The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness / two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch

PROLOGUE

A study; to the left a balcony, on right a door; in the middle a table strewn with papers and books, and a lighted lamp upon it. Towards the right a sofa. Night.

SCENE I

Ernest. [Seated at table and preparing to write.] Nothing—impossible! It is striving with the impossible. The idea is there; my head is fevered with it; I feel it. At moments an inward light illuminates it, and I see it. I see it in its floating form, vaguely outlined, and suddenly a secret voice seems to animate it, and I hear sounds of sorrow, sonorous sighs, shouts of sardonic laughter ... a whole world of passions alive and struggling.... They burst forth from me, extend around me, and the air is full of them. Then, then I say to myself: ''Tis now the moment.' I take up my pen, stare into space, listen attentively, restraining my very heart-beats, and bend over the paper.... Ah, but the irony of impotency! The outlines become blurred, the vision fades, the cries and sighs faint away ... and nothingness, nothingness encircles me.... The monotony of empty space, of inert thought, of dreamy lassitude! and more than all the monotony of an idle pen and lifeless paper that lacks the life of thought! Ah! How varied are the shapes of nothingness, and how, in its dark and silent way, it mocks creatures of my stamp! So many, many forms! Canvas without colour, bits of marble without shape, confused noise of chaotic vibrations. But nothing more irritating, more insolent, meaner than this insolent pen of mine [throws it away], nothing worse than this white sheet of paper. Oh, if I cannot fill it, at least I may destroy it—vile accomplice of my ambition and my eternal humiliation. Thus, thus ... smaller and still smaller. [Tears up paper. Pauses.] And then! How lucky that nobody saw me! For in truth such fury is absurd and unjust. No, I will not yield. I will think and think, until either I have conquered or am crushed. No, I will not give up. Let me see, let me see ... if in that way——

SCENE II

D. Julian. [At the door, without entering.] I say, Ernest!

Ernest. Don Julian!

D. Julian. Still working? Do I disturb you?

Ernest. [Rising.] Disturb me! What a question, Don Julian! Come in, come in. And Teodora?

D. Julian. We have just come from the Opera. She has gone upstairs with my brother, to see something or other that Mercedes has bought, and I was on my way to my room when I saw your light, so I stopped to say good-night.

Ernest. Was there a good house?

D. Julian. As usual. All our friends inquired after you. They wondered you were not there too.

Ernest. That was kind of them.

D. Julian. Not more than you deserve. And how have you improved the shining hours of solitude and inspiration!

Ernest. Solitude, yes; inspiration, no. It shuns me though I call on it never so humbly and fondly.

D. Julian. It has failed at the rendezvous?

Ernest. And not for the first time, either. But if I have done nothing else, at least I have made a happy discovery.

D. Julian. What?

Ernest. That I am a poor devil.

D. Julian. The deuce! That's a famous discovery.

Ernest. Nothing less.

D. Julian. But why are you so out of sorts with yourself? Is the play you talked of the other day not going on?

Ernest. How can it? The going on is done by me going out of my wits.

D. Julian. How is this? Both the drama and inspiration are faithless to my poor friend.

Ernest. This is how I stand. When I first conceived the idea, I imagined it full of promise, but when I attempt to give it form, and vest it in an appropriate stage garb, the result shows something extraordinary, difficult, undramatic and impossible.

D. Julian. How is it impossible? Come, tell me. You've excited my curiosity. [Sits down on the sofa.]

Ernest. Imagine the principal personage, one who creates the drama and develops it, who gives it life and provokes the catastrophe, who, broadly, fills and possesses it, and yet who cannot make his way to the stage.

D. Julian. Is he so ugly, then? So repugnant or bad?

Ernest. Not so. Bad as you or I may be—not worse. Neither good nor bad, and truly not repugnant. I am not such a cynic—neither a misanthrope, nor one so out of love with life as to fall into such unfairness.

D. Julian. What, then, is the reason?

Ernest. The reason, Don Julian, is that there is no material room in the Scenario for this personage.

