SOS. Why should you so insist upon this? Perhaps I may have, my Lord, some secret interest opposed to the pretensions of your love. Perhaps I may have a friend who burns with a respectful flame for the divine charms with which you are in love. Perhaps that friend makes me the daily confidant of his sufferings, that he complains to me of the rigour of his fate, and is looking upon the marriage of the princess as the dreadful sentence which is to send him to his grave. Supposing it were so, my Lord, would it be right that he should receive his death-wound from my hands? IPH. You seem to me, Sostratus, very likely to be that friend whose interests you have so much at heart. SOS. I beg of you, my Lord, not to render me odious tote persons who hear you. I know what I am, and unfortunate people like me are not ignorant of the limits which fortune assigned to their desires. ARI. Let us drop this subject; we will find means for overcoming my daughter's irresolution. ANA. Are there better means of arriving at a conclusion that would satisfy everybody than to consult the light which heaven can give us on that marriage? I have already begun, as I told you, to cast the mysterious figures which our art teaches us; and I hope soon to be able to show you what the future has in reserve regarding this longed for union. After that, who can still hesitate? Will not the glory or the prosperity which will be promised to one or the other be choice sufficient to decide it, and can he who is rejected be offended when heaven itself decides who is to be preferred? IPH. For my part, I submit to it altogether, and I declare that this way seems the most reasonable. TIM. I am entirely of the same opinion, and whatever heaven may decide, I yield to it without reluctance. ERI. But, my Lord Anaxarchus, do you really read so clearly destiny that you can never be deceived? And pray, who will give us security for this prosperity, this glory which you say heaven promises us? ARI. My daughter, you have a little incredulity which never leaves you. ANA. The proofs, Madam, which everybody has seen, of the infallibility of my predictions are sufficient security for the promises I make. But, in short, when I have shown you what heaven has in reserve for you, you may act as you please, and choose one or the other destiny. ERI. Heaven, you say, Anaxarchus, will show me the good or bad destiny that is in reserve for me? ANA. Yes, Madam; the felicity with which you will be blessed if you marry the one, and the misery that will accompany you if you marry the other. ERI. But since it is impossible for me to marry them both at once, it seems that we find written in the heavens not only what is to happen, but also what is not to happen. CLI. (_aside_). Here is a puzzler for our astrologer! ANA. I should have to give you, Madam, a long dissertation on the principles of astrology to make you understand this.