Laz. (alone). Yes: he is right: I have need of much calm. Outside there all is calm: then why should I not be calm as well? Without there is twilight (pressing his forehead): within here is another twilight. But yonder half obscurity will end by filling itself with light. And this—this? I seem to see beyond the luminous little clouds a great gloom. There without are worlds and suns and immensity—yet nothing of that bears the least consequence to me: here within are three insignificant persons—and it is they who are about to decide my destiny. To be menaced with the danger of one of those orbs that whirl through space overwhelming Carmen and myself—there would be grandeur for us in such a fate. But to be threatened with the possibility of a doctor and a fool putting me in a cage and leaving Carmen outside, to fret her pale front against the cold iron bars—this is cruel, this is humiliating—and nobody shall humiliate me. I am worth more than them all put together. I am better than them all. (Interrupting himself.) Better than Carmen?—no. Neither am I better than my mother. And my father—my father—he loves me much—more than I—silence! Yet if he is capable of loving more than I, then he is better than I—the result is that everybody is better than Lazarus. How is this possible? (Walks about in great agitation.)
Enter Paca with some cups of Manzanilla.
Who is this? It is Paca. Why the result will be—I see it—that even that creature is better than myself.
Paca. Is not Don Timoteo here? Then why does he give orders for nothing? He gives orders and then he goes away.
Laz. Whom are you looking for?
Paca. For Don Timoteo: he asked me for some cups of Manzanilla, and he went away without waiting for me.
Laz. Bring them, bring them. I’ll take them. Leave them here.
Paca (putting them on a little table). You, señorito? And if they do you harm?
Laz. Harm to me? Poor woman! Look—(drinks a cup.) I drink and you flutter about.
Paca. I flutter about, señorito? Ah! what things you say!