Chapter 35

TRUF. What is the matter? Who comes to pay me a visit?

LEL. Keep your door carefully shut to-night.

TRUF. Why?

LEL. There are certain people coming masked to give you a sorry kind of serenade; they intend to carry off Celia.

TRUF. Good Heavens!

LEL. No doubt they will soon be here. Keep where you are, you may see everything from your window. Hey! Did I not tell you so? Do you not see them already? Hist! I will affront them before your face. We shall see some fine fun, if they do not give way.

[Footnote: This is one of the passages of Molière about which commentators do not agree; the original is, _nous allons voir beau jeu, si la corde ne rompt_. Some maintain that _corde_ refers to the tight rope of a rope dancer; others that _corde_ means the string of a bow, as in the phrase _avoir deux cordes a son arc_, to have two strings (resources) to one's bow. Mons. Eugène Despois, in his carefully edited edition of Molière, (i., 187), defends the latter reading, and I agree with him.]