Racine: Phaedra

THE MISANTHROPE 323
Celimene. Solitude at twenty years of age frightens me. I
do not find in my heart greatness and self-denial enough
to yield to such a fate ; if the gift of my hand can satisfy
your wishes, I am willing ; and marriage . . .
Alceste. No. Now my heart loathes you, and my love is at
an end ; since you cannot in me find your all in all as I
do in you, go, I reject you: this unworthy insult forever
delivers my soul from the thraldom of my love.
Scene VIII.
Eliante, Alceste, Philinte
lExit Celimene.
Alceste [to Eliante], Your beauty, madam, is adorned by a
thousand virtues, and it is only in you that I have seen
sincerity and truth. I have for a long time set the highest
value on you, but allow me thus only to esteem you forever.
My heart is afflicted by too many sorrows for me
to dare to ask you to share my lot. I feel too unworthy
of you, and I begin to understand that Heaven has not
formed me for such happiness ; that it would be doing
you an unworthy homage to offer you a heart refused by
another ; in short . . .
Eliante. Do not make yourself anxious, I shall find no difficulty
in bestowing my hand, and here is your friend who
will not want pressing in order to accept it.
Philinte. Ah ! madam, that honor is my only ambition, and
I could sacrifice for it my soul, my life.
Alceste. May you always experience the same feelings for
each other, and be forever happy! As to myself, betrayed
on all sides, and crushed with injustice, I will escape from
a gulf where vice triumphs, and look in all the earth for
a desert place where one may be free to be a man of
honor. {Exit.
Philinte. Come, come, madam, let us exhaust every means to
prevent him from putting his wild scheme into execution.