When she cries out that 'farewell' means tears, he exclaims inconsequently: 'Then you, too, will cry. We will all cry … Laughing fatigues, crying rests.'
Quite gay and reckless, he faces Carmen to propose elopement to her. He laments the former coldness of his words and moods, the insufficiency of the vulgar tongue to express passion so burning and impetuous as his, and terrifies her by his wild and flowery volubility. There is night all around him except for the ray of intense light that encircles her face. On that he concentrates all that remains to him of life, of manhood, of feeling, thought and love. He descends from this into weak complaining. Her happiness is threatened by inimical conspiracies, and yet how is he to defend her? He fancies he is in a desert full of sand, plagued with unquenchable thirst and menaced by a falling heaven. He mixes up in the dreariest way the sands of the desert and the old applause that greeted his genius, wonders if either will have an end, then doubts the end of anything, and implores Carmen to save him. 'Help me. Look at me, speak, laugh, cry, do something, Carmen, to keep me from wandering into the desert.' But already his look is vague, and he has ceased to see her. In vain she cries to him that she is near, weeps over him, holds him to her. 'I am Carmen, look at me. The little head you were wont to love so is close to your lips. I am smiling at you. Laugh, Lazaro, answer me. Wake up! Surely you hear me, you see me!' When his mother comes in response to the girl's agonised cry, a glimmer of intelligence gives a sort of dignity to his incoherent words. He wants his mother to console him, for he has
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