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.