(Cyrano, an impoverished soldier/poet, is speaking with de Guiche, a powerful nobleman. De Guiche makes Cyrano an offer he thinks he cannot refuse:)
de Guiche: Poets are fashionable nowadays to have about one. Would you care to join my following?
Cyrano: No, sir. I do not follow.
de Guiche: Your duel yesterday amused my uncle the Cardinal. I might help you there...
He is himself a dramatist; Let him rewrite a few lines here and there, and he'll approve the rest.
Cyrano: Impossible. My blood curdles to think of altering one comma.
de Guiche: Ah, but when he likes a thing, he pays well.
Cyrano: Yes -- but not so well as I -- When I have made a line that sings itself so that I love the sound of it -- I pay myself a hundred times.
de Guiche: You are proud, my friend.
Cyrano: You have observed that?
....
de Guiche: Have you read Don Quixote?
Cyrano: I have -- and found myself the hero.
de Guiche: Be so good as to read once more the chapter of the windmills.
Cyrano (gravely): Chapter Thirteen.
de Guiche: Windmills, remember, if you fight with them --
Cyrano: My enemies change, then, with every wind?
de Guiche: -- May swing round their huge arms and cast you down into the mire.
Cyrano: Or up -- among the stars!