Fontanares I will acknowledge anything you like, even to the point that O plus O is a binomial! Don Fregose (after consulting with the Grand Inquisitor) Your demand is perfectly legitimate; we will forward a copy of your statement, preserving here the original. Fontanares I have, then, escaped with my life. Let me ask all of you here present, if you look upon Don Ramon as the real inventor of the vessel which has been propelled by steam before the eyes of two hundred thousand Spaniards? All We do. (Quinola makes his appearance.) Fontanares Very good. Don Ramon has accomplished this prodigy. Don Ramon can begin his work again. (A loud explosion is heard.) The prodigy is no longer in existence. The employment of such a force is not without danger, and the danger which Don Ramon had not foreseen, has manifested itself, at the very moment while Don Ramon was receiving your congratulations! (Cries in the distance; everybody rushes to the balcony and gazes seaward.) I am avenged! Don Fregose What will the king say? The Grand Inquisitor France is all ablaze, the low countries in revolt, Calvin is stirring up all Europe; the king has too much business on his hands to worry himself about the loss of a ship. This new invention and the Reformation would have been too much at one time for the world! Now for some years the rapacity of maritime peoples has been checked. (Exeunt omnes.) SCENE SIXTH Quinola, Fontanares and Faustine. Faustine Alfonso, I have done you much wrong. Fontanares Marie is dead, senora; I do not know the meaning of the words right and wrong, nowadays. Quinola There is a man for you. Faustine Forgive me, and I will devote myself to your future. Fontanares Forgiveness! That word has been erased from my heart. There are situations in which the heart either breaks or turns to bronze. I am scarcely twenty-five years old, but to-day you have changed me into a man of fifty. You have lost to me one world, now you owe me another-- Quinola Let us turn our attention to politics. Faustine And is not my love, Alfonso, worth a world? Fontanares Yes, for you are a magnificent instrument of ruin and devastation. Yet it will be by means of you that I shall crush all those who have been an obstacle in my pathway; I take you, not for my wife, but for my slave, and you shall serve me. Faustine Serve you blindly. Fontanares But without hope that there will be any return--need I say of what? All here (he strikes his hand upon his heart) is of bronze. You have taught me what this world is made of. O world of self-interest, of trickery, of policy and of perfidy, I defy you to the combat! Quinola Senor? Fontanares What is it? Quinola Am I in it with you? Fontanares You? You are the only one who has still a place in my heart. We three will stand together; we will go-- Faustine Where? Fontanares We will go to France.