D. Julian. Holy Virgin! What do you mean? Is it by chance a mythological drama with Titans in it?

Ernest. Titans, yes, but in the modern sense of the word.

D. Julian. That is to say——?

Ernest. That is to say, this person is ... everybody.

D. Julian. Everybody! You are right. There is no room for everybody on the stage. It is an incontrovertible truth that has more than once been demonstrated.

Ernest. Then you agree with me?

D. Julian. Not entirely. Everybody may be condensed in a few types and characters. This is matter beyond my depth, but I have always understood that the masters have more than once accomplished it.

Ernest. Yes, but in my case it is to condemn me, not to write my drama.

D. Julian. Why?

Ernest. For many reasons it would be difficult to explain,—above all, at this late hour.

D. Julian. Never mind. Give me a few.

Ernest. Look! Each individual of this entire mass, each head of this monster of a thousand heads, of this Titan of the century, whom I call everybody, takes part in my play for a flying moment, to utter but one word, fling a single glance. Perhaps his action in the tale consists of a smile, he appears but to vanish. Listless and absent-minded, he acts without passion, without anger, without guile, often for mere distraction's sake.

D. Julian. What then?

Ernest. These light words, these fugitive glances, these indifferent smiles, all these evanescent sounds and this trivial evil, which may be called the insignificant rays of the dramatic light, condensed to one focus, to one group, result in conflagration or explosion, in strife and in victims. If I represent the whole by a few types or symbolical personages, I bestow upon each one that which is really dispersed among many, and such a result distorts my idea. I must bring types on the stage whose guile repels and is the less natural because evil in them has no object. This exposes me to a worse consequence, to the accusation of meaning to paint a cruel, corrupted, and debased society, when my sole pretention is to prove that not even the most insignificant actions are in themselves insignificant or lost for good or evil. For, concentrated by the mysterious influences of modern life, they may reach to immense effects.

D. Julian. Say no more, my friend. All this is metaphysics. A glimmer of light, perhaps, but through an infinitude of cloud. However, you understand these things better than I do. Letters of exchange, shares, stock, and discount, now—that's another matter.

Ernest. No, no; you've common sense, and that's the chief thing.

D. Julian. You flatter me, Ernest.

Ernest. But you follow me?

D. Julian. Not in the least. There ought to be a way out of the difficulty.

Ernest. If that were all!

D. Julian. What! More?

Ernest. Tell me what is the great dramatic spring?

D. Julian. My dear fellow, I don't exactly know what you mean by a dramatic spring. All I can tell you is that I have not the slightest interest in plays where love does not preponderate—above all unfortunate love, for I have enough of happy love at home.

Ernest. Good, very good! Then in my play there can be little or no love.

D. Julian. So much the worse. Though I know nothing of your play, I suspect it will interest nobody.

Ernest. So I have been telling you. Nevertheless, it is possible to put in a little love,—and jealousy too.

D. Julian. Ah, then, with an interesting intrigue skilfully developed, and some effective situations——

Ernest. No, nothing of the sort. It will be all simple, ordinary, almost vulgar ... so that the drama will not have any external action. The drama evolves within the personages: it advances slowly: to-day takes hold of a thought, to-morrow of a heart-beat, little by little, undermines the will.

D. Julian. But who understands all this? How are these interior ravages manifested? Who recounts them to the audience? In what way are they evident? Must we spend a whole evening hunting for a glance, a sigh, a gesture, a single word? My dear boy, this is not amusement. To cast us into such depths is to hurl us upon philosophy.

Ernest. You but echo my own thought.

D. Julian. I have no wish to discourage you. You best know what you are about—there. Though the play seems rather colourless, heavy, uninteresting, perhaps if the dénoûment is sensational—and the explosion—eh?

Ernest. Sensation! Explosion! Hardly, and that only just upon the fall of the curtain.

D. Julian. Which means that the play begins when the curtain falls?

Ernest. I am inclined to admit it. But I will endeavour to give it a little warmth.

