Cléante. I will not bate a jot.

Jacques (to Cléante). Eh what! to your father?

Harpagon. Let me alone.

Jacques (to Harpagon). What! to your son? I could overlook it to myself.

Harpagon. I will make yourself, Master Jacques, judge in this affair, to show you that I am in the right.

Jacques. I consent. (To Cléante). Get a little farther away.

Harpagon. I love a girl whom I wish to marry; and the hang-dog has the insolence to love her also, and to aspire to her hand in spite of my commands.

Jacques. He is wrong there.

Harpagon. Is it not a dreadful thing for a son to wish to enter into rivalry with his father? and ought he not, out of respect, to abstain from meddling with my inclinations?

Jacques. You are right. Let me speak to him, while you remain here.

Cléante (to Master Jacques, who is approaching him). Well! yes, since he chooses you as judge, I shall not draw back; it matters not to me who it may be; and I am willing to refer to you, Master Jacques, in this our quarrel.

Jacques. You do me much honour.

Cléante. I am smitten with a young girl who returns my affection, and tenderly accepts the offer of my love: and my father takes it into his head to come and trouble our passion, by asking for her hand.

Jacques. He is assuredly wrong.

Cléante. Is he not ashamed at his age to think of marrying? Does it still become him to be in love, and should he not leave this pastime to young people?

Jacques. You are right. He is only jesting. Let me speak a few words to him. (To Harpagon.) Well! your son is not so strange as you make him out, and he is amenable to reason. He says that he knows the respect which he owes you, that he was only carried away by momentary warmth; and that he will not refuse to submit to your pleasure, provided you will treat him better than you do, and give him some one for a wife with whom he shall have reason to be satisfied.

Harpagon. Ah! tell him, Master Jacques, that, if he looks at it in that way, he may expect everything of me and that, except Mariane, I leave him free to choose whom he likes.

Jacques. Let me manage it. (To Cléante.) Well! your father is not so unreasonable as you make him out; and he has shown me that it was your violence that made him angry; that he objects only to your behaviour; and that he will be very much disposed to grant you what you wish, provided you shall do things gently, and show him the deference, the respect, and the submission which a son owes to his father.

Cléante. Ah! Master Jacques, you may assure him that if he grants me Mariane, he will always find me the most submissive of beings, and that I never shall do anything except what he wishes.

Jacques (to Harpagon). That is done. He consents to what you say.

Harpagon. Then things will go on in the best possible way.