What heat! what a crowd! nay, for that matter the fat countess of Calpi is a crowd of herself, and though it were the depth of winter, her presence would raise the thermometer to “boiling water.” Well! I must say, it’s mighty inconsiderate in corpulent people to come abroad in sultry weather; and if I were a senator, I’d make it high treason for persons above a certain weight to squeeze themselves into public places after the first of May.
Enter Teresa.
So, Teresa! gay doings! lord bless their elbows, how the fiddlers are shaking them away in the ball room.
Te. Gay in truth. But good-lack! it only serves to make me melancholy by reminding me, how the dear lady Josepha would have ornamented such an entertainment! I see the marchioness is here: well! how she can find spirits to enter scenes of gayety—
Ben. Nay, nay, Teresa, the viceroy insisted on her coming; but though the scene around her is gay, that her heart is sad is but too evident.
Te. Ah! and well it may be sad—after shutting her daughter up in the convent where she caught that fatal malady—
Ben. Could she foresee that? and why lay all the blame upon the marchioness? surely the marquis is almost as culpable for consenting that—
Te. By no means, Benedetto, by no means; the marquis only did what every sensible man ought to do; he obeyed his wife—but as for the marchioness—oh! I have no patience with her!
Ben. So it appears, Teresa; and shall I tell you why? because the marchioness is a woman, and you are a woman too: now I’ve always observed that when a female has done wrong, she ever meets with least indulgence from persons of her own sex; and whenever I want to hear the foibles of one woman properly cut up, I never fail to ask another woman what she thinks of them.
Ser. (without) Benedetto, Benedetto!