D. Julian. My dear lad, what you have to do is to write the second play, the one that begins where the first ends. For the other, according to your description, would be difficult to write, and is not worth the trouble.

Ernest. 'Tis the conclusion I have come to myself.

D. Julian. Then we agree, thanks to your skill and logic. And what is the name?

Ernest. That's another difficulty. I can find none.

D. Julian. What do you say? No name either?

Ernest. No, unless, as Don Hermogenes^[2] says, we could put it into Greek for greater clarity.

D. Julian. Of a surety, Ernest, you were dozing when I came in. You have been dreaming nonsense.

Ernest. Dreaming! yes. Nonsense! perhaps. I talk both dreams and nonsense. But you are sensible and always right.

D. Julian. In this case it does not require much penetration. A drama in which the chief personage cannot appear; in which there is hardly any love; in which nothing happens but what happens every day; that begins with the fall of the curtain upon the last act, and which has no name. I don't know how it is to be written, still less how it is to be acted, how it is to find an audience, nor how it can be called a drama.

Ernest. Nevertheless, it is a drama, if I could only give it proper form, and that I can't do.

D. Julian. Do you wish to follow my advice?

Ernest. Can you doubt it?—you, my friend, my benefactor, my second father! Don Julian!

D. Julian. Come, come, Ernest, don't let us drop into a sentimental drama on our own account instead of yours, which we have declared impossible. I asked you if you would take my advice.

Ernest. And I said yes.

D. Julian. Then leave aside your plays. Go to bed, rest yourself, and come out shooting with me to-morrow. Kill a few partridges, and that will be an excuse for your not killing one or two characters, and not exposing yourself to the same fate at the hands of the public. After all, you may thank me for it.

Ernest. I'll do no such thing. I mean to write that play.

D. Julian. But, my poor fellow, you've conceived it in mortal sin.

Ernest. I don't know, but it is conceived. I feel it stir in my brain. It clamours for life, and I must give it to the world.

D. Julian. Can't you find another plot?

Ernest. But this idea?

D. Julian. Send it to the devil.

Ernest. Ah, Don Julian, you believe that an idea which has gripped the mind can be effaced and destroyed at our pleasure. I wanted to think out another play, but this accursed idea won't give it room, until it itself has seen the light.

D. Julian. God grant you a happy delivery.

Ernest. That's the question, as Hamlet says.

D. Julian. Couldn't you cast it into the literary foundling hospital of anonymity?

Ernest. Don Julian, I am a man of conscience. Good or bad, my children are legitimate. They bear my name.

D. Julian. [Preparing to go.] I have nothing more to say. What must be done will be done.

Ernest. I wish it were so. Unfortunately, it is not done. But no matter; if I don't do it, somebody else will.

D. Julian. Then to work, and good luck, and may nobody rob you of your laurels.

SCENE III

Teodora. [Outside.] Julian, Julian!

D. Julian. It's Teodora.

Teodora. Are you there, Julian?

D. Julian. [Going to the door.] Yes, I'm here. Come in.

Teodora. [Entering.] Good-evening, Ernest.

Ernest. Good-evening, Teodora. Was the singing good?

Teodora. As usual; and have you been working much?

Ernest. As usual; nothing.

Teodora. Then you'd have done better to come with us. They all asked after you.

Ernest. It seems that everybody is interested in me.

D. Julian. I should think so, since everybody is to be the principal personage of your play. You may imagine if they are anxious to be on good terms with you.

Teodora. A play?

D. Julian. Hush! 'Tis a mystery. Ask no questions. Neither title, nor characters, nor action, nor catastrophe—the sublime! Good-night, Ernest. Come, Teodora.

Ernest. Adieu, Don Julian.

Teodora. Till to-morrow.

Ernest. Good-night.

Teodora. [To Don Julian.] How preoccupied Mercedes was!

D. Julian. And Severo was in a rage.

Teodora. Why, I wonder.

