CHOR. How feeble she is, and wasted away as to her body!
NUR. How could it be otherwise, seeing that she has abstained from food these three days?
CHOR. From the violence of her calamity is it, or does she endeavor to die?
NUR. To die; but she fasts to the dissolution of her life.
CHOR. An extraordinary thing you have been telling me, if this conduct meets the approbation of her husband.
NUR. [He nothing knows,] for she conceals this calamity, and denies that she is ill.
CHOR. But does he not guess it, looking into her face?
NUR. [How should he?] for he is out of this country.
CHOR. But do you not urge it as a matter of necessity, when you endeavor to ascertain her disease and the wandering of her senses?
NUR. I have tried every thing, and have made no further advances. I will not however abate even now from my zeal, so that you being present may bear witness with me, how I behave to my mistress when in calamity—Come, dear child, let us both forget our former conversations; and be both thou more mild, having smoothed that contracted brow, and altered the bent of your design; and I giving up that wherein I did not do right to follow thee, will have recourse to other better words. And if indeed you are ill with any of those maladies that are not to be mentioned, these women here can allay the disease: but if it may be related to men, tell it, that the thing may be mentioned to physicians.—Well! why art thou silent? It doth not behoove thee to be silent, my child, but either shouldst thou convict me, if aught I say amiss, or yield to words well spoken.—Say something—look hither—O wretch that I am! Ladies, in vain do we undergo these toils, while we are as far off from our purpose as before: for neither then was she softened by our words, nor now does she give heed to us. Still however know (now then be more obstinate than the sea) that, if thou shalt die, thou wilt betray thy children, who will have no share in their paternal mansion. I swear by the warlike queen the Amazon, who brought forth a lord over thy children, base-born yet of noble sentiments, thou knowest him well, Hippolytus.