Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/51

 your self! As if life were ever possible for one without the co-operation of all, without the laws of society! Good! Since these are your ideas, your sentiments, be consistent to the end. Your life is that which you mould by your own will, independently of the disabilities of your rank. Well, then, live it, and do not expect to enjoy the privileges of your former station.

. Do you ask me to submit to the injustice of being deprived of them? I am in a worse position without them than the man who never knew what they were. Such persecution is implacable. Your humblest subject who has committed an unspeakable crime has his day in court, he is not condemned, as I have been, in defiance of all the laws of your Empire, which guarantee to the most abject slave the right of disposing of his hand and of choosing the companion of his heart freely.

. Those same abject slaves whom your poetic imagination encourages you to envy, would very gladly exchange that inestimable right for the privileges and income which you enjoyed as Prince, with no further effort than the accident of your birth, which was considerable.

. Then I have nothing to hope?

. Hope to be happy. What more do you wish? You will make a great mistake if you are not. The question is, which is preferable—love, or the income and dignities of a Prince? Certainly no better guarantee of happiness could be desired than the assurance that your love loves you for yourself, for yourself alone, the man himself, as Shakespeare expresses it.

. Very well. I shall ask nothing further of you, but you need expect nothing of me in return. I am released from all obligation to my princely dignity. Make no attempt to prevent what I purpose doing in spite of it.