D. Julian. How do I know? On the other hand, Pepito chattered enough for both.

Teodora. He always does, and nobody escapes his tongue.

D. Julian. He's a character for Ernest's play.

SCENE IV

Ernest. Let Don Julian say what he will, I won't abandon the undertaking. That would be signal cowardice. Never retreat—always forward. [Rises and begins to walk about in an agitated way. Then approaches the balcony.] Protect me, night. In thy blackness, rather than in the azure clearness of day, are outlined the luminous shapes of inspiration. Lift your roofs, you thousand houses of this great town, as well for a poet in dire necessity as for the devil on two sticks who so wantonly exposed you. Let me see the men and women enter your drawing-rooms and boudoirs in search of the night's rest after fevered pleasures abroad. Let my acute hearing catch the stray words of all those who inquired for me of Don Julian and Teodora. As the scattered rays of light, when gathered to a focus by diaphanous crystal, strike flame, and darkness is forged by the crossed bars of shadow; as mountains are made from grains of earth, and seas from drops of water: so will I use your wasted words, your vague smiles, your eager glances, and build my play of all those thousand trivialities dispersed in cafés, at reunions, theatres, and spectacles, and that float now in the air. Let the modest crystal of my intelligence be the lens which will concentrate light and shadow, from which will spring the dramatic conflagration and the tragic explosion of the catastrophe. Already my play takes shape. It has even a title now, for there, under the lamp-shade, I see the immortal work of the immortal Florentine. It offers me in Italian what in good Spanish it would be risky and futile audacity either to write on paper or pronounce on the stage. Francesca and Paolo, assist me with the story of your loves! [Sits down and prepares to write.] The play ... the play begins.... First page—there, 'tis no longer white. It has a name. [Writing.] The Great Galeoto. [Writes feverishly.]

Scene—A drawing-room in Don Julian's house. At the back of stage a large door, and beyond a passage separating it from the dining-room door, which remains closed throughout the act. On the left a balcony, and beyond it a door. On the right two doors. On the stage a table, an arm-chair, handsome and luxurious mounting. Hour, towards sunset.

SCENE I

Teodora. What a lovely sunset! what clouds and light, and what a sky! Suppose it were true, as the poets say, and our fathers believed, that our fate is stamped upon the azure heaven! Were the mysterious secret of human destiny traced by the stars upon the sapphire sphere, and this splendid evening should hold the cipher of ours, what happiness it must disclose! what a smiling future! What a life in our life, and what radiance in our heaven! Is it not so, Julian? [She approaches Don Julian.] Ah, plunged in thought, I see! Come and look out. What, no word for me?

D. Julian. [Absently.] What is it?

Teodora. [Coming near.] You have not been listening to me!

D. Julian. You have my heart ever—who are its magnet and its centre. But my mind is apt to be besieged by preoccupations, cares, business——

Teodora. They are the plague of my life, since they rob me, if not of my husband's affections, at least of some of his attention. But what is the matter, Julian? [Affectionately.] Something worries you. Is it serious, that you are so solemn and so silent? If it should be trouble, Julian, remember that I have a right to share it. My joys are yours, and your sorrows are no less mine.

D. Julian. Sorrows! Troubles! Are you not happy? Do I not possess in you the living embodiment of joy? With those cheeks so ruddy in the glow of health, and those dear eyes, clear like your soul and resplendent as the sky, and I the owner of all you, could pain, or shadow, or grief teach me I am other than the happiest man alive?

Teodora. It is a business annoyance, perhaps?

D. Julian. Money never yet forced sleep or appetite to forsake me. I have never felt aversion, much less contempt for it, so it follows that the article has flowed easily into my coffers. I was rich, I am rich; and until Don Julian of Garagarga dies of old age, please God and his own good fortune, he will remain, if not the wealthiest, certainly the surest, banker of Madrid, Cadiz, and Oporto.

Teodora. Then what is your preoccupation?

