Act 2 — SCENE I

A room in Trotaconventos’s house. The walls are hung with bunches of dried herbs and stags’ antlers. On a table stands a big alembic surrounded by snakes and lizards preserved in bottles, and porcupines’ quills. Trotaconventos is darning a gorget and talking to Don Salomon. The beginning of this scene is happening simultaneously with the last part of the previous one.

Trotaconventos: A fig for a father’s love! To seek for it is, as the proverb has it, to seek pears on an elm tree.

Don Salomon: Pardon me, oh pearl of wisdom. Our Law has shown that a mother’s love is as dross to a father’s. In the book called Genesis we are told that when there was the flood of water in the time of Noah, the fathers fled with their sons to the mountains, and bore them on their heads that the waters might not reach them, while the mothers took thought only of their own safety, and climbed up on the shoulders of their sons. And at the siege of Jerusalem....

Trotaconventos: Oh, a pox on you and your devil’s lore! It is proverbs and songs that catch truth on the wing, and they tell ever of a mother’s love. Would you have me believe in your love to Pepita and Juanito when I saw new hopes and schemes spring up as quickly in your heart as the flowers on Isabel’s grave.... I never yet have met a man who could mourn the dead; for them ’tis but the drawing of a rotten molar, a moment’s sharp pain, and then albeit their gums may ache a day, they will already be rejoicing in the ease and freedom won by its removal.

Don Salomon: There was once a young caliph, and though he had many and great possessions, the only one he valued a fig was one of his young wives. She died, and night descended on the soul of the caliph. One evening her spirit came to him, as firm and tangible as had been her body, and after much sweet and refreshing discourse between them, beneath which his grief melted like dew, she told him that he might at will evoke her presence, but that each time he did so he would forfeit a year of life.... He invoked her the next night, and the next, and the next ... but he was close on eighty when he died.

Trotaconventos (triumphantly): Just so! The caliph was a man; you do but confirm my words.

Don Salomon: Well, let us consider, then, your love to your children. First, there was Isabel, and next, that exceeding handsome damsel, Sister Assumcion ... nay, nay, it is vain protesting; the whole town knows she was a cunning brat that all your forty summers and draughts and chirurgy were powerless to keep out of the world ... well, these two maids, both lusty and vegetal, and made for the bearing of fine children, what must you do but have them both professed in one of these nunneries ... nunneries! Your ballads tell of a Moorish king who was wont to exact a yearly tribute of sixty virgins from your race; what of your God who exacts more like a thousand?

Trotaconventos: Out on you, you foul-mouthed blaspheming Jew! I’d have you bear in mind that you are in the house of an Old Christian.[2]

Don Salomon: Ay, an Old Christian who recked so little of her law and faith that, just because they paid a little more, has suckled the brats of the Moriscos![3]

Trotaconventos: Pooh! An old dog does not bark at a tree-stump; you’ll not scare me with those old, spiteful whispers of los Abades. Come, drag me before the alcalde and his court, and I’ll disprove your words with this old withered breast ... besides, as says the proverb, He whose father is a judge goes safe to trial—Trotaconventos walks safe beneath the cloak of Doña Maria de Padilla, for Queen Blanche dies a virgin-wife, if there be any virtue in my brews.

Don Salomon: You took it for a threat? Come, come, you are growing suspicious with advancing years. But we were talking of your love to your daughters. Resolve me this: why did you make them nuns?

Trotaconventos: Why did I make them nuns? Because of all professions, it is the most pleasing to God and His Saints.

