Having made this exclamation, we may suppose that Sir John Falstaff would repair his not very flattering mistake by a plausible apology, or turn it off with a timely jest----either being always at his command at a moment’s notice. Having pacified the by no means implacable Doit, he would muse upon old times--old forms and deeds growing into shape and colour through the fog of years on the dead level of an old man’s memory--like cows and windmills through the morning mist on a Flemish landscape. “Shallow! to be sure!”--this to himself--sighing and putting his hand to his pocket. “He was the man to know! He paid all! He was a very oyster that would grow fat on the shell again, with a string of pearls round his neck directly you had swallowed him.” Then, aloud, with a deeper sigh--“I would he were living now, Master Lawyer!” “Why he lives, Sir John.” “Say you so?--where?” “Hard by, in Gloucestershire, scarce a day’s ride from hence.” “In good health and case, I trust?” “The best. For his bodily health, he is of those men whose backs will never break under the weight of their brains. It is long ere the dock withers or the ass dies. For his outward case, Heaven, in its mercy to helpless creatures, hath sent two kinds of crawling things into the world with good houses to cover them--the snails and the fools, Sir John. Master Shallow is in the Peace: he hath his father’s broad lands and some twenty thousand marks in money.” “You rejoice me! Master Shallow alive and prospering! Well! Master David Shallow was it not?” “Robert.” “True. You called him Bob a while ago. From that you have let fall, it would seem he hath not grown in wisdom as in years and possessions?” “He! Can you make silk purse out of swine’s ear, Sir John; or wash blackamoors white? A greater gull than ever!” “Bardolph.” “Sir John.” “Leave tippling, sirrah, and see to the horses. We’ll ride into Gloucestershire before daybreak. ‘Tis the county of lusty soldiers--and the rebels chafe for their beating. Another health, Master Doit.” I am convinced that it was some such accident as this that induced Sir John Falstaff to turn aside, temporarily, from his designs against the northern rebels in the King’s interest, and direct his forces to the immediate subjugation of Mr. Justice Shallow on his own account. And, indeed, in deciding upon this course, he can scarcely be said to have exceeded or departed from his duty. For in those times of primitive warfare, (especially in the reign of Henry the Fourth, who, in spite of his numerous successful robberies, was not always able to pay his bootmaker, let alone his generals,) the right of private plunder and forage formed in a manner a portion of the soldier’s payment. And it was surely excusable that Sir John Falstaff should have been drawn a little from the track of the public game he was pursuing by so tempting a cross scent as that of his former acquaintance Shallow.