Perde 2
[Textpart 3]
Did you not take care then, you and your master, that he shouldn’t go away, when you knew this?
TRACHALIO
What could he do?
AMPELISCA
If he was in love, do you ask what he could do?
Both night and day he should have kept watch; he should have been always on his guard. But, by my troth, he has done like many others; thus finely has Plesidippus taken care of her.
380
TRACHALIO
For what reason do you say that?
AMPELISCA
The thing is evident.
TRACHALIO
Don’t you know this? Even he who goes to the bath to bathe, while there he carefully keeps an eye upon his garments, still they are stolen; inasmuch as some one of those that he is watching is a rogue;
the thief easily marks him for whom he’s upon the watch; the keeper knows not which one is the thief. But bring me to her; where is she?
385
AMPELISCA
Well then, go here into the Temple of Venus; you’ll find her sitting there, and in tears.
TRACHALIO
How disagreable is that to me already. But why is she weeping?
AMPELISCA
I’ll tell you; she’s afflicting herself in mind for this; because the Procurer took away a casket from her which she had,
and in which she kept that by which she might be enabled to recognize her parents; she fears that this has been lost.
390
TRACHALIO
Where was that little casket, pray?
AMPELISCA
There, on board the ship; he himself locked it up in his wallet, that there mightn’t be the means by which she might recognize her parents.
TRACHALIO
O scandalous deed! to require her to be a slave, who ought to be a free woman.
AMPELISCA
Therefore she now laments that it has gone to the bottom along with the ship. There, too, was all the gold and silver of the Procurer.
395
TRACHALIO
Some one, I trust, has dived and brought it up.
AMPELISCA
For this reason is she sad and disconsolate, that she has met with the loss of them.
TRACHALIO
Then have I the greater occasion to do this, to go in and console her, that she mayn’t thus distress herself in mind.
For I know that many a lucky thing has happened to many a one beyond their hopes.
400