Don Salomon: So that was your reason? Well, I read your action somewhat differently. Of all the diverse flames that burn and corrode the heart of man, there is none so fierce as the flames of a mother’s jealousy of her growing daughters. You have known that flame—the years that withered your charms were ripening theirs, and, that you might not endure the bitterness of seeing them wooed and kissed and bedded, you gave them—to your God. Wait! I have not yet said my say. Rumours have reached me of the flame you have kindled in the breast of an exceeding rich and noble knight for Sister Assumcion, and that, albeit, you knew a score of other maids would have been as good fuel, and brought as good a price; just as some eight years since, you chose Isabel to kindle the fire in me. Why? Of all your so-called learned doctors—the most of them but peasants, trembling, as they roast the chestnuts on winter nights, at their grandame’s tales—there is one I do revere, Thomas Aquinas, for he is deeply read in the divine Aristotle, and, to boot, he knows the human heart. Well, your Thomas Aquinas tells of a sin which he calls ‘morose delectation,’ which is the sour pleasure—a dried olive to palates too jaded now for sweet figs—that monks and nuns and women past their prime find in the viewing of, or the hearing of, or the thinking of the bodily joys of the young and lusty. And ‘morose delectation’ is never so bitter-sweet as when aroused in a mother by the amours of her daughter, and this it was that got in your bosom the upper hand of jealousy and made you choose your own daughters to inflame the love of this knight and me.

Trotaconventos: Well ... by Our Lady ... you ... (bursts out laughing). Why, Don Salomon, in spite of all your rabbis and rubbish, you have more good common sense than I had given you credit for! (laughs again).

Don Salomon, in spite of himself, gives a little complacent smile.

Don Salomon: Laughter is the best physic; I am glad to have been able to administer it. But to return to the real purport of my visit. I tell you, you are making the convent of San Miguel to stink both far and wide, and I look upon it as no meet nursery for Moses and Rebecca.

Trotaconventos: Moses and Rebecca! Truly most pretty apt names for Christian children! But think you not that Judas and Jezebel would ring yet sweeter on the ear? Then, without doubt, their Christian playmates would pelt them through the streets with dung and dead mice—Moses and Rebecca, forsooth! In the city of Seville they will ever be Pepita and Juanito.

Don Salomon: Pepita and Juanito ... foolish, tripping names to suit the lewd comic imps of hell in one of your miracle plays. The Talmud teaches there is great virtue in names, and when they come with me to Granada they will be Moses and Rebecca.

Trotaconventos: Go with you to Granada? What wild tale is this?

Don Salomon: ’Tis no wild tale. You rated me for indifference to my children, but I am not so indifferent as to wish to see them reared in ignorance and superstition by a flock of empty-headed, vicious nuns who have become like Aholah and Aholibah, they who committed whoredoms in Egypt.

Trotaconventos: Once more, an old dog does not bark at a tree-stump. You’ll never go to Granada.

Don Salomon: And why not, star-reader?

Trotaconventos: Because you are of the race of Judas that sold our Lord for a few sueldos. There are many leeches more learned than you in Granada, but none in Castille, therefore....

Don Salomon (indignantly): Whence this knowledge of the leeches of Granada? Name me one more learned than I.

Trotaconventos (ignoring the interruption): Therefore, in that in Castille you earn three times what you would do in Granada, you will continue following the court from Valladolid to Toledo, from Toledo to Seville, until the day when you are unable to save Don Pedro’s favourite slave, and he rifles your treasure and has you bound with chains and cast into a dungeon to rot slowly into hell.

Don Salomon (quite unmoved): Howbeit, you will see that to one of my race his children are dearer than his coffers. Unless this convent gets in better odour, Moses and Rebecca will soon be playing in Granada round the Elvira gate, and sailing their boats upon the Darro ... have you that balsam for me?

Trotaconventos: Ay, and have you two maravedis for it?

Don Salomon (taking out two coins from his purse): Are you, indeed, an Old Christian? Had you no grandam, who, like your own daughter, was not averse to a circumcised lover? Methinks you love gold as much as any Jew.

Trotaconventos (drops the coins on the table and listens to their ring): Yes, they sing in tune; a good Catholic doremi, I’d not be surprised to hear coins from your purse whine ‘alleluia’ falsely through their nose—the thin noise of alloy and a false mint. (Goes and rummages in a coffer, and with her back turned to him, says nonchalantly): Neither your ointment nor the Goa stones powdered in milk have reduced the swelling.

