Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/92

 love, nor of doing penance, either, because I am yours and I love you so. Was it my duty to sit still and submit to having my life regulated by an Emperor and a Court which represent nothing but tradition and antiquity, in which the voices of the dead have more influence than the wishes of the living? No, I had a heart, I had a soul, I had my life to live, which was not that life, and it was my duty to fight, to rebel. Life is either accepting the conditions and environment in which we find ourselves, without protest, without rebellion, and living on peacefully and quietly, resigned to our fate, as if we were already dead—and in that case it is just as well to have all the virtues about us like statues on a monument—or otherwise it is protest, it is struggle, rebellion against the world, and there is but one virtue in a rebel, which is courage; the others, no matter how impressive their names, are nothing but ghosts of cowardice and fear—which are all that prevent us from running to meet happiness with a light heart, when happiness calls to us in our lives in the name of love.

. Suppose happiness calls to you some day in your life in the name of love, and the voice is not my voice? You would not hesitate, of course?

. Why do you say that? You have no reason to doubt my love.

. Probably I have no reason to doubt it because you fancy that you have sacrificed so much for my sake.

. It was no sacrifice for me to give up a life which I loathed and despised.

. If it was no sacrifice, and you loathed and despised it so utterly, how am I to know but that the desire to escape from it may not have influenced you more than my love? Without your being conscious of it, I may have represented this new life in your eyes, a fresh environment, and