Perde 5
[Textpart 8]
Won’t you hold your tongue?
PHORMIO
He married another—
1005
NAUSISTRATA
My dear sir, may the Gods forbid it!
1005
PHORMIO
Such is the fact.
NAUSISTRATA
Wretch that I am, I’m undone!
PHORMIO
And had a daughter by her, too, while you never dreamed of it.
CHREMES
What are we to do?
NAUSISTRATA
O immortal Gods!—a disgraceful and a wicked misdeed!
DEMIPHO
It’s all up with you.
PHORMIO
Was ever any thing now more ungenerously done?
Your men, who, when they come to their wives, then become incapacitated from old age.
1010
NAUSISTRATA
Demipho, I appeal to you; for with that man it is irksome for me to speak. Were these those frequent journeys and long visits at Lemnos? Was this the lowness of prices that reduced our rents?
DEMIPHO
Nausistrata, I don’t deny that in this matter he has been deserving of censure;
but still, it may be pardoned.
1015
PHORMIO
He is talking to the dead.
1015
DEMIPHO
For he did this neither through neglect or aversion to yourself. About fifteen years since, in a drunken fit, he had an intrigue with this poor woman, of whom this girl was born, nor did he ever touch her afterward. She is dead and gone: the only difficulty that remained in this matter.
Wherefore, I do beg of you, that, as in other things, you’ll bear this with patience.
1020
NAUSISTRATA
Why should I with patience? I could wish, afflicted as I am, that there were an end now of this matter. But how can I hope? Am I to suppose that, at his age, he will not offend in future? Was he not an old man then, if old age makes people behave themselves decently? Are my looks and my age more attractive now, Demipho?
