Chapter XIII: Act II: Scene I

_A room in TROTACONVENTOS’S house. The walls are hung with
bunches of dried herbs and stags’ antlers. On a table stands
a big alembic surrounded by snakes and lizards preserved in
bottles, and porcupines’ quills. TROTACONVENTOS is darning a
gorget and talking to DON SALOMON. The beginning of this scene
is happening simultaneously with the last part of the previous
one._

_Trotaconventos_: A fig for a father’s love! To seek for it is, as the proverb has it, to seek pears on an elm tree.

_Don Salomon_: Pardon me, oh pearl of wisdom. Our Law has shown that a mother’s love is as dross to a father’s. In the book called Genesis we are told that when there was the flood of water in the time of Noah, the fathers fled with their sons to the mountains, and bore them on their heads that the waters might not reach them, while the mothers took thought only of their own safety, and climbed up on the shoulders of their sons. And at the siege of Jerusalem....

_Trotaconventos_: Oh, a pox on you and your devil’s lore! It is proverbs and songs that catch truth on the wing, and they tell ever of a mother’s love. Would you have me believe in your love to Pepita and Juanito when I saw new hopes and schemes spring up as quickly in your heart as the flowers on Isabel’s grave.... I never yet have met a man who could mourn the dead; for them ’tis but the drawing of a rotten molar, a moment’s sharp pain, and then albeit their gums may ache a day, they will already be rejoicing in the ease and freedom won by its removal.

_Don Salomon_: There was once a young caliph, and though he had many and great possessions, the only one he valued a fig was one of his young wives. She died, and night descended on the soul of the caliph. One evening her spirit came to him, as firm and tangible as had been her body, and after much sweet and refreshing discourse between them, beneath which his grief melted like dew, she told him that he might at will evoke her presence, but that each time he did so he would forfeit a year of life.... He invoked her the next night, and the next, and the next ... but he was close on eighty when he died.

_Trotaconventos_ (_triumphantly_): Just so! The caliph was a man; you do but confirm my words.

_Don Salomon_: Well, let us consider, then, _your_ love to your children. First, there was Isabel, and next, that exceeding handsome damsel, Sister Assumcion ... nay, nay, it is vain protesting; the whole town knows she was a cunning brat that all your forty summers and draughts and chirurgy were powerless to keep out of the world ... well, these two maids, both lusty and vegetal, and made for the bearing of fine children, what must you do but have them both professed in one of these nunneries ... _nunneries_! Your ballads tell of a Moorish king who was wont to exact a yearly tribute of sixty virgins from your race; what of your God who exacts more like a thousand?

_Trotaconventos_: Out on you, you foul-mouthed blaspheming Jew! I’d have you bear in mind that you are in the house of an Old Christian.[2]

_Don Salomon_: Ay, an Old Christian who recked so little of her law and faith that, just because they paid a little more, has suckled the brats of the Moriscos![3]

_Trotaconventos_: Pooh! An old dog does not bark at a tree-stump; you’ll not scare me with those old, spiteful whispers of _los Abades_. Come, drag me before the _alcalde_ and his court, and I’ll disprove your words with this old withered breast ... besides, as says the proverb, He whose father is a judge goes safe to trial—Trotaconventos walks safe beneath the cloak of Doña Maria de Padilla, for Queen Blanche dies a virgin-wife, if there be any virtue in my brews.

_Don Salomon_: You took it for a threat? Come, come, you are growing suspicious with advancing years. But we were talking of your love to your daughters. Resolve me this: why did you make them nuns?

_Trotaconventos_: Why did I make them nuns? Because of all professions, it is the most pleasing to God and His Saints.

_Don Salomon_: So that was your reason? Well, I read your action somewhat differently. Of all the diverse flames that burn and corrode the heart of man, there is none so fierce as the flames of a mother’s jealousy of her growing daughters. You have known that flame—the years that withered your charms were ripening theirs, and, that you might not endure the bitterness of seeing them wooed and kissed and bedded, you gave them—to your God. Wait! I have not yet said my say. Rumours have reached me of the flame you have kindled in the breast of an exceeding rich and noble knight for Sister Assumcion, and that, albeit, you knew a score of other maids would have been as good fuel, and brought as good a price; just as some eight years since, you chose Isabel to kindle the fire in me. Why? Of all your so-called learned doctors—the most of them but peasants, trembling, as they roast the chestnuts on winter nights, at their grandame’s tales—there is one I do revere, Thomas Aquinas, for he is deeply read in the divine Aristotle, and, to boot, he knows the human heart. Well, your Thomas Aquinas tells of a sin which he calls ‘morose delectation,’ which is the sour pleasure—a dried olive to palates too jaded now for sweet figs—that monks and nuns and women past their prime find in the viewing of, or the hearing of, or the thinking of the bodily joys of the young and lusty. And ‘morose delectation’ is never so bitter-sweet as when aroused in a mother by the amours of her daughter, and this it was that got in your bosom the upper hand of jealousy and made you choose your own daughters to inflame the love of this knight and me.

_Trotaconventos_: Well ... by Our Lady ... you ... (_bursts out laughing_). Why, Don Salomon, in spite of all your rabbis and rubbish, you have more good common sense than I had given you credit for! (_laughs again_).

_DON SALOMON, in spite of himself, gives a little complacent
smile._

_Don Salomon_: Laughter is the best physic; I am glad to have been able to administer it. But to return to the real purport of my visit. I tell you, you are making the convent of San Miguel to stink both far and wide, and I look upon it as no meet nursery for Moses and Rebecca.

_Trotaconventos_: Moses and Rebecca! Truly most pretty apt names for Christian children! But think you not that Judas and Jezebel would ring yet sweeter on the ear? Then, without doubt, their Christian playmates would pelt them through the streets with dung and dead mice—Moses and Rebecca, forsooth! In the city of Seville they will ever be Pepita and Juanito.

_Don Salomon_: Pepita and Juanito ... foolish, tripping names to suit the lewd comic imps of hell in one of your miracle plays. The Talmud teaches there is great virtue in names, and when they come with me to Granada they will be Moses and Rebecca.