D. Julian. I was thinking—'tis a good thought, too.

Teodora. Naturally, since 'tis yours.

D. Julian. Flatterer! you would spoil me.

Teodora. But I am still unenlightened.

D. Julian. There is an important matter I want to achieve.

Teodora. Connected with the new works?

D. Julian. No; it has nothing to do with stone or iron.

Teodora. What, then?

D. Julian. It is a question of kindness—a sacred debt of old date.

Teodora. [Gleefully.] Oh, I can guess now.

D. Julian. So!

Teodora. You mean Ernest.

D. Julian. You are right.

Teodora. Yes, yes, you must. Poor lad! he's so good and noble and generous.

D. Julian. Quite his father's son—the model of a loyal hidalgo.

Teodora. And then so clever! Only twenty-six, and a prodigy! what doesn't he know?

D. Julian. Know! I should think he did know. That's nothing—rather, that's the worst of it. While he is wandering in the sphere of sublime thought, I fear he's not likely to learn much of a world so deceptive and prosaic as ours, which takes no interest in the subtleties of the mind until three centuries after genius has been buried.

Teodora. But with you for a guide, Julian—you don't intend to abandon him yet a while, surely?

D. Julian. God forbid. I should be black-hearted indeed if I would so readily forget all I owe his father. Don Juan of Acedo risked for my family name and wealth, ay, almost his life. Should this lad need mine, he might ask it, and welcome. 'Twould be but just payment of the debt my name represents.

Teodora. Well said, Julian. It is like you.

D. Julian. You remember, about a year ago, I heard my good friend was dead, and his son was left badly off. I lost no time, caught the train to Gerona, nearly used force, and carried the boy back here. When he stood in the middle of this room I said to him: 'You are master here; you may command me and mine. Since I owe your father everything, you must regard me in the light of his representative. If I fall short, my desire is to come as near as possible to him. As for the amount of affection I have to dispose of—we'll see if I don't outrace him there.'

Teodora. I remember it well. The soft-hearted fellow burst out crying, and clung to you like a child.

D. Julian. He's but a child, as you say. That's why we must think and plan for him. And 'twas of that I was so seriously thinking a moment ago. I was meditating a half-formed project, while you, dear, wanted me to contemplate a panorama of radiant cloud and scarlet sun that cannot compare with the sun that shines in my own heaven.

Teodora. I cannot divine your idea. What is it you project doing for Ernest?

D. Julian. Those are my words.

Teodora. But is there something yet undone that you expect to discover? He has lived with us for the past year like one of ourselves. Were he your son, or a brother of mine, could you show him more tenderness, I more affection?

D. Julian. It is much, but not enough.

Teodora. Not enough! I fancy,——

D. Julian. You are thinking of the present, and I of the future.

Teodora. Oh! the future! That is easily settled. See, he lives here with us as long as he likes, for years. It is his home. Then when the just and natural law prompts him to fall in love and desire another, we will marry him. You will nobly share your wealth with him, and we will lead them from the altar to their own house,—he and she! The proverb, you know, says wisely, 'for each wedded pair a house.' He will live just a little away from us, but that will be no reason for our forgetting him, or loving him less. I see it all distinctly. They are happy, and we even happier. They have children, of course, and we perhaps more—well, at least, one little girl, who will fall in love with Ernest's son, and to whom we will marry her by and by.

D. Julian. But where in heaven's name are you going to stop? [Laughing.]

Teodora. You spoke of his future, Julian, and I've sketched it. If not this one, I will neither approve nor accept it.

D. Julian. How like you, Teodora! but——

Teodora. Ah, there is a but already.

D. Julian. Listen, Teodora. It is but a debt we owe to look after the poor fellow as if he were a relative, and obligation runs with the exactions of our affection. So much for himself; so much for his father's son. But every human action is complex, has two points of view, and every medal has its reverse. Which means, Teodora, that you must understand it is a very different matter to give and receive favours; and that in the end Ernest might feel my protection a humiliation. He's a high-spirited, fine lad, a trifle haughty perhaps, and it is imperative there should be an end to his present position. We may, if we can, do more for him, but we must seem to do less.

