Ye Gods, I do adjure you by our trust in you!(Opening the casket.)LAMPADISCUS Why do you call upon the Gods?PHANOSTRATA Save us! LAMPADISCUS What’s the matter?PHANOSTRATA These are the trinkets with which you exposed my little daughter to death. LAMPADISCUS Are you in your senses?PHANOSTRATA These certainly are. LAMPADISCUS Do you persist? PHANOSTRATA These are they.LAMPADISCUS If any other woman were to speak to me after that fashion, I should say she was drunk.PHANOSTRATA By heaven! I’m talking no nonsense.But prithee, whence in the world did these come, or what Deity placed this before our door? As though for a given purpose, at the very instant sacred Hope comes to my aid?

(Enter HALISCA, at a distance, from the house of the FATHER of ALCESIMARCHUS.)HALISCA(to herself.)Unless the Gods give me some aid, I’m utterly undone; nor do I know whence I am to seek for aid. To such a degree does carelessness possess wretched me in mind, which I sadly fear may be lighting upon my own back, if my mistress knows that I’m so negligent as I really am.The casket which I took and held in my hands here before the door, where it is I know not; except, as I fancy, it was dropt by me about this spot. (Looks about on the ground.) My good sirs (to the AUDIENCE), my kind Spectators, do give me information if any one has seen it, if any one has taken it away, or any one picked it up; and whether in this direction or that he has taken his departure?