_Trotaconventos_: Go with you to Granada? What wild tale is this?

_Don Salomon_: ’Tis no wild tale. You rated me for indifference to my children, but I am not so indifferent as to wish to see them reared in ignorance and superstition by a flock of empty-headed, vicious nuns who have become like Aholah and Aholibah, they who committed whoredoms in Egypt.

_Trotaconventos_: Once more, an old dog does not bark at a tree-stump. _You’ll_ never go to Granada.

_Don Salomon_: And why not, star-reader?

_Trotaconventos_: Because you are of the race of Judas that sold our Lord for a few sueldos. There are many leeches more learned than you in Granada, but none in Castille, therefore....

_Don Salomon_ (_indignantly_): Whence this knowledge of the leeches of Granada? Name me one more learned than I.

_Trotaconventos_ (_ignoring the interruption_): Therefore, in that in Castille you earn three times what you would do in Granada, you will continue following the court from Valladolid to Toledo, from Toledo to Seville, until the day when you are unable to save Don Pedro’s favourite slave, and he rifles your treasure and has you bound with chains and cast into a dungeon to rot slowly into hell.

_Don Salomon_ (_quite unmoved_): Howbeit, you will see that to one of my race his children are dearer than his coffers. Unless this convent gets in better odour, Moses and Rebecca will soon be playing in Granada round the Elvira gate, and sailing their boats upon the Darro ... have you that balsam for me?

_Trotaconventos_: Ay, and have you two maravedis for it?

_Don Salomon_ (_taking out two coins from his purse_): Are you, indeed, an Old Christian? Had you no grandam, who, like your own daughter, was not averse to a circumcised lover? Methinks you love gold as much as any Jew.

_Trotaconventos_ (_drops the coins on the table and listens to their ring_): Yes, they sing in tune; a good Catholic _doremi_, I’d not be surprised to hear coins from _your purse_ whine ‘alleluia’ falsely through their nose—the thin noise of alloy and a false mint. (_Goes and rummages in a coffer, and with her back turned to him, says nonchalantly_): Neither your ointment nor the Goa stones powdered in milk have reduced the swelling.

_DON SALOMON does not answer, and TROTACONVENTOS looks sharply
over her shoulder._

_Trotaconventos_: Well?

_He looks at her in silence. She walks over to him._

_Trotaconventos_: Here is your balsam. As touching sickness, I have ever hearkened to you; you may speak.

_Don Salomon_: The ointment ... I hoped it might give you some relief of your pain; but as to the swelling....

_Trotaconventos_: It will not diminish?

_Don Salomon_: No.

_Trotaconventos_: You are certain, Don Salomon?

_Don Salomon_: Yes.

_Trotaconventos_: But ... surely ... the Table of Spain, Don Pedro’s carbuncle ... I verily believe Doña Maria could get me it for a night ... ’tis the most potent stone in the world.

_Don Salomon_: Dame, you have ever liked plain speaking. Neither in the belly of the stag, nor in the womb of the earth, nor in God’s throne, is there a precious stone that can decrease that swelling.

_Trotaconventos_: Can one live long with it?

_Don Salomon_: No.

_Trotaconventos_: How long?

_Don Salomon_: I cannot say to a day.

_TROTACONVENTOS sinks wearily down into a chair. DON SALOMON
gazes at her in silence for a time, then comes up and lays his
hand on her shoulder._

_Don Salomon_ (_gravely_): Old friend, from my heart I envy you. A wise man who had travelled over all the earth came to the court of a certain caliph, and the caliph asked him whom of all the men he had met on his wanderings he envied most; and the wise man answered: ‘Oh, Caliph, ’twas an old blind pauper whose wife and children were all dead.’ And when the caliph asked him why he envied one in such sorry plight, he answered, ‘because the only evil thing is fear, and he had nought to fear.’ You, too, have nothing to fear, except you fear the greatest gift of God—sleep.

_Exit quietly._

_Trotaconventos_ (_wildly_): Nothing to fear! Oh, my poor black soul ... hell-fire ... the devil hiding like a bug in my shroud ... oh, Blessed Virgin, save me from hell-fire!

_The ghost of DON JUAN TENORIO appears._

_Don Juan Tenorio_: There is no hell.

_Trotaconventos_: Who are you? Speak!

_Don Juan Tenorio_: I am the broad path that leads to salvation; I am the bread made of wheat; I am the burgeoning of buds and the fall of the leaf; I am the little white wine of Toro and the red wine of Madrigal; I am the bronze on the cheek of the labourer and his dreamless, midday sleep beneath the chestnut tree; I am the mirth at wedding-wakes; I am the dance of the Hours whose rhythm lulls kings and beggars, nuns, and goatherds on the hills, giving them peace, and freeing them from dreams; I am innocence; I am immortality; I am Don Juan Tenorio.

_Trotaconventos_: Don Juan Tenorio? Then you come from hell.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: I have spoken: there is no hell. There is no hell and there is no heaven; there is nought but the green earth. But men are arrogant and full of shame, and they hide truth in dreams.

_Trotaconventos_: Ay, but what of the black sins that weigh down my soul?

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Dreams are the only sin.

_Trotaconventos_: What, then, of death?

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Every death is cancelled by a birth; hence there is no death.

_Trotaconventos_: But I must surely die, and that ere long.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: But if others live? Prisoners! Prisoners! Locked up inside yourselves; like children born in a dark tower, as their parents were before them. And round and round they run, and beat their little hands against the wall, or stare at the old faded arras upon which fingers, dead a hundred years ago, have pictured quaint shapes that hint at flowers and birds and ships. And all the time the creaking door is on the jar, the gaolers long since dead.

_The ghost of SISTER ISABEL appears._

_Sister Isabel_: Mother!

_Trotaconventos_ (_in horror_): Isabel!

_Sister Isabel_: I come from Purgatory.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Still a prisoner, bound by the dreams of the living.

_Sister Isabel_: As they are by the dead.

