LYDIA. But there are other callings in the world. CASHEL. Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers, Thy poet friends to stoop o'er merchants' desks And pen prose records of the gains of greed. Tell bishops that religion is outworn, And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit His fraudulent pedantries, and do i' the world The thing he would teach others. Then return To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed; And on that pyre of sacrifice I, too, Will throw my championship. LYDIA. But 'tis so cruel. CASHEL. Is it so? I have hardly noticed that, So cruel are all callings. Yet this hand, That many a two days' bruise hath ruthless given, Hath kept no dungeon locked for twenty years, Hath slain no sentient creature for my sport. I am too squeamish for your dainty world, That cowers behind the gallows and the lash, The world that robs the poor, and with their spoil Does what its tradesmen tell it. Oh, your ladies! Sealskinned and egret-feathered; all defiance To Nature; cowering if one say to them "What will the servants think?" Your gentlemen! Your tailor-tyrannized visitors of whom Flutter of wing and singing in the wood Make chickenbutchers. And your medicine men! Groping for cures in the tormented entrails Of friendly dogs. Pray have you asked all these To change their occupations? Find you mine So grimly crueller? I cannot breathe An air so petty and so poisonous. LYDIA. But find you not their manners very nice? CASHEL. To me, perfection. Oh, they condescend With a rare grace. Your duke, who condescends Almost to the whole world, might for a Man Pass in the eyes of those who never saw The duke capped with a prince. See then, ye gods, The duke turn footman, and his eager dame Sink the great lady in the obsequious housemaid! Oh, at such moments I could wish the Court Had but one breadbasket, that with my fist I could make all its windy vanity Gasp itself out on the gravel. Fare you well. I did not choose my calling; but at least I can refrain from being a gentleman. LYDIA. You say farewell to me without a pang. CASHEL. My calling hath apprenticed me to pangs. This is a rib-bender; but I can bear it. It is a lonely thing to be a champion. LYDIA. It is a lonelier thing to be a woman. CASHEL. Be lonely then. Shall it be said of thee That for his brawn thou misalliance mad'st Wi' the Prince of Ruffians? Never. Go thy ways; Or, if thou hast nostalgia of the mud, Wed some bedogged wretch that on the slot Of gilded snobbery, _ventre a terre_, Will hunt through life with eager nose on earth And hang thee thick with diamonds. I am rich; But all my gold was fought for with my hands. LYDIA. What dost thou mean by rich?