kinsmen to avenge me! Behold, if you fail in your duty towards me, you will have in me a perpetual disturber of your joys so long as my life shall last, and even after I am dead, if it may be, I shall with constant shadows affright your faithless spirit, and with frightful visions torment your deceiving eyes! Mark that I but ask what is my own, and that by giving it you gain what you lose by refusing it! Now move your tongue to undeceive me for the many times you have moved it to wound me!' Saying this, the fair lady was silent, and for a short while was waiting to see what Grisaldo replied. He, raising his face, which up till then he had kept down, crimsoned with the shame Rosaura's words had caused in him, with calm voice replied to her in this wise: 'If I sought to deny, oh Rosaura, that I am your debtor in more than what you say, I would likewise deny that the sunlight is bright, and would even say that fire is cold and air solid. So that herein I confess what I owe you, and am obliged to pay it; but for me to confess that I can pay you as you wish is impossible, for my father's command has forbidden it, and your cruel disdain has rendered it impossible. Nor do I wish to call any other witness to this truth than yourself, as one who knows so well how many times and with what tears I begged you to accept me as your husband, and to deign to permit me to fulfil the word I had given you to be it. And you, for the reasons you fancied, or because you thought it was well to respond to Artandro's vain promises, never wished matters to come to such an issue; but rather went on from day to day putting me off, and making trials of my firmness, though you could make sure of it in every way by accepting me for your own. You also know, Rosaura, the desire my father had to settle me in life, and the haste he showed in the matter, bringing forward the rich and honourable marriages you know of, and how I with a thousand excuses held aloof from his importunities, always telling you of them, so that you should no longer defer what suited you so well and what I desired; and that after all this I told you one day that my father's wish was for me to marry Leopersia, and you, on hearing Leopersia's name, in a desperate rage told me to speak to you no more, and that I might marry Leopersia with your blessing, or anyone I liked better. You know also that I urged you many times to cease those jealous frenzies, for I was yours and not Leopersia's, and that you would never receive my excuses, nor yield to my prayers, but rather, persevering in your obstinacy and hardness, and in favouring Artandro, you sent to tell me that it would give you pleasure that I should never see you more. I did what you bade me, and, so as to have no opportunity to transgress your bidding, seeing also that I was fulfilling that of my father, I resolved to marry Leopersia, or at least I shall marry her to-morrow, for so it is agreed between her kinsmen and mine; wherefore you see, Rosaura,