Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/182

. Do what? What is it you are going to do?

. Comply with the law.

. Comply with the law? Don't talk nonsense. You don't mean to say you have authorized the performance of that horrible play?

. There wasn't any way out of it. The posters are up for the first performance already.

. With your consent?

. Why not?

. After having heard what His Reverence said this morning? After all the leading citizens of Moraleda have come to you in face of this onslaught and joined hands to form a dike

. Come down out of the pulpit, my dear; it isn't your sphere. My duty is not to please a faction, however large—no, not if it included everybody. My duty is to obey the law.

. Very well, then. Do as you see fit. I knew that sooner or later you would succeed in making yourself ridiculous. You will go out of office in disgrace, discredited as a politician or as anything else.

. Josefina, what conception have you of the law? They can say what they like, but women possess only the rudiments of moral sense. It is much less highly developed with them than with us.

. That may be, but we possess plenty of common sense, which is a thing that you haven't any idea of. What did your uncle say to me when I went to him to ask him to recommend you to the ministry for the position which you now hold, because you were too inefficient to earn your own living—our situation at that time could not possibly have been worse—what did he say to me? "Undeceive yourself, Josefina. Poor Santiago is no good. He will never amount