one of them in reply to Don Juan's boast that the genius of his son is inherited from him. Paternal inheritance would be nothing but rheum or neurosis—'the sediment of pleasure and the residuum of alcohol.' Upon this Don Juan launches into poetry and describes the single moment in which his soul soared above material enjoyments and sighed for the glorious and impossible. It was after an orgy, and as his half-closed eyes saw the sun rise over the Guadalquivir through the silky waves of a girl's hair, he understood the beauty of poetry and Nature, and stretched out a hand to clutch the splendid orb. This desire is afterwards recalled to him in a moment of surprising horror, when his brilliant and beloved son, sinking into imbecility, sees the rising sun, and cries: 'How lovely! Mother, give me the sun.' 'And I also wanted it once,' Don Juan exclaims: 'My God! my son! Lázaro!'
Don Juan, as might be inferred from his name, carries on intrigues with ballet-girls and servant-maids under the nose of his wife and son. Lázaro seems blind enough to parental delinquencies. Not, as he explains himself when complaining of broken health, that he has been a saint because he has eschewed excesses. The scene where he first appears ailing and stupid is singularly painful, above all, towards the end, when, after an outburst of lucid eloquence, he falls drowsily upon the sofa, and feeling sleep upon him, begs that Carmen, his betrothed, should not be permitted to see him in a ridiculous attitude.
Xavier. Unless you are as beautiful as Endymion she shall not enter. [Pause. Xavier walks about; Lázaro begins to sleep.]
Lázaro. Xavier, Xavier!
xxiv