Don Salomon does not answer, and Trotaconventos looks sharply over her shoulder.

Trotaconventos: Well?

He looks at her in silence. She walks over to him.

Trotaconventos: Here is your balsam. As touching sickness, I have ever hearkened to you; you may speak.

Don Salomon: The ointment ... I hoped it might give you some relief of your pain; but as to the swelling....

Trotaconventos: It will not diminish?

Don Salomon: No.

Trotaconventos: You are certain, Don Salomon?

Don Salomon: Yes.

Trotaconventos: But ... surely ... the Table of Spain, Don Pedro’s carbuncle ... I verily believe Doña Maria could get me it for a night ... ’tis the most potent stone in the world.

Don Salomon: Dame, you have ever liked plain speaking. Neither in the belly of the stag, nor in the womb of the earth, nor in God’s throne, is there a precious stone that can decrease that swelling.

Trotaconventos: Can one live long with it?

Don Salomon: No.

Trotaconventos: How long?

Don Salomon: I cannot say to a day.

Trotaconventos sinks wearily down into a chair. Don Salomon gazes at her in silence for a time, then comes up and lays his hand on her shoulder.

Don Salomon (gravely): Old friend, from my heart I envy you. A wise man who had travelled over all the earth came to the court of a certain caliph, and the caliph asked him whom of all the men he had met on his wanderings he envied most; and the wise man answered: ‘Oh, Caliph, ’twas an old blind pauper whose wife and children were all dead.’ And when the caliph asked him why he envied one in such sorry plight, he answered, ‘because the only evil thing is fear, and he had nought to fear.’ You, too, have nothing to fear, except you fear the greatest gift of God—sleep.

Exit quietly.

Trotaconventos (wildly): Nothing to fear! Oh, my poor black soul ... hell-fire ... the devil hiding like a bug in my shroud ... oh, Blessed Virgin, save me from hell-fire!

The ghost of Don Juan Tenorio appears.

Don Juan Tenorio: There is no hell.

Trotaconventos: Who are you? Speak!

Don Juan Tenorio: I am the broad path that leads to salvation; I am the bread made of wheat; I am the burgeoning of buds and the fall of the leaf; I am the little white wine of Toro and the red wine of Madrigal; I am the bronze on the cheek of the labourer and his dreamless, midday sleep beneath the chestnut tree; I am the mirth at wedding-wakes; I am the dance of the Hours whose rhythm lulls kings and beggars, nuns, and goatherds on the hills, giving them peace, and freeing them from dreams; I am innocence; I am immortality; I am Don Juan Tenorio.

Trotaconventos: Don Juan Tenorio? Then you come from hell.

Don Juan Tenorio: I have spoken: there is no hell. There is no hell and there is no heaven; there is nought but the green earth. But men are arrogant and full of shame, and they hide truth in dreams.

Trotaconventos: Ay, but what of the black sins that weigh down my soul?

Don Juan Tenorio: Dreams are the only sin.

Trotaconventos: What, then, of death?

Don Juan Tenorio: Every death is cancelled by a birth; hence there is no death.

Trotaconventos: But I must surely die, and that ere long.

Don Juan Tenorio: But if others live? Prisoners! Prisoners! Locked up inside yourselves; like children born in a dark tower, as their parents were before them. And round and round they run, and beat their little hands against the wall, or stare at the old faded arras upon which fingers, dead a hundred years ago, have pictured quaint shapes that hint at flowers and birds and ships. And all the time the creaking door is on the jar, the gaolers long since dead.

The ghost of Sister Isabel appears.

Sister Isabel: Mother!

Trotaconventos (in horror): Isabel!

Sister Isabel: I come from Purgatory.

Don Juan Tenorio: Still a prisoner, bound by the dreams of the living.

Sister Isabel: As they are by the dead.

Trotaconventos: Why do you visit me, daughter?

