Sos. You judge aright; for if you censure him who has assisted to preserve life, what are you to do to him who causes loss or misfortune to it?
Sim. Chremes comes to me next day, exclaiming: “Disgraceful conduct!”—that he had ascertained that Pamphilus was keeping this foreign woman as a wife. I steadfastly denied that to be the fact. He insisted that it was the fact. In short, I then left him refusing to bestow his daughter.
Sos. Did not you then reprove your son?
Sim. Not even this was a cause sufficiently strong for censuring him.
Sos. How so? Tell me.
Sim. “You yourself, father,” he might say, “have prescribed a limit to these proceedings. The time is near, when I must live according to the humor of another; meanwhile, for the present allow me to live according to my own.”
Sos. What room for reproving him, then, is there left?
Sim. If on account of his amour he shall decline to take a wife, that, in the first place, is an offense on his part to be censured. And now for this am I using my endeavors, that, by means of the pretended marriage, there may be real ground for rebuking him, if he should refuse; at the same time, that if that rascal Davus has any scheme, he may exhaust it now, while his knaveries can do no harm: who, I do believe, with hands, feet, and all his might, will do every thing; and more for this, no doubt, that he may do me an ill turn, than to oblige my son.
Sos. For what reason?
Sim. Do you ask? Bad heart, bad disposition. Whom, however, if I do detect—But what need is there of talking? If it should turn out, as I wish, that there is no delay on the part of Pamphilus, Chremes remains to be prevailed upon by me; and I do hope that all will go well. Now it’s your duty to pretend these nuptials cleverly, to terrify Davus; and watch my son, what he’s about, what schemes he is planning with him.