Teodora. How so?

D. Julian. We'll see—but here he comes——[Looks down the stage.]

Teodora. Hush!

SCENE II

D. Julian. Welcome!

Ernest. Don Julian!—and Teodora! [Salutes absently. Sits down near the table in pensive silence.]

Don Julian. [Approaching him.] What's the matter?

Ernest. Nothing.

D. Julian. You look as if something ailed you—your preoccupation reveals it. No trouble, I hope?

Ernest. Nonsense.

D. Julian. Nor disappointment?

Ernest. None whatever.

D. Julian. I don't annoy you?

Ernest. You! good heavens! [Rises and comes toward him effusively.] You speak out of the right of friendship and affection, and you read me through and through. Yes, sir; there is indeed something the matter. I will tell you, if you, and you also, Teodora, out of your pity, will hold me excused. I am an ungrateful fool, a mere boy, in truth, deserving neither of your kindness nor of your affection. Possessing such a father and such a sister, I ought to be happy, with no care for the morrow. But it is not so. I blush to explain it,—can't you understand?—Yes, yes, you must see how false my position is. I live here on alms. [With energy.]

Teodora. Such a word——

Ernest. Teodora!

Teodora. Affronts us.

Ernest. I expressed myself ill—but it is so.

D. Julian. I say it is not so. If any one in this house lives upon alms, and those no slight ones, it is I and not you.

Ernest. I am acquainted, sir, with the story of two loyal friends, and of some money matters long forgotten. It does honour to my father and to his hidalgic race. But I am shamed in profiting by it. I am young, Don Julian, and although I may not be worth much, there ought still to be some way for me to earn my bread. It may be pride or folly, I cannot say. But I remember what my father used to say: 'What you can do yourself, never ask another to do. What you can earn, never owe to any one else.'

D. Julian. So that my services humiliate and degrade you. You count your friends importunate creditors.

Teodora. Reason may be on your side, Ernest, and in knowledge you are not deficient, but, believe me, in this case the heart alone speaks with wisdom.

D. Julian. Your father did not find me so ungenerous or so proud.

Teodora. Ah, friendship was then a very different thing.

Ernest. Teodora!

Teodora. [To Don Julian.] What a noble anxiety displays

Ernest. I know I seem ungrateful—I feel it—and an idiot to boot. Forgive me, Don Julian.

D. Julian. His head is a forge.

Teodora. [Also apart to Don Julian.] He doesn't live in this world.

D. Julian. Just so. He's full of depth and learning, and lets himself be drowned in a pool of water.

Ernest. [Meditatively.] True, I know little of life, and am not well fitted to make my way through it But I divine it, and shudder, I know not why. Shall I founder on the world's pool as upon the high sea? I may not deny that it terrifies me far more than the deep ocean. The sea only reaches the limit set by the loose sand: over all space travel the emanations of the pool. A strong man's arms can struggle with the waves of the sea, but no one can struggle against subtle miasma. But if I fall, I must not feel the humiliation of defeat. I wish and pray that at the last moment I may see the approach of the sea that will bear me away at its will; see the sword that is to pierce me, the rock against which I am to be crushed. I must measure my adversary's strength, and despise it falling, despise it dying, instead of tamely breathing the venom scattered through the ambient air.

D. Julian. [To Teodora.] Didn't I tell you he was going out of his mind?

Teodora. But, Ernest, where are you wandering?

D. Julian. Yes. What has all this to do with the matter?

Ernest. Sir, I have come to the conclusion that others, seeing me housed and fed here, are saying of me what I long have thought. They see me constantly driving out with you, in the morning walking with Teodora or Mercedes, in your opera-box, hunting on your lands, and daily occupying the same place at your table. Though you would like to think otherwise, in one way or another the gossip runs: Who is he? Is he a relation? Not so. The secretary? Still less. A partner? If a partner, it may be accepted he brings little or nothing to the general fund. So they chatter.

