Pardon me, O king, if you find me too cold in my reply to such sweet words. My youth has been taught to think, but not to speak. What can it now aid me, that you and my father once were friends? Were! so you say yourself. The hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship bears the most deadly fruit of all; or I still know the human heart too little. Do not, therefore, O king, do not prolong my despair. You have spoken as the polished statesman: speak now as the monarch, who has the rival of his greatness completely in: his power. STRATO. O king, do not let him be tormented longer by the uncertainty of his fate! PHILOTAS. I thank you, Strato! Yes, let me hear at once, I beg you, how despicable you will render an unfortunate son in his father's eyes. With what disgraceful peace, with how many lands shall he redeem him? How small and contemptible shall he become, in order to regain his child? O my father! ARIDÄUS. This early, manly language too, prince, was your father's! I like to hear you speak thus. And would that my son, no less worthy of me, spoke thus before your father now. PHILOTAS. What mean you by that? ARIDÄUS. The gods--I am convinced of it--watch over our virtue, as they watch over our lives. To preserve both as long as possible is their secret and eternal work. Where is the mortal who knows how wicked he is at heart,--how viciously he would act, if they allowed free scope to each treacherous inducement to disgrace himself by little deeds! Yes, prince! Perhaps I might be he, whom you think me; perhaps I might not have sufficient nobleness of thought to use with modesty the strange fortune of war, which delivered you into my hands; perhaps I might have tried through you to exact that for which I would no longer venture to contend by arms; perhaps--but fear nothing; a higher power has forestalled this. Perhaps. I cannot let your father redeem his son more dearly than by--mine. PHILOTAS. I am astounded! You give me to understand that---- ARIDÄUS. That my son is your father's prisoner, as you are mine. PHILOTAS. Your son my father's prisoner? Your Polytimet? Since when? How? Where? ARIDÄUS. Fate willed it thus! From equal scales it took equal weights at the same time, and the scales are balanced still. STRATO.