S.: A dream!--an awful nightmare! I know not whether I dreamed. I know not whether I was awake. I saw you, Blanca, humiliated, degraded, vile,---- ... and in this fearful struggle between my love and my vengeance---- B.: Your vengeance! S.: You do not know what that is! Grief wrung my soul; I felt madness in my brain; despair sprung up in my heart as the tempest in the black centre of the storm-cloud and a torrent of blasphemies and prayers broke from my lips. B.: Sancho! But you are still delirious! S.: No, Blanca; no, my poor Blanca--Now, I am not delirious; no! but I believe indeed, I shall go mad. There still continues, in my soul, a frightful combat--here I feel the battle, fierce, desperate,--mortal. Go--recover yourself.--Leave me alone! B.: Sancho! S.: I love you.--Go----! (Blanca leaves, weeping.) SCENE V. Sancho, who has watched Blanca disappear, when she has gone, says: Unhappy being! Why does a cursed blood course through your veins? Aye!--What blame have I, for having loved you ere I knew the stock from which you came--the blood that gives color and freshness to your cheeks, smile to your lips, light to your eyes? Why do I love you, when I ought to hate you? Why ought I to hate you, when I love you with all my heart?--What is this?--Aye! Aye! I cannot. I cannot more. (The curtain falls darkly on the scene. A short pause.) * * * * * SCENE VII. Viceroy: Sancho---- Sancho: Enter sir! So great an honor!-- V.: I have already told you, Sancho, that I love you as a son. It is not the Viceroy of Mexico, who comes now to your house. I enter it as a friend. Receive me as such. S.: And--to what, then, do I owe this pleasure? Seat yourself, sir, seat yourself. (The Viceroy seats himself.) V.: I come to you, Sancho, because I am most unhappy. S.: (With pleasure.) You, most unhappy! V.: Yes. If you knew---- S.: And what has happened to you? Let me know--but allow me to close this door because a draught enters. (He bolts the door that communicates with the interior and through which Blanca had passed.) Ah, well! sir! what makes you unhappy? It seems incredible; a man, powerful, rich, immensely rich, cradled from infancy in the arms of fortune--Perhaps, your wife!---- V.: My wife?--No! My wife has never been able to make me unhappy, just as she has never made me happy. We have never loved. I married her for family reasons and, in fine---- S.: I do not understand, then---- V.: Hear me, Sancho! For many years my only good, my only joy, my sole delight in this world, has been a lovely girl---- S.: Yes, yes,--a lovely girl who has grown up, receiving her education, in the Convent of Seville. V.: You know it! (Profoundly surprised.) S.: And whom you brought with you to Mexico, two years ago. V.: Yes. S.: You lodged her with the Sisters of the Conception where you caused her to be loved and respected as if she were your daughter. V.: That is true!