D. Julian. By no means. You are raving.

Ernest. I beg to contradict you.

D. Julian. Then give me a name.

Ernest. Sir?——

D. Julian. One will do.

Ernest. There is one at hand—upstairs.

D. Julian. Name him.

Ernest. Don Severo.

D. Julian. My brother?

Ernest. Exactly, your brother? Will that suffice? or shall we add his respected wife, Doña Mercedes? and Pepito, their son? What have you to say then?

D. Julian. That Severo is a fool, Mercedes an idle chatterer, and the lad a puppy.

Ernest. They only repeat what they hear.

D. Julian. It is not true. This is false reasoning. Between gentlemen, when the intention is honourable, what can the opinion of the world really matter? The meaner it is, the loftier our disdain of it.

Ernest. 'Tis nobly said, and is what all well-bred men feel. But I have been taught that gossip, whether inspired by malice or not, which is according to each one's natural tendency, begins in a lie and generally ends in truth. Does gossip, as it grows, disclose the hidden sin? Is it a reflex of the past, or does it invent evil and give it existence? Does it set its accursed seal upon an existent fault, or merely breed that which was yet not, and furnish the occasion for wrong? Should we call the slanderer infamous or severe? the accomplice or the divulger? the public avenger or the tempter? Does he arrest or precipitate our fall? wound through taste or duty? and when he condemns, is it from justice or from spite? Perhaps both, Don Julian. Who can say? though time, occasion, and facts may show.

D. Julian. See here, Ernest, I don't understand an iota of all this philosophising. I presume 'tis on such nonsense you waste your intelligence. But I don't want you to be vexed or worried. It's true—you really wish for austere independence, to stand alone at a post of honour?

Ernest. Don Julian!

D. Julian. Answer me.

Ernest. [Joyously]. Yes.

D. Julian. Then count it gained. At this very moment I have no secretary. I am expecting one from London. But nobody would suit me better than a certain young fool, who is enamoured of poverty. [Speaks in pleasant reproach.] His work and salary will, of course, be settled as any one else's, though he be a son to one who cherishes him as such.

Ernest. Don Julian!

D. Julian. [Affecting comical severity.] Remember, I am an exacting business man, and I have not the habit of giving my money away for nothing. I intend to get as much as possible out of you, and work you hard. In my house the bread of just labour alone is consumed. By the clock, ten hours, starting at daybreak, and when I choose to be severe, you will see that Severo himself is no match for me. So, before the world you pose as the victim of my selfishness ... but in private, dear boy, ever the same, the centre of my dearest affections. [Unable to maintain former tone, Don Julian breaks off, and holds his hand out to Ernest.]

Ernest. [Deeply moved.] Don Julian!

D. Julian. You accept, then?

Ernest. I am yours to command.

Teodora. [To Don Julian.] At last you have tamed the savage.

Ernest. [To Don Julian.] Anything for your sake.

D. Julian. So would I have you always, Ernest. And now I have to write to my London correspondent, and thank him, and while recognising the extraordinary merit of his Englishman, whom he extols to the skies, regret that I have already engaged a young man. [Walks toward the first door on the right hand.] This is how we stand for the present; but in the future—it will be as partners. [Returns with an air of mystery.]

Teodora. Stop, Julian, I beg of you. Can't you see that he will take alarm? [Don Julian goes out on the right, and laughs to himself, looking back at Ernest.]

SCENE III

Teodora and Ernest. Towards the end of the last scene twilight has fallen, so that at this moment the room is in deep shadow.

Ernest. I am dazed by so much kindness. How can I ever repay it? [He sits down on the sofa, displaying great emotion. Teodora walks over and stands beside him.]

Teodora. By ejecting the spirit of pride and distrust; by being sensible and believing that we truly love you, that we will never change; and by putting full faith in all Julian's promises. His word is sacred, Ernest, and in him you will always have a father, in me a sister.