_Bid._ O, say no more. I know thy miseries;--what betwixt thy lady, her gentlewoman, and thy master's late gaming, thou mayest look pale. I know thy miseries, and I condole thy calamities. Thou art born well, bred ill, but diest worst of all: thy blood most commonly gentle, thy youth ordinarily idle, and thy age too often miserable. When thy first suit is fresh, thy cheeks clear of court-soils, and thy lord fall'n out with his lady, so long may be he'll chuck thee under the chin, call thee good pretty ape, and give thee a scrap from his own trencher; but after, he never beholds thee but when thou squirest him with a torch to a wanton's sheets, or lights his tobacco-pipe; never useth thee but as his pander; never regardeth thee but as an idle burr that stick'st upon the nap of his fortune; and so, naked thou camest into the world, and naked thou must return.--Whom serve you? 81 _Hol._ A fool! _Bid._ Thou art my happiest subject: the service of a fool is the only blessed'st slavery that ever put on a chain and a blue coat; they know not what nor for what they give, but so they give 'tis good, so it be good they give; fortunes are ordain'd for fools, as fools are for fortune, to play withal, not to use: hath he taken an oath of allegiance--is he of our brotherhood yet? _Hol._ Not yet, right _venerable Honorificac-cac-cac-cacu-minos Bidet_! but as little an infant as I am I will, and with the grace of wit I will deserve it. 92 _Bid._ You must perform a valorous, virtuous, and religious exploit first, in desert of your order. _Hol._ What is't? _Bid._ Cozen thy master; he is a fool, and was created for men of wit, such as thyself, to make use of. _Hol._ Such as myself? Nay, faith, for wit, I think, for my age, or so--But on, sir. 99 _Bid._ That thou mayst the easier purge him of superfluous blood, I will describe thy master's constitution. He loves and is beloved of himself, and one more, his dog. There is a company of unbraced, untruss'd rutters[504] in the town, that crinkle in the hams, swearing their flesh is their only living, and when they have any crowns, cry "God a mercy, Mol!" and shrugging, "let the cock-holds[505] pay for't;" intimating that their maintenance flows from the wantonness of merchants' wives, when in troth the plain troth is, the plain and the stand, or the plain stand and deliver, delivers them all their living. These comrades have persuaded thy master that there's no way to redeem his peach-colour satin suit from pawn but by the love of a citizen's wife; he believes it: they flout him, he feeds them; and now 'tis our honest and religious meditation that he feed us, Holofernes Puppi. 115 _Hol._ Pippo, and shall please you.