Sister Isabel: To bid you save my little son from circumcision, my daughter from concubinage to the infidels.

Trotaconventos: How?

Sister Isabel: By preserving the virginity of my sisters in religion.

Don Juan Tenorio: Virginity! What of Christ’s fig-tree?

Sister Isabel: Demon, what do you know of Christ?

Don Juan Tenorio: Once we were one, but....

Sister Isabel: Lying spirit!

Don Juan Tenorio: That part of me that was he, was sucked bloodless by the insatiable dreams of man.

Sister Isabel: Mother, hearken not....

Don Juan Tenorio: Hearken not....

Sister Isabel: To this lying spirit.

Don Juan Tenorio: To this spirit drugged with dreams.

Sister Isabel: Else you will forfeit....

Don Juan Tenorio: Else you will forfeit....

Sister Isabel: Your immortal soul.

Don Juan Tenorio: Your immortal body.

Sister Isabel: All is vanity,

Don Juan Tenorio: All is vanity.

Sister Isabel: Save only the death,

Don Juan Tenorio: Save only the death,

Sister Isabel: And the resurrection,

Don Juan Tenorio: And the resurrection,

Sister Isabel: Of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Don Juan Tenorio: Of crops and trees and flowers and the race of man.

Sister Isabel: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the dead.

Don Juan Tenorio: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the Spirit of Life.

A violent knocking at the door. The ghosts of Don Juan Tenorio and Sister Isabel vanish. Trotaconventos sits up and rubs her eyes.

Trotaconventos: I have been dreaming ... life ... death ... my head turns. And what is this knocking?

Voice outside: Old stinking bird-lime! Heart-hammer! Magpie! Bumble-bee! Street trailer! Cuirass of rotten wood! Curry-comb! Corpus dragon! I bid you open, d’ye hear?

Trotaconventos: Why, I do believe ’tis that ardent lover, Don Manuel de Lara. Can the baggage have shied from the tryst?

Voice from outside: Gutter crone! Gutter crone! The fiends of hell gnaw your marrow! I want in!

Trotaconventos: Anon, good knight, anon! Well ... shall I throw cold water on his hopes and save my soul? Nay, Isabel, ’tis too late; one cannot make shepherds’ pipes out of this old barley straw ... and yet ... visions of sleep! Nay, through my living daughter will I taste again the old joys and snap my fingers at ... ghosts.

Opens the door. Don Manuel de Lara bursts into the room.

Don Manuel de Lara: Old hag, what have you done to me? You have been riding among the signs of the Zodiac ... I know ... and tampering with the Scales, putting sweetness in each, then throwing in the moon to turn the balance. Oh, you have given me philtres ... I know, I know ... some varlet bribed with a scarlet cloak, then strange liquid dreams curdling the rough juice of the Spanish grape ... and you all the while jeering and cackling at me! (seizes her roughly by the shoulders.) How dare you meddle with my dreams? You play with loaded dice.

Trotaconventos (soothingly): Wo! ass! Let me rub thee down, ass of my wife’s brother! You must have got an ague; the water of the Guadalquivir and Seville figs play strange tricks with Castilian stomachs in May. A little prayer to St. Bartholomew ... or better still, a very soothing draught I learnt to brew long since from a Jew doctor. Why, sir knight, what is this talk of love philtres? The only receipt I know for such is a gill of neat ankle or merry eye to three gills of hot young blood. And have you no thanks for your old witch? I cannot, let evil tongues wag as they will, drum the moon from the heavens, but trust old Trotaconventos to draw a nun from her cloister!

Don Manuel de Lara (who has been standing as if stunned): Aye, there’s the rub ... I’d have the moon dragged from the heavens (laughs wildly, then turns upon her violently). Oh, I’ll shake your black soul out of its prison of rotted bones. I am encompassed all around with your spells.

