Min. Will you never breathe a syllable?

Inis. Never.

Min. Will you strive to forget it the moment you have heard it?

Inis. I'll swear to myself forty times a-day to forget it.

Min. You are sure you will not let me stir from this spot till you know the whole?

Inis. Not as far as a thrush hops.

Min. So! now, then, in one word,—here it goes. Though every body supposes my lady an arrant scold, she's no more a——[Looking out.]

Don Cæsar. [Without, l.] Out upon't e—h—h!

Min. Oh, St. Gerome!—here is her father, and his privy counsellor, Gasper. I can never communicate a secret in quiet. Well! come to my chamber, for, now my hand's in, you shall have the whole.—I would not keep it another day to be confidant to an infanta.

[Exeunt, r.

Gasp. Take comfort, sir; take comfort.

Cæsar. Take it;—why, where the devil shall I find it? You may say, take physic, sir, or, take poison, sir——they are to be had; but what signifies bidding me take comfort, when I can neither buy it, beg it, nor steal it?

Gasp. But patience will bring it, sir.

Cæsar. 'Tis false, sirrah.—Patience is a cheat, and the man that ranked her with the cardinal virtues was a fool. I have had patience at bed and board these three long years, but the comfort she promised, has never called in with a civil how d'ye?

Gasp. Ay, sir, but you know the poets say that the twin sister and companion of comfort is good humour. Now if you would but drop that agreeable acidity, which is so conspicuous——

Cæsar. Then let my daughter drop her perverse humour; 'tis a more certain bar to marriage than ugliness or folly; and will send me to my grave, at last, without male heirs. [Crying.] How many have laid siege to her! But that humour of hers, like the works of Gibraltar, no Spaniard can find pregnable.

Gasp. Ay, well—Troy held out but ten years——Let her once tell over her beads, unmarried at five-and-twenty, and, my life upon it, she ends the rosary, with a hearty prayer for a good husband.

Cæsar. What, d'ye expect me to wait till the horrors of old maidenism frighten her into civility? no, no;—I'll shut her up in a convent, marry myself, and have heirs in spite of her. There's my neighbour Don Vasquez's daughter, she is but nineteen——

Gasp. The very step I was going to recommend, sir. You are but a young gentleman of sixty-three, I take it; and a husband of sixty-three, who marries a wife of nineteen, will never want heirs, take my word for it.

Cæsar. What! do you joke, sirrah?

Gasp. Oh no, sir—not if you are serious. I think it would be one of the pleasantest things in the world—Madam would throw a new life into the family; and when you are above stairs in the gout, sir, the music of her concerts, and the spirit of her converzationes, would reach your sick bed, and be a thousand times more comforting than flannels and panada.

Cæsar. Come, come, I understand ye.—But this daughter of mine—I shall give her but two chances more.——Don Garcia and Don Vincentio will both be here to-day, and if she plays over the old game, I'll marry to-morrow morning, if I hang myself the next.

Gasp. You decide right, signor; at sixty-three the marriage noose and the hempen noose should always go together.

Cæsar. Why, you dog you, do you suppose—There's Don Garcia—there he is coming through the portico. Run