lent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the
sea, and creatures invisible to the eye--in one word, life--all, all
life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last.
A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature
on her breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain. No
longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of
beetles in the groves of limes. All is cold, cold. All is void, void,
void. All is terrible, terrible--[A pause] The bodies of all living
creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has transformed them
into stones and water and clouds; but their spirits have flowed together
into one, and that great world-soul am I! In me is the spirit of the
great Alexander, the spirit of Napoleon, of Caesar, of Shakespeare,
and of the tiniest leech that swims. In me the consciousness of man has
joined hands with the instinct of the animal; I understand all, all,
all, and each life lives again in me.

[The will-o-the-wisps flicker out along the lake shore.]

ARKADINA. [Whispers] What decadent rubbish is this?

TREPLIEFF. [Imploringly] Mother!

NINA. I am alone. Once in a hundred years my lips are opened, my voice
echoes mournfully across the desert earth, and no one hears. And you,
poor lights of the marsh, you do not hear me. You are engendered at
sunset in the putrid mud, and flit wavering about the lake till dawn,
unconscious, unreasoning, unwarmed by the breath of life. Satan, father
of eternal matter, trembling lest the spark of life should glow in you,
has ordered an unceasing movement of the atoms that compose you, and so
you shift and change for ever. I, the spirit of the universe, I alone
am immutable and eternal. [A pause] Like a captive in a dungeon deep and
void, I know not where I am, nor what awaits me. One thing only is not
hidden from me: in my fierce and obstinate battle with Satan, the source
of the forces of matter, I am destined to be victorious in the end.
Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the
reign of freedom will begin on earth. But this can only come to pass by
slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining
Sirius himself shall fall to dust. Until that hour, oh, horror! horror!
horror! [A pause. Two glowing red points are seen shining across the
lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see his dread and lurid eyes.

ARKADINA. I smell sulphur. Is tha