nefits at my hands, are iniquitously visiting me with
evils.

MER. I hear thee raving with no slight disorder.

PR. Disordered I would be, if disorder it be to loathe one's foes.

MER. Thou wouldst be beyond endurance, wert thou in prosperity.

PR. Woe's me!

MER. This word of thine Jove knows not.

PR. Ay, but Time as he grows old teaches all things.

MER. And yet verily thou knowest not yet how to be discreet.

PR. No i'faith, or I should not have held parley with thee, menial as
thou art.

MER. Thou seemest disposed to tell nought of the things which the Sire
desires.

PR. In sooth, being under obligation as I am to him, I am bound to
return his favor.

MER. Thou floutest me, forsooth, as if I were a boy.

PR. Why, art thou not a boy, and yet sillier than one, if thou lookest
to obtain any information from me? There is no outrage nor artifice by
which Jupiter shall bring me to utter this, before my torturing shackles
shall have been loosened. Wherefore let his glowing lightning be hurled,
and with the white feathered shower of snow, and thunderings beneath the
earth let him confound and embroil the universe; for nought of these
things shall bend me so much as even to say by whom it is doomed that he
shall be put down from his sovereignty.

MER. Consider now whether this determination seems availing.

PR. Long since has this been considered and resolved.

MER. Resolve, O vain one, resolve at length in consideration of thy
present sufferings to come to thy right senses.

PR. Thou troublest me with thine admonitions as vainly as
[thou mightest] a billow.[79] Never let it enter your thoughts that I,
affrighted by the purpose of Jupiter, shall become womanish, and shall
importune the object whom I greatly loathe, with effeminate upliftings
of my hands, to release me from these shackles: I want much of that.

MER. With all that I have said I seem to be speaking to no purpose; for
not one whit art thou melted or softened in thy heart by entreaties, but
art champing the bit like a colt fresh yoked, and struggling against the
reins. But on the strength of an impotent scheme art thou thus violent;
for obstinacy in one not soundly wise, itself by itself availeth less
than nothing. And mark, if thou art not persuaded by my words, what a
tempest and three-fold surge of ills, from which there is no escape,
will come upon thee. For in the first place the Sire will shiver this
craggy cleft with thunder and the b