Scene VI

Enter Chremes, Sostrata.

Sostra. Nay indeed, husband, if you don’t take care,

You’ll bring some kind of mischief on your son:

I can’t imagine how a thought so idle

Could come into your head.

Chrem. Still, woman, still

D’ye contradict me? Did I ever wish

For any thing in all my life, but you

In that same thing oppos’d me, Sostrata?

Yet now if I should ask wherein I’m wrong,

Or wherefore I act thus, you do not know.

Why then d’ye contradict me, simpleton?

Sostra. Not know?

Chrem. Well, well, you know: I grant it, rather

Than hear your idle story o’er again.

Sostra. Ah, ’tis unjust in you to ask my silence

In such a thing as this.

Chrem. I do not ask it.

Speak if you will: I’ll do it ne’ertheless.

Sostra. Will you?

Chrem. I will.

Sostra. You don’t perceive what harm

May come of this. He thinks himself a foundling.

Chrem. A foundling, say you?

Sostra. Yes indeed, he does.

Chrem. Confess it to be true.

Sostra. Ah, Heav’n forbid!

Let our most bitter enemies do that!

Shall I disown my son, my own dear child!

Chrem. What! do you fear you can not at your pleasure

Produce convincing proofs that he’s your own?

Sostra. Is it because my daughter’s found you say this?

Chrem. No: but because, a stronger reason far,

His manners are so very like your own,

They are convincing proofs that he’s your son

His manners so resemble yours, you may

Easily prove him thence to be your son.

He is quite like you: not a vice, whereof

He is inheritor, but dwells in you:

And such a son no mother but yourself

Could have engender’d.—But he comes.—How grave!

Look in his face, and you may guess his plight.