Fontanares Marie is dead, senora; I do not know the meaning of the words right and wrong, nowadays.
Quinola
There is a man for you.
Faustine
Forgive me, and I will devote myself to your future.
Fontanares Forgiveness! That word has been erased from my heart. There are situations in which the heart either breaks or turns to bronze. I am scarcely twenty-five years old, but to-day you have changed me into a man of fifty. You have lost to me one world, now you owe me another—
Quinola
Let us turn our attention to politics.
Faustine
And is not my love, Alfonso, worth a world?
Fontanares Yes, for you are a magnificent instrument of ruin and devastation. Yet it will be by means of you that I shall crush all those who have been an obstacle in my pathway; I take you, not for my wife, but for my slave, and you shall serve me.
Faustine
Serve you blindly.
Fontanares But without hope that there will be any return—need I say of what? All here (he strikes his hand upon his heart) is of bronze. You have taught me what this world is made of. O world of self-interest, of trickery, of policy and of perfidy, I defy you to the combat!
Quinola
Senor?