_Trotaconventos_: Why do you visit me, daughter?

_Sister Isabel_: To bid you save my little son from circumcision, my daughter from concubinage to the infidels.

_Trotaconventos_: How?

_Sister Isabel_: By preserving the virginity of my sisters in religion.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Virginity! What of Christ’s fig-tree?

_Sister Isabel_: Demon, what do _you_ know of Christ?

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Once we were one, but....

_Sister Isabel_: Lying spirit!

_Don Juan Tenorio_: That part of me that was he, was sucked bloodless by the insatiable dreams of man.

_Sister Isabel_: Mother, hearken not....

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Hearken not....

_Sister Isabel_: To this lying spirit.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: To this spirit drugged with dreams.

_Sister Isabel_: Else you will forfeit....

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Else you will forfeit....

_Sister Isabel_: Your immortal soul.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Your immortal body.

_Sister Isabel_: All is vanity,

_Don Juan Tenorio_: All is vanity.

_Sister Isabel_: Save only the death,

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Save only the death,

_Sister Isabel_: And the resurrection,

_Don Juan Tenorio_: And the resurrection,

_Sister Isabel_: Of our Lord Jesus Christ.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Of crops and trees and flowers and the race of man.

_Sister Isabel_: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the dead.

_Don Juan Tenorio_: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the Spirit of Life.

_A violent knocking at the door. The ghosts of DON JUAN TENORIO
and SISTER ISABEL vanish. TROTACONVENTOS sits up and rubs her
eyes._

_Trotaconventos_: I have been dreaming ... life ... death ... my head turns. And what is this knocking?

_Voice outside_: Old stinking bird-lime! Heart-hammer! Magpie! Bumble-bee! Street trailer! Cuirass of rotten wood! Curry-comb! Corpus dragon! I bid you open, d’ye hear?

_Trotaconventos_: Why, I do believe ’tis that ardent lover, Don Manuel de Lara. Can the baggage have shied from the tryst?

_Voice from outside_: Gutter crone! Gutter crone! The fiends of hell gnaw your marrow! I want in!

_Trotaconventos_: Anon, good knight, anon! Well ... shall I throw cold water on his hopes and save my soul? Nay, Isabel, ’tis too late; one cannot make shepherds’ pipes out of this old barley straw ... and yet ... visions of sleep! Nay, through my living daughter will I taste again the old joys and snap my fingers at ... ghosts.

_Opens the door. DON MANUEL DE LARA bursts into the room._

DON MANUEL DE LARA: Old hag, what have you done to me? You have been riding among the signs of the Zodiac ... I know ... and tampering with the Scales, putting sweetness in each, then throwing in the moon to turn the balance. Oh, you have given me philtres ... I know, I know ... some varlet bribed with a scarlet cloak, then strange liquid dreams curdling the rough juice of the Spanish grape ... and you all the while jeering and cackling at me! (_seizes her roughly by the shoulders._) How dare you meddle with my dreams? You play with loaded dice.

_Trotaconventos_ (_soothingly_): Wo! ass! Let me rub thee down, ass of my wife’s brother! You must have got an ague; the water of the Guadalquivir and Seville figs play strange tricks with Castilian stomachs in May. A little prayer to St. Bartholomew ... or better still, a very soothing draught I learnt to brew long since from a Jew doctor. Why, sir knight, what is this talk of love philtres? The only receipt _I_ know for such is a gill of neat ankle or merry eye to three gills of hot young blood. And have you no thanks for your old witch? I cannot, let evil tongues wag as they will, drum the moon from the heavens, but trust old Trotaconventos to draw a nun from her cloister!

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_who has been standing as if stunned_): Aye, there’s the rub ... I’d have the moon dragged from the heavens (_laughs wildly, then turns upon her violently_). Oh, I’ll shake your black soul out of its prison of rotted bones. I am encompassed all around with your spells.

_Trotaconventos_: Don Manuel, you are sick. Lie down on this couch and take a cool draught of reason, for it, at least, is a medicinal stream. You have engendered your own dreams, there have been no philtres or spells. The abbot dines off his singing, and a procuress must suit all tastes, and if a silly serving-wench comes to me a-sighing and a-sobbing for some pert groom with a heron’s feather in his cap, or trembling lest Pedro in her distant village is giving his garlic-scented kisses to another maid, why, then I know nothing will salve her red eyes but sunflower seeds culled when Venus is in the house of the Ram, or a mumbling backwards of the psalms, on a waxen heart to melt over the fire. But these are but foolish toys for the vulgar, and the devil does not reveal his secrets to an Old Christian who goes to mass every Sunday and on feast-days too. You are not bewitched, Don Manuel, except it be by a pair of gray eyes smiling beneath a nun’s veil. Was she coy, perchance? Why, coyness in a maid....

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_laughing bitterly_): Coy? (_impatiently._) I came here all hot with projects and decision, but now it is all flowing out of me like wine from a leaking pig-skin, and I seem bereft of will and desire, as sometimes on the field of battle when I fight in a dream, regardless if the issue be life or death. (_Shaking himself._) The fault lies not with you, good dame; what you set out to do you have done, the which I shall bear in mind. As to spells and philtres, they say I was born under Saturn with the moon in the ascendant, and, whether it be true or no, some evil star distills dark, poisonous vapours round the nettles and rank roots that grow in the dark places of my soul, the which some chance word will draw from their hiding-place and ... in plain words, your nun is all your words painted her, but falls far short of the lineaments lent her by my fancy; for which it is not you but that same unbridled fancy, that is to blame. In that you compassed the meeting, you shall have rich cloths and a well-filled purse, but....

_Trotaconventos_ (_her indignation boiling over_): Jesus! Here is a dainty Don! Comes far short of the linen lent her by _your_ fancy! Was then her linen foul? Or rather, are you like Alfonso the Wise, and had you had the making of her would you have fashioned her better than God? I know your breed; as the proverb says, it is but a fool that wants a bread not made with wheat. In truth, the girl is well-formed, sprightly and hot-blooded. I know no damsel can so well....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I have told you dame, you shall be well paid for your pains. But ... but ... there is another matter with regard to which I would fain....

