NEM. That’s weakness; you should take a tonic. (_Drinks._)
JUAN. My stomach cannot endure alcohol now: I drink out of compliment; but I know that it does me harm.
TIM. Because it is not the alcohol of our time.
NEM. This is corrosive sublimate alcoholised.
TIM. It is the alcohol which has grown old. (_Walks about jauntily._) I feel young still--Ah!
TIM. While simply moving I seem to have disjointed my whole vertebral column. The devil, the devil!
NEM. (_drinking calmly_). Something or other will have got dislocated.
JUAN. Let us undeceive ourselves: we are nearing the City of Old Age. By the life of life, how short is life! (_Strikes the chair with his fist._) Ah!
JUAN. A pain in the elbow--and in this shoulder.
TIM. Juanito, you have never been very strong.
JUAN. I have not been? I have not been? I have been stronger than you all. For twenty-four hours running I have played cards: for three days running I have been shut up with Pacorro and Luis emptying bottles: and my patron Saint Juan Tenorio, from the heaven where he dwells in company with Doña Inez, will have seen how I have borne myself in amorous enterprises. You, on the other hand, have been nothing more than the braggadocios of vice. Away with such lay-figures.
TIM. We don’t deny that you have been a greater madcap than anybody else; but strong--what’s called a strong man--that you have not been.
TIM. Something has happened to you which never happened to any one else.
TIM. In order to get your spine straightened you had to be put in a casing of paste, and they used to hang you up by the neck twice a day.
JUAN. But that was because we were playing at single stick in the Plaza de Toros, and they broke two of my ribs; that might happen to anybody.
TIM. No, no: you were not like us. Do you remember, Nemesio? “Where is Juanito?” “In bed.” “Where is Juanito?” “At Panticosa.” “Where is Juanito?” “At Archena.” “Where is Juanito?” “Shut up in his casing.” “Where is Juanito?” “At this moment they must be hanging him.” Ha, ha!
TIM. _and_ NEM. _laugh_. DON JUAN _looks at them angrily_.
JUAN. Don’t laugh very loud, or we shall have a general breaking up. I have been a man and you two have been pitiful fellows. You (_to_ TIM.), got married at forty: you locked yourself up in a corner of this town with your wife, and there was an end of Timoteo. You (_to_ NEM.), flying like a coward from the storms of the world, took refuge in Arganda, where you drink each year the vintage of the year before. I, on the other hand (_speaking with proud emphasis_), I--it is true that I also got married--at forty-two; but that’s no proof of weakness. If Don Juan Tenorio had been allowed the time, he would have married Doña Inez, and indeed there is a rumour that they celebrated their mystic wedding in heaven. But I, the other Don Juan, got married like a man, like a free citizen; yet I did not thereupon abandon the field of honour. I am myself at home, myself abroad, at nine in the convent, at ten in this street. Well, then I had my Lazarus!--Eh!--There’s a lad! That’s what it is to have a son.
