Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/79

 Mine does not trouble me; it is at peace with all the world. I have no children to prejudice by my behavior, which, after all, is the only consideration which would have made it inexcusable. As for my husband, I have merely repaid him—without great interest—for the insolence and brutality with which he has treated me. I owe the Court of Suavia nothing beyond a life of mortal stagnation which was one continual abdication of my will, a perpetual act of self-suppression. I have struck the balance and settled my account with them all. Now, I am dissatisfied with myself.

. In what way?

. It is idle to attempt to change ourselves when we continue in the same environment. The past, not the future, governs the world. History, despised history, tyrannizes over the lives of men as of nations. How different life would be if it were possible for us to be born on the day when we can first truly say that our lives are our own, that we belong to ourselves; but we are not even able to say that we are born on the first day of our lives, we have been living for a long time previously, from remote antiquity, in the days that are far off. Life is a forest many centuries old, and our souls are rooted in it like centenarian trees. The wind rustles the branches, and we imagine that we are spreading our wings about to fly, to soar upward into the air and liberty and light.

. All of which is to say

. All of which is to say that I should have renounced my old life gladly, but absolutely, altogether. Of what use is it to forget who I am, when nobody is willing to forget it around me? Everybody exacts of me the same behavior, and treats me with the same deference as at the Court of Suavia; everybody does, and the worst of all is the very person who of all others has most reason to forget it.