SCENE I

_Pepito listening at the door on the right, then comes back into the middle of the stage._

PEPITO. The crisis is past at last. I hear nothing. Poor Don Julian! He's in a sad way. His life hangs in the balance: on one side death awaits him, and on the other another death, that of the soul, of honour—either abyss deeper than hopeless love. The devil! All this tragedy is making me more sentimental than that fellow with his plays and verses. The tune of disaster, scandal, death, treason, and disgrace, hums in my brain. By Jove, what a day, and what a night! and the worst is yet to come. Well, it certainly was madness to move him in his condition; but when once my uncle gets an idea into his head, there's no reasoning with him. And, after all, he was right. No honourable man, in his place, could have stayed, and he is a man of spirit. Who is coming? my mother, I believe—yes. [_Enter Doña Mercedes._]