Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/183

 meeting?" To-day has been one of those days with me when a man must cry out to himself, if he can find no one into whose ears to pour his wrath. This morning I lost a patient, a working man, honorable, the father of a family, which he left, as the saying is, only day and night to remember him by. On the other hand, I cured another, a monstrous rogue, rotten with money, who is so solicitous to avoid even the appearance of virtue that he has not so much as one vice that might induce him to part with a penny. Yet to-day, when I dismissed myself, he said to me, highly satisfied: "By the way, I forgot to tell you. In spite of not being able to attend to business, I have had a rare stroke of luck. I have cleared a hundred thousand pesetas. Have a cigar?" It is the one I am smoking now, or rather biting in bitterness. We all know that death shoots in the dark, but, man alive, now and then he ought to display at least blind instinct! Then I come to this house, I see you, who are so deserving of happiness, from every point of view, and I find you sad, preoccupied; and I know the reason. Your son is about to marry. You, his mother, foresee fresh privations, direr hardships than before. You see your daughter suffer, and it wrings your heart. It is only natural. But your son suffers, too—yes, he does; I know, because he has talked with me, not more than a few days ago. But is this right? Is it human? Should an honorable love become a reproach, almost a source of remorse to a young man, who acts simply in obedience to the law of nature? Can it be a mother's duty to oppose the love of her child? Why, it is like a betrayal of motherhood itself! Is there not something iniquitous, something monstrous in all this?

. But, Don Hilario, am I not right—not to oppose it, I should not attempt that, and it would be useless—but to prevent if I can the shipwreck of my son's happiness,