PRESIDENT. I have conflagration enough in my own house, one that threatens the destruction of all I possess. Be seated, my dear marshal. You arrive very opportunely to give me your advice and assistance in a certain business which will either advance our fortunes or utterly ruin us both!
MARSHAL. Don't alarm me so, my dear friend!
PRESIDENT. As I said before, it must exalt or ruin us entirely! You know my project respecting the major and Lady Milford—you are not ignorant how necessary this union is to secure both our fortunes! Marshal, our plans threaten to come to naught. My son refuses to marry her!
MARSHAL. Refuses! Refuses to marry her? But, my goodness! I have published the news through the whole town. The union is the general topic of conversation.
PRESIDENT. Then you will be talked of by all the town as a spreader of false reports,—in short, Ferdinand loves another.
MARSHAL. Pooh! you are joking! As if that were an obstacle?
PRESIDENT. With such an enthusiast a most insurmountable one!
MARSHAL. Can he be mad enough to spurn his good-fortune? Eh?
PRESIDENT. Ask him yourself and you'll hear what he will answer.
MARSHAL. But, mon Dieu! what can he answer?
PRESIDENT. That he will publish to the world the crime by which we rose to power—that he will denounce our forged letters and receipts—that he will send us both to the scaffold. That is what he can answer.
MARSHAL. Are you out of your mind?
PRESIDENT. Nay, that is what he has already answered? He was actually on the point of putting these threats into execution; and it was only by the most abject submission that I could persuade him to abandon his design. What say you to this, marshal?
MARSHAL (with a look of bewildered stupidity). I am at my wits' end!
PRESIDENT. That might have blown over. But my spies have just brought me notice that the grand cupbearer, von Bock, is on the point of
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