AGLAEA: They are, at least in my eyes. Condescend to listen to me, person to person. When you had accepted the secret testament of my father, wise and generous Socrates, you told me that it would leave me an honest fortune with which I could establish myself. From that time, I formed the plan of giving this fortune to your dear disciple, Sophronine, who has only your support and for his entire wealth possessed only his virtue. You entirely approved my resolution. You conceived that it was my good fortune to make the fortune of an Athenian that I regard as your son. Full of my happiness, carried away by a sweet joy, that my heart could not contain, I confided this delirious state my soul was in to your wife, Xantippe, and just as soon that condition disappeared. She treated me as a dreamer. She showed me the will of my father who died in poverty, who left me nothing, and who confided me to the friendship which united you. At that moment, awakened from my dream, I felt only sadness at being unable to make the fortune of Sophronine; I don't wish to overwhelm him with the weight of my misery. SOPHRONINE: Indeed, I told you Socrates that her reasons were valueless; if she loves me am I not rich enough? I've subsisted, it's true through your charity, but it's not a guilty employment that I embrace only to support my dear Aglaea. I must, it's true, make her the sacrifice of my love, to find for her, an advantageous role for myself. But I confess, I don't have the strength, and in that respect I am unworthy of her. But if she could be content with my conditions, if she could lower herself to me! No, I don't dare ask it; I don't dare wish it and I won't succumb to a misfortune that she suffers. SOCRATES: My children, Xantippe was really indiscreet to have shown you that will. But believe me, beautiful Aglaea, that she deceived you. AGLAEA: She didn't deceive me. I saw my misery with my own eyes. My father's handwriting is well known to me. Be sure, Socrates, that I know how to bear poverty; I know how to work with my hands. It's enough to live. That's all I need. But it's not enough for Sophronine. SOPHRONINE: It's a thousand times too much for me, tender, sublime soul, worthy of having been raised by Socrates. A noble and laborious poverty is the natural state of man. I would have wanted to offer you a throne. But if you deign to live with me, our respectable poverty is higher than the throne of Croesus, SOCRATES: Your feelings please me more than they soften me. With ecstacy, I see blooming in your hearts the virtue that I sowed there. Never have my cares been better rewarded; never have my hopes been better fulfilled. But, yet once more, Aglaea, believe me, my wife has ill informed you. You are richer than you can imagine. It was not in her but in me that your father confided. Can you not have wealth that Xantippe is ignorant of? AGLAEA: No, Socrates. It says exactly in his will that he is leaving me poor.