Scene VI.

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL, MINCING.

MIRABELL
I would beg a little private audience too. You had
the tyranny to deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a
secret to you that concerned my love.

MILLAMANT
You saw I was engaged.

MIRABELL
Unkind! You had the leisure to entertain a herd of
fools: things who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing
on your easiness that time which is the incumbrance of their lives.
How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they
should admire you; they are not capable; or, if they were, it should
be to you as a mortification: for, sure, to please a fool is some
degree of folly.

MILLAMANT
I please myself.--Besides, sometimes to converse
with fools is for my health.

MIRABELL
Your health! Is there a worse disease than the
conversation of fools?

MILLAMANT
Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to
assafoetida.

MIRABELL
You are not in a course of fools?

MILLAMANT
Mirabell, if you persist in this offensive freedom
you'll displease me. I think I must resolve after all not to have
you:- we shan't agree.

MIRABELL
Not in our physic, it may be.

MILLAMANT
And yet our distemper in all likelihood will be
the same; for we shall be sick of one another. I shan't endure to be
reprimanded nor instructed; 'tis so dull to act always by advice, and
so tedious to be told of one's faults, I can't bear it. Well, I
won't have you, Mirabell--I'm resolved--I think--you may go--ha, ha,
ha! What would you give that you could help loving me?

MIRABELL
I would give something that you did not know I
could not help it.

MILLAMANT
Come, don't look grave then. Well, what do you
say to me?

MIRABELL
I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his
wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing
and sincerity.

MILLAMANT
Sententious Mirabell! Prithee don't look with
that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing
of the child in an old tapestry hanging!

MIRABELL
You are merry, madam, but I would persuade you for
a moment to be serious.

MILLAMANT
What, with that face? No, if you keep your
countenance, 'tis impossible I should hold mine. Well, after all,
there is something very moving in a lovesick face. Ha, ha, ha! Well
I won't laugh; don't be peevish. Heigho! Now I'll be melancholy, as
melancholy as a watch-light. Well, Mirabell, if ever you will win
me, woo me now.--Nay, if you are so tedious, fare you well: I see
they are walking away.

MIRABELL
Can you not find in the variety of your disposition
one moment -

MILLAMANT
To hear you tell me Foible's married, and your
plot like to speed? No.

MIRABELL
But how you came to know it -

MILLAMANT
Without the help of the devil, you can't imagine;
unless she should tell me herself. Which of the two it may have
been, I will leave you to consider; and when you have done thinking
of that, think of me.