GOOD MAN Now then, young fellow, come along with me To find the God.
CARIO Eh? Who comes here, I wonder.
GOOD MAN A man once wretched, but so happy now.
CARIO One of the honest sort, I dare aver.
GOOD MAN Aye, aye.
CARIO What want you now?
GOOD MAN I am come to thank The God: great blessings hath he wrought for me. For I, inheriting a fair estate, Used it to help my comrades in their need, Esteeming that the wisest thing to do.
CARIO I guess your money soon began to fail.
GOOD MAN Aye, that it did!
CARIO And then you came to grief.
GOOD MAN Aye, that I did! And I supposed that they Whom I had succoured in their need, would now Be glad to help me when in need myself. But all slipped off as though they saw me not.
CARIO And jeered you, I’ll be bound.
GOOD MAN Aye, that they did! The drought in all my vessels proved my ruin.
CARIO But not so now.
GOOD MAN Therefore with right good cause I come with thankfulness to praise the God.
CARIO But what’s the meaning, by the Powers, of that, That ancient gaberdine your boy is bearing?
GOOD MAN This too I bring, an offering to the God.
CARIO That’s not the robe you were initiate in?
GOOD MAN No, but I shivered thirteen years therein.
CARIO Those shoes?
GOOD MAN Have weathered many a storm with me.
CARIO And them you bring as votive offerings?
GOOD MAN Yes.
CARIO What charming presents to the God you bring!
INFORMER O me unlucky! O my hard, hard fate! O thrice unlucky, four times, five times, yea Twelve times, ten thousand times! O woe is me, So strong the spirit of ill-luck that swamps me.
CARIO Apollo shield us and ye gracious Gods, What dreadful misery has this poor wretch suffered?
INFORMER What misery quoth’a? Shameful, scandalous wrong. Why, all my goods are spirited away Through this same God, who shall be blind again If any justice can be found in Hellas.
GOOD MAN Methinks I’ve got a glimmering of the truth. This is some wretched fellow, come to grief; Belike he is metal of the baser sort.
CARIO Then well done he to come to wrack and ruin.
INFORMER Where, where is he who promised he would make All of us wealthy in a trice, if only He could regain his sight? Some of us truly He has brought to ruin rather than to wealth.
CARIO Whom has he brought to ruin?
INFORMER Me, this chap.
CARIO One of the rogues and housebreakers perchance?
INFORMER O aye, by Zeus, and you’re quite rotten too.
INFORMER ’Tis you have got my goods, I do believe.
CARIO How bold, Damater, has the Informing rogue Come blustering in! ’Tis plain he’s hunger-mad.
INFORMER You, sirrah, come to the market-place at once, There to be broken on the wheel, and forced To tell your misdemeanours.
CARIO You be hanged!
GOOD MAN O, if the God would extirpate the whole Informer-brood, right well would he deserve, O Saviour Zeus, of all the Hellenic race!
INFORMER You jeer me too? Alack, you shared the spoil, Or whence that brand new cloak? I’ll take my oath I saw you yesterday in a gaberdine.
GOOD MAN I fear you not. I wear an antidote, A ring Eudemus sold me for a drachma.
CARIO ’Tis not inscribed For an INFORMER’S BITE.
INFORMER Is not this insolence? Ye jest and jeer, And have not told me what you are doing here. ’Tis for no good you two are here, I’m thinking.
CARIO Not for your good, you may be sure of that.
INFORMER For off my goods ye are going to dine, I trow.
CARIO O that in very truth ye’d burst asunder, You and your witness, crammed with nothingness.
INFORMER Dare ye deny it? In your house they are cooking A jolly lot of flesh and fish, you miscreants. (The Informer gives five double sniffs.)
CARIO Smell you aught, lackpurse?
GOOD MAN Maybe ’tis the cold, Look what a wretched gaberdine he’s wearing.
INFORMER O Zeus and Gods, can such affronts be borne From rogues like these? O me, how vexed I am That I, a virtuous patriot, get such treatment.
CARIO What, you a virtuous patriot?
INFORMER No man more so.
CARIO Come then, I’ll ask you—Answer me.
INFORMER Well.
CARIO Are you A farmer?
INFORMER Do you take me for a fool?
CARIO A merchant?
INFORMER Aye, I feign so, on occasion.
CARIO Have you learned any trade?
INFORMER No, none by Zeus.
CARIO Then how and whence do you earn your livelihood?
INFORMER All public matters and all private too Are in my charge.
CARIO How so?
INFORMER ’Tis I WHO WILL.
CARIO You virtuous, housebreaker? When all men hate you Meddling with matters which concern you not.
INFORMER What, think you, booby, it concerns me not To aid the State with all my might and main?
CARIO To aid the State! Does that mean mischiefmaking?
INFORMER It means upholding the established laws And punishing the rogues who break the same.
CARIO I thought the State appointed Justices For this one task.
INFORMER And who’s to prosecute?
CARIO Whoever will.
INFORMER I am that MAN WHO WILL. Therefore, at last, the State depends on me.
CARIO ’Fore Zeus, a worthless leader it has got. Come, will you this, to lead a quiet life
GOOD MAN And peaceful?
INFORMER That’s a sheep’s life you’re describing, Living with nothing in the world to do.
CARIO Then you won’t change?
INFORMER Not if you gave me all Battus’s silphium, aye and Wealth to boot.
CARIO Put off your cloak!
GOOD MAN Fellow, to you he’s speaking.
CARIO And then your shoes.
GOOD MAN All this to you he’s speaking.
INFORMER I dare you all. Come on and tackle me Whoever will.
CARIO I am that MAN WHO WILL.
INFORMER O me, they are stripping me in open day.
CARIO You choose to live by mischief-making, do you?
INFORMER What are you at? I call you, friend, to witness.
CARIO Methinks the witness that you brought has cut it.
INFORMER O me! I am trapped alone.
CARIO Aye, now you are roaring.
INFORMER O me! once more.
CARIO (to G. M.) Hand me your gaberdine, I’ll wrap this rogue of an Informer in it.
GOOD MAN Nay, that long since is dedicate to Wealth.
CARIO Where can it then more aptly be suspended? Than on a rogue and housebreaker like this? Wealth we will decorate with nobler robes.
GOOD MAN How shall we manage with my cast-off shoes?
CARIO Those on his forehead, as upon the stock Of a wild olive, will I nail at once.
INFORMER I’ll stay no longer; for, alone, I am weaker, I know, than you; but give me once a comrade, A WILLING one, and ere the day is spent I’ll bring this lusty God of yours to justice, For that, being only one, he is overthrowing Our great democracy; nor seeks to gain The Council’s sanction, or the Assembly’s either.
GOOD MAN Aye run you off, accoutred as you are In all my panoply, and take the station I held erewhile beside the bath-room fire, The Coryphaeus of the starvelings there.
CARIO Nay, but the keeper of the baths will drag him Out by the ears; for he’ll at once perceive The man is metal of the baser sort. But go we in that you may pray the God.
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