ving him a coin):
Go, drink my health!
(Seeing Lise enter):
Hush! My wife. Bustle, pass on, and hide that money!
(To Lise, showing her the lyre, with a conscious look):
Is it not beautiful?

LISE:
'Tis passing silly!

(She puts a pile of papers on the counter.)

RAGUENEAU:
Bags? Good. I thank you.
(He looks at them):
Heavens! my cherished leaves! The poems of my friends! Torn, dismembered,
to make bags for holding biscuits and cakes!. . .Ah, 'tis the old tale again.
. .Orpheus and the Bacchantes!

LISE (dryly):
And am I not free to turn at last to some use the sole thing that your
wretched scribblers of halting lines leave behind them by way of payment?

RAGUENEAU:
Groveling ant!. . .Insult not the divine grasshoppers, the sweet singers!

LISE:
Before you were the sworn comrade of all that crew, my friend, you did not
call your wife ant and Bacchante!

RAGUENEAU:
To turn fair verse to such a use!

LISE:
'Faith, 'tis all it's good for.

RAGUENEAU:
Pray then, madam, to what use would you degrade prose?

Scene 2.II.

The same. Two children, who have just trotted into the shop.

RAGUENEAU:
What would you, little ones?

FIRST CHILD:
Three pies.

RAGUENEAU (serving them):
See, hot and well browned.

SECOND CHILD:
If it please you, Sir, will you wrap them up for us?

RAGUENEAU (aside, distressed):
Alas! one of my bags!
(To the children):
What? Must I wrap them up?
(He takes a bag, and just as he is about to put in the pies, he reads):
'Ulysses thus, on leaving fair Penelope. . .'
Not that one!
(He puts it aside, and takes another, and as he is about to put in the pies,
he reads):
'The gold-locked Phoebus. . .'
Nay, nor that one!. . .

(Same play.)

LISE (impatiently):
What are you dallying for?

RAGUENEAU:
Here! here! here
(He chooses a third, resignedly):
The sonnet to Phillis!. . .but 'tis hard to part with it!

LISE:
By good luck he has made up his mind at last!
(Shrugging her shoulders):
Nicodemus!

(She mounts on a chair, and begins to range plates on a dresser.)

RAGUENEAU (taking advantage of the moment she turns her back, calls back the
children, who are already at the door):
Hist! children!. . .render me back the sonnet to Phillis, and you shall have
six pies instead of three.

(The children give him back the bag, seize the cakes quickly, and go out.)

RAGUENEAU (smoothing out the paper, begins to