Jean-Louis Barrault credited as playing...
Baptiste Debureau
- Frederick: Words and phrases leave you cold. You tell your story without speaking. And you do it so well. You really astonished me. Your legs speak, your hands answer. A glance, a shrug, a step forward, back and they understand up in the Gods.
- Baptiste: They understand, though they are poor. I'm like them. I love them, I know them. Their lives are small, but their dreams are vast.
- Garance: You're shaking. Are you cold?
- Baptiste: I'm shaking because I'm happy. Happy because you're here, near me. I love you. Garance, do you love me?
- Garance: You talk like a child. People love that way in books, in dreams. Not in real life.
- Baptiste: Dreams, life - they're the same. Else life's not worth living.
- Baptiste: I still love you. I always have. And you, Garance? No, don't answer. I won't ask for anything. You're here. That's all that matters. Here, alive in my arms, like the first time. No, I ask for nothing. Only - the warmth of your body against my body, this mouth of yours. These eyes of yours.
- Baptiste: It's all so sad and absurd. Like me. Years ago, I stood here by this bed, in this very room. And she stood there, smiling, happy, so lovely in the fresh night air. And she said, "Love is so simple." And I didn't listen! I didn't take her in my arms! I set conditions: "Love me as I love you." And I shut the door, forever, between my love and me.
- Baptiste: Baptiste? Who's this Baptiste? Since the one he loves doesn't love him, he's a zero, a will-o'-the-wisp, an automaton, a bogeyman. No more Baptiste!
- [Draws an X over his face in the mirror and points at it]
- Baptiste: Here lies Baptiste. Life gave him a red flower, a good beating, a pinewood overcoat.
- Baptiste: You're so beautiful. But I must let you sleep.
- Garance: I'm not very sleepy.
- [Sits on her bed]
- Baptiste: Remember: You could work at the Funambules.
- Garance: But I can't do anything.
- Baptiste: I'll help you. You need work.
- Garance: Why not? I could show my legs.
- [Lifts her leg out from under her wrap]
- Garance: The audience doesn't ask for much.
- [Wiggles her toes]
- Baptiste: But I love you, Garance.
- Garance: Please don't be so solemn. It chills me. Don't be angry, but I'm not the way you dreamed. You must understand me. I'm simple, so simple. I am what I am. I want to please those I like. And when I want to say yes, I can't say no.
- [Gets up and blows out the lantern]
- Garance: I prefer moonlight, don't you?
- Mme Hermine: You're being unreasonable.
- Baptiste: True, I'm unreasonable.
- Mme Hermine: Shutting yourself up like a monk!
- Baptiste: No, monks pray. I sleep, I dream.
- Baptiste: "Othello" would make a nice pantomime. A man kills his beloved and it kills him, poor man! A sad, absurd tale, like so many others. Like mine and yours, Madame Hermine. You spend your empty days in your empty rooms with your poor empty heart.