Trotaconventos: Don Manuel, you are sick. Lie down on this couch and take a cool draught of reason, for it, at least, is a medicinal stream. You have engendered your own dreams, there have been no philtres or spells. The abbot dines off his singing, and a procuress must suit all tastes, and if a silly serving-wench comes to me a-sighing and a-sobbing for some pert groom with a heron’s feather in his cap, or trembling lest Pedro in her distant village is giving his garlic-scented kisses to another maid, why, then I know nothing will salve her red eyes but sunflower seeds culled when Venus is in the house of the Ram, or a mumbling backwards of the psalms, on a waxen heart to melt over the fire. But these are but foolish toys for the vulgar, and the devil does not reveal his secrets to an Old Christian who goes to mass every Sunday and on feast-days too. You are not bewitched, Don Manuel, except it be by a pair of gray eyes smiling beneath a nun’s veil. Was she coy, perchance? Why, coyness in a maid....

Don Manuel de Lara (laughing bitterly): Coy? (impatiently.) I came here all hot with projects and decision, but now it is all flowing out of me like wine from a leaking pig-skin, and I seem bereft of will and desire, as sometimes on the field of battle when I fight in a dream, regardless if the issue be life or death. (Shaking himself.) The fault lies not with you, good dame; what you set out to do you have done, the which I shall bear in mind. As to spells and philtres, they say I was born under Saturn with the moon in the ascendant, and, whether it be true or no, some evil star distills dark, poisonous vapours round the nettles and rank roots that grow in the dark places of my soul, the which some chance word will draw from their hiding-place and ... in plain words, your nun is all your words painted her, but falls far short of the lineaments lent her by my fancy; for which it is not you but that same unbridled fancy, that is to blame. In that you compassed the meeting, you shall have rich cloths and a well-filled purse, but....

Trotaconventos (her indignation boiling over): Jesus! Here is a dainty Don! Comes far short of the linen lent her by your fancy! Was then her linen foul? Or rather, are you like Alfonso the Wise, and had you had the making of her would you have fashioned her better than God? I know your breed; as the proverb says, it is but a fool that wants a bread not made with wheat. In truth, the girl is well-formed, sprightly and hot-blooded. I know no damsel can so well....

Don Manuel de Lara: I have told you dame, you shall be well paid for your pains. But ... but ... there is another matter with regard to which I would fain....

Trotaconventos: And so you deem old Trotaconventos cares for naught but cloths and purses! And what of the pride in my craft? Upon my soul! My daintiest morsel sniffed at all round, and then Don Cat, with a hump of his back, his tail arched, and his lips drawn back in disdain....

Don Manuel de Lara: Come, dame, I am pressed for time. I ask your pardon if I have been over nice, and you have no need to take umbrage for your craft. I ... would ... would ask your help ... (sinks into a chair and covers his face with his hands) ... my God, I cannot. The words choke me.

There is a knock at the door.

Voice from outside: Hola! Hecate! Goddess of the cross-roads! Open in your graciousness.

Trotaconventos: ’Tis a stranger’s voice. (Aside) This time ’tis a case of better the devil one does not know.

Opens the door. Enter Dennys.

Dennys: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has drawn me all the way from France. Why, ’twill soon rival the fame of your St. James, and from every corner of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to you on pilgrimage.

Trotaconventos (laughing and eyeing him with evident favour): A pox on your flowery tongue! I know you French of old ... hot tongues and cold, hard hearts. Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is wet with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (Draws off his cloak and at the same time slips her hand down his neck and tickles him).

Dennys: A truce! A truce! Thus you could unman me to yield you all my gold and tell you all my secrets. (Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it in her hands.) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, Joseph, and Doña Potiphar?

Trotaconventos: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling ballad it is too! But you are no Sir Joseph, my pretty lad ... while others that I know ... (glances resentfully at Don Manuel de Lara, who is still sitting with his head buried in his hands. Dennys, following her glance, catches sight of him.)

Dennys: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, are we guild brothers, and of that guild you are the virgin, fairer and more potent than she of the kings or of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have heard of your miracles. That pious young widow with a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, how....

