Quinola
My master has won from the king an acknowledgment of my innocence.
Lothundiaz To obtain for me a patent of nobility cannot then be a difficult matter.
Quinola And do you really think that a townsman can be changed into a nobleman by letters-patent of the king! Let us make the experiment. Imagine for a moment that I am the Marquis of Lavradi. My dear duke, lend me a hundred ducats?
Lothundiaz A hundred cuts of the rod! A hundred ducats! It is the rent of a piece of property worth two thousand gold doubloons.
Quinola There! I told you so—and that fellow wishes to be ennobled! Let us try again. Count Lothundiaz, will you advance two thousand doubloons in gold to your son-in-law that he may fulfill his promises to the King of Spain?
Lothundiaz (to Fontanares)
But you must tell me what you have promised.
Fontanares
The King of Spain, learning of my love for your daughter, is coming to
Barcelona to see a ship propelled without oars or sails, by a machine
of my invention, and will himself honor our marriage by his presence.
Lothundiaz (aside) He is laughing at me. (Aloud) You are very likely to propel a ship without sails or oars! I hope you will do it; I'll go to see it. It would amuse me, but I don't wish to have for a son-in-law any man of such lofty dreams. Girls brought up in our families need no prodigies for husbands, but men who are content to mind their business at their own homes, and leave the affairs of the sun and moon alone. All that I want is that my son-in-law should be the good father of his family.
Fontanares Your daughter, senor, when she was but twelve years old, smiled on me as Beatrice smiled on Dante. Child as she was, she saw in me at first naught but a brother; since then, as we felt ourselves separated by fortune, she has watched me as I formed that bold enterprise which should bridge with glory the gulf that stood between us. It was for her sake I went to Italy and studied with Galileo. She was the first to applaud my work, the first to understand it. She had wedded herself to my thought before it had occurred to her that one day she might wed herself to me. It is thus she has become the whole world to me. Do you now understand how I adore her?
Lothundiaz It is just for that reason that I refuse to give her to you. In ten years' time she would be deserted, that you might run after some other discovery.