_Ribau._ Peace! Remember your duty to me; to your country. Yet, out, alas! I mock myself to name it. Did not these rugged battlements of Calais; This tomb, yet safeguard of its citizens, Which shuts the sword out, and locks hunger in; (Where many a wretch, pale, gaunt, and famine-shrunk, Smiles, ghastly, at the slaughter's threat, and dies:) Did not these walls--like Vulcan's swarthy arms, Clasping sweet beauty's queen--encircle now, Within their cold and ponderous embrace, The fair, yet, ah! I fear, the fickle Julia, My sluggish zeal would lack the spur to rouse it. _La Gloire._ And, of all the spurs in the race of mortality, love is the only true tickler to quicken a man's motions. But to reconcile a mistress by victualling a town!--Well; dark and puzzling is the road to woman's affection; but this is the first time I ever heard of sliding into her heart through her palate; or choking her anger, by stopping her mouth with a meal. An' this pantry fashion of wooing should last, woe to the ill-favoured! Beauty will raise the price of provisions, and poor ugliness soon be starved out of the country. _Ribau._ This enterprise may yet regain her. Once she was kind; until her father's policy, Nourish'd in courts, stepp'd in, and check'd her love. Yet 'twas not love; for true love knows no check: There is no skill in Cupid's archery, When duty heals a love-wound. _La Gloire._ But, dear my lord! think on the great danger, and little reputation---- _Ribau._ No more! mark me, La Gloire! As your officer, I may command you onward: but, in respect to your early attachment, your faithful service, ere you followed me to the army, if your mind misgive you in this undertaking, you have my leave to retreat. _La Gloire._ [_Amazed._] My lord! _Ribau._ I say, you are free to return. _La Gloire._ Look ye, my lord! I am son to brave old Eustache de St. Pierre; as tough a citizen as any in all Calais: I was carried into your lordship's father's family (your lordship being then but just born) at six days old; a mere whelp, as a body may say. According to puppy reckoning, my lord, I was with you three days before I could see. I have followed you through life, frisking and trotting after your lordship ever since: and, if you think me, now, mongrel enough to turn tail, and leave my master in a scrape, why, 'twere kinder e'en to hang me up at the next tree, than cut me through the heart with your suspicions. _Ribau._ No, La Gloire,--I---- _La Gloire._ No, my lord! 'tis fear for you makes me bold to speak. To see you running your head through stone walls for a woman--and a woman who, though she be an angel, has (saving your presence) played you but a scurvy sort of a jade's trick; and---- _Ribau._ 'Sdeath, villain! how dare your slanderous tongue to--but 'tis plain--'tis for thy own wretched sake thou art thus anxious--drivelling coward!