“Sentiment! The world only exists by ignoring it. What have the fancies of girls to do with suitable family arrangements? I declare you are as great a fool as the child herself. A young woman permits herself the blamable freedom of looking complacently upon a young man who has not been officially chosen for her. She must perforce think herself a martyr and her guardians executioners, when it becomes necessary for them to reprimand her and order her to withdraw her prematurely fixed affections. Good gracious! It is preposterous. We might as well be in England or in some equally wild place, where girls are unprotected and forward.”
“Whom have you in view?” Pericles quietly asked, bringing the orator back to the point.
“Oïdas.”
“The Mayor! Why, he is a widower and nearly as old as myself.”
“What does it matter? He is rich and influential. Inarime will have a handsome house,—you know that colonnaded building near the Palace? Well, when a man has such a house as that to offer a woman, she need not trouble to examine the wrinkles on his forehead or the crowsfeet under his eyes, or whether his hair be grey or black or red. All things are relative, Pericles, even youth and beauty. It depends on the purse.”
“But have you any proof that Kyrios Oïdas is disposed to think of my daughter?”
“The best possible. He told me so to-night.”
Pericles started, and stared doubtingly at his brother.
“You do not credit me, I see, but it is true, I assure you. He admires her, wants a wife, asked if she had a dowry, and notified his willingness to demand her in marriage.”
“He is a rich man, undoubtedly,” Pericles slowly admitted, remembering just then that Reineke had not started by considerations of the dowry. “In his country women are bought,” he said to himself, “in ours their husbands are purchased. It is merely an opinion on which side the barter is more honourable.”