Felice. By Jove, we will!--Come hither, Scipio. Master of wit, lord of a cabbage-bed, Knight of the cudgel, toady, knave, and clown, Beseech your mightiness to signify To us, your humble servants, what's o'clock? Scipio. The clock's hand points now to that very hour It indexed at the same time yesterday. Felice. Sirrah, you lie, because the clock's gone fast. Scipio. Then is it very adverse to your wit. Felice. And like to yours, for fast is loose: your wit Is dissipated, drunk; 'tis redolent Of sour ale and the smoke of tavern ingles. Bruno. That is as much as to say it is ailing, and lapped in inkle, in flannel. Scipio. Verily, it is ailing, in sore pangs of travail, having been impregnated by yours; yet will you hate your offspring. By the cock and the goose!--which is a Grecian oath, and very religious and philosophic--your wits are mad, stark mad: Democritus, with an acre of hellebore, could not cure them. Gentlemen, I can prove you the maddest fools out of your own mouths. Bruno. Indeed, we are out of our own mouths; for our mouths are within us; but I thought the foolishest and most unruly member had been in the mouth. Felice. A fool expose fools! Let the blind lead the blind. Scipio. Nay; set a thief to catch a thief. But shall I advise you of your folly? Bruno. Wise men are silent when fools advise. Scipio. Well said; therefore shall I be silent. But no; for that would be for the wise man to follow the fool's advice. Sir, do you seek for anything? Felice. I seek for some ripe grain of wisdom in the desert of your brain. Scipio. And how much do you find? Felice. Not a stalk. Scipio. He is a fool who seeks that he cannot find; and you a superlative fool to seek in a wilderness, where you are jagged and torn by prickly briars, for what you believe cannot, without the miraculous intervention of Ceres, grow there. Pray, sir, do you seek for anything? Bruno. I seek nothing from you. Scipio. What an ass have we here, what a dizzard! He is surely the king of fools who seeks what, being found, will do him no good--namely, nothing: 'tis a folly worthy of that greatest of fools and criminals, old Nick Nemo. Bruno. And who may he be? Scipio. Do you seek to know? Bruno. Ay. Scipio. Then shall I not tell you. Bruno. But you shall, if he were the devil. Scipio. What? Jove help you! Are your wits entirely sublimed, and condensed on the cold sides of the moon like the melancholy bishop's? Now are you--I cannot say how foolish. You would seek to know the devil? O damned fool! who seek to know that which, being found, will do you more harm than good! Out upon you! out upon you! Felice. Fellow, do you seek for anything? Scipio. I seek for something, for something in a special way. I mean I do not seek for nothing; nor do I seek that which I cannot find; nor that which, being found, will do me more harm than good.