Julio. Really! then matrimony has not totally destroyed thy free will.
Car. 'Tis with difficulty I have preserved it though; for women, thou knowest, are most unreasonable beings! as soon as I had exhausted my stock of love tales, which, with management, lasted beyond the honey-moon, madam grew sullen,—I found home dull, and amused myself with the pretty peasants of the neighbourhood——Worse and worse!—we had nothing now but faintings, tears and hysterics, for twenty-four honey-moons more.—So one morning I gave her in her sleep a farewell kiss, to comfort her when she should awake, and posted to Madrid; where, if it was not for the remembrance of the clog at my heel, I should bound o'er the regions of pleasure, with more spirit than a young Arabian on his mountains.
Julio. Do you find this clog no hindrance in affairs of gallantry?
Car. Not much.—In that house there—but, damn her, she's perfidious!—in that house is a woman of beauty, with pretensions to character and fortune, who devoted herself to my passion.
Julio. If she's perfidious, give her to the winds.
Car. Ah, but there is a rub, Julio, I have been a fool—a woman's fool!—In a state of intoxication, she wheedled me, or rather cheated me, out of a settlement.
Julio. Pho! is that——
Car. Oh! but you know not its nature. A settlement of lands, that both honour and gratitude ought to have preserved sacred from such base alienation. In short, if I cannot recover them, I am a ruined man.
Julio. Nay, this seems a worse clog than t'other—Poor Carlos! so bewived and be——
Car. Pr'ythee, have compassion.