Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/217

 word; it may be serious to us, but from the outside it is ridiculous. We have been laughing-stocks for years in the newspapers and upon the stage. If we were to rebel, to assert our rights, our banner would not be the black flag of starvation, nor the red flag of revolution, but, more appropriately, a young gentleman's underwear, his trousers, a symbol of our degradation at once shameful and to be greeted with smiles.

. We must escape from this position, or accept it with all its consequences. As it is possible here to do neither, since in struggling against the environment I should exhaust the greater part of my energies, I shall go somewhere where nobody has any claim upon me, where I shall be as completely my own master as if I had been born without parents, without a name, without social position, without obligations or traditions. I shall become an apprentice of life, and learn of life how to live by my own efforts, to progress, and not to be what I am here, where the determining factor is always what others have done for me, and I am condemned because of errors of education, of misplaced affection, to be forever the professional young gentleman, doomed to everlasting mediocrity, without any possible hope save the lottery of influence, or, perhaps, an advantageous match. I can sell my intelligence or my heart, or sell them both. But I am not a man to do either. My intelligence may not be great, but it is my own, and my heart, because it is my own, I have given entirely. If I did not think as I do, if I did not love as I do, this life that I live would not be my life. Judge for yourself then whether or not I intend to defend it. What more can I say? You know what a man will do for his life.

. Yes, you are right; I am compelled to agree. This chronic discomfort is preposterous. Yet so many ties bind us to it. A man is beaten before he begins. For