OCT. You know, Scapin, that two months ago Mr. Géronte and my father set out together on a voyage, about a certain business in which they are both interested.
SCA. Yes, I know that.
OCT. And that both Léandre and I were left by our respective fathers, I under the management of Silvestre, and Léandre under your management.
SCA. Yes; I have acquitted myself very well of my charge.
OCT. Some time afterwards Léandre met with a young gipsy girl, with whom he fell in love.
SCA. I know that too.
OCT. As we are great friends, he told me at once of his love, and took me to see this young girl, whom I thought good-looking, it is true, but not so beautiful as he would have had me believe. He never spoke of anything but her; at every opportunity he exaggerated her grace and her beauty, extolled her intelligence, spoke to me with transport of the charms of her conversation, and related to me her most insignificant saying, which he always wanted me to think the cleverest thing in the world. He often found fault with me for not thinking as highly as he imagined I ought to do of the things he related to me, and blamed me again and again for being so insensible to the power of love.
SCA. I do not see what you are aiming at in all this.
OCT. One day, as I was going with him to the people who have charge of the girl with whom he is in love, we heard in a small house on a by-street, lamentations mixed with a good deal of sobbing. We inquired what it was, and were told by a woman that we might see there a most piteous sight, in the persons of two strangers, and that unless we were quite insensible to pity, we should be sure to be touched with it.
SCA. Where will this lead to?