SCENE IV.
Reading edition
Blanca: Sancho!
Sancho: Ah, Blanca—what is the matter?
B.: Nothing; nothing; how happy I am to find you here.
S.: Did you not sleep?
B.: No. I could not. Slumber fled from my eyes.
S.: Why? Are you not here secure? What do you fear? Have I not told you——?
B.: In vain I seek repose. My agitated spirit wakes; my afflicted soul recalls the past and trembles for the future. There are moments, when I feel that I shall go mad!
S.: You tremble, are cold—Blanca, calm yourself.
B.: The memory of this misfortune haunts me.
S.: You still insist——!
B.: You attempt to conceal it from me, in vain.... Last night I overheard, when Fortun announced to you the death of this—of this marquis.
S.: Well! What of that?—Man’s days are numbered. His hour of punishment arrives.
B.: Moreover, I can not conceal it from you, Sancho; the passing moments seem to me eternities.—We cannot continue living thus.—It is necessary that God should sanctify this union.
S.: Soon—very soon.
B.: This is not my house. Much as I love you, much as I have sacrificed my dignity upon the altar of this love, I cannot be tranquil. I feel something here, in my breast, of which I had no idea before,—and—you see, I cannot venture to raise my eyes in your presence.—The blush, which inflames my cheek, is the shame of guilt——
S.: You, guilty——?
B.: Just the same!—What am I, here?—When I am alone no one beholds me, but I would even hide me from myself.—If, in snatching me from my home, you have taken advantage of my love, do not sport with my weakness.
S.: Blanca, God reads our hearts——
B.: Yes, and because God reads them, I implore you, once for all, to end this situation. What is past is as the image of a fearful dream.—To have dreamed it alone had seemed to me impossible. Cruel! this is very cruel!—Your very presence is enough to humiliate me—and I could not live without your presence!—I would desire that looking at you my heart should beat with joy. I wish to feel that which I have always felt at seeing you! that which I felt before!—Why turn your face away? Why does your stern and sombre glance uneasily conceal itself beneath your lids, and why do you not look at me as heretofore?
S.: Blanca, you suspect——
B.: No, I do not suspect; I believe. I confess it frankly.... Love is born and grows slowly, but it may die in a single instant!—Mine is the guilt.
S.: Cease.—Do you not see that you are lacerating my soul?
B.: Listen! At night you slept—I watched! I shuddered, for presently I heard your voice, as if distant, broken and tremulous—you were speaking as if an enormous rock weighed down upon your breast——
S.: You are right—it was so——!
B.: You uttered crushing words,—words of vengeance—of dishonor—of love!
S.: Also of love!
B.: Among those words, which issued as if drawn from the innermost places of your heart, and which escaped from your lips like an echo—I heard my name.—What was this, Sancho?—Tell me.
S.: A dream!—an awful nightmare! I know not whether I dreamed. I know not whether I was awake. I saw you, Blanca, humiliated, degraded, vile,—— ... and in this fearful struggle between my love and my vengeance——
B.: Your vengeance!
S.: You do not know what that is! Grief wrung my soul; I felt madness in my brain; despair sprung up in my heart as the tempest in the black centre of the storm-cloud and a torrent of blasphemies and prayers broke from my lips.
B.: Sancho! But you are still delirious!
S.: No, Blanca; no, my poor Blanca—Now, I am not delirious; no! but I believe indeed, I shall go mad. There still continues, in my soul, a frightful combat—here I feel the battle, fierce, desperate,—mortal. Go—recover yourself.—Leave me alone!
B.: Sancho!
S.: I love you.—Go——!
(Blanca leaves, weeping.)