- Crowd: Long live the King, death to the bad government!
- Cabecilla: He'd shout death to Esquilache!
- Esquilache: He will day before all of you do, even if I do not shout.
- Pastora: Even the King is afraid. Well I know his yearning to become a popular sovereign, a king to go down in history. History is this small. Few can fit in.
- Carlos III: When I met you in Naples, how long ago?
- Esquilache: Fifteen years, Sir.
- Carlos III: Do you know what I thought then? Here is a man who does his sums with his head, and undoes them with his heart.
- Esquilache: So I am a prisoner.
- Villasanta: Guarded only, Marquis, to ensure your security.
- Esquilache: Are you sure you are not exceeding your obligations?
- Villasanta: Don't thee be alarmed, nobody will die.
- Esquilache: Several have already died.
- Villasanta: Nobody... irreplaceable, I mean.
- Carlos III: There must be some key that opens the door of understanding for the Spaniards. This determination to systematically destroy anything that is built is not getting us anywhere.