about in my turn.
Faust
Will you be gone? Obey!
Fridolin
Yes, Master.
Wagner
(To Fridolin) Get going, obey! (He leaves)
Fridolin
(Aside, following him) What could I indeed create? Me, too! (Faust brings up an armchair for Magnus)
Faust
(Sitting to the right, Magnus to the left) The savant, the illustrious Magnus at my home.
Magnus
Illustrious, savant—! My friend, we give ourselves these titles before the vulgar; but when we are alone, let’s agree that the greatest among us is, indeed, little, and that the wisest know they don’t know very much.
Faust
Yes, yes—to know that one doesn’t know, that’s the most real fruit of human study.
Wagner
No one is here to hear us. You’ve consecrated your whole life to work—are you quite satisfied with the result of your long career?
Faust
(Shaking his hand) And you?
Magnus
Alas! So many fine years wasted, friend! I wanted to appreciate the mysteries of creation.
Faust
We pale when confronted with the unknown secrets of nature.
Magnus
And backs bent and head whitened—leaning over our books—
Faust
And one day, you raise your eyes, everything has changed around you, time has fled, carrying off the objects of your affection, all that made you smile, all that you used to love, and if, by chance, a friend survives who extends to you his old, trembling hand—(He extends his hand and presses Magnus’s) There are so many regrets in this silent embrace.
Magnus
And when one sees young couples who are going about joyfully, arms entwined, as they say—what have I done with my youth?
Faust
And when one hears under the big green trees, or behind the flowering briars, words of love which are exchanged, the give and take of kisses as they say to themselves: What have I done with my heart?
Magnus
Yes, study bears a bitter fruit—and that fruit is called deception.
Faust
(Rising and passing to the left) It’s my fault, heaven warned me of it a hundred times. I shut my ears.
Magnus
(Ironic) Ah! Ah! Heaven spoke to you? (Rising) Health to the elect of the Lord!
Faust
God speaks to all men, for each of them he has a language. He’s the God of Armies, and he speaks to soldiers in the voice of trumpets; the poet hears a celestial voice which sings in his heart; God speaks also for others in the murmur of the water, in the perfume of flowers, in the song of birds. As for me, shut in this somber laboratory, absorbed completely in study, from my youth it was the clocks that seemed to me to be speaking to me. (Gesture by Magnus) Don’t smile, Doctor, I really heard what seemed celestial voices mixed with their voices of bronze; yes the clocks said to me, when I was twenty, each Sunday and at Christmas and Palm Sunday “Greetings, greetings to youth—this is the hour when everything smiles—the hour of prayer, the hour of love; it’s the time when hearts choose each other, it’s the time when marriages are blessed. Come pray, come love, too” And I remained plunged in study! Then arrived mature age and the voice of clocks became more grave “Greeting, greetings once more, greetings; this is the season in which the tree bears its fruit, the age man is married and a parent. Time’s flying, friend don’t consume your life in sterile studies, come prepare for the joys of your last years; think of choosing the arm that will support shaking feet, think of creating hearts that will pray around you, which will piously guard your memory” And I still kept working. Then old age came—why is it I no longer hear them? My house is still in the same place, the church is still nearby—and yet I no longer hear the clocks. Ah, it’s been too long that I closed my heart and my ear to the advice of their friendly voices; they used to speak to me of happiness, of love, of hope—but I’m eighty years old, and no question, the clocks have nothing more to tell me.
Magnus
Yes—yes—pleasure, wealth, glory—so many treasures unknown and disdained by us.
Faust
We took a false path—our life is a failure.
Magnus
(Forcefully) And to start over.
Faust
Start over!
Magnus
We need to become young again.
Faust
To make youth bloom again.
Magnus
Why not? Nothing dies in nature. The day which ends at twilight begins again at dawn, and the tree that sees its last fruit fall, feels itself burgeoning already with new flowers. You see this bouquet withered after a month. (Passing to the left, and taking the bouquet) Well, it’s going to be reborn. (Gesture by Faustus) Ah! I’m making you smile! And if I told you that a time will come when thought will cross the Ocean more rapidly than lightning, you will laugh—and you will be wrong—if I am speaking to you of a power capable to causing sleep by a single gesture, of animating simply with a glance—you will laugh—and you will be wrong—If I tell you, finally, that this living fluid which animates me is perhaps transmitted by breath, by contact, by will—you will laugh again—and you will be wrong. (He points to the bouquet which has regained all its freshness)
Faust
(Astonished as he takes it) It’s true! It’s true! Yes, yes—it’s a great miracle, Master—but there’s nothing in it that surprises me.
Magnus
Truly? Lord Faust knows the wisest doctors?
Faust
Yes, I know of one. (Going to the left) I have there a bunch of miracles made by him—a thousand times more sublime than yours—
Magnus
And this bunch?
Faust
(Presenting the Evangelist to him) Here it is—take and open it—you will find in it how the
