to destroy
yourself?" Then she, so that you might easily recognize their habitual
attachment, weeping, threw herself back upon him-- how affectionately!

SOS. What do you say?

SIM. I returned thence in anger, and hurt at heart: and {yet there
was} not sufficient ground for reproving him. He might say; "What have
I done? How have I deserved {this}, or offended, father? She who
wished to throw herself into the flames, I prevented; I saved her."
The defense is a reasonable one.

SOS. You judge aright; for if you censure him who has assisted to
preserve life, what are you to do to him who causes loss or misfortune
{to it}?

SIM. Chremes comes to me next day, exclaiming: "Disgraceful
conduct!"-- that he had ascertained that Pamphilus was keeping this
foreign woman as a wife. I steadfastly denied that to be the fact. He
insisted that it was the fact. In short, I then left him refusing to
bestow his daughter.

SOS. Did not you then {reprove} your son?

SIM. Not even this was a cause sufficiently strong for censuring him.

SOS. How so? Tell me.

SIM. "You yourself, father," {he might say}, "have prescribed a limit
to these proceedings. {The time} is near, when I must live according
to the humor of another; meanwhile, for the present allow me to live
according to my own."

SOS. What room for reproving him, then, is there left?

SIM. If on account of his amour he shall decline to take a wife, that,
in the first place, is an offense on his part to be censured. And now
for this am I using my endeavors, that, by means of the pretended
marriage, there may be real ground for rebuking him, if he should
refuse; at the same time, that if {that} rascal Davus has any scheme,
he may exhaust it now, while {his} knaveries can do no harm: who, I do
believe, with hands, feet, {and} all his might, will do every thing;
and more for this, no doubt, that he may do me an ill turn, than to
oblige my son.

SOS. For what reason?

SIM. Do you ask? Bad heart, bad disposition. Whom, however, if I do
detect-- But what need is there of talking? If it should turn out, as
I wish, that there is no delay on the part of Pamphilus, Chremes
remains to be prevailed upon by me; and I do hope that all will go
well. Now it's your duty to pretend these nuptials cleverly, to
terrify Davus; and watch my son, what he's about, what schemes he is
planning with him.

SOS. 'Tis enough; I'll take care; now let's go in-doors.

SIM. You go first; I'll follow