Trotaconventos: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! It would take a French tongue to call Trotaconventos a virgin. Why, before you were born ... come, I’ll tell you a secret. (She whispers something in his ear. He bursts out laughing.)

Dennys: Holy Mother of God! You should have given suck to Don Ovid. Why, that beats all the French fabliaux. Well, now as to my business. You must know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, I would visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of Seville....

Trotaconventos (chuckling): A bold and merry wager!

Dennys: Ay, but that is but the prelude. In one of these convents (Don Manuel drops his hands from his face and sits up straight in his chair) I fell into an ambush laid by Don Cupid himself.

Trotaconventos (bitterly): To be sure! And so you come to old Trotaconventos. To be a procuress is to be the cow at the wedding, for ever sacrificed to the junketings of others. ’Tis other folks’ burdens killed the ass. Well, the time is short, the time is short, if you want Trotaconventos’s aid.

Dennys: Why, despite her habit, ’twas the fairest maid I have seen this side the Pyrenees, and I swear ’tis a sin she should live a nun. I fell to talking and laughing with her; but though she is a ripe plum, I warrant, ’tis for another hand to shake the branch. Now you, mother, I know, go in and out of every convent in Seville.... So will you be my most cunning and subtle ambassador?

Trotaconventos: Ay, but ambassadors are given services of gold, and sumpter-mules laden with crimson cloths, and retinues of servants, and apes and tumblers and dancers, and purses of gold. How will you equip your ambassador?

Dennys: A trovar’s fortune is his tongue and lips; so with my lips I pay. (He gives her three smacking kisses.)

Trotaconventos: Oh, you French jackanapes! Oh, you saucy ballad-monger! So you hold your kisses weigh like maravedis, do you? Well, well, I have ever said that the lips of a fine lad hold the sweetest wine in Spain. Now you must acquaint me more fully with your business, if you would have me speed it.

Dennys: Why! You know it all. I love a nun of the Convent of San Miguel, and....

Don Manuel de Lara springs from his bench and seizes him by the shoulders.

Don Manuel de Lara: You scurvy, whoreson, lily-livered, shameless son of France! France! The teeming dam of whores and ballad-mongers, whose king flies from his foes shaking a banner broidered with the lilies of a frail woman’s garden-close. You are in Castille, where lions guard our virgins in strong towers, and e’er you tamper with the virtue of a professed virgin of Spain, I will hew you into little pieces to feed my hounds. (He shakes him violently.)

Trotaconventos (pulling him back by his cloak): Let go, you solemn, long-jowled, finicky Judas! You fox in priest’s habit on the silver centre-piece of a king’s table! Don Cat turned monk that he might the better catch the monastery mice! Foul Templar escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah! Who are you to take up the glove for Seville nuns?

Don Manuel, paying no heed to Trotaconventos, holds Dennys with one hand, and with the other draws his dagger and places its point on his throat.

Don Manuel de Lara: Now, blackbird of St. Bénoit, you’ll tell me the name of the nun you would seduce. D’ye hear? The name of the nun you would seduce!

Dennys (gasping): Sister Assumcion.

Trotaconventos: Ah!

Don Manuel lets go of Dennys, who, pale and gasping, is supported to the couch by Trotaconventos, she mingling the while words of condolence with Dennys and imprecations against the Don.

Don Manuel de Lara (to himself): Strange! Passing strange! That Moorish knight who gave me the head wound at Gibraltar ... then years later both serenading ’neath the same balcony, in Granada ... and then again, last year, of a sudden coming on his carved, olive face staring at the moon from a ditch in Albarrota. And I convinced, till then, that our lives were being twisted in one rope to some end.... Chance meetings, chance partings, chance meetings again. And this trovar, coming to-night, on business ... why am I so beset by dreams?

Dennys: Thanks, mother, the fiery don shook all the humours to my head (gets up). Well, knight, more kicks than ha’pence—that’s the lot of a trovar in Spain. I know well, necessity makes one embrace poverty and obedience, like the Franciscans, but I never learnt till now that a trovar must take the third vow of chastity.

