SCENE III.—_Same as SCENE I.
_PEDRO discovered guarded by two Alguazils._
_Ped._ Shots and shouting! They must be at work. Perhaps you gentlemen will wait, while I go and see.
_Alg._ Be quiet, or two bullets—
_Ped._ Oh, one would be enough, thank you. Well, if I mustn’t go, will you two gentlemen? and leave me to wait for you? I’m quite indifferent.
_Alg._ We leave you not an instant or an inch.
_Ped._ Were ever guards half so polite! Sure, I must be a holiday to be so strictly kept.
_Alg._ Hark! They are coming.
_Enter Judge and Alguazils with GIL, a cloak thrown over him._
_Judge._ Where is the other prisoner?
_Alg._ Here, my lord.
_Judge._ March on with us.
_Alg. 2._ My lord, this man will faint with loss of blood and weariness.
_Judge._ Halt then, and let him breathe awhile.
(_They uncover GIL, and PEDRO sees him._)
_Ped._ I might have guessed it! Let me be in the bilboes, on the very scaffold, he must be with me: he will die on purpose to lie in the same grave with me, I think!
_Gil._ Whose voice is that?
_Ped._ Nobody’s.
_Gil._ Pedro? Courage, my poor boy. My day is over. Oh, vanity of mortal strength!
_Judge._ But who are these?
_Enter DONNA LEONOR, with ISABEL, JUANA, and Servants._
_Leonor._ I, Donna Leonor, who, falling in With these sad ladies, do repent me much, That, misdirected by a lying tongue, I have pursued this gentleman—I doubt To death—if not, I charge you from this moment Leave him at liberty.
_Isab._ Or else—
_Enter suddenly MANUEL and DON ALONSO, and Followers._
_Alon._ Or else, Look to it.
_Gil._ Don Alonso! whom I thought Far off upon the seas?
_Alon._ And should have been, But when my foot was on the very plank That rock’d upon the foam along the beach, I, who could never get you from my heart, And knew that you had come to peril hither, Could but return once more to him who saved My life, though he had waved me from his side. Enough; I am in time. I tell you, sir, Give up this man at once. (_To the Judge._)
_Judge._ Not for you all!
_Alon._ Then at him and his people!
(_ALONZO, MANUEL, and their people rush on the Judge, Alguazils, etc., disarm them, and beat them out._)
_Alon._ (_embracing GIL_). My friend is free.
_Gil._ And what first use shall make Of freedom?
_Ped._ Why, turn Friar; you can then Be free and easy too, and leave me so. Oh, sir, have I not had enough of terror, Exile, and hunger, to deserve your pardon? Plead for me, Don Alonso.
_Alon._ Gil—
_Gil._ Nay, nay, What could you seem about to ask of me But granted ere ’twas said? Go. I forgive you. With which magnanimous forbearance now Gil Perez, the Gallician, makes his bow.
[_Exeunt._
‘Thus ends,’ says Calderon, ‘the first part of the _hozanas notables_ of Luis Perez,’ whose name I have, for sundry reasons, (and without offence to the hero, I hope,) changed to _Gil_. He was ‘a notorious robber,’ says Mr. Ticknor, a kind of Spanish Rob Roy perhaps; at all events, one whose historical reality is intimated by greater distinctness of character than is usual in these plays. Of such gentry examples are never wanting in Spain, where so little alters to this day; witness the career of the famous José Maria, quite lately ended; who, I read in a book of Travels, was, like Gil, a farmer, for his first calling; a most merciful robber when he took to his second; and who performed Gil’s feat of confronting, if not a Judge, a Prime Minister in his own den.
Gil perhaps had better have ‘played his pranks’ (as Fuller says of Robin Hood) in prose; but he was a lawless fellow, and blank verse lay in his way. Those who think his style altogether too heroic for a country robber, will at least find my version more than excused by the original.
THREE JUDGMENTS AT A BLOW
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
PEDRO IV. _King of Arragon._
DON MENDO TORELLAS _his Minister._
DONNA VIOLANTE _Mendo’s Daughter._
ELVIRA _her Maid._
DON LOPE DE URREA.
DONNA BLANCA _his Wife._
DON LOPE _their Son._
BEATRICE _their Servant._
DON GUILLEN _a Friend of Don Lope’s._
VICENTE _Young Lope’s Servant._
ROBBERS, OFFICERS, ROYAL SUITE, etc.