"What an opening!" he [the rival poet and playwright] exclaimed, as he listened to the first dialogue between Don Diego and Simon. "A pretty way to begin a comedy! The scene a village inn! What can happen of any interest in a village inn? In all my plays, and they are many,--though never a one has been represented,--the action opens in a Corinthian garden, with monumental fountains to the right and left, and a temple of Juno in the background; or in a wide square with three regiments drawn up, and in the background the city of Warsaw, with a bridge, and so forth. And just listen to the twaddle this old man is made to talk! He is about to marry a young girl who has been brought up by the nuns of Guadalajara. Well, is that very remarkable? Is not that a matter of every-day occurrence?" Pouring out these remarks, that confounded poet did not allow me to hear a word of the piece, and though I answered all his comments with humbly acquiescent monosyllables, I only wished that he would hold his tongue, deuce take him!... "What a vulgar subject! what low ideas!" he exclaimed, loud enough for every one to hear. "And this is how comedies are written!"... "But let us listen to it," said I, finding my chief's comments quite intolerable. "We can laugh at Moratin afterwards." "But I cannot bear such a medley of absurdities," he went on. "We do not come to the theatre to see just what is to be seen any day in the streets, or in every house you go into. If instead of enlarging on her matrimonial experiences, the lady were to come in invoking curses on an enemy because he had killed one-and-twenty of her sons in battle, and left her with only the twenty-second, still an infant at the breast, and if she had to carry that one off to save him from being eaten by the besieged, all dying of famine--then there would be some interest in the plot, and the public would clap their hands till they were sore. Gabriel, my boy, we must protest, protest vehemently. We must thump the floor with our feet and sticks to show that we are bored and out of patience. Yawn; open your mouth till your jaws are dislocated; look about you; let all the neighbors see that we are people of taste, and utterly weary of this tiresome and monstrous piece."