_Trotaconventos_: And so you deem old Trotaconventos cares for naught but cloths and purses! And what of the pride in my craft? Upon my soul! My daintiest morsel sniffed at all round, and then Don Cat, with a hump of his back, his tail arched, and his lips drawn back in disdain....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Come, dame, I am pressed for time. I ask your pardon if I have been over nice, and you have no need to take umbrage for your craft. I ... would ... would ask your help ... (_sinks into a chair and covers his face with his hands_) ... my God, I cannot. The words choke me.

_There is a knock at the door._

_Voice from outside_: Hola! Hecate! Goddess of the cross-roads! Open in your graciousness.

_Trotaconventos_: ’Tis a stranger’s voice. (_Aside_) This time ’tis a case of better the devil one does _not_ know.

_Opens the door. Enter DENNYS._

_Dennys_: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has drawn me all the way from France. Why, ’twill soon rival the fame of your St. James, and from every corner of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to you on pilgrimage.

_Trotaconventos_ (_laughing and eyeing him with evident favour_): A pox on your flowery tongue! I know you French of old ... hot tongues and cold, hard hearts. Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is wet with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (_Draws off his cloak and at the same time slips her hand down his neck and tickles him_).

_Dennys_: A truce! A truce! Thus you could unman me to yield you all my gold and tell you all my secrets. (_Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it in her hands._) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, Joseph, and Doña Potiphar?

_Trotaconventos_: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling ballad it is too! But _you_ are no Sir Joseph, my pretty lad ... while others that I know ... (_glances resentfully at DON MANUEL DE LARA, who is still sitting with his head buried in his hands. DENNYS, following her glance, catches sight of him._)

_Dennys_: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, are we guild brothers, and of that guild _you_ are the virgin, fairer and more potent than she of the kings or of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have heard of your miracles. That pious young widow with a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, how....

_Trotaconventos_: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! It would take a French tongue to call Trotaconventos a virgin. Why, before you were born ... come, I’ll tell you a secret. (_She whispers something in his ear. He bursts out laughing._)

_Dennys_: Holy Mother of God! You should have given suck to Don Ovid. Why, _that_ beats all the French _fabliaux_. Well, now as to my business. You must know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, I would visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of Seville....

_Trotaconventos_ (_chuckling_): A bold and merry wager!

_Dennys_: Ay, but that is but the prelude. In one of these convents (_DON MANUEL drops his hands from his face and sits up straight in his chair_) I fell into an ambush laid by Don Cupid himself.

_Trotaconventos_ (_bitterly_): To be sure! And so you come to old Trotaconventos. To be a procuress is to be the cow at the wedding, for ever sacrificed to the junketings of others. ’Tis other folks’ burdens killed the ass. Well, the time is short, the time is short, if you want Trotaconventos’s aid.

_Dennys_: Why, despite her habit, ’twas the fairest maid I have seen this side the Pyrenees, and I swear ’tis a sin she should live a nun. I fell to talking and laughing with her; but though she is a ripe plum, I warrant, ’tis for another hand to shake the branch. Now you, mother, I know, go in and out of every convent in Seville.... So will you be my most cunning and subtle ambassador?

_Trotaconventos_: Ay, but ambassadors are given services of gold, and sumpter-mules laden with crimson cloths, and retinues of servants, and apes and tumblers and dancers, and purses of gold. How will _you_ equip your ambassador?

_Dennys_: A _trovar’s_ fortune is his tongue and lips; so with my lips I pay. (_He gives her three smacking kisses._)

_Trotaconventos_: Oh, you French jackanapes! Oh, you saucy ballad-monger! So you hold your kisses weigh like _maravedis_, do you? Well, well, I have ever said that the lips of a fine lad hold the sweetest wine in Spain. Now you must acquaint me more fully with your business, if you would have me speed it.

_Dennys_: Why! You know it all. I love a nun of the Convent of San Miguel, and....

_DON MANUEL DE LARA springs from his bench and seizes him by
the shoulders._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: You scurvy, whoreson, lily-livered, shameless son of France! _France!_ The teeming dam of whores and ballad-mongers, whose king flies from his foes shaking a banner broidered with the lilies of a frail woman’s garden-close. You are in Castille, where lions guard our virgins in strong towers, and e’er you tamper with the virtue of a professed virgin of Spain, I will hew you into little pieces to feed my hounds. (_He shakes him violently._)

_Trotaconventos_ (_pulling him back by his cloak_): Let go, you solemn, long-jowled, finicky Judas! You fox in priest’s habit on the silver centre-piece of a king’s table! Don Cat turned monk that he might the better catch the monastery mice! Foul Templar escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah! Who are _you_ to take up the glove for Seville nuns?

_DON MANUEL, paying no heed to TROTACONVENTOS, holds DENNYS
with one hand, and with the other draws his dagger and places
its point on his throat._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Now, blackbird of St. Bénoit, you’ll tell me the name of the nun you would seduce. D’ye hear? The name of the nun you would seduce!

_Dennys_ (_gasping_): Sister Assumcion.

_Trotaconventos_: Ah!

_DON MANUEL lets go of DENNYS, who, pale and gasping, is
supported to the couch by TROTACONVENTOS, she mingling the
while words of condolence with DENNYS and imprecations against
the DON._

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_to himself_): Strange! Passing strange! That Moorish knight who gave me the head wound at Gibraltar ... then years later both serenading ’neath the same balcony, in Granada ... and then again, last year, of a sudden coming on his carved, olive face staring at the moon from a ditch in Albarrota. And I convinced, till then, that our lives were being twisted in one rope to some end.... Chance meetings, chance partings, chance meetings again. And this _trovar_, coming to-night, on business ... why am I so beset by dreams?

_Dennys_: Thanks, mother, the fiery don shook all the humours to my head (_gets up_). Well, knight, more kicks than ha’pence—that’s the lot of a _trovar_ in Spain. I know well, necessity makes one embrace poverty and obedience, like the Franciscans, but I never learnt till now that a _trovar_ must take the third vow of chastity.

