Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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In confusion and amaz’d at so strange a humor, I askt the meaning of her passion? or why she pity’d the goose rather than me.

But wringing her hands, “you wicked wretch,” said she, “d’ye speak too? D’ye know what you’ve done? You’ve killed the gods delight, a goose the pleasure of all matrons: And, lest you shou’d think your self innocent, if a magistrate shou’d hear of it, you’d be hang’d. You have defil’d with blood my cell, that to this day had been inviolate. You have done that, for which, if any’s so malicious, he may expel me my office.”

She said, and trembling, rends her aged hairs,

And both her cheeks with wilder fury tears:

Sad murmurs from her troubl’d breast arise,

A shower of tears there issu’d from her eyes.

And down her face a rapid deluge run,

Such as is seen, when a hills frosty crown,

By warm Favonius is melted down.

Upon which, “I beseech you,” said I, “don’t grieve, I’ll recompence the loss of your goose with an ostrich.”

While amaz’d I spoke, she sat down on the bed, lamented her loss; at what time Proselenos came in with the sacrifice, and viewing the murder’d goose, and enquiring the cause, began very earnestly to cry and pity me, as it had been a father, not a goose I had slain. But tired with this stuff, “I beseech you,” said I, “tell me, tho’ it had been a man I kill’d, won’t gold wipe off the guilt? See here are two pieces of gold: with these you may purchase gods as well as geese.”