Valère. I say, Sir, that I have had all the trouble in the world to bring her modesty to consent to what my love wished for.

Harpagon. The modesty of whom?

Valère. Of your daughter; and it is only yesterday that she could make up her mind to sign a mutual promise of marriage.

Harpagon. My daughter has signed you a promise of marriage?

Valère. Yes, Sir, as I have signed her one.

Harpagon. O Heaven! another disgrace!

Jacques (to the Magistrate). Write, Sir, write.

Harpagon. More harm! additional despair! (To the Magistrate). Come, Sir, do the duty of your office; and draw up for him his indictment as a felon and a suborner.

Jacques. As a felon and a suborner.

Valère. These are names that do not belong to me; and when people shall know who I am …

Scene IV.—Harpagon, Elise, Mariane, Valère, Frosine, Master Jacques, a Magistrate.

Harpagon. Ah! graceless child! daughter unworthy of a father like me! it is thus that you carry out the lessons which I have given you? You allow yourself to become smitten with an infamous thief; and you pledge him your troth without my consent! But you shall both find out your mistake. (To Elise). Four strong walls will answer for your conduct; (to Valère,) and a good gibbet will give me satisfaction for your audacity.

Valère. It will not be your passion that shall judge this matter; and I shall get at least a hearing before being condemned.

Harpagon. I have made a mistake in saying a gibbet; and you shall be broken alive on the wheel.

Elise (at Harpagon’s knees). Ah! father, show a little more humanity in your feelings, I beseech you, and do not push matters with the utmost violence of paternal power. Do not give way to the first movements of your passion, and give yourself time to consider what to do. Take the trouble to know better him whom you believe to have offended you. He is quite different from what he appears in your eyes; and you will find it less strange that I have given myself to him, when you know that, had it not been for him, you would long ago have had me no longer. Yes, father, it is he who saved me from the great peril I was in when I fell into the water, and to whom you owe the life of that very daughter, who …

Harpagon. All that is nothing; and it would have been much better for me, had he allowed you to be drowned, than to do what he has done.

Elise. I implore you, father, by your paternal love, to …

Harpagon. No, no; I will hear nothing, and justice must have its course.

Jacques. You shall pay me my cudgel-blows.

Frosine (aside). What strange confusion is this!