Cyrano’s newspaper.
Fourteen years have passed. As is her custom every Saturday, Roxane, dressed in mourning, is sitting in the convent gardens doing her embroidery and waiting for Cyrano’s visit. It is late afternoon. Meanwhile De Guiche, who has aged and repented, asks her forgiveness. Two nuns bring a chair on which Cyrano is accustomed to sit. He has fallen on hard times and his writings have brought him numerous enemies. For the first time in fourteen years he is late. Roxane waits in some trepidation. At last he arrives, very pale and unsteady, his hat lowered over his forehead. He has brought the local newspaper which he always reads to Roxane. He has been reading the trivial news to her for a few minutes when his chin drops. Roxane is afraid. But he recovers and reassures her: it is only his old wound from the siege of Arras. Roxane tells him that her wound, too, has never healed… Cyrano asks her if he may read Christian’s last letter. She consents and hands it to him. Darkness is gathering and when Cyrano starts reading, Roxane is deeply perturbed. She stands up and asks him how he can possibly read now that night has fallen. Suddenly, she understands that Cyrano knows the letter by heart, that he has always loved her and sacrificed himself for her. But Cyrano denies this. The swordsman-poet’s friends come running in recounting that Cyrano was struck from behind with a stick by an unknown assailant and had incautiously got out of bed to keep his rendezvous with Roxane. Cyrano takes off his hat, revealing a bandaged head. Dying by now, he says he has not quite finished reading the newspaper; and adds: today, one hour before dinner, Cyrano de Bergerac was murdered. The nuns sing Mater Dei dolorosa.. .