Act 3 — SCENE X.—TRUFALDIN at his window, LELIO.
Reading edition
TRUF. What is the matter? Who comes to pay me a visit?
LEL. Keep your door carefully shut to-night.
TRUF. Why?
LEL. There are certain people coming masked to give you a sorry kind of serenade; they intend to carry off Celia.
TRUF. Good Heavens!
LEL. No doubt they will soon be here. Keep where you are, you may see everything from your window. Hey! Did I not tell you so? Do you not see them already? Hist! I will affront them before your face. We shall see some fine fun, if they do not give way.
[Footnote: This is one of the passages of Molière about which commentators do not agree; the original is, nous allons voir beau jeu, si la corde ne rompt. Some maintain that corde refers to the tight rope of a rope dancer; others that corde means the string of a bow, as in the phrase avoir deux cordes a son arc, to have two strings (resources) to one's bow. Mons. Eugène Despois, in his carefully edited edition of Molière, (i., 187), defends the latter reading, and I agree with him.]