BEL. I have. I am disgusted with Napoleon’s manner of treating the Spaniards; sick of inaction. Come with me.
JEAN. (laughs) My dear Beluche, will the fair senorita allow your departure?
BEL. What senorita?
JEAN. The creator of this restlessness, this love-hate.
BEL. Do I look like a fool?
JEAN. Heaven forbid!
BEL. Heaven has nothing to do with it. I am a fool.
JEAN. My dear Beluche—
BEL. I bear on my shoulders a convict’s brand—not a regular mark, but the scars of lashings. I am a young man no longer because seven of my years have been spent in prison—a prison to which my fair senorita and her Spanish hypocrites sent me. And it is still a daily humiliation to me that she has a miniature of me to show her friends; the fool whose face she placed upon a serpent’s head—a fitting locket truly. Probably Antonio Cardez dangles it at his watch chain now—the fat, insentient beast!—the very kind of man sure to exhibit jewelry on his expansive front.