Page:The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness; two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch (IA greatgaleotofoll00echerich).djvu/18

 into the family vault, where the door slams upon him with a secret spring. When Manfred has excited the king's anger by scornful rejection of the favour of a name and title that shall give him equality with his brother, we realise that the hour is a favourable one for Juana's accusation. Whatever rights a sovereign may arrogate to himself in the matter of his own morals, he is usually a keen arbitrator of the limitations of those of his subjects. On this principle, Don Pedro shows himself merciless to the sinners, though one happens to be his hostess and the other his host's much-loved brother. A rational man would have preferred to blink and turn away, with the safe conclusion that it was, after all, none of his business. But monarchs are allowed so many other attributes, that even out of Spain they may be fitly dispensed with reason. In an interview with the culprits, when a saner man would have been touched with the generous strife between them as to which should bear the blame and punishment, he decides that both shall die. Upon Manfred's petition, he consents that Jaime shall live in ignorance of his wrong, but the poor fool, for all his crown, was not sufficiently master of events to contrive this rash promise. Spanish history may furnish a precedent of such a situation, but we are not taught that the lives of the monarchs of the land explain it adequately. When Jaime enters and remonstrates with Don Pedro:—'I am her owner, sir. All your power, your crown, your greatness, the glory of Sicily and of the entire world—what are they against Beatrix! But smoke and dust,'—the king commutes her sentence to perpetual imprisonment, and orders the execu- xiv