D. Julian. What do you say? No name either?

Ernest. No, unless, as Don Hermogenes[[2]] says, we could put it into Greek for greater clarity.


[2]. A pedant in Moratin's Comedia Nueva, who quotes Greek incessantly to make himself better understood.—Tran.


D. Julian. Of a surety, Ernest, you were dozing when I came in. You have been dreaming nonsense.

Ernest. Dreaming! yes. Nonsense! perhaps. I talk both dreams and nonsense. But you are sensible and always right.

D. Julian. In this case it does not require much penetration. A drama in which the chief personage cannot appear; in which there is hardly any love; in which nothing happens but what happens every day; that begins with the fall of the curtain upon the last act, and which has no name. I don't know how it is to be written, still less how it is to be acted, how it is to find an audience, nor how it can be called a drama.

Ernest. Nevertheless, it is a drama, if I could only give it proper form, and that I can't do.

D. Julian. Do you wish to follow my advice?