Tom Jones: Lyric Comedy in Three Acts

Mr. W E S T E R N.

Yes, my friend, it is thanks to your intelligence. Good day, Sophie: how are you, my daughter? Pay your compliments to my comrade; he has, by my faith, just acquired the glory of being the most determined hunter in our county of Somerset a county in South West England.

J O N E S.

That advantage belongs to you.

Mr. W E S T E R N.

Not at all, I am sincere. It is to you that I owe all the pleasure of my hunt today. If you had seen it, Sophie, what liveliness! What ardor! But you women, you get up so late!

Mde. W E S T E R N.

Do we not have to, like you, run through the woods before it is day?

S O P H I E.

I regret it very much.

J O N E S.

The pleasure that we would have seen you take would have increased our own.

Mde. W E S T E R N.

Oh! undoubtedly, it is very flattering for women of a certain station to expose themselves every day to some new accident, to brave the winds, the rain!

Mr. W E S T E R N.

Eh! my dear sister, busy yourself with politics without thwarting our pleasures. Ah! why did you not see this morning's hunt? Perhaps in six months we shall not have a similar encounter; a ten-tined stag original: "Cerf dix-cors", a hart with ten branches on its antlers, a time, a freshness, tally-ho hunting cry, tally-ho, it seems I am still there: look, the mere account of my hunt will make you regret not having followed us. Listen.

---

A R I E T T A.

Of a ten-tined stag, I have knowledge:
One attacks it in the thicket, one flushes it;
All are ready: