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She too, she confesses, is ill, unhappy, though she will not tell Golaud what it is that ails her. Her husband discovers the absence of her wedding-ring, and harshly, suspiciously, asks where it is. Mélisande, confused and terrified, dissembles, and answers that she must have lost it in a grotto by the seashore, when she went there in the morning to pick shells for little Yniold.
Mélisande begs to be released, Pelléas kisses the enveloping tresses.... "Do you hear my kisses? They mount along your hair." Doves come from the tower Mélisande's doves and fly about them. They are frightened, and are flying away. "They will be lost in the dark!" laments Mélisande. Golaud enters by the winding stair, and surprises them.
Golaud rushes upon them with drawn sword and kills Pelléas, who falls beside the fountain. Mélisande flees in terror, crying out as she goes, "Oh! oh! I have no courage! I have no courage!" Golaud pursues her in silence through the forest. The last act opens in an apartment in the castle. Mélisande is stretched unconscious upon a bed. Golaud, Arkël, and the physician stand in a corner of the room.
How, for example, she gives her voice the hue and colour of a jeune fille in Pelléas et Mélisande, for although Mélisande had been the bride of Barbe-Bleue before Golaud discovered her in the forest she had never learned to be anything else than innocent and distraught, unhappy and mysterious.
It is her soul, now, that weeps. Why does she stretch her arms out so? what does she wish?" "Toward her child, without doubt," answers the physician. "It is the struggle of motherhood against...." "At this moment? At once?" cries Golaud, in a renewed outburst of anguish.... "Oh, oh! I must speak to her! Mélisande! Mélisande! leave me alone with her!" "Trouble her not," gravely interposes Arkël.
Their greeting is simple. Pelléas bids her come under the shade of the linden. She wishes to remain where it is lighter; she wishes to stay where she may be seen. Golaud, she says, is sleeping. It is late. In an hour the great gates of the castle will be closed. Pelléas tells her that it is perhaps the last time he shall see her, that he must go away forever.
Yniold wishes to go, but Golaud restrains him. "Let us stay here in the shadow a little longer.... One cannot tell, yet.... I think Pelléas is mad!" he exclaims violently. He lifts Yniold up to the window, cautioning him to make no noise, and asks him what he sees. The child reports that Mélisande is there, and that his uncle Pelléas is there, too. "What are they doing? Are they near each other?"
This is repeated still more vehemently three measures further on, and there is a return of the Fate motive as Mélisande, at the bidding of Golaud, goes forth to seek the missing ring.
They decide to receive Golaud and his child-bride, although the marriage has prevented a union which, for political reasons, Arkël had arranged for his grandson. Again the scene changes. Mélisande and Geneviève are walking together in the gardens, and they are joined by Pelléas.
The original Paris cast was as follows: Pelléas, M. Jean Périer; Mélisande, Miss Mary Garden; Arkël, M. Vieuille; Golaud, M. Dufrane; Geneviève, Mlle. Gerville-Réache; Le petit Yniold, M. Blondin; Un Médicin, M. Viguié. M. André Messager was the conductor. The work was admirably mounted under the supervision of the Director of the Opéra-Comique, M. Albert Carré.
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