1st Peas. Never we. He knew where a yeoman's heart lay! One that would clap a man on the back when his cow died, and behave like a gentleman to him--that never met you after a hailstorm without lightening himself of a few pocket-burners. 2d Peas. Ay, that's your poor-man's plaster: that's your right grease for this world's creaking wheels. 1st Peas. Nay, that's your rich man's plaster too, and covers the multitude of sins. That's your big pike's swimming-bladder, that keeps him atop and feeding: that's his calling and election, his oil of anointing, his salvum fac regem, his yeoman of the wardrobe, who keeps the velvet-piled side of this world uppermost, lest his delicate eyes should see the warp that holds it. 2d Peas. Who's the warp, then? 1st Peas. We, man, the friezes and fustians, that rub on till we get frayed through with overwork, and then all's abroad, and the nakedness of Babylon is discovered, and catch who catch can. Old Woman. Pity they only brought his bones home! He would have made a lovely corpse, surely. He was a proper man! 1st Lady. Oh the mincing step he had with him! and the delicate hand on a horse, fingering the reins as St. Cicely does the organ- keys! 2d Lady. And for hunting, another Siegfried. Knight. If he was Siegfried the gay, she was Chriemhild the grim; and as likely to prove a firebrand as the girl in the ballad. 1st Lady. Gay, indeed! His smiles were like plumcake, the sweeter the deeper iced. I never saw him speak civil word to woman, but to her. 2d Lady. O ye Saints! There was honey spilt on the ground! If I had such a knight, I'd never freeze alone on the chamber-floor, like some that never knew when they were well off. I'd never elbow him off to crusades with my pruderies. 'Pluck your apples while they're ripe, And pull your flowers in May, O!' Eh! Mother? Old Woman. 'Till when she grew wizened, and he grew cold, The balance lay even 'twixt young and old.' Monk. Thus Satan bears witness perforce against the vanities of Venus! But what's this babbling? Carolationes in the holy place? Tace, vetula! taceas, taceto also, and that forthwith. Old Woman. Tace in your teeth, and taceas also, begging-box! Who put the halter round his waist to keep it off his neck,--who? Get behind your screen, sirrah! Am I not a burgher's wife? Am I not in the nave? Am I not on my own ground? Have I brought up eleven children, without nurse wet or dry, to be taced nowadays by friars in the nave? Help! good folks! Where be these rooks a going? Knight. The monk has vanished. 1st Peas. It's ill letting out waters, he finds. Who is that old gentleman, sir, holds the Princess so tight by the hand? Knight. Her uncle, knave, the Bishop. 1st Peas. Very right, he: for she's almost a born natural, poor soul. It was a temptation to deal with her. 2d Peas. Thou didst cheat her shockingly, Frank, time o' the famine, on those nine sacks of maslin meal.