Scene XII.

Love for Love

by William Congreve

SCANDAL, FORESIGHT, MRS FORESIGHT, MRS FRAIL.

FORESIGHT
Ah, Sir Sampson, heav'n help your head. This is
none of your lucky hour; Nemo omnibus horis sapit. What, is he gone,
and in contempt of science? Ill stars and unconvertible ignorance
attend him.

SCANDAL
You must excuse his passion, Mr Foresight, for he
has been heartily vexed. His son is non compos mentis, and thereby
incapable of making any conveyance in law; so that all his measures
are disappointed.

FORESIGHT
Ha! say you so?

MRS FRAIL
What, has my sea-lover lost his anchor of hope,
then? [Aside to MRS FORESIGHT.]

MRS FORESIGHT
O sister, what will you do with him?

MRS FRAIL
Do with him? Send him to sea again in the next
foul weather. He's used to an inconstant element, and won't be
surprised to see the tide turned.

FORESIGHT
Wherein was I mistaken, not to foresee this?
[Considers.]

SCANDAL
Madam, you and I can tell him something else that he
did not foresee, and more particularly relating to his own fortune.
[Aside to MRS FORESIGHT.]

MRS FORESIGHT
What do you mean? I don't understand you.

SCANDAL
Hush, softly,--the pleasures of last night, my dear,
too considerable to be forgot so soon.

MRS FORESIGHT
Last night! And what would your impudence
infer from last night? Last night was like the night before, I
think.

SCANDAL
'Sdeath, do you make no difference between me and
your husband?

MRS FORESIGHT
Not much,--he's superstitious, and you are
mad, in my opinion.

SCANDAL
You make me mad. You are not serious. Pray
recollect yourself.

MRS FORESIGHT
Oh yes, now I remember, you were very
impertinent and impudent,--and would have come to bed to me.

SCANDAL
And did not?

MRS FORESIGHT
Did not! With that face can you ask the
question?

SCANDAL
This I have heard of before, but never believed. I
have been told, she had that admirable quality of forgetting to a
man's face in the morning that she had lain with him all night, and
denying that she had done favours with more impudence than she could
grant 'em. Madam, I'm your humble servant, and honour you.--You look
pretty well, Mr Foresight: how did you rest last night?

FORESIGHT
Truly, Mr Scandal, I was so taken up with broken
dreams and distracted visions that I remember little.

SCANDAL
'Twas a very forgetting night. But would you not
talk with Valentine? Perhaps you may understand him; I'm apt to
believe there is something mysterious in his discourses, and
sometimes rather think him inspired than mad.

FORESIGHT
You speak with singular good judgment, Mr Scandal,
truly. I am inclining to your Turkish opinion in this matter, and do
reverence a man whom the vulgar think mad. Let us go to him.

MRS FRAIL
Sister, do you stay with them; I'll find out my
lover, and give him his discharge, and come to you. O' my
conscience, here he comes.