Bilora monologue (Act 3) — The history of the harlequinade, volume 1 (of 2)

Who could have foretold that love would so rudely have thrust me out of my own house, to throw me amid people whom I do not know? It is said that love will not or cannot do anything. But I see instead that it does what it likes. As for me, it is love which has compelled me to come to seek my hidden wife. Had it been otherwise I should not have tramped all yesterday, all last night and all this morning through woods and fields. I am so tired that I can scarcely stand. A lover is drawn by his love more irresistibly than by three pairs of oxen. There are those who say that love lodges with young people and drives them mad. For my part I see that it can also haunt old men, for had it not pierced the heart of that old gossip—may a scorpion eat him!—he would not have brought my wife into this town. Could not that old usurer have taken pleasure in his ducats without seeking it in my wife? By the blood of the scorpion! it was an ill turn to have served me! But I shall so contrive that in some way I shall wrest her from him. Ah, but who knows whether I shall so much as get a glimpse of her? I should have done well to have gone to his house.... I am dying of hunger and I have neither bread nor money with which to buy it. If I but knew at least where she is living, that is to say where he has lodged her, I should so move her that at least she would give me bread.