SCENE IV.——HARPAGON, ÉLISE, MARIANNE, VALÈRE, FROSINE, MASTER JACQUES, THE POLICE OFFICER.

HAR.
Ah! guilty daughter! unworthy of a father like me! is it thus that you put into practice the lessons I have given you? You give your love to an infamous thief, and engage yourself to him without my consent! But you shall both be disappointed. (To Élise) Four strong walls will answer for your conduct in the future; (to Valère) and good gallows, impudent thief, shall do me justice for your audacity.

VAL.
Your anger will be no judge in this affair, and I shall at least have a hearing before I am condemned.

HAR.
I was wrong to say gallows; you shall be broken alive on the wheel.

ELI.
(kneeling to her father). Ah! my father, be more merciful, I beseech you, and do not let your paternal authority drive matters to extremes. Do not suffer yourself to be carried away by the first outburst of your anger, but give yourself time to consider what you do. Take the trouble of inquiring about him whose conduct has offended you. He is not what you imagine, and you will think it less strange that I should have given myself to him, when you know that without him you would long ago have lost me for ever. Yes, father, it is he who saved me from the great danger I ran in the waters, and to whom you owe the life of that very daughter who …

HAR.
All this is nothing; and it would have been much better for me if he had suffered you to be drowned rather than do what he has done.

ELI.
My father, I beseech you, in the name of paternal love, grant me …

HAR.
No, no. I will hear nothing, and justice must have its course.

JAC.
(aside). You shall pay me for the blows you gave me.
FRO.
What a perplexing state of affairs!