BEL. _Without a moment's haggling, pray,_

PHI. _With your own hands the miscreant drown_. With your own
hands, there, drown her there in the bath.

ARM. In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty.

BEL. One promenades through them with rapture.

PHI. One treads on fine things only.

ARM. They are little lanes all strewn with roses.

TRI. Then the sonnet seems to you....

PHI. Admirable, new; and never did any one make anything more
beautiful.

BEL. (_to_ HENRIETTE). What! my niece, you listen to what has
been read without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!

HEN. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt, and to be a wit
does not depend on our will.

TRI. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.

HEN. No. I do not listen.

PHI. Ah! let us hear the epigram.