Racine: Phaedra

THE MISANTHROPE tSg
Celimene. I insist upon your staying.
Alceste. No, it is impossible.
Celimene. Very well, go, then ; do just as you please.
Scene V.
Eliante, Philinte, Acaste, Clitandre, Alceste, Celimene, Basque
Eliante [to Celimene], Here are the two marquises coming
up with us. Have you been told of it ?
CthiMti^-E [to Basque]. Chairs for everybody. [Basque places
chairs and exit.] [Aside to Alceste:] What! you are
not gone yet?
Alceste. No, but I am determined to force you to choose
between them and me.
Celimene. Be quiet.
Alceste. You will explain yourself this very day.
Celimene. You are surely losing your senses.
Alceste. I am doing nothing of the kind; you shall declare
yourself.
Celimene. Ah!
Alceste. You shall decide between them and me.
Celimene. You are laughing, I suppose.
Alceste. No, you shall make up your mind ; my forbearance
is at an end.
Clitandre. Egad ! madam, I have just come from the Louvre,
where Cleonte, at the levee, made himself supremely ridicu-
lous. Has he no friend who could give him some char-
itable advice on his behavior?
Celimene. It is true that he sadly compromises his reputation
; his manners everywhere at once strike us as odd
and when after a short absence we see him again, he
seems even more absurd than before.
Acaste. 'Gad! talking of absurd people, I have just had to
bear with that most trying of tedious bores, the argiier
Damon ; if you will believe me, he kept me out of my
sedan-chair in the broiling sun for a whole hour.
Celimene. He certainly is a strange talker, and knows how
to make long speeches with no meaning in them. No one