_Trotaconventos_: Pooh! A rare champion of chastity and the vows of nuns you see before you! Why, my sweet lad, this same Don Manuel de Lara has been importuning me with prayers and tears and strange fantastical ravings, that I should devise a meeting between him ... and whom, think you? Why, this same Sister Assumcion.

_Dennys_: Sister Assumcion?

_Trotaconventos_: Ay, Sister Assumcion. But, as I tell him, he is one of these fools that seek a bread not made of wheat. He’ll not to bed unless I rifle hell for him and bring him Queen Helena. He comes to me to-night with a “comely, yes, but comeliness, what of comeliness?” and “a tempting enough for Pedro and Juan and the rest of the workaday world, but as to me!” And she the prettiest nun that ever took the veil, and certain to bear off the prize for Seville in the contest of beauty with the nuns of Toledo ... but not good enough for him, oh no!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Of my thirty years, I have spent sixteen in fighting the Moors, and if I choose to squander some of the spiritual treasures I have thus acquired by my sword in ... (_he brings the words out with difficulty_) dallying with nuns, who knows, maybe _I_ can afford it. But think you I’ll allow a sinewless French _jongleur_ to rifle the spiritual treasury of Spain? For Spain is the poorer by every nun that falls. (_Impatiently_) Pooh! If two whistling false blackbirds choose to mate, what care I or Spain? Dame, settle this fellow’s business with him, then ... I would claim a hearing for my own.

_Sits down on the bench and once more buries his face in
his hands. DENNYS taps his forehead meaningly and winks at
TROTACONVENTOS._

_Dennys_: Well, mother, will you be my advocate? Tell her I am master of arts in the university of Love, and have learnt most cunning and pleasant gymnastics in Italy, unknown to Pyramus and Troilus ... nay, not that, for maidens want the moon, to wit, a Joseph with all the cunning in love’s arts of Naso. Tell her rather, that having been born when Venus was in the house of Saturn, and the scorpion ... you know the kind of jargon ... I came into the world already endowed with knowledge of love’s secrets ... nay ... tell her (_his voice catches fire from his words_) the years, like village lads when the Feast of St. John draws near, have built up in my soul a heap of lusty green branches, and old dry sticks, and frails of dried rose-petals, and many a garland of rosemary and maiden-hair and ivy and rue, and there it has lain until one glance from those eyes of hers has been the spark to turn it into a crackling, flaming, fragrant-smoked bonfire, a beacon to a thousand farms and hamlets. Tell her I can touch the lute, the vihuela, the guitar, the psalter, Don Tristram’s harp ... ay, and most delicately touch her breasts. And if she wishes a little respite from _our_ love, tell her I can wring tears from her eyes with the Matter of Britain or the Matter of Rome—sad tales (for sadness turns sweet when it is dead) of Dido and Iseult and Guinevere, or make her laugh and laugh again with tales from the clerk Boccaccio. Tell her....

_Trotaconventos_: Enough, French rogue! You have little need, it seems, of an ambassador. Well, I have seen worse-favoured lads and (_with a scowl in the direction of DON MANUEL_) less honey-tongued. (_She rummages in a cupboard and brings out a key._) What will you give me for this, Don Nightingale? I’ll tell you a secret; I have a duplicate key to the postern of near every convent in Seville, but they are not for _all_ my clients, oh no! This opens the postern of San Miguel ... well, well, take it then. And be there to-morrow night at nine o’clock, and I can promise you your nun will not fail you.

_Dennys_: Oh, dearer than a mother! oh, most bountiful dame! A key! A key! (_holds up the key_), I have ever loved a key and held it the prettiest toy in Christendom. I vow ’twas a key and not an apple that Eve gave to Adam in Paradise, a key and not an apple the goddesses strove for on Mount Ida, a key into which the Roman smith, Vulcan, put all his amorous cunning when he was minded to fashion a gift well pleasing to his mistress, Venus. May you dream to-night that you are young again, mother, and hold the keys of heaven. And you, sir knight, what dreams shall I wish you? (_Eyes DON MANUEL quizzically._) Adieu.

_Exit._

_Trotaconventos_: Ay! May his key bring him joy! A very sweet rogue! Well, Don Manuel, has your brain cooled enough to talk with me?

_DON MANUEL, who has remained passive and motionless during the
above scene, suddenly springs to his feet, his eyes blazing,
his cheeks flushed._

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_hoarsely_): I, too, would have a key ... for the convent of San Miguel.

_Trotaconventos_: And would you in truth? (_suspiciously_). Has the convent some fairer nun than Sister Assumcion?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: How can I say? I have never seen any of the nuns. All I ask you, dame, is for a key.

_Trotaconventos_: And what if I refuse you a key, Sir Arrogance?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will pay for it all you ask ... even to my immortal soul.

_Trotaconventos_: And what do I want with your immortal soul? I’d as lief have a wild cat in the house, any market day.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_clenching his fists and glaring at her fiercely_): A key, a key, old hag! Give me a key.

_TROTACONVENTOS picks up his scarlet cloak which he has let
drop and waves in his face._

_Trotaconventos_: Come, come, brave bull! And has Love, the _bandillero_, maddened you with his darts? Old Trotaconventos must turn bull-fighter! Ah! I know the human heart! Dog in the manger, like all men! Too nice yourself for Sister Assumcion, but too greedy to let another enjoy her!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: A key!

