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.

Faustine
Let us start at once; I know these Spaniards, and they are sure to
plot your death.

Quinola
The resources of Quinola are at the bottom of the sea. Be kind enough
to excuse his faults; he will doubtless do better at Paris. Verily, I
believe that hell is paved with good inventions.

Final Curtain.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Resources of Quinola, by Honore de Balzac

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