gallant? Gad, how coaxing your tongue was with him! You must have been at a good school. Who the deuce has taught you so much all on a sudden? You are no longer afraid, then, to meet ghosts; this gallant has given you courage in the night time. Ah, baggage, to arrive at such a pitch of deceit! To form such a plot in spite of all my kindness! Little serpent that I have warmed in my bosom, and that as soon as it feels it is alive, tries ungratefully to injure him that cherished it!

Agnès. Why do you scold me?

Arnolphe. Of a truth, I do wrong!

Agnès. I am not conscious of harm in all that I have done.

Arnolphe. To run after a gallant is not, then, an infamous thing?

Agnès. He is one who says he wishes to marry me. I followed your directions; you can have taught me that we ought to marry in order to avoid sin.

Arnolphe. Yes; but I meant to take you to wife myself; I think I gave you to understand it clearly enough.

Agnès. You did. But, to be frank with you, he is more to my taste for a husband than you. With you, marriage is a trouble and a pain, and your descriptions give a terrible picture of it; but there—he makes it seem so full of joy that I long to marry.

Arnolphe. Oh, traitress, that is because you love him!

Agnès. Yes, I love him.

Arnolphe. And you have the impudence to tell me so!

Agnès. Why, if it is true, should I not say so?

Arnolphe. Ought you to love him, minx?

Agnès. Alas! can I help it? He alone is the cause of it; I was not thinking of it when it came about.

Arnolphe. But you ought to have driven away that amorous desire.

Agnès. How can we drive away what gives us pleasure?

Arnolphe. And did you not know that it would displease me?

Agnès. I? Not at all. What harm can it do you?

Arnolphe. True. I ought to rejoice at it. You do not love me then after all?

Agnès. You?

Arnolphe. Yes.

Agnès. Alack! no.

Arnolphe. How! No?

Agnès. Would you have me tell a fib?

Arnolphe. Why not love me, Madam Impudence?