Trotaconventos: Pooh! A rare champion of chastity and the vows of nuns you see before you! Why, my sweet lad, this same Don Manuel de Lara has been importuning me with prayers and tears and strange fantastical ravings, that I should devise a meeting between him ... and whom, think you? Why, this same Sister Assumcion.

Dennys: Sister Assumcion?

Trotaconventos: Ay, Sister Assumcion. But, as I tell him, he is one of these fools that seek a bread not made of wheat. He’ll not to bed unless I rifle hell for him and bring him Queen Helena. He comes to me to-night with a “comely, yes, but comeliness, what of comeliness?” and “a tempting enough for Pedro and Juan and the rest of the workaday world, but as to me!” And she the prettiest nun that ever took the veil, and certain to bear off the prize for Seville in the contest of beauty with the nuns of Toledo ... but not good enough for him, oh no!

Don Manuel de Lara: Of my thirty years, I have spent sixteen in fighting the Moors, and if I choose to squander some of the spiritual treasures I have thus acquired by my sword in ... (he brings the words out with difficulty) dallying with nuns, who knows, maybe I can afford it. But think you I’ll allow a sinewless French jongleur to rifle the spiritual treasury of Spain? For Spain is the poorer by every nun that falls. (Impatiently) Pooh! If two whistling false blackbirds choose to mate, what care I or Spain? Dame, settle this fellow’s business with him, then ... I would claim a hearing for my own.

Sits down on the bench and once more buries his face in his hands. Dennys taps his forehead meaningly and winks at Trotaconventos.

Dennys: Well, mother, will you be my advocate? Tell her I am master of arts in the university of Love, and have learnt most cunning and pleasant gymnastics in Italy, unknown to Pyramus and Troilus ... nay, not that, for maidens want the moon, to wit, a Joseph with all the cunning in love’s arts of Naso. Tell her rather, that having been born when Venus was in the house of Saturn, and the scorpion ... you know the kind of jargon ... I came into the world already endowed with knowledge of love’s secrets ... nay ... tell her (his voice catches fire from his words) the years, like village lads when the Feast of St. John draws near, have built up in my soul a heap of lusty green branches, and old dry sticks, and frails of dried rose-petals, and many a garland of rosemary and maiden-hair and ivy and rue, and there it has lain until one glance from those eyes of hers has been the spark to turn it into a crackling, flaming, fragrant-smoked bonfire, a beacon to a thousand farms and hamlets. Tell her I can touch the lute, the vihuela, the guitar, the psalter, Don Tristram’s harp ... ay, and most delicately touch her breasts. And if she wishes a little respite from our love, tell her I can wring tears from her eyes with the Matter of Britain or the Matter of Rome—sad tales (for sadness turns sweet when it is dead) of Dido and Iseult and Guinevere, or make her laugh and laugh again with tales from the clerk Boccaccio. Tell her....

Trotaconventos: Enough, French rogue! You have little need, it seems, of an ambassador. Well, I have seen worse-favoured lads and (with a scowl in the direction of Don Manuel) less honey-tongued. (She rummages in a cupboard and brings out a key.) What will you give me for this, Don Nightingale? I’ll tell you a secret; I have a duplicate key to the postern of near every convent in Seville, but they are not for all my clients, oh no! This opens the postern of San Miguel ... well, well, take it then. And be there to-morrow night at nine o’clock, and I can promise you your nun will not fail you.

Dennys: Oh, dearer than a mother! oh, most bountiful dame! A key! A key! (holds up the key), I have ever loved a key and held it the prettiest toy in Christendom. I vow ’twas a key and not an apple that Eve gave to Adam in Paradise, a key and not an apple the goddesses strove for on Mount Ida, a key into which the Roman smith, Vulcan, put all his amorous cunning when he was minded to fashion a gift well pleasing to his mistress, Venus. May you dream to-night that you are young again, mother, and hold the keys of heaven. And you, sir knight, what dreams shall I wish you? (Eyes Don Manuel quizzically.) Adieu.

