_Theoph._ As thought: I prithee tell me, good Macrinus, How health and our fair princess lay together This night, for you can tell; courtiers have flies[35], That buzz all news unto them. _Mac._ She slept but ill. _Theoph._ Double thy courtesy; how does Antoninus? _Mac._ Ill, well, straight, crooked,--I know not how. _Theoph._ Once more; --Thy head is full of windmills:--when doth the princess Bestow herself on noble Antoninus? _Mac._ I know not. _Theoph._ No! thou art the manuscript, Where Antoninus writes down all his secrets: Honest Macrinus, tell me. _Mac._ Fare you well, sir. [_Exit._ _Harp._ Honesty is some fiend, and frights him hence; A many courtiers love it not. _Theoph._ What piece Of this state-wheel, which winds up Antoninus, Is broke, it runs so jarringly? the man Is from himself divided: O thou, the eye, By which I wonders see, tell me, my Harpax, What gad-fly tickles this Macrinus so, That, flinging up the tail, he breaks thus from me. _Harp._ Oh, sir, his brain-pan is a bed of snakes, Whose stings shoot through his eye-balls, whose poisonous spawn Ingenders such a fry of speckled villanies, That, unless charms more strong than adamant Be used, the Roman angel's[36] wings shall melt, And Cæsar's diadem be from his head Spurn'd by base feet; the laurel which he wears, Returning victor, be enforced to kiss That which it hates, the fire. And can this ram, This Antoninus-Engine, being made ready To so much mischief, keep a steady motion?-- His eyes and feet, you see, give strange assaults. _Theoph._ I'm turn'd a marble statue at thy language, Which printed is in such crabb'd characters, It puzzles all my reading: what, in the name Of Pluto, now is hatching? _Harp._ This Macrinus, The line is[37], upon which love-errands run 'Twixt Antoninus and that ghost of women, The bloodless Dorothea; who in prayer And meditation, mocking all your gods, Drinks up her ruby colour: yet Antoninus Plays the Endymion to this pale-faced Moon, Courts, seeks to catch her eyes-- _Theoph._ And what of this? _Harp._ These are but creeping billows, Not got to shore yet: but if Dorothea Fall on his bosom, and be fired with love, (Your coldest women do so),--had you ink Brew'd from the infernal Styx, not all that blackness Can make a thing so foul, as the dishonours, Disgraces, buffetings, and most base affronts Upon the bright Artemia, star o' the court, Great Cæsar's daughter. _Theoph._ I now conster[38] thee. _Harp._ Nay, more; a firmament of clouds, being fill'd With Jove's artillery, shot down at once, To pash[39] your gods in pieces, cannot give, With all those thunderbolts, so deep a blow To the religion there, and pagan lore, As this; for Dorothea hates your gods, And, if she once blast Antoninus' soul, Making it foul like hers, Oh! the example--