Perde 4
[Textpart 4]
What have you brought?
PISTOCLERUS
Everything that you bade me bring.
CHRYSALUS
Do you take the pen at once, and these tablets.
CHRYSALUS
Write there what I shall bid you; for I wish you to write for this reason,
that your father may know the hand when he reads it.
730
MNESILOCHUS
What shall I write?
CHRYSALUS
Health to your father, in your own language.
PISTOCLERUS
Suppose he were to write disease and death, in preference, that would be much better.
CHRYSALUS
Don’t you interrupt us.
MNESILOCHUS
What you have ordered is now written on the wax.
CHRYSALUS
Tell me in what terms.
MNESILOCHUS
Mnesilochus sends health to his father.
CHRYSALUS
Write this, too, quickly:
My father, Chrysalus is always and everywhere talking at me, and in no measured terms, because I gave you up the gold, and because I did not cheat you of it.
735
PISTOCLERUS
Stop till he has written it.
CHRYSALUS
It befits the hand of a lover to be active.
PISTOCLERUS
I’ faith, that hand is more active by far at lavishing than at writing.
MNESILOCHUS
Say on; that’s written down.
