Cistellaria, or The Casket (50-69)

and you’ll prove a loss to many and a profit to myself full oft, without any outlay of my own.

May the Gods grant it.

Without your own energies[*], the Gods cannot possibly do anything in this.

I’ faith, for my own part, I’ll zealously devote my energies to it. But what mean you amid this conversation, apple of my eye, my own Silenium? (never did I see you more sad); prithee, do tell me, why does mirth so shun you?

And you are not so neat as you usually are. (SILENIUM sighs.) Do look at that, please, how deep a sigh she heaved. You are pale too. Tell us both what’s the matter with you, and in what you want our aid; so that we may know. Prithee, don’t by your tears be causing me anxiety.

My dear Gymnasium, I’m sadly affected; I feel ill, I am shockingly distrest;

I am pained in spirits, I feel pain in my eyes, I am in pain from faintness. What shall I say, but that my own folly drives me to sadness?

Take you care, then, that you have your folly entombed in that very same place from which it takes its rise.

What shall I do?

Hide it in darkness, in the very deepest recesses of your breast. Take you care and have it so, that you yourself are alone sensible of your own folly, without any other witnesses.

But I’ve got the heart-ache.

Why so? For what reason have you the heartache, prithee, tell me, a thing that I neither have, nor any other woman whatever, according as the men say?

If there’s any heart to feel pain, it does feel pain; but if there isn’t, still this pains me here.

This woman’s in love.

Come now, to begin to be in love, is it bitter, prithee?

Why, troth, love is most fruitful both in honey and in gall;