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Rh prepared to take her without; he will even provide out of his own purse all the expenses of the wedding-feast, and will send in to Euclio's house both the provisions and the cooks required for the occasion.

But the cooks, when they come, and begin to busy themselves in the house, are a source of continual agony to the miser. He hears one of them call for a "larger pot:" and he rushes at once to the protection of his gold. He finds his own dunghill-cock scratching about the house; and he is sure that these new-comers have trained him to discover the buried treasure, and knocks the poor bird's head off in his fury. In the end he drives them all off the premises under a shower of blows, and only when he has in their absence dug up the precious pot, and got it safe under his cloak, will he allow them to come back again. When the bridegroom expectant, in the joy of his heart, invites him to drink with him, he feels satisfied that his intention is to make him drunk, and so to wring from him his secret.

The miser carries off the pot, and proceeds to bury it afresh in the temple of Faith, placing it under that goddess's protection. He finds that this proceeding has been watched by a slave belonging to Megadorus, and carries the gold off again to the sacred grove of Sylvanus, where he buries it once more. This time, however, the slave takes his measures successfully, by getting up into a tree; and when Euclio is gone, he unearths the pot, and carries it off rejoicing. The discovery of his loss almost drives the miser frantic: and the scene is worth extracting, if only because Molière has borrowed it almost entire in the well-known soliloquy of