_Trotaconventos_: No, no, Sir knight. You are not St. Ferdinand and I am not the Moorish king that I should yield up the keys of Seville to you without a parley. Why do you want the key?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_suddenly growing quiet and eyeing her ironically_): What if I have been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and found the sun too hot? I have strange fancies. They say the founder of our house wed with a heathen witch who danced on the hills. (_Persuasively_) Hearken, I know you love rich fabrics; I have silk coverlets from Malaga that are ballads for the eye instead of for the ear, silk-threaded heathen ballads of Mahound and the doves and Almanzor and his Christian concubine. I have curtains from Almeric—Doña Maria has none to rival them in the Alcazar—and so fresh-coloured are the flowers that are embroidered on them, that when I was a child I thought that I could smell them, and my mother, to coax me to eat when a dry, hot wind was parching the _Vega_, would tell me the bees had culled the honey spread on my bread from the flowers embroidered on these curtains. I have necklets of gold, beaten thin like autumn beech-leaves, taken by my grandsire from the harems of Cordova when he stormed the city with St. Ferdinand; ere they were necklets they were ciboriums of the Goths, rifled by impious Tarik. Precious stones? I have rubies like beakers with the red wine trembling to their very lip ... one almost fears to lift them except with a steady hand for fear they spill and stain one’s garments red, and like to wine, the gifts they bring are health and a merry heart. I have Scythian sapphires that once lay in the bed of the river of Paradise, while to win them Arimaspians were fighting Gryphons; they are the gage of the life to come, they are blue and cold like English ladies’ eyes who go on pilgrimage. And I have emeralds to catch from them a blue shadow like that of a kingfisher on green waters. He who has store of precious stones need fear neither plague nor fever, nor fiends, nor the terrors by night, and with that store I will endow you if you but give me the key. The key, good mother, the key!

_Trotaconventos_: Very pretty ... but ... well ... I know a certain king, a mighty ugly one, who laughs at the virtues of precious stones.... Aye ... but come, Don Manuel, we are but playing with each other. With your own eyes you saw me give the key of the Convent of San Miguel to the French _trovar_. Think you I have two?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_as if stunned_): Not two? To the French _trovar_?

_Trotaconventos_: Why, yes, Sir knight. Your wits are wool-gathering.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_in great excitement_): My cloak? Where is my cloak? Away! the key!

_Exit._

SCENE II

_The orchard of San Miguel the following evening at nine
o’clock. Near the postern stands DON MANUEL DE LARA,
motionless, his arms folded, his cloak drawn round the lower
part of his face. Towards him hurries SISTER ASSUMCION._

_Sister Assumcion_: Good evening, friar _trovar_ ... and can you not come forward to meet me? I can tell you, sir, it needed all Trotaconventos’s eloquence to send me to the tryst. Never before has her pleading been so honeyed.... Why....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am not the _trovar_, lady.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_starting back_): Holy saints defend me! Who, then, are you?... And yet your voice....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: But I bear a message to you from the _trovar_.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_sharply_): Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: His words were these: ‘Tell her the dead grudge us our joys.’

_Sister Assumcion_: What meant he?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am a messenger, not a reader of riddles.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_crossing herself_): Strange words! Where was it that you met him?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the streets of Seville ... at night.

_Sister Assumcion_: And what was he doing?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He was standing by a niche in which was an image of Our Lady with a lamp burning before it, and by its light he was examining a key. And he was laughing.

_Sister Assumcion_: Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That is all.

_Sister Assumcion_: All? (_Shrilly_): Who are you? (_Plucks at his cloak which he allows to fall._)

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well, and are you any the wiser?

_Sister Assumcion_: No, your face is unknown to me.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And yours to me.

_Sister Assumcion_: And yet, your voice ... by Our Lady, you are an ominous, louring man. And this strange tale of the _trovar_ ... why am I to credit it?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Here is the key.

_Sister Assumcion_: And where is he?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That I cannot say.

_Sister Assumcion_: Did he look sick?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No, in the very bloom of health.

_Sister Assumcion_: And he was standing under a shrine laughing, and you approached, and he said, “Tell her the dead grudge us our joys”.... Pooh! It rings like a foolish ballad.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: It is true nevertheless.

_Sister Assumcion_: And how came you by the key?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_nonchalantly_): The key? (_holding it out in front of him and smiling teasingly_). It is delicately wrought.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_stamping_): A madman!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: So many have said. But now, in that I have borne a message to you, will you return the grace and bear one for me? I have a kinswoman in this sisterhood and I would fain speak with her.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_insolently_): Have you in truth? We have no demon’s kinswomen here ... well, and what is her name?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Sister Pilar.

_Sister Assumcion_: Aye, _she_ might be ... sprung from the same still-born, white-blooded grandame.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! (_with suppressed eagerness_). You know Sister Pilar well?

_Sister Assumcion_ (_with a short laugh_): Aye, that I do.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And ... is ... is she well?

_Sister Assumcion_: She is never ailing.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_absently_): Never ailing. You ... you know her well?

_Sister Assumcion_: Without doubt, a madman! I have told you that I know her but too well.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: On what does her talk turn?

_Sister Assumcion_: For the most part on our shortcomings. But her words are few.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_pulling himself together_): Well, you would put me much in your debt if you would carry her this letter. It bears my credentials as her kinsman. I would speak with her at once, as I bear weighty news for her from her home.

_Sister Assumcion_: And why could you not come knocking at the porter’s lodge, as others do, and at some hour, too, before Compline, when ends the day of a religious?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: As to the porter’s lodge, I have my own key. And the news, I tell you, will not keep till morning. Handle that letter gingerly; it bears the king’s seal.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_awed_): Don Pedro’s?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye.

_Sister Assumcion_: Well ... as you will. I’ll take your message. Good-night ... Sir demon; are you not of Hell’s chivalry?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_SISTER ASSUMCION shrugs her shoulders, looks at him
quizzically, and exit. A few minutes elapse, during which DON
MANUEL stands motionless; then SISTER PILAR enters; she gives a
slight bow and waits._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: You are Sister Pilar?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the world the Lady Maria Guzman y Perez?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am Don Pablo de Guzman, your father’s cousin’s son.

_Sister Pilar_ (_with interest_): Ah! I have heard my father speak of yours.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: You have not lately, I think, visited your home?

_Sister Pilar_: Not since I was professed.... _I_ obey the bull of Pope Boniface, that nuns should keep their cloister.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your sister, Violante, has lately been wed.

