Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/182

 three children, my three children on my wanderings through those abodes of ignorance and neglect. In each case, an epidemic carried one off. Then I determined to move to Madrid, at whatever cost. I felt that in Madrid my profession would prove more agreeable, that the poverty would not be so devastating nor so dour; but it is worse, a thousand times worse, because the sensibility of those who suffer is more refined, because the contrasts are greater, and the almost animal resignation of the man who has seen nothing else, of the man who is not able to compare, of the man who, without rebellion, accepts, is no longer possible. While I remained there, I myself was more humble, more resigned in the presence of another's grief, or before my own. I was able to say: "It is God's will. God has decreed it." But here I am not; here, I feel differently. Many a time, indignantly, I have burst out: "No, no, it is not God; it cannot be! Man, man is responsible." It is his cruelty, his injustice, because we call ourselves Christians, and we live, as you must admit, like wild beasts. The pretense has endured a long time. But are we Christians? Then we should live as brothers, and, as Christians, love one another. Are we wild beasts? An end then to this hypocrisy! Let us fall to and devour each other, and may that one prevail who has most force. Anything rather than this injustice as a social state, propped up by devious arts and worse laws, the rule of the few based upon the weakness of the many, who are not able even to rebel like wild beasts, because they have been cowed and debilitated by starvation, and have learned at last to call their cowardice resignation. These things cannot, they must not be. God has not ordered them, they are the bungling work of man, and man can fight with man. Forgive this peroration. "What has happened to Don Hilario?" you ask, "that he has turned orator, and addresses us like a town