Another time he by chance overheard a Gentleman which was talking to a Lady, and said that whatsoever she commanded him to do, he would do it, if she would grant him grace. The Gentlewoman belike willing to hear him speak so not to her, required him to build in that place with one word a Castle of fine silver, at which the Gentleman amazed went away confounded, Faustus followed him fast, and said to him that he had overheard the Lady’s unjust demand, wherefore go say (quoth he) thou wilt do it with one word. And so the Gentleman did and it was done, whilst he ran laughing in to many nobles and lusty gallants, telling them he would shew them the strangest thing that ever they saw, and all they came running into the garden together, where they found the Gentleman fast locked in a pair of stocks, and an ugly foul kitchen wrench in his arms. O Lord, what wondrous sport did he make them there. And when they had laughed their fill, he loosed the gallant, who went and swore all that he could he would be revenged on him. In such monstrous intolerable knaveries Faustus took especial felicity. CHAPTER XXV These four honest fellows Faustus, Akercocke, Mephostophiles, and Wagner went out together into the street, and walking there by chance espied four Gentlewomen seeming to be sisters, them they cast to abuse, and they were never content to play any merry pranks for honest sport, but they must be so satirically full of gall, that they commonly proved infamous, sparing neither their good name on whom they committed them nor any kind of villainy, so it might procure mirth: when they had talked sufficiently with them, they did so much that they were contented to ride abroad with them, and so each fetched his horse and came to them masked, and the Gentlewomen were wimpled likewise (for the men as well as women use there to wear masks). Thus they rode to the common furlong where many Italian gentlemen were playing at the Balloon, and there they rode round about, whole armies of shouts accompanying them, they riding still backward and forward, whilst these men-women had sewed their coats to their doublets, and pinned upon their backs things of vile reproach amongst them, then rode they to the Court not yet satisfied, where they were entertained with more merriment and laughter. And when these men-women saw the greatest multitude that was there likely to be, even upon a piece of ground which was higher than all the rest, they leaped down, and by reason of the friendship betwixt their petticoats and their doublets, they haled them all down one after another, the horses ran away, and they lay upon them to their great confusion and reproach, yet they thought all well sith they were personated and masked, but the women stripped off their women’s garments and their head attires, and there they were well known to be four brave noble young Gentlemen brethren, and each of them rent off the masks of Mephostophiles and his mates, and detected them