_Sister Pilar_ (_eagerly_): Little Violante? She was but a child when I took the black veil. Whom has she wedded?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Er ... er ... a comrade in arms of mine. A knight of Old Castille ... one Don Manuel de Lara.

_Sister Pilar_: And what manner of man is he? I should wish little Violante to be happy.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He passes for a brave soldier. He has brought her the skulls of many Moors. She has filled them with earth and planted them with bulbs. Daffodils grow out of their eyes and nose.

_Sister Pilar_: A strange device!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: ’Twas Don Manuel showed her it; such are the whimsies of Old Castille. In that country we like to play with death.

_Sister Pilar_: Yet ... yet is it not a toy.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: We rarely play with love.

_Sister Pilar_: No.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_Sister Pilar_: I would fain learn more of this knight. He loves my sister?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! yes. His soul snatched the torch of love from his body, then gave it back again, then again snatched it. She is all twined round with his dreams; she smiles at him with his mother’s eyes; she is Belerma the Fair and Doña Alda of his childhood’s ballads. She is a fair ship charged with spices, she is all the flowers that have blossomed since the Third Day of the Creation, she is the bread not made with wheat, she ... she ... she is a key, like this one (_holding up the key_), but wrought in silver and ivory.

_Sister Pilar_: A key? Strange! (_smiling a little_). And what is he to her?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He to her? I know not ... perhaps also a key.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_: So you know my home? You have heard our slaves crooning Moorish melodies from their quarters on moonlight nights, perchance you have handled my father’s chessmen and the Portuguese pennon he won from a French count at Tables ... oh! he was so proud of that pennon! How is the Cid?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The Cid? His bones still moulder in Cardeña.

_Sister Pilar_: No, no, my father’s greyhound ... the one that has one eye blue and the other brown.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! He still sleeps by day and bays at the moon o’ nights.

_Sister Pilar_: Oh! And how tall has my oak grown now?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your oak?

_Sister Pilar_: Ah, surely they cannot have forgot to show it you! It was the height of a daffodil when I took the veil. When we were children, you know, we were told an _exemplum_ of a wise Moor who planted trees that under their shade his children’s children might call him blessed, so we—Sancho and Rodrigo and little Violante and me—we took acorns from the pigs’ trough and planted them beyond the orchard, near my mother’s bed of gillyflowers, and mine was the only one that sent forth shoots. Oh! And the bush of Granada roses ... they must have shown you _them_?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: To be sure! They are still fragrant.

_Sister Pilar_: You know, they were planted from seeds my grandsire got in the Alhambra when he was jousting in Granada. My father was wont to call them his harem of Moorish beauties, and there was a nightingale that would serenade them every evening from the Judas tree that shadows them. It was always to them he sang, he cared not a jot for the other roses in the garden.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rose-tree died of blight and the nightingale of a broken heart the year you took the veil.

_Sister Pilar_: You are jesting!

_He smiles, and she gives a little smile back at him._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so it is of roses and nightingales that you ask tidings, and not of mother and father or brothers! Well, it is always thus with exiles. When I have lain fevered with my wounds very far from Old Castille, it has been for the river that flows at the foot of our orchard I have yearned, or for the green _Vega_ dotted with brown villages and stretching away towards the _Sierra_.

_Sister Pilar_: I am not an exile.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: An exile is one who is far from home.

_Sister Pilar_: This is my home.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And do you never yearn for your other one?

_Sister Pilar_: My _other_ one? Ah, yes!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: By that you mean Paradise?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so you long for Paradise?

_Sister Pilar_: With a great longing.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I sometimes _dream_ of Paradise.

_Sister Pilar_: And how does it show in your dreams?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_smiling a little_): I fear it is mightily like what the _trovares_—_not_ the monks—tell us of hell.

_Sister Pilar_ (_severely_): Then it must be a dream sent you by a fiend of the Moorish Paradise, which is indeed hell.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That may be. And how does it show in _your_ dreams?

_Sister Pilar_: A great, cool, columned, empty hall, and I feel at once small and vast and shod with the wind. And all the while I am aware that the coolness and vastness and spaciousness of the hall and my body’s lightness is because there is no sin.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: But what can you know of sin in a nunnery?

_SISTER PILAR looks at him suspiciously, but his expression
remains impenetrable._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well?

_Sister Pilar_: You must know ... ’tis the scandal of Christendom ... the empty vows of the religious. Yet when all’s said, ’tis better here than out in the world; we _do_ live under rule, and mark the day by singing the Hours (_gazing in front of her as if at some vision_). Just over there, perhaps across that hill, or round that bend of the road, a cool, rain-washed world, trees, oxen, men, women, children, thin and transparent, as if made of crystal.... I always held I would suddenly come upon it. (_Passionately_) Oh, I am so weary of the glare and dust of sin! Everything is heavy and savourless and confined.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Always?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... except when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And then?

_Sister Pilar_: Then there is vastness and peace.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That must be a nun’s communion. When I eat Our Lord I am filled with a great pity for His sufferings on Calvary which the Mass commemorates. There have been times when having eaten Him on the field of battle, my comrades and I, the tears have rained down our cheeks, and from our pity has sprung an exceeding great rage against the infidel dogs who deny His divinity, and in that day’s battle it goes ill with them. And when I eat Him in times of peace, I am filled with a longing to fall upon the Morería, a sword in one hand, a burning brand in the other.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_: It is already very late ... for nuns. What is the weighty news you bring me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Why, the marriage of your sister Violante!

_Sister Pilar_ (_coldly_): And was it for that I was dragged from the dorter?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I had sworn to acquaint you with the news ... and to-morrow I leave Seville.

_Sister Pilar_ (_relenting_): And you are well acquainted with Don Manuel de Lara?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_gives a start_): Don Manuel de Lara? Ah, yes ... we are of the same country and the same age. We were suckled by one foster-mother, we yawned over one Latin primer, and gloated over the same tales of chivalry. We learned to ride the same horse, to fly the same hawk; we were dubbed knight by the same stroke of the sword—we love the same lady.