Exit.

Trotaconventos: Ay! May his key bring him joy! A very sweet rogue! Well, Don Manuel, has your brain cooled enough to talk with me?

Don Manuel, who has remained passive and motionless during the above scene, suddenly springs to his feet, his eyes blazing, his cheeks flushed.

Don Manuel de Lara (hoarsely): I, too, would have a key ... for the convent of San Miguel.

Trotaconventos: And would you in truth? (suspiciously). Has the convent some fairer nun than Sister Assumcion?

Don Manuel de Lara: How can I say? I have never seen any of the nuns. All I ask you, dame, is for a key.

Trotaconventos: And what if I refuse you a key, Sir Arrogance?

Don Manuel de Lara: I will pay for it all you ask ... even to my immortal soul.

Trotaconventos: And what do I want with your immortal soul? I’d as lief have a wild cat in the house, any market day.

Don Manuel de Lara (clenching his fists and glaring at her fiercely): A key, a key, old hag! Give me a key.

Trotaconventos picks up his scarlet cloak which he has let drop and waves in his face.

Trotaconventos: Come, come, brave bull! And has Love, the bandillero, maddened you with his darts? Old Trotaconventos must turn bull-fighter! Ah! I know the human heart! Dog in the manger, like all men! Too nice yourself for Sister Assumcion, but too greedy to let another enjoy her!

Don Manuel de Lara: A key!

Trotaconventos: No, no, Sir knight. You are not St. Ferdinand and I am not the Moorish king that I should yield up the keys of Seville to you without a parley. Why do you want the key?

Don Manuel de Lara (suddenly growing quiet and eyeing her ironically): What if I have been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and found the sun too hot? I have strange fancies. They say the founder of our house wed with a heathen witch who danced on the hills. (Persuasively) Hearken, I know you love rich fabrics; I have silk coverlets from Malaga that are ballads for the eye instead of for the ear, silk-threaded heathen ballads of Mahound and the doves and Almanzor and his Christian concubine. I have curtains from Almeric—Doña Maria has none to rival them in the Alcazar—and so fresh-coloured are the flowers that are embroidered on them, that when I was a child I thought that I could smell them, and my mother, to coax me to eat when a dry, hot wind was parching the Vega, would tell me the bees had culled the honey spread on my bread from the flowers embroidered on these curtains. I have necklets of gold, beaten thin like autumn beech-leaves, taken by my grandsire from the harems of Cordova when he stormed the city with St. Ferdinand; ere they were necklets they were ciboriums of the Goths, rifled by impious Tarik. Precious stones? I have rubies like beakers with the red wine trembling to their very lip ... one almost fears to lift them except with a steady hand for fear they spill and stain one’s garments red, and like to wine, the gifts they bring are health and a merry heart. I have Scythian sapphires that once lay in the bed of the river of Paradise, while to win them Arimaspians were fighting Gryphons; they are the gage of the life to come, they are blue and cold like English ladies’ eyes who go on pilgrimage. And I have emeralds to catch from them a blue shadow like that of a kingfisher on green waters. He who has store of precious stones need fear neither plague nor fever, nor fiends, nor the terrors by night, and with that store I will endow you if you but give me the key. The key, good mother, the key!

Trotaconventos: Very pretty ... but ... well ... I know a certain king, a mighty ugly one, who laughs at the virtues of precious stones.... Aye ... but come, Don Manuel, we are but playing with each other. With your own eyes you saw me give the key of the Convent of San Miguel to the French trovar. Think you I have two?

Don Manuel de Lara (as if stunned): Not two? To the French trovar?

Trotaconventos: Why, yes, Sir knight. Your wits are wool-gathering.

Don Manuel de Lara (in great excitement): My cloak? Where is my cloak? Away! the key!

Exit.