longer and conceals more, no doubt, like a train. Where did I read that nobody knows what he may be capable of, until he has been an absolute monarch for some hours, and has starved for some days?
Luisa. If you are going to believe that, we can never know the truth about anybody or anything.
Pepe. The truth? Do you wish the truth about your future husband? All you have to do is to ask. Everybody will tell you the truth as he sees it, and all the truths that they tell you will be lies. It would be wonderful to read the story of our lives written by different people—by our friends, our creditors, our servants. It would be like reading a thousand lives of a thousand different people, and if we were to sit down to write our own lives, the result would not be any more genuine, because, although we are all what we are, we all imagine ourselves to be something quite different.
Luisa. Just the same, the truth must be somewhere.
Pepe. The truth of our lives is in the hearts of those who love us, whose love remains ours through all the moments of our lives. It may be so great that at times they may think that they hate us, and we may believe it too, because not even love itself, if it is sincere, can be the same every day, nor through all the hours of our lives, because it is like life itself, and moves with us at its own step down all the good and all the miserable highways, whether we are sad or whether we are joyful, not because we are this or that, but however we may be. It is but a mood, a passing phase, for better or for worse; we are a little weaker or a little stronger, more heroic or more cowardly, as the case may be. At times we are unjust, even cruelly, at others we are indulgent, with equal injustice. We are so proud that we imagine ourselves to be superior to all love, above the need of all
