Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/83

 Suavia. Romantic creature, is she not?—a young lady in waiting, whom the Princess retains in the family so that Prince Florencio may entertain himself at home, and not create such scandals in Suavia.

. Poor Prince! He is very susceptible; a lover of art, indefatigable in the pursuit of beauty.

. Entirely too much so. Was he not a lover of Imperia before his uncle?

. I may have heard talk.

. And after you?

. She was only my model; I was never her lover. She took her name, Imperia, from one of my statues. It was at my studio in Rome that she met Prince Florencio.

. Who left you without a model? You see I am taking your word. Then you fell sick.

. With malaria.

. And changed your life completely. Your art suffered a collapse. Is it true that you broke into pieces a great block of marble which you had prepared for a gigantic statue, The Triumph of Life? It was to have been a work of genius, and surely not the last. Italy then might have boasted two Leonardos, equally great.

. Leonardo! You have no idea how the name has obsessed me ever since I was a child. It has been to me like some preternatural portent. My father admired the divine da Vinci, so he gave me the name—my father was a lover of beautiful things, an idolater of great artists. It was a mighty name which compelled me from my boyhood's days to dream great dreams. But you see how it was: a great ideal can be realized only when it has been reduced to our scale, shattered into parts. From that block of Carrara marble from which I intended to carve my masterpiece, I cut a thousand figurines, such as you have seen in the