ARG. What is the matter?
TOI. Your doctor, forsooth, who wanted to feel my pulse!
ARG. Just imagine; and that, too, at fourscore and ten years of age.
BER. Now, I say, brother, since you have quarrelled with Mr. Purgon,
won't you give me leave to speak of the match which is proposed for my
niece?
ARG. No, brother; I will put her in a convent, since she has rebelled
against me. I see plainly that there is some love business at the
bottom of it all, and I have discovered a certain secret interview
which they don't suspect me to know anything about.
BER. Well, brother, and suppose there were some little inclination,
where could the harm be? Would it be so criminal when it all tends to
what is honourable--marriage?
ARG. Be that as it may, she will be a nun. I have made up my mind.
BER. You intend to please somebody by so doing.
ARG. I understand what you mean. You always come back to that, and my
wife is very much in your way.
BER. Well, yes, brother; since I must speak out, it is your wife I
mean; for I can no more bear with your infatuation about doctors than
with your infatuation about your wife, and see you run headlong into
every snare she lays for you.
TOI. Ah! Sir, don't talk so of mistress. She is a person against whom
there is nothing to be said; a woman without deceit, and who loves
master--ah! who loves him.
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