fects in the invention of which
Debussy is so curiously happy. It is the motive of _The Fountain_.[8]

[8] I quote it in the completer and more beautiful form in which it
appears on page 57, measures 1-3.

IX. THE FOUNTAIN

[Illustration: Modere]

It is repeated, with still more magical effect (scored for divided
violins and violas, two muted horns, and harp), as Melisande remarks
upon the clearness of the water, while the violins and violas weave
about it a shimmering figure in sixteenth-notes with which its
appearances are usually associated. As Pelleas warns Melisande to take
care, while she leans above the water along the marble edge of the
basin, the clarinet, over a string accompaniment, announces an
impassioned phrase (page 62, measure 3)--the theme of _Awakening
Desire_:

X. AWAKENING DESIRE

[Illustration: En animant]

As Pelleas questions Melisande about the ring with which she is
playing,--her wedding-ring,--and when it falls into the water while she
is tossing it in the air, we hear persistently the theme of _Fate_,
which, with the _Golaud_ theme (portentously sounded, _pp_, by horns and
bassoons), closes the scene. There is an interlude in which the
_Golaud_, _Melisande_, and _Fate_ themes are heard.

The rhythm of the latter theme mutters ominously in the bass as the
second scene is disclosed. When _Golaud_, lying wounded on his bed,
describes to Melisande how, "at the stroke of noon," his horse "swerved
suddenly, with no apparent cause," and threw him, as he was hunting in
the forest ("could he have seen something extraordinary?"), the oboe
recalls the theme of _Awakening Desire_, which was first heard as
Melisande and Pelleas sat together by the fountain in the forest during
the heat of midday. The rhythm of the _Fate_ motive is hinted by
violas, 'cellos, and horns as Golaud, in answer to Melisande's
compassionate questioning, observes that he is "made of iron and blood."
Melisande weeps, and the oboe sounds a plaintive variant of her motive
(page 82, measure 2); the strings repeat it as she complains that she is
ill. Nothing has happened, no one has harmed her, she answers, in
response to Golaud's questionings: "It is no one. You do not understand
me. It is something stronger than I," she says; and we hear the
_Pelleas_ theme, dulcetly harmonized, in the strings. When, later,
Golaud mentions his brother's name inquiringly, and she replies that she
thinks he dislikes her, although he speak