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But Micio loved the city, and, forsooth!

Ne'er thought of looking after his adopted;

But if he told the truth, and all the truth,

Whatever prank was played, he never stopped it."

Demea has protested from time to time against his brother's very lax system of discipline; and when he finds that young Æschinus's not very steady course has just culminated in a tremendous and notorious row—that he has broken open the house of a slave-dealer, beaten the master, and carried off a young woman—he lectures his brother severely on the results of his ill-judged indulgence.

But Ctesipho, who has been kept in stricter leading-strings by the father, is not quite the pattern youth that the old gentleman thinks him. He is really the person most concerned in the brawl which caused so much scandal; for the girl who has been thus forcibly carried off from her owner is a young music-girl with whom he has fallen in love—who claims, however, as usual, to be free-born and entitled to all the rights of citizenship, Æschinus, not standing so much in fear of his good-natured guardian as the other does of his father, and having, besides, no great reputation to lose, is content to take upon himself all the blame of the late burglary and abduction; though Ctesipho has been really the principal in the affair, in which his brother has only aided and abetted out of pure fraternal affection. There is the usual intriguing slave, Syrus, who is of course in the secret; and who persuades the father that Ctesipho is gone down to the country grange, whither Demea follows him, quite persuaded that he shall find his exemplary son