ZER. But just listen to the plan he adopted to take in his dupe--ah! ah! ah! ah! I can't think of it without laughing heartily--ah! ah! ah! He went to that old screw--ah! ah! ah!--and told him that while he was walking about the harbour with his son--ah! ah!--they noticed a Turkish galley; that a young Turk had invited them to come in and see it; that he had given them some lunch--ah! ah!--and that, while they were at table, the galley had gone into the open sea; that the Turk had sent him alone back, with the express order to say to him that, unless he sent him five hundred crowns, he would take his son to be a slave in Algiers--ah, ah, ah! You may imagine our miser, our stingy old curmudgeon, in the greatest anguish, struggling between his love for his son and his love for his money. Those five hundred crowns that are asked of him are five hundred dagger-thrusts--ah! ah! ah! ah! He can't bring his mind to tear out, as it were, this sum from his heart, and his anguish makes him think of the most ridiculous means to find money for his son's ransom--ah! ah! ah! He wants to send the police into the open sea after the Turk's galley--ah! ah! ah! He asks his servant to take the place of his son till he has found the money to pay for him--money he has no intention of giving--ah! ah! ah! He yields up, to make the five hundred crowns, three or four old suits which are not worth thirty--ah! ah! ah! The servant shows him each time how absurd is what he proposes, and each reflection of the old fellow is accompanied by an agonising, "But what the deuce did he want to go in that galley for? Ah! cursed galley. Ah! scoundrel of a Turk!" At last, after many hesitations, after having sighed and groaned for a long time...But it seems to me that my story does not make you laugh; what do you say to it? GER. What I say? That the young man is a scoundrel--a good-for-nothing fellow--who will be punished by his father for the trick he has played him; that the gypsy girl is a bold, impudent hussy to come and insult a man of honour, who will give her what she deserves for coming here to debauch the sons of good families; and that the servant is an infamous wretch, whom Géronte will take care to have hung before to-morrow is over. SCENE IV.--ZERBINETTE, SILVESTRE. SIL. Where are you running away to? Do you know that the man you were speaking to is your lover's father? ZER. I have just begun to suspect that it was so; and I related to him his own story without knowing who he was. SIL. What do you mean by his story? ZER. Yes; I was so full of that story that I longed to tell it to somebody. But what does it matter? So much the worse for him. I do not see that things can be made either better or worse. SIL. You must have been in a great hurry to chatter; and it is indiscretion, indeed, not to keep silent on your own affairs. ZER. Oh! he would have heard it from somebody else. SCENE V.--ARGANTE, ZERBINETTE, SILVESTRE.