Mer. Ye rascal barons! What! Are we burghers monkeys for your pastime? We'll clear the odds. [Seizes Walter.] Wal. Soft, friend--a worm will turn. Voices below. Throw him down. Wal. Dost hear that, friend? Those pups are keen-toothed; they have eat of late Worse bacon to their bread than thee. Come, come, Put up thy knife; we'll give thee market-price-- And if thou must have more--why, take it out In board and lodging in the castle dungeon. [Walter leads him out; the Mob, etc., disperse.] Eliz. Now then--there's many a one lies faint at home-- I'll go to them myself. Isen. What now? start forth In this most bitter frost, so thinly clad? Eliz. Tut, tut, I wear my working dress to-day, And those who work, robe lightly-- Isen. Nay, my child, For once keep up your rank. Eliz. Then I had best Roll to their door in lacqueyed equipage, And dole my halfpence from my satin purse-- I am their sister--I must look like one. I am their queen--I'll prove myself the greatest By being the minister of all. So come-- Now to my pastime, [aside] And in happy toil Forget this whirl of doubt--We are weak, we are weak, Only when still: put thou thine hand to the plough, The spirit drives thee on. Isen. You live too fast! Eliz. Too fast? We live too slow--our gummy blood Without fresh purging airs from heaven, would choke Slower and slower, till it stopped and froze. God! fight we not within a cursed world, Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends-- Each word we speak has infinite effects-- Each soul we pass must go to heaven or hell-- And this our one chance through eternity To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake, Or like the meteor stone, though whelmed itself, Kindle the dry moors into fruitful blaze-- And yet we live too fast! Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt: Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And that thy last deed ere the judgment-day. When all's done, nothing's done. There's rest above-- Below let work be death, if work be love! [Exeunt.] SCENE VIII A Chamber in the Castle. Counts Walter, Hugo, etc., Abbot, and Knights. Count Hugo. I can't forget it, as I am a Christian man. To ask for a stoup of beer at breakfast, and be told there was no beer allowed in the house--her Ladyship had given all the malt to the poor. Abbot. To give away the staff of life, eh? C. Hugo. The life itself, Sir, the life itself. All that barley, that would have warmed many an honest fellow's coppers, wasted in filthy cakes. Abbot. The parent of seraphic ale degraded into plebeian dough! Indeed, Sir, we have no right to lessen wantonly the amount of human enjoyment! C. Wal. In heaven's name, what would you have her do, while the people were eating grass? C. Hugo. Nobody asked them to eat it; nobody asked them to be there to eat it; if they will breed like rabbits, let them feed like rabbits, say I--I never married till I could keep a wife.