SCENE SIXTEENTH
Faustine and Fontanares.
Faustine (aside)
There he stands, like a man pausing on the brink of a precipice to
which tigers have pursued him. (Aloud) Why are you not as great as
your creative thought? Is there but one woman in the world?
Fontanares
What! Do you think that a man can pluck from his heart a love like
mine, as easily as he draws the sword from his scabbard?
Faustine
I can well conceive that a woman should love you and do you service.
But, according to your idea, love is self-abdication. All that the
greatest men have ever wished for: glory, honor, fortune, and more
than that, a triumphant dominion which genius alone can establish
--this you have gained, conquering a world as Caesar, Lucullus and
Luther conquered before you! And yet, you have put between yourself
and this splendid existence an obstacle, which is none other than a
love worthy of some student of Alcala. By birth you are a giant, and
of your own will you are dwindling into a dwarf. But a man of genius
can always find, among women, one woman especially created for him.
And such a woman, while in the eyes of men she is a queen, for him is
but a servant, adapting herself with marvelous suppleness to the
chances of life, cheerful in suffering and as far-sighted in
misfortune as in prosperity; above all, indulgent to his caprices and
knowing well the world and its perilous changes; in a word, capable of
occupying a seat in his triumphal car after having helped it up the
steepest grades--
Fontanares
You have drawn her portrait.
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