SCENE I
Pepito listening at the door on the right, then comes
back into the middle of the stage.
Pepito. The crisis is past at last. I hear nothing. Poor Don Julian! He's in a sad way. His life hangs in the balance: on one side death awaits him, and on the other another death, that of the soul, of honour—either abyss deeper than hopeless love. The devil! All this tragedy is making me more sentimental than that fellow with his plays and verses. The tune of disaster, scandal, death, treason, and disgrace, hums in my brain. By Jove, what a day, and what a night! and the worst is yet to come. Well, it certainly was madness to move him in his condition; but when once my uncle gets an idea into his head, there's no reasoning with him. And, after all, he was right. No honourable man, in his place, could have stayed, and he is a man of spirit. Who is coming? my mother, I believe—yes. [Enter Doña Mercedes.]
SCENE II
Pepito and Doña Mercedes.
Mercedes. Where's Severo?
Pepito. He has not left my uncle for a moment. I had no idea he was so attached to him. If what I fear should happen——
Mercedes. How is your uncle?
Pepito. He suffers greatly, but says nothing. Sometimes he calls out 'Teodora' in a low harsh voice, and sometimes 'Ernest'; and then he tugs violently at the sheets, and lies quiet again as a statue, staring vacantly into space. Now his brow is bathed in the cold sweat of death, and then fever seizes him. He sits up in bed, listens attentively, and shouts that he and she are waiting for him. He tries to jump out of bed to rush at them, and all my father's entreaties and commands barely suffice to restrain him or soothe him. There's no quieting him. Anger races hot through his veins, and thought is a flame. It is shocking, mother, to see the bitter way his lips contract, and how his fingers close in a vice, with head all wild, and pupils dilated as though they drank in with yearning and despair every shadow that floats around the chamber.