To which the sole reply was tears, and sobs,
And indications of hysterics, whose
Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs,
Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose:
Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job’s;118
He saw too, in perspective, her relations,
And then he tried to muster all his patience.
CLXIII
He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer,
But sage Antonia cut him short before
The anvil of his speech received the hammer,
With “Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more,
Or madam dies.”—Alfonso muttered, “D⸺n her,”119
But nothing else, the time of words was o’er;
He cast a rueful look or two, and did,
He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.
CLXIV
With him retired his “posse comitatus,”
The attorney last, who lingered near the door
Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as
Antonia let him—not a little sore
At this most strange and unexplained “hiatus”
In Don Alfonso’s facts, which just now wore
An awkward look; as he revolved the case,
The door was fastened in his legal face.
CLXV
No sooner was it bolted, than—Oh Shame!
Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind!
How can you do such things and keep your fame,
Unless this world, and t’ other too, be blind?
Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!
But to proceed—for there is more behind:
With much heartfelt reluctance be it said,
Young Juan slipped, half-smothered, from the bed.
CLXVI
He had been hid—I don’t pretend to say
How, nor can I indeed describe the where—
Young, slender, and packed easily, he lay,
No doubt, in little compass, round or square;
But pity him I neither must nor may
His suffocation by that pretty pair;
’Twere better, sure, to die so, than be shut
With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.120
CLXVII
And, secondly, I pity not, because
He had no business to commit a sin,
Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws;—
At least ’twas rather early to begin,
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,
And find a deuced balance with the Devil.121
CLXVIII
Of his position I can give no notion:
’Tis written in the Hebrew Chronicle,
How the physicians, leaving pill and potion,
Prescribed, by way of blister, a young belle,
When old King David’s blood grew dull in motion,
And that the medicine answered very well;
Perhaps ’twas in a different way applied,
For David lived, but Juan nearly died.
CLXIX
What’s to be done? Alfonso will be back
The moment he has sent his fools away.
Antonia’s skill was put upon the rack,
But no device could be brought into play—
And how to parry the renewed attack?
Besides, it wanted but few hours of day:
Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,
But pressed her bloodless lip to Juan’s cheek.
CLXX
He turned his lip to hers, and with his hand
Called back the tangles of her wandering hair;
Even then their love they could not all command,
And half forgot their danger and despair:
Antonia’s patience now was at a stand—
“Come, come, ’tis no time now for fooling there,”
She whispered, in great wrath—“I must deposit
This pretty gentleman within the closet:
CLXXI
“Pray, keep your nonsense for some luckier night—
Who can have put my master in this mood?
What will become on ’t—I’m in such a fright,
The Devil’s in the urchin, and no good—
Is this a time for giggling? this a plight?
Why, don’t you know that it may end in blood?
You’ll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,
My mistress all, for that half-girlish face.
CLXXII
“Had it but been for a stout cavalier122
Of twenty-five or thirty—(come, make haste)
But for a child, what piece of work is here!
I really, madam, wonder at your taste—
(Come, sir, get in)—my master must be near:
There, for the present, at the least, he’s fast,
And if we can but till the morning keep
Our counsel—(Juan, mind, you must not sleep.)”
CLXXIII
Now, Don Alfonso entering, but alone,
Closed the oration of the trusty maid:
She loitered, and he told her to be gone,
An order somewhat sullenly obeyed;
However, present remedy was none,
And no great good seemed answered if she staid:
Regarding both with slow and sidelong view,
She snuffed the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.
CLXXIV
Alfonso paused a minute—then begun
Some strange excuses for his late proceeding;
He would not justify what he had done,
To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding;
But there were ample reasons for it, none
Of which he specified in this his pleading:
His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
Of rhetoric, which the learned call “rigmarole.”
CLXXV
Julia said nought; though all the while there rose
A ready answer, which at once enables
A matron, who her husband’s foible knows,
By a few timely words to turn the tables,
Which, if it does not silence, still must pose—
Even if it should comprise a pack of fables;
’Tis to retort with firmness, and when he
Suspects with one, do you reproach with three.
CLXXVI
Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds—
Alfonso’s loves with Inez were well known;
But whether ’twas that one’s own guilt confounds—
But that can’t be, as has been often shown,
A lady with apologies abounds;—
It might be that her silence sprang alone
From delicacy to Don Juan’s ear,
To whom she knew his mother’s fame was dear.
CLXXVII
There might be one more motive, which makes two;
Alfonso ne’er to Juan had alluded—
Mentioned his jealousy, but never who
Had been the happy lover, he concluded,
Concealed amongst his premises; ’tis true,
His mind the more o’er this its mystery brooded;
To speak of Inez now were, one may say,
Like throwing Juan in Alfonso’s way.
CLXXVIII
A hint, in tender cases, is enough;
Silence is best: besides, there is a tact—123
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)—
Which keeps, when
