Perde 3
[Textpart 1]
Prithee, my dear nurse, how is it like to end?
CANTHARA
Like to end, do you ask? I’ troth, right well, I trust.
SOSTRATA
Her pains are just beginning, my dear.
CANTHARA
You are in a flight, now, just as though you had never been present on such an occasion—never been in labor yourself.
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SOSTRATA
Unfortunate woman that I am! I have not a person at home; we are quite alone; Geta too is absent. I have no one to go for the midwife, or to fetch Aeschinus.
CANTHARA
I’ faith, he’ll certainly be here just now, for he never lets a day pass without visiting us.
SOSTRATA
He is my sole comfort in my afflictions.
CANTHARA
Things could not have happened, mistress, more for the advantage of your daughter than they have, seeing that violence was offered her; so far as he is concerned, it is most lucky,—such a person, of such disposition and feelings, a member of so respectable a family.
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SOSTRATA
It is indeed as you say; I entreat the Gods that he may be preserved to us.
[Textpart 2]
Now such is our condition, that if all were to combine all their counsels,
GETA
and to seek a remedy for this mischief that has befallen myself, my mistress, and her daughter, they could find no relief. Oh wretched me! so many calamities beset us on a sudden, we can not possibly extricate ourselves. Violence, poverty, oppression, desertion, infamy! What an age is this! O shocking villainy! O accursed race! O impious man!—
300
SOSTRATA
Unhappy me! How is it that I see Geta hurrying along thus terrified?
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GETA
Whom neither promises, nor oaths, nor compassion could move or soften; nor yet the fact that the delivery was nigh at hand of the unfortunate woman on whom he had so shamefully committed violence.
SOSTRATA
I don’t well understand what he is talking about.
CANTHARA
Pray, let us go nearer to him, Sostrata.
wretched me! I am scarcely master of my senses, I am so inflamed with anger. There is nothing that I would like better than for all that family to be thrown in my way, that I might give vent to all my wrath upon them while this wound is still fresh. I could be content with any punishment, so I might only wreak my vengeance on them. First, I would stop the breath of the old fellow himself who gave being to this monster;
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then as for his prompter, Syrus, out upon him! How I would tear him piecemeal! I would snatch him by the middle up aloft, and dash him head downward upon the earth, so that with his brains he would bestrew the road: I would pull out the eyes of the young fellow himself, and afterward hurl him headlong over some precipice. The others I would rush upon, drive, drag, crush, and trample them under foot.
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But why do I delay at once to acquaint my mistress with this calamity?
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SOSTRATA
Let us call him Lack. Geta—
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