SCENE VI.
George Colman translation
Enter Chremes, Sostrata.
Sostra. Nay indeed, husband, if you don’t take care,
You’ll bring some kind of mischief on your son:
I can’t imagine how a thought so idle
Could come into your head.
Chrem. Still, woman, still
D’ye contradict me? Did I ever wish
For any thing in all my life, but you
In that same thing oppos’d me, Sostrata?
Yet now if I should ask wherein I’m wrong,
Or wherefore I act thus, you do not know.
Why then d’ye contradict me, simpleton?
Sostra. Not know?
Chrem. Well, well, you know: I grant it, rather
Than hear your idle story o’er again.
Sostra. Ah, ’tis unjust in you to ask my silence
In such a thing as this.
Chrem. I do not ask it.
Speak if you will: I’ll do it ne’ertheless.
Sostra. Will you?
Chrem. I will.
Sostra. You don’t perceive what harm
May come of this. He thinks himself a foundling.
Chrem. A foundling, say you?
Sostra. Yes indeed, he does.
Chrem. Confess it to be true.
Sostra. Ah, Heav’n forbid!
Let our most bitter enemies do that!
Shall I disown my son, my own dear child!
Chrem. What! do you fear you can not at your pleasure
Produce convincing proofs that he’s your own?
Sostra. Is it because my daughter’s found you say this?
Chrem. No: but because, a stronger reason far,
His manners are so very like your own,
They are convincing proofs that he’s your son
His manners so resemble yours, you may
Easily prove him thence to be your son.
He is quite like you: not a vice, whereof
He is inheritor, but dwells in you:
And such a son no mother but yourself
Could have engender’d.—But he comes.—How grave!
Look in his face, and you may guess his plight.