow insults every day? Scrape my knees raw from kneeling and bend my back till it breaks from bowing? No, thank you! Or be two-faced and sly, running with the hare while at the same time hunting with the hounds? Learn the cheap art of flattering people so that they may praise me? Step on people to make my way ahead? Navigate the sea of life with madrigals for sails, blown gently windward by old ladies’ sighs? Thank you, but no! Bribe kindly editors to print my poetry? Aspire to be elected pope of tavern councils held by drunken idiots? Work my whole life to bank my reputation on one famous sonnet instead of writing hundreds? Be terrorized by all the papers, thinking such things as, “Oh, if only the Mercury would give me a kind review!” Grow pale and fearful and scheming? Prefer to make visits instead of poems? Seek introductions to the right people, sign the right petitions? No! No! And no again! But sing? And dream and laugh? Yes! Go freely, wherever I please, with eyes that look straight forward and with a fearless voice! To wear my hat just the way I choose! To decide for myself in any situation whether to fight a duel or to recite a poem! To work without one thought of fortune or fame, and to realize that journey to the moon! Never to write a line that has not sprung straight from my heart. To be modest. To be content with every flower, fruit or even leaf—but pluck them from my own garden and no one else's! And then, if glory ever does by chance come my way, I'll pay no tribute to Caesar, because the merit will be my own. In short, I will never be like that wretched ivy. Whether I rise very high or not, I am content because I climb alone!

LE BRET:

Be alone if you will, but where did you ever get the idea that you should be making enemies at every turn?

CYRANO:

I got it from watching you make friends at every turn by fawning over people and flattering them. As you smile at people you despise, I pass by joyfully, thinking, “Oh, good—I've made another enemy today!”

LE BRET:

Sheer lunacy!

CYRANO:

Think of it as my vice. It gives me pleasure to displease people. I love to be hated! I march better beneath the crossfire of hostile glances! How amusing it is to see my jacket stained with so many spatters of envy and fear! The dull friendships which you and others keep enfold your neck like an open-laced collar. Such a collar makes it easy to move your head every which way, but makes it impossible to hold your head up straight. My hatred is like a stiff and starched collar which presses in upon me and keeps my head held high! And every new enemy adds a stiff new pleat to it, for hatred grips like a vice, but frames one like a halo!

LE BRET:

[after a silence, taking his arm] Speak loud and proud to the world. But whisper the truth into my ear—she does not love you, does she?

CYRANO:

[sharply] Hush!