PRIMUS MUNDANUS. _Si breve tempus abit_, SECUNDUS MUNDANUS. _Si vita caduca recedit_; TERTIUS MUNDANUS. _Si cadit hora_. PRIMUS MUNDANUS. _Dies abeunt_, SECUNDUS MUNDANUS. _Perit Omne_, TERTIUS MUNDANUS. _Venit Mors_, PRIMUS MUNDANUS. _Quidnam prodesset fati meminisse futuri?_ SECUNDUS MANDANUS. _Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam?_ TERTIUS MUNDANUS. _Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis?_ Upon which an unpleasant personage who has just appeared to interrupt their trialogue observes, _Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit, Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit omne, venit Mors, Quidnam lethiferæ Mortis meminisse nocebit?_ It is _Mors_ herself who asks the question. The three Worldlings however behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell Death that they are young and rich and active and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. Death or rather Mrs. Death, (for _Mors_ being feminine is called _læna_, and _meretrix_, and _virago_,) takes all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery? Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not? and Death answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is credible that any should be obliged to go there? and Death to convince her calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own sufferings. A dreadful account this _Damnatus_ gives; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, enquires if he is the only one who is tormented in _Orcus_, _Damnatus_ assures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to Heaven, but that his fellow-sufferers are in number numberless; and he specifies among them Kings and Popes, and Senators and severe Schoolmasters,—a class of men whom Textor seems to have held in great and proper abhorrence—as if like poor Thomas Tusser he had suffered under their inhuman discipline.