_Amph._ What gross absurdities are these? _Sos._ O Lord, O Lord, what absurdities!--as plain as any packstaff. That other me had posted himself there before me, me.--You won't give a man leave to speak poetically now; or else I would say, that I was arrived at the door just before I came thither. _Amph._ This must either be a dream or drunkenness, or madness in thee. Leave your buffooning and lying; I am not in humour to bear it, sirrah. _Sos._ I would you should know I scorn a lie, and am a man of honour in every thing but just fighting. I tell you once again, in plain sincerity and simplicity of heart, that, before last night, I never took myself but for one single individual Sosia; but, coming to our door, I found myself, I know not how, divided, and, as it were, split into two Sosias. _Amph._ Leave buffooning: I see you would make me laugh, but you play the fool scurvily. _Sos._ That may be; but, if I am a fool, I am not the only fool in this company. _Amph._ How now, impudence! I shall---- _Sos._ Be not in wrath, sir; I meant not you: I cannot possibly be the only fool; for, if I am one fool, I must certainly be two fools; because, as I told you, I am double. _Amph._ That one should be two, is very probable! _Sos._ Have you not seen a six-pence split into two halves, by some ingenious school-boy, which bore on either side the impression of the monarch's face? Now, as those moieties were two three-pences, and yet in effect but one six-pence---- _Amph._ No more of your villainous tropes and figures. _Sos._ Nay, if an orator must be disarmed of his similitudes---- _Amph._ A man had need of patience, to endure this gibberish! be brief, and come to a conclusion. _Sos._ What would you have, sir? I came thither, but the t'other I was before me; for that there was two _I_'s, is as certain, as that I have two eyes in this head of mine. This _I_, that am here, was weary: the t'other _I_ was fresh; this _I_ was peaceable, and t'other _I_ was a hectoring bully _I_. _Amph._ And thou expect'st I should believe thee? _Sos._ No; I am not so unreasonable; for I could never have believed it myself, if I had not been well beaten into it: but a cudgel, you know, is a convincing argument in a brawny fist. What shall I say, but that I was compelled, at last, to acknowledge myself! I found that he was very I, without fraud, cozen, or deceit. Besides, I viewed myself, as in a mirror, from head to foot; he was handsome of a noble presence, a charming air, loose and free in all his motions; and saw he was so much I, that I should have reason to be better satisfied with my own person, if his hands had not been a little of the heaviest. _Amph._ Once again, to a conclusion: Say you passed by him, and entered into the house. _Sos._ I am a friend to truth, and say no such thing; he defended the door, and I could not enter. _Amph._ How, not enter?