_Hip._ Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our jewels; as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for all time’s sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still. _Orl._ Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green? _Hip._ Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still. _Orl._ I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice. * * _Hip._ You are the happier man, Sir. _Orl._ May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no child, have no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare? _Hip._ Is your wife then departed? _Orl._ She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted. _Hip._ You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not? _Orl._ Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was strait: I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, help’d it to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: I hew’d it down. What’s become of it, I neither know nor care. _Hip._ Then can I tell you what’s become of it: that branch is wither’d. _Orl._ So ’twas long ago. _Hip._ Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she’s dead. _Orl._ Ha! dead? _Hip._ Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave. _Orl._ Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death’s a good trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest——Is she dead? _Hip._ She’s turn’d to earth. _Orl._ Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph! Is she dead? I am glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight beat at the doors: in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and all my sorrows, and all her sins. _Hip._ I’m glad you are wax, not marble; you are made Of man’s best temper; there are now good hopes That all these heaps of ice about your heart, By which a father’s love was frozen up, Are thaw’d in those sweet show’rs fetch’d from your eye: We are ne’er like angels till our passions die. She is not dead, but lives under worse fate; I think she’s poor; and more to clip her wings, Her husband at this hour lies in the jail, For killing of a man: to save his blood, Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown, The getting of his life preserves your own.