No sooner was it bolted, than—Oh shame! O 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 unfilch’d good name! But to proceed—for there is more behind: With much heartfelt reluctance be it said, Young Juan slipp’d half-smother’d, from the bed.
He had been hid—I don’t pretend to say How, nor can I indeed describe the where— Young, slender, and pack’d 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.
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.
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 answer’d very well; Perhaps ’twas in a different way applied, For David lived, but Juan nearly died.
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 renew’d attack? Besides, it wanted but few hours of day: Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak, But press’d her bloodless lip to Juan’s cheek.
He turn’d his lip to hers, and with his hand Call’d 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 whisper’d, in great wrath—‘I must deposit This pretty gentleman within the closet:
‘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.