Eight Dramas of Calderon

Luis. Once more, a thousand times once more, Don Juan,

Come to my heart.

Juan. And every fresh embrace

Rivet our ancient friendship faster yet!

Luis. Amen to that! Come, let me look at you—

Why, you seem well—

Juan. So well, so young, so nimble,

I will not try to say how well, so much

My words and your conception must fall short

Of my full satisfaction.

Luis. How glad am I

To have you back in Naples!

Juan. Ah, Don Luis,

Happier so much than when I last was here,

Nay, than I ever thought that I could be.

Luis. How so?

Juan. Why, when I came this way before,

I told you (do you not remember it?)

How teased I was by relatives and friends

To marry—little then disposed to love—

Marriage perhaps the last thing in my thoughts—

Liking to spend the spring time of my youth

In lonely study.

Luis. Ay, ay, I remember:

Nothing but books, books, books—still day and night

Nothing but books; or, fairly drowsed by them,

By way of respite to that melancholy,

The palette and the pencil—

In which you got to such a mastery

As smote the senseless canvas into life.

O, I remember all—not only, Juan,

When you were here, but I with you in Spain,

What fights we had about it!

Juan. So it was—

However, partly wearied, partly moved

By pity at my friends’ anxieties,

Who press’d upon me what a shame it were

If such a title and estate as mine

Should lack a lineal inheritor,

At length I yielded—

Fanned from the embers of my later years

A passion which had slept in those of youth,

And took to wife my cousin Serafina,

The daughter of Don Pedro Castellano.