Perde 1
[Textpart 1]
Even more still.
DEMAENETUS
Why, how long?
LIBANUS
I want you, even to the death—
DEMAENETUS
Take you care of a woful mishap, if you please.
LIBANUS
Of your wife, I mean, not of yourself.
DEMAENETUS
For that speech, I give you leave to be free from apprehension.
LIBANUS
May the Gods grant you whatever you desire.
DEMAENETUS
In return, give me your attention. Why should I ask this of you? Or why should I threaten you, because you have not made me acquainted with it? Or why, in fine, should I censure my son
LIBANUS
What new affair is this? (Aside.) I wonder much what it is, and I’m in dread what the upshot of it may be.
50
DEMAENETUS
In fact, I’m now aware that my son’s in love with that Courtesan Philenium, that lives close by. Is not this as I say, Libanus?
LIBANUS
You are upon the right track; such is the fact. But a dreadful malady has overtaken him.
DEMAENETUS
What is the malady?
LIBANUS
Why, that his presents don’t equal his promises.
DEMAENETUS
Are you, then, one who assists my son in his amours?
LIBANUS
I really am, and our Leonida is another.
DEMAENETUS
I’ faith, you do kindly, and you gain thanks from me. But this wife of mine, Libanus, don’t you know what sort of a person she is?
LIBANUS
You are the first to experience it, but we give a guess beforehand.
DEMAENETUS
I confess that she is troublesome and not to be pleased.
LIBANUS
You say that later than I believed you in it.
