Laz. If I can understand you? I understand everything now. The world is transparent to me: your head is made of crystal (laughing), and written in very black and tortuous letters I read your thought—you suppose I am very bad. Poor Javier! (Laughing.)
Jav. Don’t talk such rubbish: I neither think such a thing, nor are you really ill. Fatigue, weariness—nothing more. You have lived very fast in Madrid during the last few years: you have thought much, you have worked much, you have had a good deal of pleasure, and you need a few months’ rest—here—in your father’s house, with your mother, with Carmen.
Laz. Carmen—yes—look at her. (Pointing to the photograph.) There she is. How sad, how poetical, how adorable a countenance. I wish to live for her. With all the glory that I achieve I shall make a circle of light for that dear, pretty little head. (Sends a kiss to the portrait.) We shall live together, you and I, my sweet little Carmen, and we shall be very happy. (As if speaking with her.) For I wish to live. (Growing excited and turning to Javier.) If I had never lived it would never have suggested itself to me that I should continue to live: but I have commenced, and I don’t wish to break off so soon. No—no—it shall not be—as God lives.
Jav. Come, Lazarus.
Laz. I am strong. Why should I not be so? What right has nature to make of me a feeble creature when I wish to be strong? My thought burns, my heart leaps, my veins abound with the exuberance of life, my desires are aflame! To put steam of a thousand atmospheres into an old and rusty boiler! Oh! infamous mockery!
Jav. Eh! There you are, started off! What steam, or what boiler? The little glass of champagne.
Laz. A man like myself cannot be tormented with impunity. Here you have the world: it is yours: run merrily through its valleys, mount its summits in triumph! But you shall not run, you shall not mount, unless rheumatism is planted in your bones. Here you have the azure firmament: it is yours: fly among its altitudes, gaze upon its horizons. But you shall not fly except the plumage of your wings be wrenched away and you become a worm-eaten carcass. What derision! What satire! What cruelty! Accursed wine! What extravagant things I see, Javier! Colossal figures in masks float across the firmament, and, hung from very long strings, which are suspended from very long canes, they bear suns and splendours and stars, and they sweep onward crying, “Hurrah! hurrah!”[1] and I wish to reach all that, and I cannot touch even one little star with my lips. Grotesque, very grotesque! Cruel! very cruel! Sorrowful, very sorrowful! My God! My God! (He hides his face in his hands.)
Jav. Come, Lazarus, come. You see you cannot commit even the slightest excess.
Laz. I have uttered many follies, have I not? No matter: no one hears me but you, and it’s a relief to me. See, now I am more composed. I feel tired, and I even think I am sleepy.
Jav. That would be best for you: sleep, sleep, and let neither your mother nor Carmen see you thus.