But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks, And, truth to say, he made a foolish figure; When, after searching in five hundred nooks, And treating a young wife with so much rigour, He gained no point, except some self-rebukes, Added to those his lady with such vigour Had poured upon him for the last half-hour, Quick, thick, and heavy--as a thunder-shower. CLXII. At first he tried to hammer an excuse, To which the sole reply was tears, and sobs, And indications of hysterics, whose Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs, Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose: Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's;[77] He saw too, in perspective, her relations, And then he tried to muster all his patience. CLXIII. He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer, But sage Antonia cut him short before The anvil of his speech received the hammer, With "Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more, Or madam dies."--Alfonso muttered, "D--n her,"[78] But nothing else, the time of words was o'er; He cast a rueful look or two, and did, He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid. CLXIV. With him retired his _"posse comitatus,"_ The attorney last, who lingered near the door Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as Antonia let him--not a little sore At this most strange and unexplained "_hiatus_" In Don Alfonso's facts, which just now wore An awkward look; as he revolved the case, The door was fastened in his legal face. CLXV. No sooner was it bolted, than--Oh Shame! Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind! How can you do such things and keep your fame, Unless this world, and t' other too, be blind? Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name! But to proceed--for there is more behind: With much heartfelt reluctance be it said, Young Juan slipped, half-smothered, from the bed. CLXVI. He had been hid--I don't pretend to say How, nor can I indeed describe the where-- Young, slender, and packed easily, he lay, No doubt, in little compass, round or square; But pity him I neither must nor may His suffocation by that pretty pair; 'T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.[ag] CLXVII. And, secondly, I pity not, because He had no business to commit a sin, Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws;-- At least 't was rather early to begin, But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws So much as when we call our old debts in At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil, And find a deuced balance with the Devil.[ah] CLXVIII.