_Men._ It must be so, for where great states revenge, 'Tis requisite the parts be closely dogg'd,[431] (Which piety and soft respect forbears). Lay one into his breast shall sleep with him, Feed in the same dish, run in self-faction, Who may discover[432] any shape of danger; For once disgrac'd, displayèd[433] in offence, It makes man blushless, and man is (all confess) 80 More prone to vengeance than to gratefulness. Favours are writ in dust; but stripes we feel Depravèd nature stamps in lasting steel. _Pietro._ You shall be leagu'd with the duchess. _Equato._ The plot is very good. _Pietro._[434] You shall both kill, and seem the corse to save. _Fer._ A most fine brain-trick. _Celso._ [_aside_] Of a most cunning knave. _Pietro._ My lords, the heavy action we intend Is death and shame, two of the ugliest shapes That can confound a soul; think, think of it: 90 I strike, but yet, like him that 'gainst stone walls Directs, his shafts rebound in his own face; My lady's shame is mine, O God, 'tis mine! Therefore I do conjure all secrecy: Let it be as very little as may be, Pray ye, as may be. Make frightless entrance, salute her with soft eyes, Stain naught with blood; only Ferneze dies, But not before her brows. O gentlemen, God knows I love her! Nothing else, but this:-- 100 I am not well: if grief, that sucks veins dry, Rivels[435] the skin, casts ashes in men's faces, Be-dulls the eye, unstrengthens all the blood, Chance to remove me to another world, As sure I once must die, let him succeed: I have no child; all that my youth begot Hath been your loves, which shall inherit me: Which as it ever shall, I do conjure it, Mendoza may succeed: he's nobly[436] born; With me of much desert. _Celso._ [_aside_] Much![437] 110 _Pietro._ Your silence answers, "Ay:" I thank you. Come on now. O, that I might die Before her shame's display'd! would I were forc'd To burn my father's tomb, unheal[438] his bones, And dash them in the dirt, rather than this! This both the living and the dead offends: Sharp surgery where naught but death amends. [_Exeunt._ [412] "Cast o' ladies"--couple of ladies. [413] A very venomous little serpent. "A man or beast wounded with this serpent," says Topsel in his _Hist. of Serpents_ (ed. 1658, p. 699), "is afflicted with intolerable thirst, insomuch as it is easier for him to break his belly than to quench his thirst with drinking; always gaping like a bull, casteth himself down into the water and maketh no spare of the cold liquor, but continually sucketh it in till either the belly break or the poison drive out the life by overcoming the vital spirits."