Now are my walls soaking in my heart; this building is utterly undone.PHILEMATIUMDo look, my Scapha, there’s a dear, whether this dress quite becomes me. I wish to please Philolaches my protector, the apple of my eye.SCAPHANay but, you set yourself off to advantage with pleasing manners, inasmuch as you yourself are pleasing. The lover isn’t in love with a woman’s dress, but with that which stuffs outThat which stuffs out: That is, the body. the dress.PHILOLACHES(apart.)So may the Gods bless me, Scapha is waggish; the hussy’s quite knowing. How cleverly she understands all matters, the maxims of lovers too!PHILEMATIUMWell now? SCAPHAWhat is it?PHILEMATIUMWhy look at me and examine, how this becomes me.SCAPHAThanks to your good looks, it happens that whatever you put on becomes you.PHILOLACHES(apart.)Now then, for that expression, Scapha, I’ll make you some present or other to-day, and I won’t allow you to have praised her for nothing who is so pleasing to me.PHILEMATIUMI don’t want you to flatter me.SCAPHAReally you are a very simple woman. Come now, would you rather be censured undeservedly, than be praised with truth? Upon my faith, for my own part, even though undeservedly, I’d much rather be praised than be found fault with with reason, or that other people should laugh at my appearance.PHILEMATIUMI love the truth; I wish the truth to be told me; I detest a liar.SCAPHASo may you love me, and so may your Philolaches love you, how charming you are.PHILOLACHES(apart.)How say you, you hussy? In what words did you adjure? So may I love her? Why wasn’t So may she love me added as well? I revoke the present. What I just now promised you is done for; you have lost the present. SCAPHATroth, for my part I am surprised that you, a person so knowing, so clever, and so well educated, are not aware that you are acting foolishly.PHILEMATIUMThen give me your advice, I beg, if I have done wrong in anything.SCAPHAI’ faith, you certainly do wrong, in setting your mind upon him alone, in fact, and humouring him in particular in this way and slighting other men. It’s the part of a married woman, and not of courtesans, to be devoted to a single lover.PHILOLACHES(apart.)O Jupiter! Why, what pest is this that has befallen my house? May all the Gods and Goddesses destroy me in the worst of fashions, if I don’t kill this old hag with thirst, and hunger, and cold.PHILEMATIUMI don’t want you, Scapha, to be giving me bad advice.SCAPHAYou are clearly a simpleton, in thinking that he’ll for everlasting be your friend and well-wisher. I warn you of that; he’ll forsake you by reason of age and satiety.PHILEMATIUMI hope not.SCAPHAThings which you don’t hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope. In fine, if you cannot be persuaded by words to believe this to be the truth, judge of my words from facts; consider this instance, who I now am, and who I once was. No less than your are now, was I once beloved, and I devoted myself to one, who, faith, when with age this head changed its hue, forsook and deserted me. Depend on it, the same will happen to yourself.PHILOLACHES(apart.)I can scarcely withhold myself from flying at the eyes of this mischief-maker.PHILEMATIUMI am of opinion that I ought to keep myself alone devoted to him, since to myself alone has he given freedom for himself alone.PHILOLACHES(apart.)O ye immortal Gods! what a charming woman, and of a disposition how chaste! By heaven, ’tis excellently done, and I’m rejoiced at it, that it is for her sake I’ve got nothing left.