CARIO
How hard it is, O Zeus and all ye Gods, To be the slave of a demented master! For though the servant give the best advice, Yet if his owner otherwise decide, The servant needs must share the ill results. For a man’s body, such is fate, belongs Not to himself, but to whoe’er has bought it. So much for that. But now with Loxias, Who from his golden tripod chants his high Oracular strains, I’ve got a bone to pick. A wise Physician-seer they call him, yet He has sent my master off so moody-mad, That now he’s following a poor blind old man, Just the reverse of what he ought to do. For we who see should go before the blind, But he goes after (and constrains me too) One who won’t answer even with a gr-r-r. I won’t keep silence, master, no I won’t, Unless you tell me why you’re following him. I’ll plague you, Sir; I know you won’t chastise me So long as I’ve this sacred chaplet on.
CHREMYLUS I’ll pluck it off, that you may smart the more If you keep bothering.
CARIO Humbug! I won’t stop Until you have told me who the fellow is. You know I ask it out of love for you.
CHREMYLUS I’ll tell you, for of all my servants you I count the truest and most constant—thief. —I’ve been a virtuous and religious man Yet always poor and luckless.
CARIO So you have.
CHREMYLUS While Temple-breakers, orators, informers, And knaves grow rich and prosper.
CARIO So they do.
CHREMYLUS So then I went to question of the God— Not for myself, the quiver of my life Is well-nigh emptied of its arrows now,— But for my son, my only son, to ask If, changing all his habits, he should turn A rogue, dishonest, rotten to the core. For such as they, methinks, succeed the best.
CARIO And what droned Phoebus from his wreaths of bay?
CHREMYLUS He told me plainly that with whomsoe’er I first forgathered as I left the shrine, Of him I never should leave go again, But win him back, in friendship, to my home.
CARIO With whom then did you first forgather?
CHREMYLUS Him.
CARIO And can’t you see the meaning of the God, You ignoramus, who so plainly tells you Your son should follow the prevailing fashion?
CHREMYLUS Why think you that?
CARIO He means that even the blind Can see ’tis better for our present life ’To be a rascal, rotten to the core.
CHREMYLUS ’Tis not that way the oracle inclines, It cannot be. ’Tis something more than that. Now if this fellow told us who he is, And why and wherefore he has come here now, We’d soon discover what the God intended.
CARIO (to Wealth) Hallo, you sirrah, tell me who you are, Or take the consequence! Out with it, quick!
WEALTH Go and be hanged!
CARIO O master, did you hear The name he gave?
CHREMYLUS ’Twas meant for you, not me. You ask in such a rude and vulgar way. (to Wealth) Friend, if you love an honest gentleman, Tell me your name.
WEALTH Get out, you vagabond!
CARIO O! O! Accept the omen, and the man.
CHREMYLUS O, by Demeter, you shall smart for this. Answer this instant or you die the death.
WEALTH Men, men, depart and leave me.
CHREMYLUS Wouldn’t you like it?
CARIO O master, what I say is far the best: I’ll make him die a miserable death. I’ll set him on some precipice, and leave him, So then he’ll topple down and break his neck.
CHREMYLUS Up with him!
WEALTH O pray don’t.
CHREMYLUS Do you mean to answer?
WEALTH And if I do, I’m absolutely sure
WEALTH You’ll treat me ill: you’ll never let me go,
CHREMYLUS I vow we will, at least if you desire it.
WEALTH Then first unhand me.
CHREMYLUS There, we both unhand you.
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