Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/89

. Evidently he is a great friend of yours. If he had been Emperor, he would have kept you always at his side like…

. You intended to say like a fool?

. A rather sad fool.

. English fools are always sad. They might pass for diplomatists in other countries.

. All fools are sad. A smile is the most efficient grave-digger. We cry over what lives, what suffers, what we still carry in our hearts; but when we laugh at a thing—love, faith, memory, hope—it is dead. Shakespeare's fools are the most tragic figures in his tragedies. Hamlet shrivels up in the presence of the grave-diggers, singing and jesting among the graves. Their spades grit in the earth, and out comes the skull of Yorick, the King's jester, to leer and scoff with that horrible grin of his bony jaws. Everything dies, but we still smile. What is life, eternally renewing itself, but the triumphant smile of love as it conquers death?

. But death is the end of all things, and then…

. Hell then. Fortunately, you Italians have a most alluring Inferno. I see you, Countess, in the same circle as Francesca, always in the best society.

. You must not joke about such things. I am a believer; I hope to be saved.

. Why not? The lives of all the saints have two parts—even the best of them. You are still in the first.

. Let us talk of something else. Often, I leap out of bed, shrieking, in the middle of the night, mad with terror, because the idea of death creeps into my mind as I am falling asleep. Sometimes when it is day, one of those days all holiday and sunshine, in the midst of the crowds and the festival, suddenly I stop and think that within a few years all those people will no longer be there, that they will all be dead, and