SCENE XVI.——ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE.

TOI.
(pretending to speak to somebody). Come, come, I am your servant; I'm in no joking humour.

ARG.
What is the matter?

TOI.
Your doctor, forsooth, who wanted to feel my pulse!

ARG.
Just imagine; and that, too, at fourscore and ten years of age.

BER.
Now, I say, brother, since you have quarrelled with Mr. Purgon, won't you give me leave to speak of the match which is proposed for my niece?

ARG.
No, brother; I will put her in a convent, since she has rebelled against me. I see plainly that there is some love business at the bottom of it all, and I have discovered a certain secret interview which they don't suspect me to know anything about.

BER.
Well, brother, and suppose there were some little inclination, where could the harm be? Would it be so criminal when it all tends to what is honourable—marriage?

ARG.
Be that as it may, she will be a nun. I have made up my mind.
BER.
You intend to please somebody by so doing.

ARG.
I understand what you mean. You always come back to that, and my wife is very much in your way.

BER.
Well, yes, brother; since I must speak out, it is your wife I mean; for I can no more bear with your infatuation about doctors than with your infatuation about your wife, and see you run headlong into every snare she lays for you.

TOI.
Ah! Sir, don't talk so of mistress. She is a person against whom there is nothing to be said; a woman without deceit, and who loves master ah! who loves him…. I can't express how much.

ARG.
(to Béralde). Just ask her all the caresses she lavishes for me.

TOI.
Yes, indeed!

ARG.
And all the uneasiness my sickness causes her.

TOI.
Certainly.

ARG.
And the care and trouble she takes about me.
TOI.
Quite right. (To Béralde) Will you let me convince you; and to show you at once how my mistress loves my master. (To Argan) Sir, allow me to undeceive him, and to show him his mistake.

ARG.
How?

TOI.
My mistress will soon come back. Stretch yourself full-length in this arm-chair, and pretend to be dead. You will see what grief she will be in when I tell her the news.

ARG.
Very well, I consent.

TOI.
Yes; but don't leave her too long in despair, for she might die of it.

ARG.
Trust me for that.

TOI.
(to Béralde). Hide yourself in that corner.