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/60

. Teodora!

. Affronts us.

. I expressed myself ill—but it is so.

. I say it is not so. If any one in this house lives upon alms, and those no slight ones, it is I and not you.

. I am acquainted, sir, with the story of two loyal friends, and of some money matters long forgotten. It does honour to my father and to his hidalgic race. But I am shamed in profiting by it. I am young, Don Julian, and although I may not be worth much, there ought still to be some way for me to earn my bread. It may be pride or folly, I cannot say. But I remember what my father used to say: 'What you can do yourself, never ask another to do. What you can earn, never owe to any one else.'

. So that my services humiliate and degrade you. You count your friends importunate creditors.

. Reason may be on your side, Ernest, and in knowledge you are not deficient, but, believe me, in this case the heart alone speaks with wisdom.

. Your father did not find me so ungenerous or so proud.

. Ah, friendship was then a very different thing.

. Teodora!

. [To Don Julian.] What a noble anxiety he displays!

. I know I seem ungrateful—I feel it—and an idiot to boot. Forgive me, Don Julian.

. His head is a forge. 20