_Sister Pilar_ (_amazed_): _You_ love my sister Violante?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I love your sister Violante ... and your mother that carried you in her womb, and your father that begat you. (_Violently_) By the rood, I am sick of mummery! _I_ am Don Manuel de Lara.

_Sister Pilar_: You?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I——

_Sister Pilar_: Then you are not the son of my father’s cousin?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_Sister Pilar_: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... I ...

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will make it clear. On Tuesday night I heard your talk with Sister Assumcion.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in horror_): Oh!...

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I was the man behind the wall whom you justly named the worst kind of would-be adulterer, and....

_Sister Pilar_: I have no further words for Sister Assumcion’s lover.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: _I_ am not Sister Assumcion’s lover. The moon has already set and risen, the sun risen and set on his dead body.

_Sister Pilar_ (_haughtily_): I am not an old peasant woman that you should seek to please me with riddles.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will read you the riddle. Some weeks ago I had business—sent from the Alcazar on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with that old hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I cannot say, she waxed exceeding eloquent on the charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught in the Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, are gates by which either fiends or angels may enter.... Well, her words entered my ears and set fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, old hopes ... (strange! these are the _trovar’s_ words!) piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming a sun-parched _vega_ in the North. Well, a fire must work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, towers, men—drive forward to its secret bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I obtained speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters to quench a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. I heard a voice and strange, passionate words ... the course of the fire was altered, but still it drives on, still it consumes.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in a small, cold voice_): Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well? And is it well? My God! Well, a _trovar_ from France who had entered your convent disguised as a friar obtained from Trotaconventos this key, which I likewise desired, first because it opens this postern, secondly because ... toys are apt to take for me a vast significance and swell out with all the potencies of my happiness in this world, my salvation in the next, and thus it happened with this key; the fire rushed on, I killed the _trovar_ and took the key!

_Sister Pilar_ (_horror-stricken_): You _killed_ him?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes ... and would have killed a thousand such for the key ... a low, French _jongleur_! The world is all the better for his loss. The dog! Daring to think he could seduce the nuns of Spain!

_Sister Pilar_: Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rest is told in few words. My madness over (for that night I was mad) the key in my hands, counsel returned to me, and showed me that it was not only through the key I could win to your convent ... it is dreams that open only to this key; strange dreams I only know in fragments ... and I minded me of an _exemplum_ told by the king Don Sancho, in his book, of a knight that craved to talk with a nun, and to affect the same, feigned to be her kinsman. The night I was the other side this wall and you were taunting Sister Assumcion, you named yourself a Guzman whose mother was a Perez. I had but to go to a herald and learn from him all the particulars pertaining to the family of Perez y Guzman.

_Sister Pilar_: You wished to have speech with me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes.

_Sister Pilar_: Why?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I have already said that no one knows the bourne of fire.

_Sister Pilar_ (_scornfully_): The bourne of fire! The bourne rather of ... I’ll not soil my lips with the word. Let me reduce your “fires,” and “lyres,” and “moons” to plain, cold words; having wearied of Sister Assumcion, you thought you’d sample another nun—one maybe taking a greater stretch of arm to reach; like children with figs—a bite out of one, then flung away, then scrambling for another on a higher branch, that in its turn it, too, may be bitten and thrown. Or, maybe, Sister Assumcion found the _trovar_ more to her taste than you ... yes, I have it! _I_ am to bring a little balm to Sister Assumcion’s discarded lover!

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_eagerly_): Oh, lady, very light of ... lady, it is not so. Maybe thus it shows, but in your heart of hearts you know right well it is not so. I am a grievous sinner, but my soul is not light nor is my heart shallow ... and I think already you know ’tis so. Listen; I could have continued feigning to be your kinsman and thus I could have come again to speak with you, and all would have gone well; but your presence gave me a loathing of my deceit, so I stripped me of my lies and stand naked at your mercy. As to Sister Assumcion ... the old hag’s words, when she spoke of her, mated with my dreams and engendered _you_ in my heart, yes, _you_; and I had but to hear the other’s voice and hearken to her words to know that I had been duped and that she was not you. I swear by God Almighty, by the duty I owe to my liege-lord, by my order of chivalry, that I speak the truth.

_Sister Pilar_: Well, suppose it true, what then?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: What then? I have burned my boats and I shall go ... where? And you will to your dorter and be summoned by the cock to matins, and it will all be as a dream (_in a voice of agony_). No! No! By all the height and depth of God’s mercy it cannot be thus! The stars have never said that of all men I should be the most miserable. Can you see no pattern traced behind all this? Sin? Aye, sin.... But I verily believe that God loves sinners. But why do I speak of sin? You say sin is everywhere; tell me, do you see sin’s shadow lying between us two to-night? Speak! You do not answer. Who knows? It may be that for the first time we have stumbled on the track that leads to Paradise. Angels are abroad ... fiends, too, it may be ... but I am not a light man. _Ex utero ante luciferum amavi te_ ... ’tis not thus the words run, but they came.

_Sister Pilar_: You speak wildly. What do you want of me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: What do I want?... _Magna opera Domini_ ... why does the psalter run in my head?... Great are the works of the Lord ... the sun is a great work, but so is shade from the sun; and the moon is a great work, giving coolness and dreams, and air to breathe is a great work, and so is water to lave our wounds and slake our throats ... I believe all the works of the Lord are found in you.... I could ... oh, God!... Where? Lady, remember I have the key, and every evening at sundown I shall be here ... waiting. It is a vow.

_SISTER PILAR slowly moves away._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Lady Maria! Lady Maria!

_Sister Pilar_ (_stopping_): She is dead. Do you speak to Sister Pilar?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, that is she, Sister Pilar. Listen: receive absolution; communicate; be very instant in prayer; make deep obeisance to the images of Our Lady. Say many Paters and Aves, and through the watches of the night, pray for the dead.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in a frightened voice_): For the dead?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye, the dead ... that defend virginity.

_Sister Pilar_ (_very coldly_): All this has ever been my custom, as a nun, without your admonition.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Good-night.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_ (_almost inaudibly_): Good-night.