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.