ICARUS Adelaide, you must understand that your sweet Papa, notwithstanding his eminent qualities, won’t earn a great deal of money in his new profession. And so as not to be a burden to him, you’ll have to earn your living. Which is not the fate that M. Lubert had in mind for you for he, if I remember rightly, was going to provide you with a leisurely existence, and the hope that it would last for a long time. But you can still think better of your actions and, if you don’t like the idea of working, go back to M. Lubert.
ADELAIDE I don’t want to go back to M. Lubert.
ICARUS In that case, we’ll have to find you a profession.
ADELAIDE I am very willing, but profession have I none. I am a well brought-up young lady who knows how to play the piano, paint in watercolours, sew a fine seam …
ICARUS Sew – that’s it. Come with me, Adelaide, I’ll find work for those fairy fingers of yours.
They walk a few steps and come to LN’s boutique. They enter.
LN Ah! good day Monsieur Icarus! this must be the young person of whom you spoke?
ICARUS It is indeed, Mademoiselle LN. She is called Adelaide, sews a fine seam and has fairy fingers.
LN Perfect! Marvellous! I have the very thing for her. Does that suit you, Mademoiselle – bloomers-maker?
ADELAIDE (blushing). Che sara, sara. I will bloomerise, Mademoiselle (she starts crying. Icarus proffers a chair, on which she collapses, sobbing).
LN to ICARUS Quick, get going: Mme de Champvaux will be here any minute. She’s always ordering bloomers.
Icarus disappears.
ADELAIDE (through her tears). Where is my enchanted youth? Where the happy fate for which I was destined? Love caused me to flee the pages that had become nothing more for me than absence and desolation, and I am now reduced to utilising my fairy fingers on tasks of which I shall be ashamed, and which may well give me naughty thoughts.
LN There are no foolish trades, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. In any case, we only work for ladies. We make cycling, and feminine, bloomers.
ADELAIDE I shall get used to it.
MADAME DE CHAMPVAUX (coming sailing in). Well, my new bloomers? Are they ready? These cycling bloomers are marvels, even though they don’t produce all the expected results.