FRONTIN: It's necessary that I first be Senechal Groux. Wait for me upstairs at Aunt Araminte's. She's getting ready to leave. There I can go without fear and instruct you in everything. VALERE: I am going there. FRONTIN: I will rejoin you. (Exit Valere) FRONTIN: (to Lackey) I thought I'd have two days time at least. But both of them taking the money to the notary are going to discover the trick. We'll have to speed up the affair. (Exit Lackey, enter Belise) FRONTIN: Good. The prude is leaving. By having imitated trait for trait her insipidity, her cold gravity, I pleased her. There's no other way to please this foolish woman except by echoing her vapid whims.------- Madame BELISE: Ah, Senechal. What! You are here. I see you again. FRONTIN: You see? As for me, I see you again, too. BELISE: Once more I see the happiness of an unfeeling woman. FRONTIN: I see again the happiness of a fire-proof man. BELISE: Who looks with frigidity on the most charming of men. FRONTIN: Who views with disdain the most loveable object. BELISE: Preceded by terror, considering my love. I am astonished to see this extreme change you've wrought in me in less than two weeks. FRONTIN: I see with a kind of horror that you have effected a metamorphosis in me. BELISE: Both of us, at the same time, think the same thing? FRONTIN: The same thing, and always sympathy between us. BELISE: What a coincidence! Oh, heaven! To take you for a spouse. That makes me tremble. FRONTIN: I quiver, Madame, on account of the step I am going to take, by taking you for my wife. BELISE: I, who by my example have kept my sister in the vow she made to guard her heart. She respected me as the most perfect. I must blush before my little sister. FRONTIN: I who to my elders reprimanded passions, forcing even my sisters to celibacy, I who in history to distinguish my name would have gloried in the title of extinguisher of my race-- BELISE: I who abhorred even the name of marriage and would have become famous for it. FRONTIN: I, Senechal Groux, caustic philosopher who jested at suitors, insulted them, apostrophized them. BELISE: I called marriage a myth, a stumbling block. FRONTIN: The prison of desires, the coffin of the living. BELISE: (tenderly) The abyss. Now see what an unfeeling fondness-- FRONTIN: Towards the abyss, a slope-- BELISE: Yes, sweet-- FRONTIN: Imperceptible-- BELISE: Leads me to the brink-- FRONTIN: The foot slips and here I am. BELISE: Here I am. But at least the world agrees I have chosen you from taste, from wisdom. FRONTIN: Our marriage is the wisest type.